CHAPTER I

THE FANATIC


Mr. Caryll, lately from Rome, stood by the window, looking out
over the rainswept, steaming quays to Notre Dame on the island
yonder. Overhead rolled and crackled the artillery of an
April thunderstorm, and Mr. Caryll, looking out upon Paris in
her shroud of rain, under her pall of thundercloud, felt
himself at harmony with Nature. Over his heart, too, the
gloom of storm was lowering, just as in his heart it was still
little more than April time.

Behind him, in that chamber furnished in dark oak and leather
of a reign or two ago, sat Sir Richard Everard at a vast
writing-table all a-litter with books and papers; and Sir
Richard watched his adoptive son with fierce, melancholy eyes,
watched him until he grew impatient of this pause.

"Well?" demanded the old baronet harshly. "Will you undertake
it, Justin, now that the chance has come?" And he added:
"You'll never hesitate if you are the man I have sought to
make you."

Mr. Caryll turned slowly. "It is because I am the man that
you - that God and you - have made me that I do hesitate."

His voice was quiet and pleasantly modulated, and he spoke
English with the faintest slur - perceptible, perhaps, only to