"That is all very fine "-he flung the syllables out with a venomous accent-"but your prerogative won't pay bread bills, or shoemakers and drygoods merchants. Pretty as you are, Winifred-and you are the most beautiful woman I ever beheld-I say, pretty as you are, there is no other man, in my position, who would make you the offer I do, and no other woman, in your position, who would think of refusing it."

Winifred listened, calmly; indeed, there was not the slightest tremor visible now. Fulke noticed the change. His shrewd glance defined the resolution in the sweet face. He did not, in any sense, like this gathering together of her forces.

"Fulke❞—there was a plaintive wistfulness in the curve of her flexile lips, as if she even longed for a word of pity from this man, when the world had turned against her"Fulke, I am ill; I know that you can see that, for I have no longer the power to hide it. I came down here while I could to explain my position to you. It is perhaps very generous in you to ask me to be your wife now, but it would be equally ungenerous in me to take advantage of an offer you say no other man in your position would make. I am poor, without friends or family-a foundling, as you observe. I will not return the love of Hugh Jocelyn by compromising a member of his family. If there was no other barrier, you yourself have reared onebut there is another."

Winifred sank back with a faint gasp of exhaustion, and, with such a struggle to hold to the ebbing strength, that Fulke stopped in his angry tramp-stopped and looked at her fixedly.

"You were wise to come down while you could, Winifred," he said, smilingly unpleasantly. "It's most probable that you won't come down again for some time. You are extremely ill. I say, what will become of you if you lose your health?"

Once again Fulke started angrily on his restless tramp. Once more his astuteness was at fault. He had blundered foolishly in his dealing with this proud, sensitive nature. He had erred broadly in chaffering for her hand, as if it was a matter of bargain and sale.

"I will die," was the simple answer. "But suppose you don't die? Suppose you have to live an ailing invalid, who do you think will be burdened with your support? Besides," he added, sardonically, "if you live under my roof, do you suppose the world will imagine I have ever offered you marriage ?"

or coarse.

To Winifred he could but choose to vail his evil falsehoods. She made an effort to rise, and stood up, holding to the table as a support.

"Fulke, the world will never judge me harshly if you do not mislead them. You will not do this, will you ?” she asked, pleadingly. "You will at least shield me from calumny, will you not, Fulke ?"

Her pale face flushed. Bright spots burned in either cheek. Fulke comprehended that here at least she recognized his power. He comprehended in ferocious glee the revelation of the agitated excitement in her lovely face.

"I will take care of your reputation, Winifred, if you are my wife; if you refuse to be my wife, the world may think what it pleases. I don't mind telling you that I will take care that its opinion is just what I choose it to be, and perhaps that may not be particularly agreeable to you. The safest and only course," he said, with pointed emphasis, "is to marry me while you can. She shook her head hopelessly.

"I shall never marry you or any one," was her deliberate answer.

"As you please. I'll take devilish good care that people understand that the young woman living with me is not married to me. Any one will honor and receive my wife; every one will shut virtuous doors in the face of my-of what they will think you." Again he could not utter that word to her; again some instinctive respect for her withheld him. Winifred was ill and unnerved; Winifred knew only too well that he had no scruple in executing his threat. Her pride succumbed-she neither defied nor disdained him, neither one nor the other. She buried her face in her small hands and burst into tears. She was too sick and weak to be haughty; too alarmed to be resentful. The tears, hot and glistening, trickled between the slender fingers. Winifred wept in the same bitter helplessness many another woman has wept. She longed for only a friendly word from some lips; the smallest kindness. They all denied Hugh Jocelyn's darling niche or corner in human sympathy. She offered no remonstrance, except in this burst of weeping. She was driven to the wall. Fulke eyed her in saturnine amusement-the ferocious amusement of a tiger watching its victim.

"People are not all fools, Winifred," he went on, coarsely; "everybody knows that you are not my wife, and everybody knows that you are living in my house. The world is not particularly charitable, and neither is it deemed necessary for a rich man like me to offer a pauper like you marriage to gain possession of her. No, no, Winifred, you are already compromised, but I don't mind still giving you a chance to save your reputation. You are at my mercy, but you can be my wife instead of my-"

"Mistress," Fulke meant to have said, but the look in the girl's wide, open eyes arrested the foul word. The same loathing horror and aversion he discerned in their depths the day of Hugh Jocelyn's funeral was there now, and withheld the culminating term of the deadly insult. He could not syllable it with those shocked eyes upon him. He could not offer insult with that cold loathing in the beautiful lineaments before him. Barbarous and sullen as he might be, Fulke could only imply his base meaning. To Madame Frissae no terms were too broad

better be an honest woman than go away from here attainted. You know what people will call you-what they even call you now. Once for all, will you do it ?"

