matter for years. But
the belief was there. Now it was taking shape.

She would meet it face to face. She stood up as though she had been
going to throttle some visible foe for ever: "I shall tell you the
truth, Catharine. Your father has never known it. He believes his son
died in Nicaragua fighting for a cause which he thought good. I let him
believe it. There was some comfort in that."

"It was not true, then?"

"No." She rearranged the vases on the mantel-shelf, turned over the
illuminated texts hanging on the wall, until she came to the one for the
day. She was trying to convince herself that Hugh Guinness mattered
nothing to her.

"He died," she said at last, "in New York, a reprobate, as he lived."

"But where? how?"

"What can that matter to you?" sharply. "But I will tell you where and
how. Two winters ago a poor, bloated, penniless wretch took up his
lodging in a cheap hotel in New York. He left it only to visit the
gambling-houses near. An old friend of mine recognized Hugh, and warned
me of his whereabouts. I went up to the city at once, but when I reached
it he had disappeared. He had lost his last penny at dice."

"Then he _is_ still alive?"

"God forbid! No," correcting herself. "A week later the body of a
suicide was recovered off Coney Island and placed in the Morgue. It was
horribly mutilated. But I knew Hugh Guinness. I think I see him yet,
lying on that marble slab and his eyes staring up at me. It was no doing
of mine that he lay there."

"No, mother, I am sure that it was not," gently. "If your conscience
reproaches you, I wish he were here that you could try and bring him
into the right path at last."

"My conscience does not trouble me. As for Hugh--Heaven forbid that I
should judge any man!--but if ever there was a son of wrath predestined
to perdition, it was he. I always felt his day of grace must have passed
while he was still a child."

Kitty had no answer to this. She went off to bed speedily, and to sleep.
An hour or two later her mother crept softly to her bedside and stood
looking at her. The woman had been crying.

"Lord, not on her, not on her!" she cried silently. "Let not my sin be
laid up against her!" But her grief was short-lived. Hugh was dead. As
for his harming Kitty, that was all folly. Meanwhile, Mr. Muller and the
wedding-clothes were facts. She stooped over Kitty and kissed
her--turned down the sheet to look at her soft blue-veined shoulder and
moist white f