Hope at the last was taken off his guard, and took the proffered hand.  That is a binding action, and somehow he could no longer go back.

Then Bartley told him he should live in the house at first, to break the parting.  “And from this hour,” said he, “you are no clerk nor manager, but my associate in business, and on your own terms.”

“Thank you,” said Hope, with a sigh.

“Now lose no time; get her into the house at once while the clerks are away, and meantime I must deal with the nurse, and overcome the many difficulties.  Stay, here is a five-pound note.  Buy yourself a new suit, and give the child a good meal.  But pray bring her here in half an hour if you can.”

Then Bartley took him to the lobby, and let him out in the street, whilst he went into the house to buy the nurse, and make her his confidante.

He had a good deal of difficulty with her; she was shocked at the proposal, and, being a woman, it was the details that horrified her.  She cried a good deal.  She stipulated that her darling should have Christian burial, and cried again at the doubt.  But as Bartley conceded everything, and offered to settle a hundred pounds a year on her, so long as she lived in his house and kept his secret, he prevailed at last, and found her an invaluable ally.

To dispose of this character for the present we must inform the reader that she proved a woman can keep a secret, and that in a very short time she was as fond of Grace Hope as she had been of Mary Bartley.

We have said that Colonel Clifford’s talk penetrated Monckton’s ear, but produced no great impression at the time.  Not so, however, when he had listened to Bartley’s proposal, Hope’s answer, and all that followed.  Then he put this and Colonel Clifford’s communication together, and saw the terrible importance of the two things combined.  Thus, as a congenital worm grew with Jonah’s gourd, and was sure to destroy it, Bartley’s bold and elaborate scheme was furnished from the outset with a most dangerous enemy.

Leonard Monckton was by nature a schemer and by habit a villain, and he was sure to put this discovery to profit.  He came out of the little office and sat down at his desk, and fell into a brown-study.

He was not a little puzzled, and here lay his difficulty.  Two attractive villainies presented themselves to his ingenious mind, and he naturally hesitated between them.  One was to levy black-mail on Bartley; the other, to sell the secret to the Cliffords.

But there was a special reason why he should incline toward the Cliffords, and, whilst he is in his brown-study, we will let the reader into his secret.

This artful person had immediately won the confidence of young Clifford, calling himself Bolton, and had prepared a very heartless trap for him.  He introduced to him a most beautiful young woman—­tall, dark, with oval face and glorious black eyes and eyebrows, a slight foreign accent, and ingratiating manners.  He called this beauty his sister, and instructed her to win Walter Clifford in that character, and to marry him.  As she was twenty-two, and Master Clifford nineteen, he had no chance with her, and they were to be married this very day at the Register Office.