His tone was serious and full of bitter self-reproach. Miss Dounay's surprisingly indulgent attitude emboldened him to pursue the disagreeable subject farther.
"I have not told you," he went on, "that I came to ask you for mercy."
"Do you not perceive that you are getting it without asking?" the actress replied, with a liquid glance that was really full of gentleness and sympathy.
"Of course," Rollie averred. "But I am so grateful that I did not want you to think I could take it for granted. I was in a terrible position, Miss Dounay. The crime was not accidental, but deliberate; that it miscarried was the accident. But that your diamonds are to be restored to you, and that I myself am on my way to a sort of character restoration, if I ever had any, which I begin to doubt, is all due to one good friend whom I saw to-day, and who is also a good friend of yours."
Again Rollie was interrupted; but this time there was nothing intangible about it.
Miss Dounay's face grew suddenly hard; cruel lines that were tense and threatening appeared about her mouth, while her eyes bored straight into his, as she exclaimed: "Never mind about that now. As for the theft: you need never hear from me one word about what you have done. The only injunction that I lay upon you is to keep absolute silence about it yourself. Remember, no matter what comes to pass, you know nothing and have nothing to say. So long as you are silent, I will protect you absolutely. Break the silence, and you will go where you belong!"
Of all the hard glances Miss Dounay had given young Burbeck, the look which accompanied this last menacing sentence was positively the hardest. A spasm of mortal terror wrung the young man's heart, as he saw how de-
