he fixed whiteness of her face had not altered.
The large, luminous eyes looked into the dying redness in the grate, the
lips were set in one tense tight line. Until last night she had been but
a child, the veriest child in the tragic drama of life, the sin and
shame, the utter misery of the world to her a sealed book. All at once
the black, bitter page had opened, she was one of the lost herself,
love, truth, honor--there were none on earth. A loathing of herself, of
him, of life, filled her--an unspeakable bitterness weighed her down
body and soul.

"You do not speak, Miss Bourdon," Mr. Liston said, uneasily. "You--you
have not fallen asleep?"

"Asleep!" she laughed a little, strangely sounding laugh. "Not likely,
Mr. Liston; I have been listening to your story--not a pleasant story
to listen to or to tell. I am sorry for you, I am sorry for her. Our
stories are strangely alike--we have both thrown over good and loyal men
to become a villain's victim. We have no one to thank but ourselves.
More or less, we both richly deserve our fate."

There was a hard, reckless bitterness in the words, in the tone. She had
not shed a tear since the blow had fallen.

Mr. Liston paused in his walk and strove to read her face.

"Both?" he said. "No, Miss Bourdon. She, perhaps, but you do not. You
believed yourself his wife, in all honor and truth; to you no stain of
guilt attaches. But all the blacker is his dastardly betrayal of you.
Without even the excuse of loving you, he forced you from home, only to
gratify his brutal malice against Richard Gilbert. He told me so
himself; out of his own mouth he stands condemned."

She shivered suddenly, she shrank as though he had struck her. From
first to last she had been fooled; that was, perhaps, the cruelest,
sharpest blow of all, to know that Laurence Thorndyke had never for one
poor instant loved her, that hatred, not love, had been at the bottom of
it all.

"Don't let us speak of it," she said, hoarsely. "I--I can't bear it. O
Heaven! what have I done?"

She covered her face with her hands, a dry, shuddering sob shaking her
from head to foot.

"If I could only die," she thought, with a pang of horrible agony and
fear; "If I dared only die!"

"Listen to me, Mrs. Laurence," Mr. Liston said, steadily, and as if he
read her thoughts. "Don't despair; you have something to live for yet."

"Something to live for?" she repeated, in the same stifled tones.
"What?"

"Revenge."