count, but on hers whose
voice we could plainly hear humming a gay tune in the adjoining
apartment. But I was resolved to suppress all betrayal of uneasiness. I
even smiled, though I felt the eyes of Evelyn's pictured countenance
upon me; Evelyn's, whose portrait I had never lost sight of from the
moment of entering the room, though I had not given it a direct look and
now stood with my back to it. Felix, who faced it, but who did not raise
his eyes to it, waited a moment for my response, and finding that my
words halted, said again:

"That oath must be kept!"

This time I found words with which to answer. "Impossible!" I burst out,
flinging doubt, fear, hesitancy, everything I had hitherto trembled at
to the winds. "It was in my nature to take it, worked upon as I was by
family affection, the awfulness of our father's approaching death, and a
thousand uncanny influences all carefully measured and prepared for this
end. But it is not in my nature to keep it after four months of natural
living in the companionship of a man thirty years removed from his
guilt, and of his guileless and wholly innocent daughter. And you cannot
drive me to it, Felix. No man can force another to abandon his own wife
because of a wicked oath taken long before he knew her. If you think
your money----"

"Money?" he cried, with a contempt that did justice to my
disinterestedness as well as his own. "I had forgotten I had it. No,
Thomas, I should never weigh money against the happiness of living with
such a woman as your wife appears to be. But her life I might. Carry out
your threat; forget to pay John Poindexter the debt we owe him, and the
matter will assume a seriousness for which you are doubtless poorly
prepared. A daughter dead in her honeymoon will be almost as great a
grief to him as a dishonored one. And either dead or dishonored he must
find her, when he comes here in search of the child he cannot long
forget. Which shall it be? Speak!"

Was I dreaming? Was this Felix? Was this myself? And was it in my ears
these words were poured?

With a spring I reached his side where he stood close against the table,
and groaned rather than shrieked the words:

"You would not kill her! You do not meditate a crime of blood--here--on
her--the innocent--the good----"

"No," he said; "it will be you who will do that. You who will not wish
to see her languish--suffer--go mad--Thomas, I am not the raving being
you take me for. I am merely a keepe