For Irma Gluyas feared for her own life. She dared not betray the tiger-like Fritz Braun, whose veiled scheme of plunder or blackmail she could not fathom.

Hitherto all had gone well with them, in their merry will-o'-the-wisp game with Irma's jealous unknown guardians, with his concealed enemies.

But Clayton well knew that no mere pretense would baffle Arthur Ferris' thorough knowledge of all of his past social habits.

He dared not openly quarrel with Ferris until Jack Witherspoon's return. He only lived now to see the Detroit lawyer speeding west, far on ahead of the deceitful Ferris, who would be detained in New York by the quiet consummation of the big deal.

Clayton was but too well aware that his only weapon was his knowledge of Ferris' secret marriage--an outrage upon Alice Worthington's unguarded girlhood.

And yet he dared not openly use that weapon; how easy for the old capitalist to frame a suave excuse for the "maimed rites" of that Western bridal.

One longing burned now in Clayton's heart, the honest wish to find some dignified and safe place of meeting with the woman upon whom he would shower the gold soon to be his own.

"If anything should happen," he thought.

Of course, his own face was too well known to adopt any mere hiding tactics. Irma was ever fearful of her jealous artist guardians, and in this lovely evening hour the lover's heart rose up in all its stormy tenderness to beg her to lift the veil from her incognito.

Even while they murmured again their vows and drifted away into dreams of the unclouded future, the heavens were blackening around them.

Irma seemed strangely frightened as she cowered in her lover's arms, while he begged her to lift the veil of her privacy.

"I must be with you--near you," he cried. "Listen! I have even now grave matters hanging over me which may summon me suddenly away from you. You know not my abode. You cannot write or telegraph safely to my office.

"There are veiled spies, jealous rivals, there, who would rob me of place, power, and the money which will yet be ours, in the dear far-off Danube land.

"You have been ill, distressed," he fondly said. "Nay, do not deny it! Madame Raffoni has told me all."

"My God!" whispered Irma. "She has told you"--

"Only that you have suffered, my darling," said Clayton, folding her to his breast.

"Ah! I must make an end of it!" the loyal lover cried, as Irma lay sobbing on his breast. "If I could only come to you; how shall I know? Can you trust no one? There is Madame Raffoni," said Clayton.

"She knows where my office is. I have bribed her, with flattery and a few little kindnesses, to come and tell me of you, several times, when we have been separated in these long weeks. We have not even gone to the 'Bavaria'; I have shown her my office. I care not to force myself upon your loyal secrecy. I respect the promise upon which your artistic future depends; but think of me. If you were ill, and we were separated by Fate, I should go mad! I could not live! Can you not trust her to bring me to you?" Fear and love were striving now in the singer's throbbing heart.

The Magyar witch clasped her arms around her gallant lover in a mad access of tenderness. "And you do love me so, Randall," she cried, in a storm of tears.

"More than my life," said the man who now felt her heart beating wildly against his own.

"Ah! God!" sobbed Irma. "If we had only met in other days, in another land, in my own dear country!"

"Listen, Irma," pleaded Clayton. "I will soon take you away, far over the seas."

"In a few weeks I shall be free, and you shall be my own, my very own! For I will then come to you, free to give you all that life and love can give.

"But promise me now that Madame Raffoni shall lead me to you if you need me. You can trust her. I will come to her home. I cannot bear this agony, and I am watched, also!"

Even as he spoke, the heavens blackened and a stormy drift of rain swept athwart the sky. There was a muttering roll of thunder. The white-crested waves dashed menacingly upon the shore!

Irma Gluyas clung to her lover as the affrighted Madame Raffoni came rushing toward them for shelter in the storm. The red lightning flashed, and the fury of the storm was upon them. It was a wild tempest which raged around them. The women were helpless with fear.

In despair, Randall Clayton gazed at the distant hotels; there was shelter and safety. But now a new fear beset him. His well-known identity, Irma's marked beauty, the strange attendant duenna, there would be certain discovery and scandal. And he would be Ferris'

easy victim if discovered.

Irma Gluyas shrieked as she clung to her lover and bade him save her as the wild lightning bolts rent the darkness. It was a horrid elemental tumult!

A few hundred yards away a heavy closed carriage was slowly creeping along the drive between the hotels. "Run for your life!" shouted Clayton to the eager Madame Raffoni. "Stop that carriage. Offer him anything, everything! I will carry her. I must save her."

Bending himself to the task, Clayton raised the fainting form of Irma Gluyas. Her long hair lowered, swept around her in the storm; her sculptured arms clung to him, and her warm heart thrilled him as he sped on through the driving torrent. He was possessed with Love's last delirium.

In the violence of the storm, Clayton could only motion "forward"

as he closed the door of the carriage and the frightened horses set off at a mad gallop. The inmates of the carriage never saw the bridge as the vehicle swayed from side to side in the blue-flamed lightning flashes.

They were nearing Brooklyn when, in the still driving storm, Clayton descended and procured some restoratives at a pharmacy.

He poured a draught of strong wine between the affrighted woman's pallid lips, and then whispered, "You must tell me where to take you. It is life or death now."

And then Irma Gluyas, her head resting on Madame Raffoni's bosom, feebly whispered, "To my home, 192 Layte Street."

There was not a word spoken as, in the midnight darkness of the storm, the horses struggled along until, under the shelter of the high houses, the carriage stopped before the desolate-looking old mansion.

There was a look of terror on Madame Raffoni's face which was not lost upon Clayton. "Get the door open," he hoarsely cried. "I will carry her in. Then, I swear to you, I will leave her at once."

The strong man sprang from his place, and in a few moments he stood within the veiled splendors of the old drawing-room.

Kneeling by the bed, wherein he had deposited the senseless woman, Clayton chafed her marble hands in an agony of despair.

But, even in his lover's exaltation, he listened to Madame Raffoni, who knelt before him in passionate adjuration. "Go, go!" she cried in broken pathos. "I will come to you to-morrow."

And she dragged him to the door. "I will all do; everything! I swear! Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!"

With one last despairing look, raining passionate kisses upon the marble lips of the woman he loved, Randall Clayton left the dusky magnificence of the superb apartment, and only halted at the door long enough to whisper to the Raffoni, "Bring me to her to-morrow, and I will make you rich!"

And the poor woman dumbly covered his hands with obedient kisses.

"Go, go!" she cried. "I will come!"

And, touched with the woman's frantic fears, Randall Clayton sprang into the carriage. Through the blinding storm he had reached the New York side before he thought of his own movements, of the morrow, of his coming friend, and of his wary enemies.

Then he resolutely made up his mind to fight the warring Fates to a finish.

He drove to the Astor House, dismissed his driver with a ransom fee, and there hid himself in an upper room.

When he presented himself at the half-deserted office of the Western Trading Company, upon the next morning, he was clad in unfamiliar garb.

His blood-shot eyes told of a vigil of mental suffering, and he dared say nothing as he gruffly bowed when Mr. Somers told him of Robert Wade's continued illness.

"I am going down to the election," said the old accountant. "And so you will be in charge, as Mr. Ferris has not been heard from.

There is no one here but you to represent the management."