led sardonically as he opened the door. "It does great credit
to your imagination, Mrs. Swinton. Your statement, on the face of it, is
false. Unless Mr. Herresford made that avowal with his own lips, no one
would take the slightest notice of it. It would only be adding folly to
crime. I wish you good-day."

He held the door wide open, still smiling with an evil light in his eyes.
As she passed out, she was almost tempted to strike him, so great was her
mortification.

"You are as bad as my father," she cried. "Nothing pleases you men of
money more than to wound and lacerate women's hearts. Dora is well saved
from such a cur."

She reached the rectory in a state bordering on despair. Money could do
nothing. She was powerless to evade the consequences of her folly. It was
the more maddening because she had only robbed her father of a little,
whereas he had defrauded her of much--oh, so much!

One sentence let fall by Ormsby remained vividly in her memory. "Unless
Mr. Herresford made that avowal with his own lips, no one would take the
slightest notice of it."

He should make the avowal; she would force it from him. The irony of the
situation was fantastic in its horror.

She found her husband at home, looking whiter and more bloodless than
ever.

"What news, Mary?" he asked awkwardly, avoiding her glance.

"The strangest, John--the strangest of all! My father is the biggest
thief in America."

"Mary, Mary, this perpetual abuse of your father, whom we have wronged,
will not help us in the least."

He led her into the study.

"John, John, you don't understand what I mean. I've been to Mr. Jevons,
and he says that my mother left me more than half-a-million dollars,
which my father has stolen--stolen! He has kept us beggars ever since our
marriage, by a trick. My mother left me twenty thousand a year; and--you
know what we've had from him."

"Mary, what wild things are you saying?"

"Ah, it's hard to believe; but it's true. He'll have to disgorge, or Mr.
Jevons will take the business into court. He gave me the seven thousand
dollars I wanted on the spot, and promised to get the rest for me, and
give me as much more as I wanted. I've seen Ormsby, and paid him the
money; but he's obdurate. The jealous wretch is bent upon ruining Dick.
Nothing will move him."

"It is our sin crying for atonement, Mary. Money cannot buy absolution."

"No, but father can say the word that will save us all. He must swear he
made