arrived
there she found that her father had gone. It was still early for the
assize courts, but she paid no attention to it. There was doubtless
sufficient reason for her father's early departure. Perhaps,
perhaps---- But she could not formulate the thoughts which one after
another flashed through her mind. Seizing a piece of paper, she
scribbled a hasty note and gave it to the hall porter.

"This is for Judge Bolitho," she said, and then, entering the cab which
waited for her, she drove quickly to Dixon Street. Arriving there she
found Paul's mother was ready for her, and ere long they were in the
train bound for Brunford.

During the journey scarcely a word passed between them. Mary was busy
with her own thoughts. She was trying to bring some order out of the
confusion of the events which had been narrated to her. Everything was
altered. If what the woman had told her was true--and in spite of
everything she believed it was--then Paul was her half-brother; and if
Paul were her half-brother and his mother were still alive, then,
then----

But she would not trouble about this, bewildering as it was. What
mattered her own future? What mattered what the world might say? Her
first business was to save Paul, and save him she would, at all
hazards. She looked at her companion, who sat near to her staring into
vacancy. Mary's excited imagination began to conjure up wild fancies
as she looked. She thought of what Paul's mother must have been
twenty-five years before, tried to picture her as a girl. Yes, she
must have been very beautiful, and might easily have attracted such a
young man as her father was at the time. She fancied the two up among
the bare Scottish hills, saw the flash of the young girl's eyes when
the stranger told her he loved her, realised the throbbing of her
heart, the joy, the wonder which must have possessed her when she
promised to be his wife. For the moment all the grim realities of the
present seemed to retire to the background. She lived in the world of
fancy, of imagination, and the poetry and the romance of the past
became very beautiful to her. Strange to say, her own part in the
affair did not for the moment trouble her. The terrible logic of
events were not yet real to her. By and by they would appear to her in
all their ghastly nakedness, but now they did not seem to matter.

"If I am going to be ill," said Paul's mother, "you'll stay with me,
won't you?"

"Yes," s