ct.

Her son had been murdered ... her eldest son whom she had never known,
and she--involuntarily mayhap, compulsorily certes--had in a measure
helped to bring about those events which had culminated in that
appalling crime.

She had known of Marmaduke's monstrous fraud on the confiding girl whom
he now so callously abandoned to her fate. She had known of it and
helped him towards its success by luring her other son Richard to that
vile gambling den where he had all but lost his honor, or else his
reason.

This knowledge and the help she had given was the real curse upon her
now: a curse far more horrible and deadly than that which had driven
Cain forth into the wilderness. This knowledge and the help she had
given had stained her hands with the blood of her own child.

No wonder that she sighed for ghouls and for shadowy monsters,
well-nigh longing for a sight of distorted faces, of ugly deformed
bodies, and loathsome shapes far less hideous than that specter of an
inhuman homicide which followed her along this dark road as she ran--ran
on--ran towards the home where dwelt the living monster of evil, the man
who had done the deed, which she had helped to accomplish.

Complete darkness reigned all around her, she could not see a yard of
the road in front of her, but she went on blindly, guided by instinct,
led by that unseen shadow which was driving her on. All round her the
gale was moaning in the creaking branches of the trees, branches which
were like arms stretched forth in appeal towards the unattainable.

Her progress was slow for she was walking in the very teeth of the
hurricane, and her shoes ever and anon remained glued to the slimy mud.
But the road was straight enough, she knew it well, and she felt neither
fatigue nor discomfort.

Of Sue she did not think. The wrongs done to the defenseless girl were
as nothing to her compared with the irreparable--the wrongs done to her
sons, the living and the dead: for the one the foul dagger of an inhuman
assassin, for the other shame and disgrace.

Sue was young. Sue would soon forget. The girl-wife would soon regain
her freedom.... But what of the mother who had on her soul the taint of
the murder of her child?

The gate leading to the Court from the road was wide open: it had been
left so for her, no doubt, when Sir Marmaduke returned. The house itself
was dark, no light save one pierced the interstices of the ill-fitting
shutters. Editha paused a moment