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 abstained from informing him beforehand of the terrible Ziegler’s identity, guessing that his natural delicacy would have prevented him from turning to account a sentimental weakness so necessary to a successful issue, yet so revolting to his modesty.

“Must you really refer to that wretched woman?” he asked, as soon as he saw Sybil’s meaning.

“Only to tell you that she is dead,” was the reply. “It is in the Standard, which came after you had left for the coverts. There, I must light the lamp, after all, so that you may read it yourself.”

When the lamp shone out on the pleasant, homelike room, this was the paragraph which Forsyth read:

“On the arrival at Vienna of the through mail train from Budapest on Thursday night a fashionably dressed female was found alone in a first-class compartment, stabbed to the heart. The police inquiries have established her identity as Cora Lestrade, a notorious American ex-convict, who is believed to have practised on the credulity of highly placed personages in nearly every European capital. At the time of her death she was traveling as