The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-09-09

believed the woman now dead to be | Lydia. But she apparently was not!' | she said.
 You believed her to be Lydia!' I
 cried. "Then you were imposed up- | onn
 Tell me. MT. Ralston-tell me who she really was" I was compelled to admit my ignor- ance, whereupon she smiled incredu- ious1y
 By this conversation one fact was established. She had been misled re- garding the identity of the woman who had died by means so secret that fdoctors and anlysts had been baffled, 1 the woman against whom my own
 knife had been taken but abandoned. At last. apparently finding herself too closely pressed by my questions, and
 with firm resolve not to carry out | the- object for which she had paid me
 that secret visit. she declared that she must go Her mother, she said. was at the Metro1ole awaiting her for luncheon. E
 "Then you have nothing more to say to mel" I asked. as she again took my hand in farewell. 'tI think not. MT. Ralston. Only, of course. I would ask you to regard my visit as confidential one. do not wish Myra to know that we have met here. And-and. above all. recollect
 your promise to say nothing of what
 I have told you concerning Ralph Gar shore"
 'If it be your wish. Miss Maynard I will not" assured her. in an earnest. voice. Goodbye"
 "Good-bye" she said. Remember your promise" 't f "Tell me-" I asked, Granny Cough is really your friend. is he not?''
 "Yes,'' she replied. "he is. If I could secure his freedom I would; but-but fear that is impossible-utterly inn possible"
 And with swish of her skirts she
 passed out of my flat and down the | stairs. From my window. watched her direction of the Metropole, where her mother awaited her. As I watched
 that neat-waisted figure in blue with the gay summer hat strange thoughts occurred to me.
 Those who passed her and cast ad- hiring glances into her beautiful countenapce little dreamed the truth that she. a mere girl, was held in the | thralldom of one of the cleverest crim- inals of modern times An! the human tragedies that pass on every side amid the frantic hustle of the London streets. I loved my dainty. dark-eyed divin- ity. But between us lay a great and formidable breacf-a mysterious and dastardly crime of which she had been a witness and of which Granny Cough, my best friend. was suspected. I strode back across the room, beside myself with frantic fear. Had that woman-the only woman
 had ever seen that I could really love-slipped from my life forever. I looked around at the four walls of my
 room, dismal, even though a streak of
 faint London sunlight slanted across
 it. and felt imprisoned there.
 A blank existed in my life-a blank
 that could be filled only by Elfrida Maynard-my goddess. my well be-
  sentimental man who fell into the tolls of a pretty woman. But that day. for the first time in all my life,
 I knew what the passion of love really
 meant-I experienced the sensation of
 a scared heart.
 I had halted at my writing table and
 taken up the telephone receiver to call
 up Cunliffe when of a sudden the door bell rang again.
 I found there telegraph messenger.
 and the message he handed me was of such character that the lad must
 have thought me seized by a sudden
 madness.
 I gave him sixpence and banked the
 door.
 Then I reread those printed words
 upon the green "tape' pasted upon the
 white form as all foreign messages
 are in London.
 And those ominous. fateful words al- tered the whole course of my future. I became a changed man.