le. Look!"

And she handed over the article headed "Jethro Bass." Jane, who had
quicker intuitions than her sister, would have snatched it from Cynthia's
hand, and it was a long time before Susan forgave herself for her folly.
Thus Miss Sadler had her revenge.

It is often mercifully ordained that the mightiest blows of misfortune
are tempered for us. During the winter evenings in Coniston, Cynthia had
read little newspaper attacks on Jethro, and scorned them as the cowardly
devices of enemies. They had been, indeed, but guarded and covert
allusions--grimaces from a safe distance. Cynthia's first sensation as
she read was anger--anger so intense as to send all the blood in her body
rushing to her head. But what was this? "Right had found a champion at
last" in--in Isaac D. Worthington! That was the first blow, and none but
Cynthia knew the weight of it. It sank but slowly into her consciousness,
and slowly the blood left her face, slowly but surely: left it at length
as white as the lace curtain of the window which she clutched in her
distress. Words which somebody had spoken were ringing in her ears.
Whatever happens! "Whatever happens I will never desert you, never deny
you, as long as I live." This, then, was what he had meant by newspapers,
and why he had come to her!

The sisters, watching her, cried out in dismay. There was no need to tell
them that they were looking on at a tragedy, and all the love and
sympathy in their hearts went out to her.

"Cynthia! Cynthia! What is it?" cried Susan, who, thinking she would
faint, seized her in her arms. "What have I done?"

Cynthia did not faint, being made of sterner substance. Gently, but with
that inexorable instinct of her kind which compels them to look for
reliance within themselves even in the direst of extremities, Cynthia
released herself from Susan's embrace and put a hand to her forehead.

"Will you leave me here a little while--alone?" she said.

It was Jane now who drew Susan out and shut the door of the parlor after
them. In utter misery they waited on the stairs while Cynthia fought out
her battle for herself.

When they were gone she sank down into the big chair under the reading
lamp--the very chair in which he had sat only two nights before. She saw
now with a terrible clearness the thing which for so long had been but a
vague premonition of disaster, and for a while she forgot the clippings.
And when after a space the touch of them in her hand br