The Lamp of Fate

Hugh Vallincourt, therefore, was conscious at this critical moment of no questionings on that particular score. He was merely a prey to the normal tremors and agitations of a husband and prospective father.

For an ageless period, it seemed to him, his thoughts had clung about that upstairs room where his wife lay battling for her own life and another's. Suddenly they swung back to the time, a year ago, when he had first met her--an elusive feminine thing still reckoning her age in teens--beneath the glorious blue and gold canopy of the skies of Italy.

Their meeting and brief courtship had been pure romance--romance such as is bred in that land of mellow warmth and colour, where the flower of passion sometimes buds and blooms within the span of a single day.

In like manner had sprung to life the