ll only add to your distress. Dick Sorley left your
side to go to certain death. Nothing could have averted that. Such was
his fate--through you."

CHAPTER III

THE PARIAH

Joan suddenly threw up her head. There was resentment in the violet
depths of her eyes, and her whole expression had hardened. It was as
though something of her youth, her softness, had passed from her.

"You must tell me, auntie," she demanded in a tone as cold as the
other's. "I--I don't understand. But I mean to. You accuse me with the
responsibility of--this. Of responsibility for all that has happened
to those others. You tell me I am cursed. It is all too much--or too
little. Now I demand to know that which you know--all that there is to
know. It is my right. I never knew my father or mother, and you have
told me little enough of them. Well, I insist that you shall tell me
the right by which you dare to say such things to me. I know you are
cruel, that you have no sympathy for any one but--yourself. I know
that you grudge the world every moment of happiness that life
contains. Well, all this I try to account for by crediting you with
having passed through troubles of which I have no knowledge. But it
does not give you the right to charge me with the things you do. You
shall tell me now the reason of your accusations, or I will leave this
home forever, and will never, of my own free will, set eyes on you
again."

Mercy's thin lips parted into a half-smile.

"And I intend that you shall know these things," she replied promptly.
"You shall know them from my lips. Nor has any one more right to the
telling than I." The smile died abruptly, leaving her burning eyes
shining in an icy setting. "I am cruel, eh?" she went on intensely.
"Cruel because I have refused to bend beneath the injustice of my
fellows and the persecutions of Fate. Cruel because I meet the world
in the spirit in which it has received me. Why should I have sympathy?
The world has robbed me of the only happiness I ever desired. What
obligation, then, is mine? You are right. I have no sympathy for any
living creature--none!"

Joan offered no comment. She was waiting--waiting for the explanation
she had demanded. She was no longer the young girl just returned
flushed with the healthy glow of her morning ride. Life had taken on a
fresh tone for her since then. It seemed as if years had suddenly
passed over her head and carried her into the middle of life.

"You shall