reature like herself. She bore her executioner about with her, Aunt
Lois, evidently returning home to die. That death would complete the
ruin of Sonia, and over the grave she would learn once for all how well
her iniquity had been known, how the lost husband had risen from his
darkness to accuse her, how little her latest crime would avail her.
What a dull fool Horace Endicott had been over a woman suspected of her
own world! Her beauty would have kept him a fool forever, had she been
less beastly in her pleasures. And this Endicott, down in the depths,
sighed for her still!

But Arthur Dillon saw her in another light, as an unclean beast from
sin's wilderness, in the light that shone from Honora Ledwith. Messalina
cowered under the halo of Beatrice! When that light shone full upon her,
Sonia looked to his eye like a painted Phryne surprised by the daylight.
Her corruption showed through her beauty. Honora! Incomparable woman!
dear lady of whiteness! pure heart that shut out earthly love, while God
was to be served, or men suffered, or her country bled, or her father
lived! The thought of her purified him. He had not truly known his dear
mother till now; when he knew her in Honora, in old Martha, in charming
Mona, in Mary Everard, in clever Anne Dillon. These women would bless
his life hereafter. They refreshed him in mind and heart. It began to
dawn upon him that his place in life was fixed, that he would never go
back even though he might do so with honor, his shame remaining unknown.
It was mere justice that the wretched past should be in a grave, doomed
never to see the light of resurrection.

His mother and her party shared the journey with him. The delay of
Ledwith's trial had enabled them to make the short tour on the
Continent, and catch his steamer. Anne was utterly vexed with him that
Ledwith had not escaped the prison. Her plain irritation gave Judy deep
content.

"She needs something to pull her down," was her comment to Arthur, "or
she'll fly off the earth with the lightness of her head. My, my, but the
airs of her since she laid out the ambassador, an' talked to the Pope!
She can hardly spake at all now wid the grandher! Whin Father Phil ... I
never can call him Mounsinnyory ... an', be the way, for years wasn't I
callin' him Morrisania be mistake, an' the dear man never corrected me
wanst ... but I learned the difference over in Rome ... where was I?...
whin Father Phil kem back from Rome he gev us a gr