rime. Sue is his
favourite author, and I believe that he has exceedingly grim ideas as to
duelling and fighting generally. He was in prison once for six months
at New Orleans for killing a man who insulted my mother. Nothing in the
world would ever have convinced him that he had not done a perfectly
legitimate thing."

"I am expecting to find him quite an interesting study, when I know him
better," Francis pronounced. "My only fear is that he will count me an
unfriendly person and refuse to have anything to do with me."

"I am not at all sure," she said indifferently, "that it would not be
very much better for you if he did."

"I cannot admit that," he answered, smiling. "I think that our paths
in life are too far apart for either of us to influence the other. You
don't share his tastes, do you?"

"Which ones?" she asked, after a moment's silence.

"Well, boxing for one," he replied. "They tell me that he is the
greatest living patron of the ring, both here and in America."

"I have never been to a fight in my life," she confessed. "I hope that I
never may."

"I can't go so far as that," he declared, "but boxing isn't altogether
one of my hobbies. Can't we leave your father and his tastes alone for
the present? I would rather talk about--ourselves. Tell me what you care
about most in life?"

"Nothing," she answered listlessly.

"But that is only a phase," he persisted. "You have had terrible trials,
I know, and they must have affected your outlook on life, but you are
still young, and while one is young life is always worth having."

"I thought so once," she assented. "I don't now."

"But there must be--there will be compensations," he assured her. "I
know that just now you are suffering from the reaction--after all you
have gone through. The memory of that will pass."

"The memory of what I have gone through will never pass," she answered.

There was a moment's intense silence, a silence pregnant with
reminiscent drama. The little room rose up before his memory--the
woman's hopeless, hating eyes, the quivering thread of steel, the dead
man's mocking words. He seemed at that moment to see into the recesses
of her mind. Was it remorse that troubled her, he wondered? Did she lack
strength to realise that in that half-hour at the inquest he had placed
on record for ever his judgment of her deed? Even to think of it now was
morbid. Although he would never have confessed it even to himself, there
was growing