"'I thank you, madam. I thank you with all my heart. Let me not detain you.'
"He said no more, and I rose. But the door was thrown open, and Mr. Purdon walked in without being announced.
"'Ha!' he said, seeing me, 'we are all three, then, together again. My lord, I will not waste your time. I have come to explain that since you have refused to perform your compact, you cannot complain if I have broken up the whole business.'
"'I thought I had ordered you out of my presence, sir.'
"'So you did. So you did. I have only come to say that I have this day drawn up a full confession of the conspiracy into which I was drawn by your lordship, deceived against my better judgment by the promise of a large sum of money.'
"Lord Fylingdale pointed to the door. 'You can go, sir,' he said. So the man Purdon obeyed and went away.
"Then he turned to me. 'Anastasia, we were friends once. I treated you shamefully in the matter of the jewels. Things have gone badly with me of late. I seem to have no luck. Perhaps I have, somehow, lost my judgment. That money has done me no good. Curse that scoundrel, Sam Semple! It is all over now. The game has been played. I have lost, I suppose. But every game comes to an end at last.' He talked unlike himself. 'You can go, Anastasia. You had better leave me. You have had your revenge. Let that consideration console you.'
"I said no more, but left him. It was in the afternoon. An hour later his people heard an explosion—they ran to find the cause. Lord Fylingdale was lying dead on the floor.
"So, Jack, we are all punished, and none of us can complain. For my own part I am going into the country where I have a small dower house. The solitude and the dullness will, I dare say, kill me, but I do not care about living any longer.—Anastasia."
She did, however, pass into a better mind. For I heard some time after that she had married the dean of the neighbouring cathedral, not under the name of Lady Fylingdale, which she never assumed, but that of her first husband.