orty pounds a year. I did not know that I had so much to be grateful
for to you. I have taken gifts from you since, not knowing; but this is
the last of it--I will never take another now!"

"Are you so proud, Cynthia, that you cannot bear me to have helped you a
little? My love, I did not know, I never guessed that you were
Westwood's daughter. But can you never forgive me for having done my
best for you. Do you think I love you one whit the less?"

"Oh, I see--you think that I am ungenerous," cried Cynthia, "and that it
is my pride which stands in your way! Well, so it is--this kind of
pride--that I will not accept gifts from those who believe my father to
be a guilty man when I believe in his innocence. They did well never to
tell me who was my benefactor--for whom I was taught to pray when I was
at St. Elizabeth's. If I had known, the place would not have held me for
a day when I was old enough to understand! At first I was too ignorant,
too much stupefied by the whole thing to understand that the Vanes were
keeping me at school and supporting me. It is horrible--it is
sickening--to send my father to prison, to the gallows, and his child to
school! Much better have let me go to the workhouse! Do you think I wish
to be indebted to people who think my father a murderer?"

"You mistake!" said Hubert quickly. "The Vanes knew nothing about it. If
Mrs. Rumbold ever said so, it was my fault. I did not like her to think
that I was doing it alone. And, as for me, Cynthia, I never thought your
father guilty--never!"

He trembled beneath the burning gaze she turned on him, and his color
changed from white to red, and then to white again. He felt as if he had
been guilty of the meanest subterfuge of his whole life.

"You never thought so?" she said, with a terrible gasp. "Then who was
guilty? Who did that murder, Hubert? Do--you--know?"

She could not say, "Was your sister guilty, and are you shielding her?"

He looked at her helplessly. His tongue clave to the roof of his mouth;
he could not speak. With a bitter cry she fell upon her knees before him
and seized his hands.

"You know--you know! Oh, Hubert, clear my father's name! Never mind whom
you sacrifice! Let the punishment fall on the head of the wrong-doer not
on my dear, dear father's! I will forgive you for having been silent so
long, if now you will only speak. I will love you always, I will give
you my life, if you will but let the truth be known!"

He gather