en! Soon after we got home mother cabled
Mostyn's lawyer that 'Mrs. Mostyn had had a son.' Nothing was said of
the boy's death. Almost immediately I was notified that Mr. Mostyn would
insist on the surrender of the child to his care. I took no notice of
the letters. Then he sent his lawyer to claim the child and a woman to
take care of it. I laughed them to scorn, and defied them to find
the child. After them came Mostyn himself. He interviewed doctors,
overlooked baptismal registers, advertised far and wide, bribed our
servants, bearded father in his office, abused Bryce on the avenue,
waylaid me in all my usual resorts, and bombarded me with letters, but
he knows no more yet than the cable told him. And the man is becoming a
monomaniac about HIS SON."

"Are you doing right, Dora?"

"If you only knew how he had tortured me! Father and mother think he
deserves all I can do to him. Anyway, he will have it to bear. If he
goes to the asylum he threatened me with, I shall be barely satisfied.
The 'cat-faced woman' is getting her innings now."

"Have you never spoken to him or written to him? Surely"

"He caught me one day as I came out of our house, and said, 'Madam,
where is my son?' And I answered, 'You have no son. The child WAS MINE.
You shall never see his face in this world. I have taken good care of
that.'

"'I will find him some day,' he said, and I laughed at him, and
answered, 'He is too cunningly hid. Do you think I would let the boy
know he had such a father as you? No, indeed. Not unless there was
property for the disgrace.' I touched him on the raw in that remark,
and then I got into my carriage and told the coachman to drive quickly.
Mostyn attempted to follow me, but the whip lashing the horses was in
the way." And Dora laughed, and the laugh was cruel and mocking and full
of meaning.

"Dora, how can you? How can you find pleasure in such revenges?"

"I am having the greatest satisfaction of my life. And I am only
beginning the just retribution, for my beauty is enthralling the man
again, and he is on the road to a mad jealousy of me."

"Why don't you get a divorce? This is a case for that remedy. He might
then marry again, and you also."

"Even so, I should still torment him. If he had sons he would be
miserable in the thought that his unknown son might, on his death, take
from them the precious Mostyn estate, and that wretched, old, haunted
house of his. I am binding him to misery on every hand.