ishment so
cruel, so awful as this. That June--the woman who had died just because
she "had no heart to go on living"--should be Michael's sister! Oh, it
was a crazy tangling of the threads--mad! Like some macabre invention
sprung from a disordered brain. She wanted to laugh, and she knew if she
began to laugh she should never stop. She felt she was losing her hold
over herself. With a violent effort she clutched at her self-control.

"Will you say it all over again, please?" she said in a flat voice. "I
don't think I understand."

"Nor did I till to-day," he replied shortly. "Davilof made me
understand--this morning."

"Davilof?" The word seemed to drag itself from her throat. . . .
Davilof--who had been at Stockleigh that summer! Then it was all going
to be true, after all.

"Yes, Davilof. He had chanced on the fact that June was my sister.
Very few people knew it, because, when she married, it was against
our father's wishes, and she had cut herself adrift from the family. I
wanted to help her, but she would never let me." He paused, then went
on tonelessly: "It's all quite clear, isn't it? You know everything
that happened while you were at Stockleigh. I've told you what happened
afterwards. Storran cleared out of the country at once, and June had
nothing left to live for. The only thing I didn't know was the name of
the woman who had smashed up both their lives. I saw Dan in Paris . . .
He came to me at my studio. But he was a white man. He never gave away
the name of the woman who had ruined him. I only knew she had spent
that particular summer at Stockleigh. It was Davilof who told me who the
woman was."

_"I can prevent your marrying Quarrington!"_ Magda could hear again the
quiet conviction of Antoine's utterance. So he had known, then, when he
threatened her, that June was Michael's sister! She wondered dully how
long he had been aware of the fact--how he had first stumbled across it
and realised its value as a hammer with which to crush her happiness.
Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered any more. The main fact was that
he _had_ known.

June was dead! Amid the confused welter of emotions which seemed to have
utterly submerged her during the last few minutes, Magda had almost lost
sight of this as a fact by itself--as distinct from its identity with
the fact that Michael's sister was dead. She felt vaguely sorry for
June.

Since the day she and Gillian had left Ashencombe she had heard nothing
of S