isdain that brought the impending
tears to his eyes. But if he lacked the manliness to restrain them, he
possessed at least the shame to turn his back and hide them from her.
"But tell me, sir," she added, her curiosity awakened, "if I am to
judge, what was the nature of this bargain?"

He was silent for a moment, and took a turn in the hall--mastering
himself to speak--his hands clasped behind his back, and his eyes bent
towards the polished floor which the evening sunlight, filtered through
the gules of the leaded windows, splashed here and there with a crimson
stain. She sat in the great leathern chair at the head of the board,
and, watching him, waited.

He was debating whether he was bound to secrecy in the matter, and in
the end he resolved that he was not. Thereupon, pausing before her,
he succinctly told the story Crispin had related to him that night in
Worcester--the story of a great wrong, that none but a craven could have
left unavenged. He added nothing to it, subtracted nothing from it, but
told the tale as it had been told to him on that dreadful night, the
memory of which had still power to draw a shudder from him.

Cynthia sat with parted lips and eager eyes, drinking in that touching
narrative of suffering that was rather as some romancer's fabrication
than a true account of what a living man had undergone. Now with sorrow
and pity in her heart and countenance, now with anger and loathing, she
listened until he had done, and even when he ceased speaking, and flung
himself into the nearest chair, she sat on in silence for a spell.

Then of a sudden she turned a pair of flashing eyes upon the boy, and in
tones charged with a scorn ineffable:

"You dare," she cried, "to speak of that man as you do, knowing all
this? Knowing what he has suffered, you dare to rail in his absence
against those sins to which his misfortunes have driven him? How, think
you, would it have fared with you, you fool, had you stood in the shoes
of this unfortunate? Had you fallen on your craven knees, and thanked
the Lord for allowing you to keep your miserable life? Had you succumbed
to the blows of fate with a whine of texts upon your lips? Who are you?"
she went on, rising, breathless in her wrath, which caused him to recoil
in sheer affright before her. "Who are you, and what are you, that
knowing what you know of this man's life, you dare to sit in judgment
upon his actions and condemn them? Answer me, you fool!"

But ne