seeing martin gurwood's attitude of despair, and the horror-stricken expression on humphrey statham's face, pauline started back in amazement.

'is it possible,' she cried, 'that some one has been beforehand with me, that you already know the news which i come to bring? but no, that could not be.'

she addressed herself to martin, but, after a brief glance at her, he had resumed his former attitude, and it was statham who replied. 'you find us talking over a matter which has caused great surprise and pain to both of us, but it is not one,' he added quickly, seeing her start, 'in which, madame du tertre, you could be interested, or of which, indeed, you could have any knowledge. from what you say you would appear to have some communication to make to us--does it concern mrs. claxton?'

'it does, indeed,' cried pauline, with a deep sigh, and more than ever disconcerted at a glimpse of martin gurwood's tear-blurred face, which he lifted up as he heard her words; 'it does, indeed.'

martin did not say a word, but kept his eyes upon her with a hard stony gaze. but humphrey statham cried out:

'for god's sake, woman, speak, and do not keep us longer in suspense! is alice ill--has anything happened to her?'

'what has happened to her you will be able to guess, when you read this slip of paper which, on my return from a false errand on which i had been lured, i found in an envelope addressed to me.'

she handed him a note as she spoke. humphrey statham took it, and read the following words in alice's handwriting:

'i have found you and your accomplices out! i know my exact position now, and can guess why i was prevented from seeing john after his death!'

'good heavens, what can this mean?' cried martin gurwood, after statham had read aloud the words of the note.

'mean!' said statham. 'there is one portion of it, at all events, which is sufficiently intelligible. "i know my exact position now;" she has learned what we have been so long endeavouring to hide from her! she knows the exact relation in which she stood with mr. calverley.'

'merciful powers, do you think so?' cried martin.

'what other meaning could that phrase convey?' said humphrey statham. 'i myself have no doubt of it, and i think madame du tertre is of my opinion; are you not, madame?'

'i am, indeed,' said pauline.

'but where can alice have learned the secret?' said martin; 'who can have told it to her?'

'i have no doubt on that point either,' said pauline; 'it must have been told to her by mr. wetter.'

'wetter!' cried martin and humphrey both at the same time.

'mr. henrich wetter,' repeated pauline. 'it was he who beguiled me into the city upon a false pretence, and on my return home i learned from the servant that he had been at the house during my absence, and had a long interview with her mistress. then i recognised at once that i had been gotten out of the way for this very purpose.'

'your suspicions of this man seem to have been just,' said martin, turning to humphrey statham, and speaking slowly, 'though they did not point in that direction.'

'yes, as i told you before, i knew him to be a bad fellow, and a particularly undesirable acquaintance for mrs. claxton,' said statham. 'but i confess, madame du tertre, that i do not yet see why you should fix upon mr. wetter as the guilty person in the present instance, independently, that is to say, of the fact that he was with mrs. claxton in the interval between your leaving home and your return, during which she seems to have acquired this information. i should not have thought that wetter could have known anything about the calverley and claxton mystery.'

'he knows everything that he wants to know,' cried pauline with energy; 'he is a fiend, a clever merciless fiend. if it were his interest--and it was, as i happen to know--to make himself acquainted with alice's history, he would learn it at whatever cost of money, patience, and trouble! it is he that has done this and no one else, be sure of that.'

'we must allow then, i suppose,' said humphrey statham, referring to the paper which he still held in his hand, 'that the discovery which mrs. claxton claims to have made is that of her relations with mr. calverley, and it seems likely that she gained the information from mr. wetter, who gave it her for his own purpose. i take only a subordinate part in the matter, martin, as your friend, but it strikes me that it is for you, as alice's guardian, to ask madame du tertre, who has evidently a bad opinion--worse than mine almost--of mr. wetter, why, having that opinion, she introduced this man to alice, and suffered him to become intimate at pollington-terrace.'

