To find Carmel Cumberland alone in this desolation was a mystifying discovery to which I had found it hard enough to reconcile myself.

But Carmel here in company with another at the very moment when I had expected the fruition of my own joy,--ah, that was to open hell's door in my breast; a possibility too intolerable to remain unsettled for an instant.

Though she had passed out before my eyes in a drooping, almost agonised condition, not she, dear as she was, and great as were my fears in her regard, was to be sought out first, but the man! The man who was back of all this, possibly back of my disappointment; the man whose work I may have witnessed, but at whose identity I could not even guess.
Leaving the window, I groped my way along the wall until I reached the rack where the man's coat and hat hung.

Whether it was my intention to carry them away and hide them, in my anxiety to secure this intruder and hold him to a bitter account for the misery he was causing me, or whether I only meant to satisfy myself that they were the habiliments of a stranger and not those of some sneaking member of the club, is of little importance in the light of the fact which presently burst upon me.

The hat and coat were gone.