"And now I'm off," said the captain. "I'll let you have a check in a day or two, Adelstone, and I'm very much obliged to you."
"All right," said Jasper, with a slightly absent air as if his mind was already engaged with other matters. "No hurry; whenever it's convenient. Good-bye!"
He went back to his desk before the captain had left the room, and bent over his letter, but as the departing footsteps died away, he sprang up, locked the door, and drawing a slip of paper from under his blotting pad, held it before him with both hands and looked down at it with a smile of eager triumph.
It was the forged bill. Without a word or gesture he looked at it for a full minute, gloating over it as if it were some live, sentient thing lying in his path and utterly at his mercy; then at last he raised his head, and his lips parted with a smile of conscious power.
"So soon!" he muttered; "so soon! Fate is with me! She is mine! My beautiful Stella! Yes, she is mine, though a hundred Lord Leycesters stood between us!"
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
When Stella awoke in the morning it was with a start that she remembered the scene of last night, and that she was, with the exception of Mrs. Penfold, alone in the cottage.
While she was dressing she recalled the incidents of the eventful evening—the party at the Hall, the telegram, and, not least, the finding of the mysterious miniature. But, above all, there shone out clear and distinct the all-important fact that Lord Leycester loved her, and that she had promised to meet him this evening.