'My husband was Philip Vanthorpe,' she said, ' and he is Philip Vanthorpe. The man you call Clarkson Fielding is Philip Vanthorpe himself, and nobody else!'

Charlton struck the table sharply with his fist.

'I knew there was something wrong about that man,' he exclaimed. I knew it from the first. " I always said so, Janet-didn't I?'

Poor Janet could not answer.

She dropped into a

chair, and the room seemed to swim around her.

felt a sort of spite, the reason for which he could hardly have defined even to himself, against Gabrielle. He had always predicted that something would be found out to Fielding's discredit; and his prophetic insight seemed now made good at last. Therefore he went into Paulina's story with an eager hope that it might prove true.

But it was really wonderful what a plausible, consistent tale Paulina told him, and what scraps of corroboratory evidence she brought to sustain it. She made rather Robert Charlton her confidant in the beginning; her leading counsel, so to speak, who was

to advise upon the case and its further progress. Philip Vanthorpe and she were married in haste, she said, and after a while they did not get on very well together. They made the acquaintance of Clarkson Fielding; they were very intimate with him; Philip and he led a very wild life together. Fielding died in New Orleans. Vanthorpe and she had been anxious to return to England, and also anxious to get rid of each other. Philip was convinced his mother would never be reconciled with him, nor did he want to be reconciled with her. But he thought if Paulina were to pass off as his widow she would have a good chance of being taken into favour, and therefore it was settled between them that Paulina was to go back to England with a story of his death and to make the best use she could of it. Then came the death of Clarkson Fielding, and it suddenly occurred to Vanthorpe that it would be a good thing if he were to personate Clarkson Fielding, and see whether he could not recover the money which Fielding had always told them he had left untouched in his brother's hands. The idea had a great fascination for Vanthorpe, who liked audacious enterprises of any kind, and he determined to carry it

out. Therefore the pair came to England almost at the same time, but not in the same vessel, and they went to work with their plot. They were to help each other as much as possible, and were to divide the spoils if necessary; but they were not going to live together any more or to acknowledge each other. It was the principal object of each to be rid of the other. 'But,' Paulina added, 'I wasn't going to stand his marrying another woman while Paulina Vanthorpe was alive; not if I knew it. That wasn't in the bargain, and he was a great fool to think any woman would stand that.'

That was the story. The points which Paulina impressed upon Charlton were, that she and the man calling himself Clarkson Fielding turned up in London just about the same time, and she appealed to Charlton whether it was not within his own knowledge that this man came to see her often when she was on the Surrey side; that Gabrielle, when first she saw him, was convinced that he was Philip Vanthorpe, from his likeness to Mrs. Leven; that Gabrielle had even taxed him with being Philip Vanthorpe; that Sir Wilberforce Fielding said he should never have known him

for his brother; that the professed Fielding never could or would give any clear account of what happened to Vanthorpe; that he and she had always lived in New Orleans under the name of Clarkson, a name which a

6

man whose real name had any Clarkson in it,' as Paulina put it, would not have been likely to adopt for the purpose of concealing his identity.

Eager as he was to believe all this, Robert could not but ask how it happened that the man calling himself Clarkson Fielding had done so much to prevent Gabrielle Vanthorpe and her relations from receiving Paulina. Paulina laughed at what she called his simplicity. All that only came about, she said, when they found that Mrs. Leven was inexorable, and that nothing was to be got out of her; while, on the other hand, Sir Wilberforce was very good-natured, and there was ever so much to be got out of him. Then they believed the best policy was to throw all their strength into what Paulina described as the Fielding business,' and it was thought a capital way of turning off any suspicion of conspiracy, and making it certain that he was the real Clarkson Fielding, if he were to play the