'why did you do this?' cried martin, turning almost fiercely upon her. 'you say yourself that this is a bad man, and that nothing will stop him when his mind is once made up to the commission no matter of what crime, and yet you bring him to the house and present him to this girl, whom it was so necessary to shield and protect.'

he spoke so wrathfully that statham looked up in surprise at his friend, and then glancing with pity at the shrinking figure of pauline, said, in mitigation:

'you must recollect that mr. wetter discovered madame du tertre's address by accident, and that he was her cousin!'

'he is not my cousin,' said pauline, in a low subdued voice, gazing at martin with tearful eyes, 'i deceived you in that statement, as in many others about mr. wetter, and about myself.'

'not your cousin!' said martin; 'why, then, did you represent him to be so?'

'because he insisted on it,' said pauline, gesticulating freely; 'because he had a certain hold over me which i could not shake off, and which he would have exercised to my detriment if i had not implicitly obeyed him.'

'but how could he have done anything to your detriment so far as we were concerned?' asked martin.

'very easily,' replied pauline. 'it was my earnest desire for--for several reasons to live in the house with alice as her companion. and mr. wetter would have prevented that.'

'how could he have done so?'

'by exercising the influence which he possessed, and which lay in his acquaintance with a portion of my early life. he would have told you what he knew of me, and you would not have suffered me to remain with alice.'

'you mean to say--' cried martin, with a certain shrinking.

'o, don't mistake me,' she interrupted; 'i was never wicked, as you seem to imagine; only the manner of my bringing-up, and the associations of my youth were such that, if you had known them, you might not have thought me a desirable companion for your friend.'

'let me ask you one question, madame du tertre,' said humphrey statham. 'up to this crisis you have undoubtedly discharged your duties with fidelity, and proved yourself to be alice claxton's warm and excellent friend. but what first induced you to seek for that post of companion--what made you desire to ally yourself so closely with this young woman?'

'what first influenced me to seek her out?' said pauline; 'not love for her, you may be assured of that. when first i saw this girl who has played such a part in my life, her head was resting on the shoulder of a man who, in bidding her adieu, bent down to kiss her upturned face, down which the tears were rolling. and that man was my husband.'

'your husband!' cried martin.

'my husband. i knew not who the girl was; i had never seen her before; i had never heard of the existence of any one between whom and my husband there could properly exist such familiarity, and i at once jumped to the conclusion that he was her lover, and i hated her accordingly.'

'but you have satisfied yourself that that was not the case,' asked humphrey statham hurriedly.

'o, yes,' said pauline; 'but not until a long time after i first saw them together, not until, so far as one of them was concerned, any feeling of mine was useless. i determined that if ever i saw this woman again i would be revenged upon her! fortune stood my friend; i did see her; i became acquainted with the mystery of her story, and thus supplied myself with a weapon which could at any time be made fatal to her; i won your confidence,' turning to martin, 'and made myself necessary to you all, and then, and not till then, did i discover how ill-founded and unjust had been my suspicions; not till then did i learn, by the merest accident, that alice, instead of having been the mistress of my husband, who was dead by that time, was his sister.'

'alice your husband's sister?' cried martin gurwood in amazement. 'and you were not aware of that fact until animated by false suspicions you had laid yourself out for revenge upon her?'

'not until i had gained your confidence,' said pauline, 'or at least taken the first steps towards gaining it. not until that night at hendon, when i was left alone with her, and when, while she was under the influence of the narcotic, i looked through her papers--you see i am speaking frankly now, and am desirous of hiding nothing, however much to my own disadvantage it may be--and discovered her relationship to my dead husband.'

'who was your husband?' said martin gurwood in a softened voice.

'it is not likely that you ever heard of him,' replied pauline. 'his name was durham. in his last days he had some connection with the house of calverley and co., being sent out as an agent to represent them in ceylon.'

