hinder you from going; on the contrary, if you do not, I will take good care that the country rings with the story of how I found my husband and Miss Helen Adair alone, at eleven at night, when all her people were away. . . arranging an elopement between them. I wonder whether it would be you or I who would be blamed then for not having got on together? I don't want to stop you; I only came after you to shame her. Ha, ha! Have I not my revenge on you at last, Helen Adair?"
Paul does not speak, only his hands clench and unclench themselves rapidly, and his breast rises in short, quick pants.
"You taunted me once with the possession of a good name, that no living man or woman could lay finger on," she says, in her mocking, flute-like tones; "do you think it is so white and soilless now?"
"Now," I say, lifting my hand and beckoning to her, "you will come with me."
Like a woman who moves without her own volition, Silvia leaves her place and follows me. Again I lift my hand and beckon to Paul, who also comes slowly, like a man in a dream. . . . I open the door, traverse the short passage, and enter the bedroom, the husband and wife following. I walk to the bed and look round at them they are standing by the door—and lift my hand once more, and they come and stand one on either side of the bed . . . and they look down on the dead face of their little fatherless, motherless son, Wattie.
"He died at six of the clock this evening," I say, monotonously; then something seems to snap in my brain, and I fall down like a log, with my arms round my little dead lad.
*****
In God's Acre, a man stands holding my hand in his for the last time, and asks me, as though I were his judge, to forgive him the terrible sin and treachery into which his mad, sinful love and
