floor.

"I shall be happy to repeat my lesson," said his lordship, calmly, "if
you require it again."

Allan Lyster made no reply, and Lord Atherton walked away. When he was
quite gone, and the last sound of his footsteps died away, he rose--he
shook his fist in impotent wrath:

"Curse him!" he cried. "It shall go hard with me but I will be equal
with him yet!"

He had played his last card and lost; henceforward there was nothing for
him but hard work and dishonor. He knew that what Lord Atherton had said
was true; if any one knew what he had done, nothing but hatred and
disgust would be his portion.

Lord Atherton went at once to Scotland Yard and asked for a detective.
He showed him the portrait of his wife, told him she had left home under
a false impression, and that he would give him fifty pounds if he could
trace her.

For a week all effort was in vain, they could hear nothing of her; then
one morning Lord Atherton saw an advertisement in the "Times," and he
said to himself that the lost was found.




CHAPTER XV.