who had received a death message. Then,
without a word, she handed the letter to Martha.

The old woman adjusted her glasses, read the missive to the end without
comment, and laid it back on Jane's lap. The writing covered but part
of the page, and announced Lucy's coming marriage with a Frenchman: "A
man of distinction; some years older than myself, and of ample means.
He fell in love with me at Aix."

There are certain crises in life with conclusions so evident that no
spoken word can add to their clearness. There is no need of comment;
neither is there room for doubt. The bare facts stand naked. No
sophistry can dull their outlines nor soften the insistence of their
high lights; nor can any reasoning explain away the results that will
follow. Both women, without the exchange of a word, knew instantly that
the consummation of this marriage meant the loss of Lucy forever. Now
she would never come back, and Archie would be motherless for life.
They foresaw, too, that all their yearning to clasp Lucy once more in
their arms would go unsatisfied. In this marriage she had found a way
to slip as easily from out the ties that bound her to Yardley as she
would from an old dress.

Martha rose from her chair, read the letter again to the end, and
without opening her lips left the room. Jane kept her seat, her head
resting on her hand, the letter once more in her lap. The revulsion of
feeling had paralyzed her judgment, and for a time had benumbed her
emotions. All she saw was Archie's eyes looking into hers as he waited
for an answer to that question he would one day ask and which now she
knew she could never give.

Then there rose before her, like some disembodied spirit from a
long-covered grave, the spectre of the past. An icy chill crept over
her. Would Lucy begin this new life with the same deceit with which she
had begun the old? And if she did, would this Frenchman forgive her
when he learned the facts? If he never learned them--and this was most
to be dreaded--what would Lucy's misery be all her life if she still
kept the secret close? Then with a pathos all the more intense because
of her ignorance of the true situation--she fighting on alone,
unconscious that the man she loved not only knew every pulsation of her
aching heart, but would be as willing as herself to guard its secret,
she cried:

"Yes, at any cost she must be saved from this living death! I know what
it is to sit beside the man I love, the man who