ars that the only boy I
got was lyin' out among strangers. The only one that's honest is the
little Pond Lily. She ain't got nothin' to hide and you see it in her
face. Her father was square and her mother's with her and nothin' can't
touch her and don't. Let's have this out. I'm tired of it--"

The captain was out of breath now, his emotions still controlling him,
his astonishment at the unexpected opposition from the woman of all
others on whose assistance he most relied unabated.

Jane rose from her chair and stood facing him, a great light in her
eyes:

"No! No! NO! A thousand times, no! You don't know Lucy; I do. What you
want done now should have been done when Archie was born. It was my
fault. I couldn't see her suffer. I loved her too much. I thought to
save her, I didn't care how. It would have been better for her if she
had faced her sin then and taken the consequences; better for all of
us. I didn't think so then, and it has taken me years to find it out. I
began to be conscious of it first in her marriage, then when she kept
on living her lie with her husband, and last when she deserted Ellen
and went off to Beach Haven alone--that broke my heart, and my mistake
rose up before me, and I KNEW!"

The captain stared at her in astonishment. He could hardly credit his
ears.

"Yes, better, if she'd faced it. She would have lived here then under
my care, and she might have loved her child as I have done. Now she has
no tie, no care, no responsibility, no thought of anything but the
pleasures of the moment. I have tried to save her, and I have only
helped to ruin her."

"Make her settle down, then, and face the music!" blurted out the
captain, resuming his seat. "Bart warn't all bad; he was only young and
foolish. He'll take care of her. It ain't never too late to begin to
turn honest. Bart wants to begin; make her begin, too. He's got money
now to do it; and she kin live in South America same's she kin here.
She's got no home anywhere. She don't like it here, and never did; you
kin see that from the way she swings 'round from place to place. MAKE
her face it, I tell ye. You been too easy with her all your life; pull
her down now and keep her nose p'inted close to the compass."

"You do not know of what you talk," Jane answered, her eyes blazing.
"She hates the past; hates everything connected with it; hates the very
name of Barton Holt. Never once has she mentioned it since her return.
She never loved Arch