ould spring upon me, he leaned forward with so much
impetuosity.

"How do you know?" he asked, and my heart stood still at the question.

"Because I have seen her," I presently rejoined. "Because I have had
opportunities for studying her heart. She is called Honora, and she is
like Miss Dudleigh, only more beautiful and with more claims to what is
called character."

He did not seem to take in my words.

"You have been to France?" he declared.

"No," I corrected; "Miss Urquhart has been here."

He fell back, then started forward again, opened his lips and stared
wildly, half fearfully about the room.

"Here?" he repeated, evidently overcome at the idea. "Why did they send
her here? I should as soon have expected them to send her into the murk
of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent girl, you say, and sent
here?"

"They had reason; besides, she did not come alone."

This time he understood me.

"Oh!" he shrieked, "she in the house. I might have known it," he went on
more calmly; "I did, only I would not believe it. Her crime has drawn
her to the place of its perpetration. She could not resist the magnetic
influence which all places of blood have upon the guilty. She has come
back! And he?"

I shook my head.

"The man had less courage," I declared. "Perhaps because he was more
guilty; perhaps because he had less love."

"Love?"

"It was love for the daughter which drew the mother here, not the spell
of her crime or the accusing spirit of the dead. The woman who wronged
you has some heart; she was willing to risk detection, and with it her
reputation and life, to see if by any possibility she could venture to
give happiness to the one being whom she really loves."

"Explain; I do not understand. How could she hope to find happiness for
her child here?"

"By settling the question which evidently tortured her. By determining
once for all whether the crime of sixteen years back had ever been
discovered, and if she found it had not, to satisfy at once her own
pride and her daughter's heart by giving that daughter to as noble a
gentleman as ever carried a sword."

"And they are here now?"

"They are here."

"And she has discovered--"

"The futility of all her hopes."

He drew back, and his heavy breath echoed in deep pants through the
room.

"What an end for Marah Leighton!" he gasped.

"What an end! And she is here!" he went on, after a moment of silent
emotion--"under this roof! No wonder I