her; that
the name you bear is yours by assumption only? Ah! That brings home your
own wrongs to you, Justin! Consider them; have them ever present in your
mind, together with your mother's blighted life, that you may not shrink
when the hour strikes to punish the evildoer."

He flung himself back in his chair again, and watched the younger man
with brooding eye. Mr. Caryll was plainly moved. He had paled a little,
and he sat now with brows contracted and set teeth.

Sir Richard pushed back his chair and rose, recapitulating. "He is your
mother's destroyer," he said, with a sad sternness. "Is the ruin of that
fair life to go unpunished? Is it, Justin?"

Mr. Caryll's Gallic spirit burst abruptly through its British glaze.
He crushed fist into palm, and swore: "No, by God! It shall not, Sir
Richard!"

Sir Richard held out his hands, and there was a fierce joy in his gloomy
eyes at last. "You'll cross to England with me, Justin?"

But Mr. Caryll's soul fell once more into travail. "Wait!" he cried.
"Ah, wait!" His level glance met Sir Richard's in earnestness and
entreaty. "Answer me the truth upon your soul and conscience: Do you in
your heart believe that it is what my mother would have had me do?"

There was an instant's pause. Then Everard, the fanatic of vengeance,
the man whose mind upon that one subject was become unsound with excess
of brooding, answered with conviction: "As I have a soul to be saved,
Justin, I do believe it. More--I know it. Here!" Trembling hands took up
the old letter from the table and proffered it to Justin. "Here is her
own message to you. Read it again."

And what time the young man's eyes rested upon that fine, pointed
writing, Sir Richard recited aloud the words he knew by heart, the words
that had been ringing in his ears since that day when he had seen her
lowered to rest: "'Never let him learn that Justin exists unless it be
to punish him by the knowledge for his cruel desertion of me.' It
is your mother's voice speaking to you from the grave," the fanatic
pursued, and so infected Justin at last with something of his
fanaticism.

The green eyes flashed uncannily, the white young face grew cruelly
sardonic. "You believe it?" he asked, and the eagerness that now
invested his voice showed how it really was with him.

"As I have a soul to be saved," Sir Richard repeated.

"Then gladly will I set my hand to it." Fire stirred through Justin now,
a fire of righteous passion. "An id