She lifted her wet, tear-marked face from her hands. "Oh, Fulke," she implored, in those mournful, musical tones of hers, "pity me a little, I am so miserable-pity me just a little."

"Will you be my wife, or will you not, Winifred? You can help yourself if you choose," he urged. "That is an easy way to do it. Any other woman would be glad of the chance. Will you or will you not, that's the question ?"

Winifred made a tremendous effort to control herself, "I cannot be your wife, Fulke." She pronounced the words in the same unfaltering, resolute way with which she had invariably made the declaration.

"Very well," he returned, while his coarse red face darkened viciously. "It will be devilish easy to make people understand that you are under my roof in another relation-the relation pretty outcasts generally bear to rich gentlemen." In all the future, Fulke never forgot

the hunted affright in the look she gave him. In all the scenes of his life he never again encountered such appalled apprehension as his full meaning dawned upon her. He had revenged himself by deadly insult. He meant to revenge himself by still further insult. "She takes it hard; she is too ill to leave this house for a cursed long time," he muttered, scowling after the slender, graceful figure, as Winifred rushed away with a shuddering cry. He followed her up the steps; he heard her fall heavily on the floor. Jane's ejaculations of alarm were distinctly audible. His prediction was, he thought, verified-she was too ill to leave the house.

"They will believe anything I choose, and I don't choose the neighborhood to know that illness detains her here. It's confoundedly hard on her, but I'll do as I said. I wish she would listen to reason.'

Fulke scowled again and descended the steps, angry and anxious, but with no thought of relenting. What Winifred's mother had been guilty of, the world would easily believe Winifred might be guilty. In the soft light of the stained windows of the hall, he suddenly discerned Marie Frissae. She was in full, flashy toilet and complexion, but the cool audacity of her manner had been broken by Fulke's unscrupulous effrontery.

"You here yet?" he demanded, glad, perhaps, of a vent for his ill humor. "I told you that I wanted my house cleared, and I have given orders that no meals are to be served to you. A man can't be forced to support a lot of worthless people-I won't stand the extravagance! I've had the wine-cellar locked up, and cut down supplies in the storeroom. I mean to clear the stables of the useless hunters and racers, and clear my house of dead heads. When are you going?"

The spiteful expression of the Frenchwoman's countenance became vixenish. Her schemes had failed; nevertheless her tongue was strong.

"Monsieur Miser," she began, shrilly.

the foul calumny to the Frenchwoman; it would creep stealthily, until it environed Winifred. He thought of her in the night, and resolved, in furtherance of his own subtle purpose, to send to town for a strange physician. He would save her life; he would ruin her reputation. Fulke dictated the telegram in the morning, and gave it to the servant with a proviso: "I will see how she is before it is sent." He crossed to the west wing; Winifred's door stood wide open. Jane, frightened and bewildered, was searching the adjoining room. "Where is Winifred ?" he demanded.

Jane pointed to the bed—it was untouched. She looked dumbly at the dresssing-room-it was empty. At the wardrobe-every article was there.

"Where is Winifred ?" he shouted. The maid answered in a monosyllable: "Gone."

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FROZEN SEA.

BERNARD JOCELYN's sharpened hearing caught up the shrill echo of the ship's gun. "What does it matter?" he asked himself, bitterly. Nevertheless, with the rapidity of thought in the face of tremendous peril, he found himself calculating that the ship could not be many miles distant, hemmed in, perhaps, in the pack-ice. The floe dashed onward with terrible impetus. It could only be a breathless moment or two before the gigantic mass was hurled upon the frozen sea. All at once the floe seemed to stop. Some unseen power apparently held the island of ice in its grasp. Abruptly it stopped short and rocked fearfully, while the explosive cracking again clove the air like volleys of musketry. He was Arctic voyager enough to know that the floe had been met by another powerful ocean current, and was pressed back from the icy shore. The Polar bear on the next cliff, forgetful of his prey, clung desperately to the ice. The animal's in

"You have swindled me. Mon Dieu! how I wish I had let the girl Winifred swindle you! Why don't you send the girl Winifred away? She hates, she despises you"Confound your tongue !" interrupted Fulke, angrily. "I don't choose Winifred to go."

