g to my mother, to whom
they were given by her father; and she needs the money at this moment--"

"Let me advise you to say as little as possible for your own sake;
because your words will be weighed against you."

"I speak only the truth, and it will, it must, vindicate me. What
papers are you searching for?"

"General Darrington's will. It was stolen with the money. Here is
yesterday's paper, with an account of the whole affair, telegraphed
from X----. If you need to learn anything, you will understand when you
read it."

The sight of the capital letters in the Telegraphic Despatches,
coupling her name with a heinous and revolting crime, seemed to stab
her eyes with red-hot thrusts; and shivering from head to foot, she
slowly realized the suspicious significance of the disappearance of the
will, which was the sole obstacle that debarred her from her
grandfather's wealth. Although sustained by an unfaltering trust in the
omnipotence of innocence, she was tormented by a dread spectre that
would not "down" at her bidding; how could she prove that the money and
jewels had been given to her? Would the shock of the tidings of her
arrest kill her mother? Was there any possible way by which she might
be kept in ignorance of this foul disgrace?

Beryl hid her face in her hands, and tried to think, but the whole
universe appeared spinning into chaos. She had opposed the trip South
so steadily and vehemently: had so sorrowfully and reluctantly yielded
at last to maternal solicitation, and had been oppressed with such dire
forebodings of some resultant evil. So bitter was her repugnance to the
application to her grandfather, that she had set out on her journey
feeling as though it were a challenge to fate; and this was the answer?
The vague distrust, the subtle sombre presentiment, the haunting shadow
of an inexplicable ill, had all meant this; this bloody horror,
dragging her fair name down to the loathsome mire of the slums of
crime. Had some merciful angel leaned from the parapets of heaven and
warned her; or did her father's spirit, in mysterious communion of
deathless love and prescient guardianship, stir her soul to oppose her
mother's scheme? Sceptical and heedless Tarquins are we all, whom our
patient Sibylline intuitions finally abandon to the woes which they
sought to avert.

In the maddening rush and whirl of Beryl's reflections, her mother's
image was the one centre around which all things circled; and at
leng