y taken the pencil from her fingers, and retouched and rounded
the sweep of the curves; the dear wasted hand that she had stooped and
kissed, as it corrected her work?

As on the golden background of a cherished Byzantine picture, memory
held untarnished every tint and outline of that blessed day, when she
and her father had looked for the last time on the sunny sea they loved
so well.

Did fell fate hover, even then, in that sparkling perfumed air, and in
sinister prescience trace this tangling web of threads, with grim
intent to snare her unwary feet?

Savants tell us, that ages ago, in the dim dawn, primeval rain drops
made their pattering print, and left it to harden on the stone pages,
awaiting decipherment by human eyes and human brains, not yet

"Born of the brainless Nature,
Who knew not that which she bore."

Is there an analogous iron chain linking the merest trifles, the
frivolous accidents, the apparently worthless coincidences that swell
the sum of what we are pleased to call the nobly independent life of
the "free-agent" Man? In the matrix of time, do human tears and human
blood-drops leave their record, to be conned when Nemesis holds her
last assize?

As the handkerchief swayed in the lawyer's grasp, Beryl saw the red "B.
B." like a bloody brand. At that instant she felt that the death clutch
fastened upon her throat; that fate had cast her adrift, on the black
waves of despair. In her reeling brain kaleidoscopic images danced; her
father's face, the lateen sail of fishing boats rocking on blue
billows, white oxen browsing amid purple iris clusters; she heard her
mother's voice, her brother's gay laugh; she smelled the prussic acid
fragrance of the vivid oleanders, then over all, like tongues of
devouring flames, flickered "Ricordo." "B. B."

In the frenzy of her desperation she sprang forward, seized the arms
that held up the fatal handkerchief, and shook the man, as if he had
been an infant. Her eyes full of horror, were fixed on the scrap of
linen, and a frantic cry rang from her lips.

"Father! Father! There is no hereafter for you and me! Prayer is but
the mockery of fools! There is no heaven for the pure, because there is
no God! No God!--to hear, to save the innocent who trusted in Him.
Oh--no God!"

Mr. Dunbar dropped the handkerchief, and as the irresistible conviction
of her guilt rolled back, crushing the hope he had cherished a moment
before, a spasm of pain seized his heart,