nd there on a misery so abject and
so terrifying that the dear nurse had hugged the frail figure all the
tighter, seeing only the wound and knowing nothing of the steps that had
led up to the final blow or the anger that hastened it.

Martha had known, of course, that there had been bankruptcy and ruin;
that Oakdale, the ancestral estate of the O'Days--theirs for two
centuries, with all its priceless old furniture, tapestries, pictures,
and porcelains--had, after the owner's death, been sold at public
auction; that Fernlodge, Mr. Felix's own home, had gone in the same way;
that Lady Barbara, for some reason, had returned to her father, Lord
Carnavon; that the girl baby had died; and that "Mr. Felix," as she
always called him, had gone to London where he had taken up his abode
at his club. Lady Barbara herself had given these details in a letter
written a couple of weeks after the death of the child, Martha being in
Toronto at the time.

Martha had also learned, through a letter from the head gardener's wife,
that after a few months' stay, Lady Barbara had left her father's house
because of a fierce scene with Lord Carnavon, who had sent for his
carriage, conducted her into it, and given directions to his coachman
either to set his daughter down on the main road, outside his gates, or
to take her to the nearest public house.

She had learned, too, that her former charge, after having eloped
with Dalton, had dropped entirely out of sight and, so far as her own
knowledge was concerned, had never come to light again until, with a cry
of joy, Lady Barbara sank sobbing on her shoulder in that Third Avenue
car.

Much of this information had been gathered from newspaper clippings that
her old uncle, living in London, had mailed to her. More particulars had
come in a letter from James Muldoon, one of the grooms at Oakdale, who
gave a most pitiful and graphic account of the way the London dealers
crowded about the old porcelains in the ebony cabinets, and of the
prices paid by the Earl of Brinsmore, who bought most of the pictures,
half of the old Spanish furniture, as well as the largest but one of
the great tapestries, to enrich the new mansion he was then building in
London and in which James Muldoon was happy to say he had been promised
a place.

In still other letters, open references had also been made to a much
discussed speculation, entangling many of those whom Martha had formerly
known, followed by a grand financi