u learned yet? Can't you read what the hand of Fate is
trying to point out to your blinded eyes? Did not the man Cahusac ask
you to marry him? Did not you refuse him? And did not he die of
typhoid within two weeks of committing that foolishness? And Charlie
Hemming. He dared to make love to you. What then? Didn't he make a
fortune on the Cotton Exchange? Didn't he tell you that it was you who
brought him his luck? Luck? Your luck is disaster--disaster disguised.
What happened? Hemming plunged into an orgie of riotous living when
you refused him. Didn't he squander his fortune, bolt to Mexico, and
in twelve months didn't he get shot as a rebel and a renegade, and
thus add himself to the list of the victims of your--so-called
'luck'? Luck! Oh, the madness, the blindness of it!"

The woman's passionate bitterness had lost all sense of proportion.
She saw only through her straining nerves. And the injustice of it all
brought swift protest to Joan's lips.

"You are wrong. You are cruel--bitterly, wickedly cruel, auntie," she
cried. "How am I responsible? What have I done?"

In an instant the gray eyes were turned upon her with something akin
to ferocity, and her voice rang with passion.

"Wrong? Cruel? I am stating undeniable facts. I am telling you what
has happened. And now I am going to tell you the result of your
morning's ride. How are you responsible? What have you done? Dick
Sorley has gone to his fate as surely as though you had thrust a knife
through his heart."

"Aunt! How--how dare----?"

"How dare I say such things? Because I am telling you the truth--which
you cannot bear to face. You must and shall hear it. Who are you to
escape the miseries of life such as we all have to suffer? Such as you
have helped to make _me_ suffer."

"Don't--don't!" Joan covered her face with her hands, as though to
shut out the sight of that cruel, working face before her--as though
to shut out of her mind the ruthless accusation hurled at her.

But the seer was full of the bitterness so long stored up in her
heart, and the moment had come when she could no longer contain it
beneath the cold mask she had worn for twenty years. The revelation
was hers. Her strange mind and senses had witnessed the scenes that
now held her in the grip of their horror. They had driven her to the
breaking-point, and no longer had she thought for anything but her own
sufferings, and the injustice that a pariah should walk at large,
unknown to the