coldly rejoined. "She"--he pointed a hand in the direction of the
churchyard--"was married before she met me. She kept the fact from me. It
was apparently a secret passage in her life. During our long association
together she gave no hint of it. She confessed the truth on her deathbed.
In justice to her memory let me say that she believed her husband dead."

Robert Turold told this with unmoved face in barest outline--etched in
dry-point, as it were--leaving his hearers to fill in the picture of the
unhappy woman who had gone through life tormented by the twin demons of
conscience and fear, which had overtaken her and brought her down before
she could reach the safe shelter of the grave.

Mrs. Pendleton, whose robust mind had scant patience with the policy of
cowardice which dictates death-bed confessions, regretted that Alice,
having remained silent so long, had not kept silence altogether.

"You do not intend to make this scandal public, Robert?" she said
anxiously.

"I am compelled to do so," was the gloomy response.

"Is it necessary?" she pleaded. "Cannot the story be kept quiet--if not
for Alice's sake, at least for Sisily's? You must consider her above all
things. She is your daughter, your only child."

"I agree with Aunt," said Charles Turold. He rose from the window-seat and
approached the table. "Sisily must be your first consideration," he said,
looking at Robert Turold.

"This has nothing to do with you, Charles," interposed Austin hastily.