The Frenchwoman's white teeth glittered between her painted lips.

"She will never marry you-ngly beast that you are!" she snapped.

"I don't ask her to marry me," was the false response. "I shall keep her here until I am tired-marriage is not necessary. I don't mean to hamper myself with a wife. Things have changed-I prefer a mistress to a wife." He spoke deliberately. She believed him exultantly. "And now, if you don't take yourself and your trumpery out of Jocelyn Hall before night, I'll make no scruple in turning you out."

"The girl will die and disappoint you yet, you brute," shrieked the woman, as he banged the library door after him. "Eh, Mon Dieu! It has come to that; my grudge is paid," she added to herself, in grim renunciation of the old hate.

Her words were barbed to Fulke. "The girl will die and disappoint you yet," haunted him with a prophetic import. He stood at the window watching the Frissaes depart from his house. He remembered, of all her gibes and taunts, only that last: "The girl will die and disappoint you yet." He had drawn the first invisible circle around Winifred. His heart misgave him that something might rescue her from his ruthless trap. He had uttered

horrible cracking had a significance to the brute. It was the signal of danger; it seemed useless to take precation when death might be on every side.

The

Nevertheless, Bernie meant to clamber down the icepeak to the flats below. An instant later he would have started upon the perilous descent, when, with a hissing report, the ice parted asunder. The sagacity of the animal on the next iceberg gave no false warning. floe had separated. The interior peaks were whirling furiously, and still with the echoes of inferno, cracking and hissing and breaking. The brute clinging to the peak passed him twice in the mad whirl. The ice was toppling to the side, with the brute dimly perceptible in the distance. He would pass him a third time. The ice stopped visibly, and then, with another hideous crack, the crest of the iceberg detached itself and plunged downward into the sea. It came up again, with torrents of salt water pouring down the sides, and was caught in the fatal whirl. The iceberg came up, but the brute was gone. Bernie watched it with riveted gaze. The terrors of this Arctic inferno were horribly grand. He became aware that his own iceberg had moved slowly and gently away toward the frozen sea. The fragment of ice seemed to drift cautiously out of the circles of the fatal eddy. The white peak edged away from the crashing, breaking masses. Other fragments, uninhabited by human life, were pushed off by the outward movement of the whirling ripples. He was on the very edge of the frozen sea. The iceberg advanced steadily. It neared the icy coast slowly. There was not the faintest danger of collision. It drifted into a slight break in the line of eternal ice. It moored itself,

and filled up the opening for ever. The fragment was wedged into the coast of the frozen sea for all time. Bernard descended the peak and crossed to the immovable mountains and valleys of ice. He wondered whether it would not have been a shorter death, at least, to have perished in the sea, gone to the bottom with the Polar bear, than drag out days of starvation and piercing cold. No living creature existed in this boundless waste of ice save those whose prey he must inevitably become. He hurried forward in long strides to the windward, with no especial object in view save to move and keep himself from freezing. Bernard Jocelyn thought of the evil schemes for his destruction in bitter resentment. They had culminated in this. He was perishing in the trackless fields of Polar ice-perishing miserably, while Fulke lived in luxury and comfort; while Fulke persecuted Winifred, and tortured her with the false story of his death. Even in the face of death he could not forgive the iniquity of the past. He strode on for miles in bootless toil over the rough ice. The wind was piercingly cold. He was sensible of fatigue and hunger. It was no longer a question of life. He found himself looking for a comfortable place to die. Courage and hope ebbed rapidly. There was nothing to sustain the one or kindle the other. Breaks in the clear landscape showed him endless worlds, as it seemed, of icefields, whereon no human being lived save this one helpless inhabitant.

"I must give it up, Winifred-Winifred, I must give it up at last," he muttered. "But, starving and dying, my last thought is of you, my Winifred."

Still he strode on, less rapidly, less boldly, nevertheless still orward. The icy cold seemed to steal over him insensibly. He searched for a sheltered corner in the ice. A fatal numbness deadened his limbs. His motions grew perceptibly labored. He stopped and leaned against a glistening icepeak. Bernie was freezing. "Winifred! Winifred!" he murmured, dreamily. Through the icebergs echoed that same sharp, cutting sound, close at hand. It was the ship's gun again. Bernie started to his feet with a frantic effort to shake off the frightful drowsiness, the paralyzing numbness. Once more a thrill of hope raised his spirit. He hurried forward for a mile or two further, and then the very tops of a ship's masts became visible. He calculated that she was three miles away. "Wedged in the pack-ice," he concluded.

