vacy. A scarf of black
lace was twisted, hood-like, about her head, and beneath its fragile
drapery was revealed the beautiful face and haunting, mysterious eyes
of Elisabeth Durward. She had flung a long black cloak over her evening
gown, and where it had fallen a little open at the throat her neck
gleamed privet-white against its shadowy darkness.

The mystical, transfiguring touch of the moon's soft light had
eliminated all signs of maturity, investing her with an amazing look of
youth, so that for an instant it seemed to Trent as though the years had
rolled back and Elisabeth Eden, in all the incomparable beauty of her
girlhood, stood before him.

He gazed at her in utter silence, and the brooding eyes returned his
gaze unflinchingly.

"Good God!"

The words burst from him at last in a low, tense whisper, and, as if
the sound broke some spell that had been holding both the man and woman
motionless, Elisabeth stepped across the threshold and came towards him.

Trent made a swift gesture--almost, it seemed, a gesture of aversion.

"Why have you come here?" he demanded hoarsely.

She drew a little nearer, then paused, her hand resting on the table,
and looked at him with a strange, questioning expression in her eyes.

"This is a poor welcome, Maurice," she observed at last.

He winced sharply at the sound of the name by which she had addressed
him, then, recovering himself, faced her with apparent composure.

"I have no welcome for you," he said in measured tones. "Why should I
have? All that was between us two . . . ended . . . half a life-time
ago."

"No!" she cried out. "No! Not all! There is still my son's happiness to
be reckoned."

"Your son's happiness?" He stared at her amazedly. "What has your son's
happiness to do with me?"

"Everything!" she answered. "Everything! Sara Tennant is the woman he
loves."

"And have you come here to blame me for the fact that she does not
return his love?"--with an accent of ironical amusement.

"No, I don't blame you. But if it had not been for you she would
have married him. They were engaged, and then"--her voice shook a
little--"you came! You came--and robbed Tim of his happiness."

Trent smiled sarcastically.

"An instance of the grinding of the mills of God," he said lightly.
"You robbed me--you'll agree?--of something I valued. And
now--inadvertently--I have robbed you in return of your son's happiness.
It appears"--consideringly--"an unusually just d