uld forego an
inheritance to which these others feel themselves honestly entitled?"

The voice which answered gave both my mind and heart a shock. It was
_she_ who had risen at this call. _She_, the only true-faced person
there!

Anxiously I listened for her reply. Alas! it was one of action rather
than speech. As I afterward heard, she simply opened her long cloak and
showed a little infant slumbering in her arms.

"This is my reason," said she. "I have sinned in the eyes of the world,
therefore I can not take my share of Uncle Anthony's money. I did not
know he exacted an unblemished record from those he expected to enrich,
or I would not have come."

The sob which followed these last words showed at what a cost she thus
renounced a fortune of which she, of all present, perhaps, stood in the
greatest need; but there was no lingering in her step; and to me, who
understood her fault only through the faint sound of infantile wailing
which accompanied her departure, there was a nobility in her action
which raised her in an instant to an almost ideal height of unselfish
virtue.

Perhaps they felt this, too. Perhaps even these hardened men and the
more than hardened woman whose presence was in itself a blight,
recognized heroism when they saw it; for when the lawyer, with a certain
obvious reluctance, laid his hand on the bolts of the door with the
remark: "This is not my work, you know; I am but following out
instructions very minutely given me," the smothered growls and grunts
which rose in reply lacked the venom which had been infused into all
their previous comments.

"I think our friends out there are far enough withdrawn, by this time,
for us to hazard the opening of the door," the lawyer now remarked.
"Madam, I hope you will speedily find your way to some comfortable
shelter."

Then the door opened, and after a moment, closed again in a silence
which at least was respectful. Yet I warrant there was not a soul
remaining who had not already figured in his mind to what extent his own
fortune had been increased by the failure of one of their number to
inherit.

As for me, my whole interest in the affair was at an end, and I was only
anxious to find my way to where this desolate woman faced the mist with
her unfed baby in her arms.

III

A LIFE DRAMA

But to reach this wanderer, it was first necessary for me to escape from
the house. This proved simple enough. The up-stairs room toward which I
rus