'durham!' cried martin gurwood. 'surely i have some recollection of that name. yes; i remember it all now. he was the man who mysteriously disappeared from on board one of the peninsular and oriental company's ships, and who was supposed to have fallen overboard and been drowned on his passage out.'

'the same,' said pauline; 'he was my husband.'

'durham!' cried statham. 'what was his christian name?'

'thomas. all his friends knew him as tom durham.

'tom durham; i knew him well--at one time intimately; but i had no idea that he was married, much less that you were his wife. i recollect now reading the paragraph about his supposed drowning the last time i left london on my holiday.'

'you knew tom durham well?' cried pauline, clasping her hands. 'mon dieu, i see it all! you are the h. s., whose letter i have here!'

as she spoke she took a pocket-book from the bosom of her dress, and from it extracted a paper, which she handed to statham.

'that is my handwriting, surely,' said humphrey, running his eyes over the document. 'in it i acknowledge the receipt of a packet which i promised to take care of, and declare i will not give it up save to tom himself, or to some person duly accredited by him. the packet is in that iron safe, where it has remained ever since.'

'what do you imagine it contains?' asked martin.

'i have not the remotest idea,' replied his friend. 'as you will see, by a perusal of this paper, tom durham offered to inform me, but i declined to receive his confidence, partly because i thought my ignorance might be of service to him, partly to prevent myself being compromised.'

'do you think it could have any bearing upon alice?' asked pauline.

'if i thought so, i should not hesitate for an instant to place it in your hands. whatever may have been the motive by which you were actuated at first, you have been a sure and steady friend to that poor girl, and i have perfect reliance on you.'

'this poor man, durham, will now never come to claim the packet himself,' said martin gurwood, 'and his widow is plainly his nearest representative. if there be anything in it which concerns mrs. claxton, we should never forgive ourselves for not having taken advantage of the information which it may contain.'

'you think, then, perhaps on the whole i should be justified in handing it to madame du-- i mean to this lady,' said statham.

'certainly, i think so.'

'so be it,' said statham, walking round to the desk at which martin was seated, and taking from the top drawer a key, with which he proceeded to unlock the iron safe; 'there it is,' he added, 'duly marked "akhbar k," and exactly in the same condition as when i received it from poor tom's messenger.'

and with these words he placed a packet in pauline's hands.

she broke the seals, and the outside cover fell to the ground. its contents were two sheets of paper, one closely written.

'there is nothing but this,' she said, looking though it; then turning to mr. statham, 'it will be as well, perhaps,' she said, 'if you were to read it aloud.'

humphrey took the paper from her hand and read as follows:

'my dear humphrey statham,--within a week after this reaches you i shall have left england for what may possibly prove a very long absence; and although i am pretty well accustomed to a roving life, and have been so busy, that i have never had time to be superstitious, i, for the first time, feel a desire to leave my affairs as much in order as possible, and to put as good a polish on my name as that name will bear.

'after all, however, i do not see that i need inflict a true and particular history of my life and adventures upon a man so busied as yourself. it would not be very edifying reading, my dear statham, nor do i imagine that being mixed up in any way with my affairs would be likely to do you much good with the governor of the bank of england or the directors of lloyd's. i scarcely know how you, a steady, prosperous man of business, ever managed to continue your friendship with a harum-scarum fellow like myself! it was all very well in the early days when we were lads together, and you were madly in love with that leeds milliner-girl'--humphrey statham's voice changed as he read the passage--'but now you are settled and respectable, and i am as great a ne'er-do-weel as ever.

'not quite so great, perhaps, you will think, when you see that i am going to try to make amends for one wrong which i have done. i shall not bother you with anything else, my dear statham; but i will leave this one matter in your hands, and i am sure that if any question about it ever arises, you will look to it and see it put straight for the sake of our old friendship, and don't break down or give it up because i seem to come out rather rough at the first, dear old man. read it through, and stand by me.