Bernard Jocelyn's herculean strength came to his assistance. His powerful muscles regained their vigor. He pressed on, almost jubilantly. The ship's masts were plainly visible, and then her hull. He had conjectured rightly. She was wedged in the pack-ice. He clambered over the ice to her very side and hailed her. The men drew him up on deck in the stoical, unastonished way of sailors in those regions.

Monsieur Gabe's aboard of her, and he's devil-proof. Come down in the cabin; a pull of grog will bring you round.”

Bernie followed the mate to the cabin. The sailor's unfailing remedy for all ailments, grog and food, soon restored him to something approximating to his usual strength.

66

'Now take a pipe, sir, and Monsieur Gabe will be in before long. He's out on the ice now."

Bernie accepted the pipe gratefully, and sat before the fire smoking, in some amazement that he could be there. For the second time he was cast away without one of the necessary accoutrements of a life at the Pole. All the little he had in the way of comfort and apparel was in the other ship. He remembered leaving his meerschaum in the cabin of the Arcturus. Perhaps John Devèy was smoking it at that very moment, while the men talked over the tragic fate of Bernard Jocelyn, and nobody suspected the treachery of the sailor. Nevertheless, through all the terrors and adventures and perfidies of the past few months, came an abiding faith that he would escape everything and return home to Winifred. As this conviction settled upon him, Monsieur Gabe, in his fuss, came into the cabin.

66

'They have told me your wonderful story, and I felt that it was you, Mr.-Mr." He made an effort to pronounce the name, and as usual failed. "You will bring me evil, perhaps, but I am glad to see you again. How did you happen on the floe?"

Monsieur Gabe sat down and rested his chin on his slender hand, while he regarded his guest with a pained admiration-an odd struggle between an effort to hate him and a disposition to yield to the charm of the insouciant's manners and fearless nature.

"The enemy of whom you warned me," reminded Bernie.

"An enemy among the icebergs is death itself. Fate is in your favor; I am not afraid you will sink my ship," Monsieur Gabe said, when he had listened to the strange history Bernie related of Devèy's mysterious influence in his affairs from the moment of his departure from Jocelyn Hall. "One question, Mr. Jocelyn: You say that your cousin has a motive for wishing to be rid of you. May I inquire how that motive concerns Hugh Jocelyn? You say he controlled your uncle's actions ?" Bernie's handsome face flushed.

I may as well be frank, Monsieur Gabe, and acknowledge that Winifred Jocelyn is my wife. To save her from Fulke's persistent resolution to force her to marry him, I reared the insuperable barrier of a marriage with She loved me, poor child, and I-ah, Monsieur Gabe, I idolize my Winifred."

me.

"The whaler Hector," was the prompt response.

"There is no Winifred Jocelyn; your uncle had no children," he asserted, slowly. "If the girl loved you,

mate, curiously. "The Arcturus.”

Bernie passed his half-frozen hand wearily over nis face in the effort to remember.

"Ay, she is a hundred miles to the nor'west. Were you lost on the ice? You are no whaler, sir." The mate added the observation to the question as he surveyed the magnificent, patrician-looking man with more curiosity than politeness.

more money? Every woman's hand is salable; every woman's heart false."

Bernie smiled at the bitter cynical philosophy of this man, whose past was a sealed book.

"Fulke has ferreted out some crime, which he charges that my uncle committed in New Orleans, twenty years ago," replied Bernie, removing his pipe. "He threatens to bring my uncle to the gallows for it, unless he compels Winifred to marry him-of course Winifred cannot

probable he would make an exception of the nephew of a man he openly detested. Monsieur Gabe sat in moody silence; Bernie smoked in perplexed påtience.

