I shall have all the more time to give to the election." Leaving this commission behind him, he had started on his journey.

At the end of it a telegram had been handed to him on the stairs of his hotel: "Have seen the lady, also Mrs.Hurd.You are urgently asked to undertake defence." He spread it out before him now, and pondered it.

The bit of flimsy paper contained for him the promise of all he most coveted,--influence, emotion, excitement.

"She will have returns upon herself," he thought smiling, "when I see her again.

She will be dignified, resentful; she will suspect everything I say or do--still more, she will suspect herself.