unction, she remembered that she had deceived a dying man. He
believed her, but she did not wish him to see her face. She drew a
chair towards the bed, and for a moment looked about her, striving to
collect her scattered thoughts. Framed by the stone-ribbed window, the
afterglow still shimmered, a pale luminous green, and one star twinkled
over the black shoulder of Crosbie Fell. Curlews called mournfully
down in the misty mosses, and when she turned her head the sick man's
face showed faintly livid against the darker coverings of the bed. For
a moment she felt tempted to make full confession, or at least excuses
for Geoffrey, but Anthony Thurston spoke again just then and the moment
was lost.

"I asked are you happy in Canada, Millicent," he repeated, and there
was command as well as kindness in his tone. Anthony Thurston, mine
owner and iron works director, was dying, but he had long been a ruler
of stiff-necked men, and the habit of authority still remained with
him. It struck Millicent that he was in many ways very like Geoffrey.

"I am not," she admitted. "I would not have told you if you had not
insisted. It is the result of my own folly, and there is no use
complaining."

Anthony Thurston stretched out a thin, claw-like hand and laid it on
one of her own. "Tell me," he said.

"We are poor. That is, my husband's position is precarious, and it is
a constant struggle to live up to it."

"Then why do you try?"

Millicent sighed as she answered:

"It is, I believe, necessary or he would lose it, while he aims at
obtaining sufficient influence to win him a connection, if he resumed
his former land business."

"From what I know it is a rascally business; but there is more than
this. My time is very short, Millicent, but it seems such a very
little while since a bright-haired girl who atoned for another's injury
sat upon my knee, and for the sake of those days I can still protect
you. Your husband treats you ill?"

There was a vibration in the strained voice which more strongly
reminded the listener of Geoffrey's, and awoke her bitterness against
the man she had married. It was so long since she had taken a living
soul into her confidence, that she answered impulsively: "There is no
use hiding the truth from you. He does not treat me well."

Then she related the story of her married life, and Anthony Thurston
listened gravely, comprehending more than she meant to tell him, for
when she had fin