"Mr. Jocelyn”—the stranger roused abruptly from his reverie-"I will do for you what I have done for no other man living: I will tell you my story. You have the key unlocking my foolish lips; you have a miniature in your possession. The face in that miniature is the reproduction of another face dead twenty years ago-the face that drove me mad. More than twenty years ago the most beautiful woman in New Orleans was Mathilde Le Vailliante. She was a Spanish blonde, with golden hair and • black eyes. She was trained and tutored by a shrewd mother, for the avowed purpose of making a great match; winning a grande parti. Possibly she was a willing scholar; possibly she was not. However faithless she may have been at heart, she was rigidly true in word and deed. I was the grande parti for whom her mother successfully angled. I loved her from the time she studied lessons, and wore short dresses; I meant to win Mathilde from the time she played in the shabby old garden, and dressed dolls in the bare little nursery. She was my cousin, consequently I had access to her when others were denied. She acquiesced in the arrangement without demur. I was very rich, and madame, my aunt, was very practical. She made her debut in society, and society went mad over her magnificent eyes and ravishing beauty. Nevertheless, society knew that she was fiancée to me-that the wedding-day was fixed; the trousseau in preparation. My old friend Hugh Jocelyn came to New Orleans. In my delight and pride, I presented him to Mathilde. He was the handsomest man I ever beheld-dangerously handsome, as you are, Bernard Jocelyn. Ten minutes afterward I regretted it; twenty-four hours afterward I repented it bitterly. Twenty-four hours afterward I knew not only that he loved her madly, but she returned the attachment with equal strength. Plainly, she had forgotten me; plainly, she adored him. The aversion in her beautiful face when I approached might have warned me; the rapture and tenderness in every lineament when he approached might have opened my eyes. Neither one nor the other, however, would I understand. I complained, and Madame Vailliante hastened the wedding. I grew jealous, and Hugh Jocelyn was forbidden the house. The preparations went on, but Mathilde drooped visibly. What I refused to see for myself, Hugh Jocelyn showed me. It lacked a fortnight of my marriage-I was preparing to meet the Vailliantes at the opera, when, without the least ceremony, Hugh Jocelyn walked into my room. flushed and excited, but grandly handsome, although not in evening dress.

He was

moment I hated Hugh Jocelyn; from that moment my enthusiastic friendship became deadly enmity.

"Mathilde implores you to rescue her from perpetrating this miserable falsehood. Mathilde loves me, not you-she has never loved you. If you compel her to be your wiie, your will repent it; if you release her now you will'

866

'Give you an opportunity to supplant me,' I broke in, angrily.

666

'To marry the woman I love better than life.' "Hugh Jocelyn watched me breathlessly; I could see how wildly he hoped for my consent. His passionate anxiety hardened my resolve against him.

"I love her better than life, tɔo-I would give my life for her,' he said, in low a tone.

"Then quit New Orleans,' I retorted. 'Leave Mathilde, and all will be as it was before you came here to seduce her affections from me, or marry the woman you are engaged to-the woman pining her life away for you, Winifred Strachan. You have no right to come here asking me to release Mathilde when you yourself are not free.'

"His face burned and his eyes flashed with passion. It was well known that Winifred Strachan, a frail, delicate woman-dying then, almost, held frantically to some boyish love-making in the years past; and claimed to be his fiancée in the face of every denial from him.

"This was a tender point with Hugh Jocelyn. Knowing fully the facts of the case, I taunted him with it, and that taunt, perhaps, embittered him more deeply against me than anything I could have said.

"I have given you your chance,' he rejoined, angrily. 'You have refused it. Now look to yourself. My turn may come for refusing you mercy.'

"With that almost prophetic menace, Hugh Jocelyn quitted my room. I met the Vailliantes at the opera. Mathilde turned her beautiful, imploring eyes toward me with questioning entreaty. That she, too, hoped for generosity from me was evident. That she understood the mission of her lover was perfectly plain. She pressed her face down in the bouquet I had sent her, and sighed. She comprehended, without a word, that the case was hopeless. She resigned herself to fate, in spiritless submission.

"We were married in brilliant style, at the proper time and place. Everything was conducted in the most perfect ton. It was such an enviable match! The world congratulated her upon my money, and me upon her beauty. We ought to have been satisfied. We certainly were not. Mathilde never recovered her vivacity, or smiled upon me after our marriage. Her silvery laughter had died away. Her winning gayety and sparkle had vanished. I beguiled myself with the hope that she would forget my rival and love me. She deluded me with patient politeness, and loved my rival.

"Hugh Jocelyn married Winifred Strachan soon afterward. She lived long enough to disgust him with a jealous, fretful invalid, and died soon enough to make him miserable. If she had lived a few months longer, Hugh Jocelyn would never have returned to the old idolatry. He had some honor, and he bore in mind that his allegiance was due his wife. Her death left him at liberty to brood over his disappointment.

'Mathilde faded visibly. My jealous eyes perceived that her face only glowed into brightness when she chanced to meet Hugh Jocelyn. He lived in New Orleans. He had given up everything to be near and catch

"My temper began to get the better of me-from that

afforded.

"Hugh Jocelyn was exceptionally unfortunate in his