"Your life shall be bright and peaceful, dearest, whatever mine may be.
The future looks bleak and terrible for me; but for you, sweet one, it
may be bright and fair."

The young mother loved her child with a passionate intensity; but even
that love could not exclude darker passions from her breast.

There was much that was noble in the nature of this woman; but there
was also much that was terrible. From her childhood she had been gifted
with a power of intellect--a strength of will--that lifted her high
above the common ranks of womanhood.

A fatal passion had taken possession of her soul after the untimely
death of Sir Oswald; and that passion was a craving for revenge. She
had been deeply wronged, and she could not forgive. She did not even
try to forgive. She believed that revenge was a kind of duty which she
owed, not only to herself, but to the noble husband whom she had lost.

The memory of that night of anguish in Yarborough Tower, and that still
darker hour of shame and despair in which Sit Oswald had refused to
believe her innocent, was never absent from the mind of Honoria
Eversleigh. She brooded upon these dark memories. Time could not lessen
their bitterness. Even the soft influence of her infant's love could
not banish those fatal recollections.

Time passed. The child grew and flourished, beautiful to her mother's
enraptured eyes; and yet, even by the side of that fair baby's face
arose the dark image of Victor Carrington.

For a long time the county people had kept close watch upon the