nd silence, would you go back to America and tell no one of
what has happened here?"

The mere hint was like flinging a door open and letting the sunlight
into a dungeon. The very word "America" was itself a rush of fresh
air. The long-forgotten love of country came back into her heart on a
cry of hope.

"Oh, you don't mean that you might?"

"We might. In fact, we will, if you will promise--"

She could not wait for his formal conclusion. She broke in: "I'll
promise anything--anything! Oh I don't want to be free just for the
sake of escaping punishment! No, no. I just want a chance to--to
expiate the evil I have done. I want to do some good to undo all the
bad I've brought about. I won't try to shift any blame. I want to
confess. It will take this awful load off my heart to tell people what
a wicked fool I've been."

Verrinder checked her: "But that is just what you must not do. Unless
you can assure us that you will carry this burden about with you and
keep it secret at no matter what cost, then we shall have to proceed
with the case--legally. We shall have to exhume Sir Joseph and Lady
Webling, as it were, and drag the whole thing through the courts. We'd
really rather not, but if you insist--"

"Oh, I'll promise. I'll keep the secret. Let them rest."

She was driven less by the thought of her own liberty than the terror
of exposing the dead. The mere thought brought back pictures of
hideous days when the grave was not refuge enough from vengeance, when
bodies were dug up, gibbeted, haled by a chain along the unwashed
cobblestones, quartered with a sword in the market-place and then
flung back to the dark.

Verrinder may have feared that Marie Louise yielded under duress, and
that when she was out of reach of the law she would forget, so he
said

"Would you swear to keep this inviolate?"

"Yes!"

"Have you a Bible?"

She thought there must be one, and she searched for it among the
bookshelves. But first she came across one in the German tongue. It
fell open easily, as if it had been a familiar companion of Sir
Joseph's. She abhorred the sight of the words that youthful
Sunday-school lessons had given an unearthly sanctity as she
recognized them twisted into the German paraphrase and printed in the
twisted German type. But she said:

"Will this do?"

Verrinder shook his head. "I don't know that an oath on a German Bible
would really count. It might be considered a mere heap of paper."

Marie Louis