'you do not know--nor any one else scarcely, for the matter of that--that i have a half-sister, the sweetest, prettiest, dearest, and most innocent little creature that ever shed sunshine on a household. she didn't shed it long on ours though; for as soon as she was old enough, she was sent away to earn her own living, which she did by becoming governess in a quaker's family at york. i was fond of her--very fond in my odd way--but i never saw much of her, as i was always rambling about; and when, after a return from an absence of many months, i heard that alice was married to an elderly man named claxton, who was well off, and lived in comfort near london, i thought it was a good job for her, and troubled myself but little more about the matter.

'but one day, no matter how, my suspicions were aroused. i made inquiries, and--to cut the matter short--i discovered that the respectable mr. claxton, to whom i had heard alice was married, was a city merchant, whose real name was calverley, and who had already a wife. i never doubted alice for a moment; i knew the girl too well for that. i felt certain this old scoundrel had deceived her, and, as they say in the states, "i went for him."

'there's no use denying it, humphrey, i acted like a mean hound; but what was i to do? i was always so infernally hard up. i brought the old boy to his bearings, and made him confess that he had acted a ruffian's part. and then i ought to have killed him, i suppose. but i didn't. he pointed out to me that alice was in perfect ignorance of her real position, that to be informed of it would probably be her death. and then--he is a tremendously knowing old bird--he made certain suggestions about improving my financial position and getting me regular employment, and giving me a certain sum of money down, so that somehow i listened to him more quietly than i was at first disposed to do. not that i wasn't excessively indignant on alice's account. don't make any mistake about that. i told old calverley that he had done her a wrong which must be set right, so far as lay in his power; and i made him write out a paper at my dictation and sign it in full, with his head-clerk as witness to the signature. of course the clerk did not know the contents of the document, but he saw his master sign it, and put his own name as witness. this was done two-days ago, just at the time when they had been writing a lot of letters in the office about my taking up their agency in ceylon, and no doubt he thought it had something to do with that. i shall enclose that paper in this letter, and you can use it in case of need. not that i think old calverley will go away from his word; in the first place, because, notwithstanding this rascally trick he has played poor alice, he seems a decent kind of fellow; and in the next, because he would be afraid to, so long as i am to the fore. but something might happen to him or to me, and then the paper would be useful.

'here is the whole story, humphrey, confided to your common sense and judgment, to act with as you think best, by

'your old friend,

'tom durham.'

'something has happened to both of them,' said humphrey statham, solemnly, picking up the paper which had fluttered to the ground. 'now let us look at the enclosure:

'i, john calverley, merchant, of mincing-lane and great walpole-street, do hereby freely confess that having made the acquaintance of alice durham, to whom i represented myself as a bachelor of the name of claxton, i married the said alice durham at the church of saint nicholas, at ousegate, in the city of york, i being, at the same time, a married man; and having a wife then, and now, living. and i solemnly swear, and hereby set forth, that the said alice durham, now known as alice claxton, was deceived by me, had no knowledge of my former marriage, or of my name being other than that which i gave her, but fully and firmly believes herself to be my true and lawful wife.

'this i swear,

'john calverley.

'witness, 'thomas jeffreys,

'head clerk to messrs. calverley and co.'

'that appears to me decisive as an assertion of alice's innocence,' said martin gurwood, looking round as humphrey finished reading.

'to most persons it would be so,' said statham; 'but mrs. calverley, with whom we chiefly have to deal, is not of the ordinary stamp. it will be advisable, however, i think, that we should see her at once, taking this document with us. if madame du--if mrs. durham's suspicions of mr. wetter are well founded, he will not have uttered his bark without being prepared to bite, and it is probably to mrs. calverley that he will first address himself.'

'do you wish me to accompany you?' asked pauline.

'no,' said statham, 'i think you had better return home.'

'i think so, too,' said martin; 'your sister may be expecting you.'

her sister! in her broken condition it was some small comfort to pauline to hear the acknowledgement of that connection from martin's lips.