"I feared these joyful tidings would unnerve you," said he, gently. "Calm yourself, my dear sir. Your daughter, whom you have mourned as dead, yet lives. It was her own living self that you saw in your hall that night, not her spirit!"
"Oh! God be thanked! Lily lives!" repeated the banker in a low voice of ecstasy.
Shelton put his head out of the carriage window a moment.
"We have caught up with the officers' hack," said he. "Now we are all right. Driver, just keep on at your present pace. We do not need to go faster."
"Every moment seems an hour," exclaimed the banker, in a fever of anxiety and impatience. "Oh, to think that my darling lives! And yet, oh, God! what would be her feelings on learning that her betrothed will wed another to-night!"
"Do not distress yourself about that marriage, Mr. Lawrence," answered the detective. "I assure you it shall never be consummated."
"Ah! you think she will generously yield him to Lily when she finds that she is still living?" said the banker; "but you do not know Mrs. Vance. Nothing would induce her to release her victim from the toils she has wound about him."
"Perhaps I know more of Mrs. Vance than you suppose," said Mr. Shelton. "For instance, Mr. Lawrence, you believe that your daughter committed suicide—do you not?"
"It was the jury's verdict," said the banker.