though I hardly
understood."

"Oh! oh!"

She was swaying from side to side, swaying so heavily that I
instinctively pushed forward a chair.

"Sit," I prayed. "You are not strong enough for this excitement."

She glanced at me vaguely, shook her head, but made no move toward
accepting the proffered chair. She submitted, however, when I continued
to press it upon her; and I felt less a brute and hard-hearted monster
when I saw her sitting with folded hands before me.

"I bring this up," said I, "that you may understand what I mean when I
say that some one else--another woman, in fact, may feel her claim upon
this child greater than yours."

"You mean the real mother. Is she known? The doctor swore--"

"I do not know the real mother. I only know that you are not; that to
win some toleration from your mother-in-law, to make sure of your
husband's lasting love, you won the doctor over to a deception which
secured a seeming heir to the Ocumpaughs. Whose child was given you, is
doubtless known to you--"

"No, no."

I stared, aghast.

"What! You do not know?"

"No, I did not wish to. Nor was she ever to know me or my name."

"Then this hope has also failed. I thought that in this mother, we might
find the child's abductor."

XVIII

"YOU LOOK AS IF--AS IF--"

I had studiously avoided looking at her while these last few words
passed between us, but as the silence which followed this final outburst
continued, I felt forced to glance her way if only to see what my next
move should be. I found her gazing straight at me with a bright spot on
either cheek, looking as if seared there by a red-hot iron.

"You are a detective," she said, as our regards met. "You have known
this shameful secret always, yet have met my husband constantly and have
never told."

"No, I saw no reason."

"Did you never, when you saw how completely my husband was deceived, how
fortunes were bequeathed to Gwendolen, gifts lavished on her, her small
self made almost an idol of, because all our friends, all our relatives
saw in her a true Ocumpaugh, think it wicked to hold your peace and let
this all go on as if she were the actual offspring of my husband and
myself?"

"No; I may have wondered at your happiness; I may have thought of the
consequences if ever he found out, but--"

I dared not go on; the quick, the agonizing nerve of her grief and
suffering had been touched and I myself quailed at the result.
Stammering some excu