From Mrs. Dare to Lady Carradine.

"My Dear Godmother,--Your last letter, to hand five days ago, brought me a large measure of happiness. In it you tell me that you have at length forgiven me in full for what heretofore you have always designated as my \'rash and ill-considered marriage.\' It does indeed make me glad to learn that I am once more to be taken back, fully and freely, into your affections, the loss of which has been the bitterest drop in the cup of my married felicity.

"In your letter you put several questions to me having reference to the events of the last few weeks prior to my departure from England. These I will now endeavor to answer to the best of my ability.

"Thanks to the interest brought to bear by your ladyship in a certain high quarter, your scapegrace goddaughter, after having made three appearances before the Lanchester bench of magistrates, was unceremoniously set at liberty. This, of course, is ancient history to you, but it is the point from which, for your information, I purpose narrating as briefly as may be what befell me afterwards up to the date of my departure for America.

"I had only been a couple of days back at Stanbrook when a note reached me which had been brought by a man on horseback. The writer of it was Mr. Cope-Ellerslie, of Rockmount, whose acquaintance I had made some time before under rather peculiar circumstances, asking me to go back with his messenger, as the writer had some news of importance to communicate. This I had no hesitation about doing, seeing that Mr. Ellerslie was known to me as the uncle of Geoffrey Dare.

"A couple of hours later I alighted from my mare at the door of Rockmount.

"A man between sixty and seventy, tall and bowed, habited in a monkish robe, with a moustache and a short peaked beard, long grizzled hair parted down the middle, and a singular waxen pallor of complexion--such was the Mr. Ellerslie known to me, and such was the man who now received me. I had assumed that it was in order to be favored with some tidings of, or to receive some message from, his nephew (who had been utterly lost to me from the moment the cell door was shut between us), that I had been summoned to Rockmount. Nor was I mistaken.

"After having referred to the Lanchester affair in terms which I would not recapitulate even if I could, Mr. Ellerslie went on to mark that his nephew had not yet left the country, but was in safe hiding no great distance away. Proceeding, he went on to observe that he was the bearer of a certain message from Geoffrey, but that he found himself somewhat at a loss for terms in which to convey it. Stripped, however, of all verbiage it came to this: Geoffrey would not hold me to my word or promise, given him in the cell at Lanchester, if, since then, and after further consideration, I in the slightest degree regretted, or wished, to recall, anything which had passed between us on that occasion.

"Then, before I had time to frame into words the answer which leapt from my heart, Mr. Ellerslie proceeded to address me on his own account. I was young and parentless, he remarked, and, so far as he could judge, somewhat liable to be led away by generous but undisciplined impulses. He begged of me to pause, to reflect coolly and dispassionately, before linking my lot with that of a man who, should no worse fate befall him, must henceforth be an outcast from his native land. And so on, and so on, till I begged of him to cease.

"Need I tell you, my dear godmother, in what terms I answered him? No, I am sure I need not. You know your Nelly too well not to have guessed already.

"The pith of all I had to say was comprised in less than a score words: \'Geoffrey Dare is my chosen husband, and, come weal or woe, I will wed none but him.\'

"Mr. Ellerslie threw up his hands. \'If you will persist, my dear young lady, in your headstrong course, then have I nothing more to urge. My ambassadorial functions are at an end, and the sooner my nephew comes and does his own talking the better for all concerned.\'

"Without a word more he rose and left the room, and five minutes later Geoffrey entered it.

"To relate what passed between him and me would not entertain you in the least. It will be enough to state that if we had not been betrothed lovers before, we became so from that hour.

"It was to Rockmount that Geoffrey had directed his steps on the night of his escape, and there he had been in hiding ever since.

"When the time had come for me to take my departure in order that I might get back to Stanbrook before dark, I said to him, \'But shall I not see Mr. Ellerslie again before I go?\'

"\'That you certainly will not,\' he replied with one of his puzzling smiles. \'Mr. Cope-Ellerslie is no longer in existence. He died about an hour ago. His life was brief but necessary. Peace to his remains!\' Then, seeing my look of amazement, he added, \'Have you not yet found out, or even suspected, that Mr. Ellerslie and Geoffrey Dare were one and the same person?"

"No, that I certainly had not. Nevertheless, I was now assured that such was the fact, and I had to delay my departure for another half hour while the mystery was cleared up for me.

"When Geoffrey Dare left London a ruined man, bankrupt in love, in friendship, in means (I long ago explained to you under what peculiar circumstances he was induced to take to the King\'s highway), he came to Rockmount, which was his own property, and which, owing doubtless to its isolated situation in the midst of a wide stretch of desolate moorland, had been untenanted for years. With him he brought three old family servants, whom not even the rack or the thumbscrew would have forced into betraying him. But it was Mr. Cope-Ellerslie, the scholar and the recluse, who had become the tenant of Rockmount, and no faintest suspicion ever got abroad that there was, or could be, any connection between him and Captain Nightshade.

"So far so good; but I still failed to comprehend the nature of a disguise which so completely changed Geoffrey\'s identity that only an hour before my eyes had failed to penetrate it. To take one point alone: in Mr. Ellerslie\'s face, leaving out of account the difference in the complexions, there bad been a thousand fine lines and creases, whereas in Geoffrey\'s it would have puzzled one to find a dozen.

"Then was I enlightened. Mr. Cope-Ellerslie\'s face was a mask, of which moustache, beard, eyebrows, and hair formed component parts. The foundation of the mask consisted of the skin of a newly-born kid, pared or scraped to an exceeding fineness, and moulded to the features while still plastic. Geoffrey had brought it with him from Italy several years before, where such disguises seem to be not unknown, and where it had been ma............