ad seen Rafe Gadbeau leave herself at a dance, one afternoon a very
long time ago, and spend the greater part of the afternoon talking
gaily to Ruth Lansing. Now Rafe Gadbeau was gone. There was nothing
left of him whom Cynthe Cardinal had loved but a memory. But that
memory was as much to her as was the life of Jeffrey Whiting to this
other girl. She was sorry for the other girl. Who would not be? What
would that girl do? If the question was not asked directly, it was not
likely that the girl would tell what she knew. She would not wish to
tell. She would certainly try to avoid it. But if the question came to
her of a sudden, without warning, without time for thought? What then?
Would that girl be strong enough to deny, to deny and to keep on
denying?

Who could tell? The girl was a Catholic. But she was a convert. She
did not know the terrible secret of the confessional as they knew it
who had been born to the Faith.

Cynthe herself had meant to keep away from this trial. She knew it was
no place for her to carry the awful secret that she had hidden away
in her heart. No matter how deeply she might have it hidden, the fear
hung over her that men would probe for it. A word, a look, a hint
might be enough to set some on the search for it and she had had a
superstition that it was a secret of a nature that it could not be
hidden forever. Some day some one would tear it from her heart. She
knew that it was dangerous for her to be in Danton during these days
when the hill people were talking of nothing but the killing of Rogers
and hunting for any possible fact that might make Jeffrey Whiting's
story believable. But she had been drawn irresistibly to the trial and
had sat all day yesterday and to-day listening feverishly, avidly to
every word that was said, waiting to hear, and praying against hearing
the name of the man she had loved. The idea of protecting his name and
his memory from the blight of his deed had become more than a
religion, more than a sacred trust to her. It filled not only her own
thought and life but it seemed even to take up that great void in her
world which Rafe Gadbeau had filled.

When she had heard his name mentioned in that sudden questioning of
the Bishop, she had almost jumped from her seat to cry out to him that
he must know nothing. But that was foolish, she reflected. They might
as well have asked the stones on the top of the Gaunt Rocks to tell
Rafe Gadbeau's secret as to ask it from th