'Or did the curse but delay to work in him?—in him, my love and my hero? Was it foreordained to come to this, though I would at any time have given my life to prevent it?"

Again she thought.—“I have been wrong in holding religion to be the great cause why men are cruel,—as in believing that free-thought must needs humanise us all. Strange! that I should discover my error on this very day has showed me men being led by religion to deaths of torture. Yet an error it must be. For see my lord-hear how he laughs as cruelly, even, as the devote at his elbow!"

They had loitered some while over dessert, and Ruth's eye sought Donna Maria's, to signal her before rising and leaving the gentlemen to their wine. But Donna Maria was running a preoccupied glance around the table and counting with her fingers. .. Presently the glance grew distraught and the silly woman fell back in her chair with a cry.

"Jesus! We are thirteen!"

"Faith, so we are," said Sir Oliver with an easy laugh, after counting.

"And I the uninvited one! The calamity must fall on me-there is no other way!"

"But indeed there is another way," said Ruth, rising with a smile. "In my country the ill-luck falls on the first to leave the table. And who should that be, here, but the hostess?"

CHAPTER III

EARTHQUAKE

THE auto-da-fé was but a preliminary to the festivities and great processions of All Saints. For a whole week Lisbon had been sanding its squares and streets, painting its signboards, draping its balconies and windows to the fourth and fifth stories with hangings of crimson damask. Street after street displayed this uniform vista of crimson, foil for the procession, with its riot of gorgeous dresses, gold lace, banners, precious

stones.

Ruth leaned on the balustrade of her villa garden, and looked down over the city, from which, made musical by distance, the bells of thirty churches called to High Mass. Their chorus floated up to her on the delicate air; and-for the chimneys of Lisbon were smokeless, the winter through, in all but severest weather, and the citizens did their cooking over braziers-each belfry stood up distinct, edged with gold by the brilliant morning sun. Aloft the sky spread its blue bland and transparent; far below her Tagus mirrored it in a lake of blue. Many vessels rode at anchor there. The villas to right and left and below

her, or so much of them as rose out of their embosoming trees, took the sunlight on walls of warm yellow, with dove-coloured shadows.

She was thinking. . . . He had tried to discover how much she suspected; and when neither in word or look would she lower her guard, he had turned defiant. This very morning he had told her that, if she cared to use it, a carriage was at her disposal. For himself, the Countess of Montalagre had offered him a seat in hers, and he had accepted. . . . He had told her this at the last moment, entering her room in the full court dress the state procession demanded; and he had said it with a studied carelessness, not meeting her eyes.

She had thanked him and added that she was in two minds about going. She was not dressed for the show, and doubted if her maid could array her in time.

"We go to the Cathedral," said he. "I should recommend that or the Church of St. Vincent, where, some say, the Mass is equally fine."

"If I go, I shall probably content myself with the procession."

"If that's so, I've no doubt Langton will escort you. He likes processions, though he prefers executions. To a religious service I doubt your bribing him."

Upon this they had parted, each well aware that, but a few weeks ago, this small expedition would have been planned together, discussed, shared, as a matter of course. At parting he kissed her hand-he had

always exquisite manners; and she wished him a pleasant day with a voice quite cheerful and unconstrained.

From the sunlit terrace she looked almost straight down upon the garden of Mrs. Hake's villa. The two little girls were at play there. She heard their voices, shrill above the sound of the church bells. Now and again she caught a glimpse of them, at hide-and-seek between the ilexes.

She was thinking. If only fate had given her children such as these! . . . As it was, she could show a brave face. But what could the future hold?

She heard their mother calling to them. They must have obeyed and run to her, for the garden fell silent of a sudden. The bells, too, were ceasing-five or six only tinkled on.

She leaned forward over the balustrade to make sure that the children were gone. As she did so, the sound of a whimper caught her ear. She looked down, and spoke soothingly to a small dog, an Italian greyhound, a pet of Mr. Langton's, that had run to her trembling, and was nuzzling against her skirt for shelter. She could not think what ailed the creature. Belike it had taken fright at a noise below the terracea rumbling noise, as of a cart mounting the hill heavily laden with stones.

The waggon, if waggon it were, must be on the roadway to the left. Again she leaned forward over the balustrade. A faint tremor ran through the stonework on which her arms rested. For a moment she fancied it some trick of her own pulse.

But the tremor was renewed. The pulsation was actually in the stonework. . . . And then, even while she drew back, wondering, the terrace under her feet heaved as though its pavement rested on a wave of the sea. She was thrown sideways, staggering; and while she staggered, saw the great flagstones of the terrace raise themselves on end, as notes of a harpsichord when the fingers withdraw their pressure.

She would have caught again at the balustrade. But it had vanished, or rather was vanishing, under her gaze, toppling into the garden below. The sound of the falling stones was caught up in a long, low rumble, prolonged, swelling to a roar from the city below. Again the ground heaved, and beneath her she had dropped on her knees, and hung, clutching the little dog, staring over a level verge where the balustrade had run—she saw Lisbon fall askew, this way and that: the roofs collapsing, like a toy structure of cards. Still the roar of it swelled on the ear; yet, strange to say, the roar seemed to have nothing to do with the collapse, which went on piecemeal, steadily, like a game. The crescendo was drowned in a sharper roar and a crash close behind her-a crash that seemed the end of all