listened to Bartley's proposal, Hope's answer, and all that followed.
Then he put this and Colonel Clifford's communication together, and saw
the terrible importance of the two things combined. Thus, as a
congenital worm grew with Jonah's gourd, and was sure to destroy it,
Bartley's bold and elaborate scheme was furnished from the outset with a
most dangerous enemy.

Leonard Monckton was by nature a schemer and by habit a villain, and he
was sure to put this discovery to profit. He came out of the little
office and sat down at his desk, and fell into a brown-study.

He was not a little puzzled, and here lay his difficulty. Two attractive
villainies presented themselves to his ingenious mind, and he naturally
hesitated between them. One was to levy black-mail on Bartley; the other,
to sell the secret to the Cliffords.

But there was a special reason why he should incline toward the
Cliffords, and, whilst he is in his brown-study, we will let the reader
into his secret.

This artful person had immediately won the confidence of young Clifford,
calling himself Bolton, and had prepared a very heartless trap for him.
He introduced to him a most beautiful young woman--tall, dark, with oval
face and glorious black eyes and eyebrows, a slight foreign accent, and
ingratiating manners. He called this beauty his sister, and instructed
her to win Walter Clifford in that character, and to marry him. As she
was twenty-two, and Master Clifford nineteen, he had no chance with her,
and they were to be married this very day at the Register Office.

Manoeuvring Monckton then inclined to let Bartley's fraud go on and