isappeared from their home and
both were supposed to have suffered the same fate, although the body
of the child was not found."

"Oh!" groaned Gerald Goddard, wiping the clammy moisture from his
brow. "I never realized the horror of it as I do at this moment, and I
never have forgiven myself for not going to Rome to institute a search
for myself; but--"

"But I wouldn't let you, I suppose you were about to add," said madam,
bitterly. "What was the use?" she went on, angrily. "Everything was
all over before you knew anything about it--"

"I could at least have erected a tablet to mark her resting-place,"
the man interposed.

"Ha! ha! it strikes me it was rather late then to manifest much
sentiment; that would have become you better before you broke her
heart and killed her by your neglect and desertion," sneered madam,
who was driven to the verge of despair by this late exhibition of
regard for a woman whom she had hated.

"Don't, Anna!" he cried, sharply. Then suddenly straightening himself,
he said, as if just awaking from some horrible nightmare: "But she did
not die. I have not that on my conscience, after all."

"She did--I tell you she did!" hoarsely retorted the excited woman.

"But I have seen and talked with her to-night, and she told me that
she was--Isabel!" he persisted.

Anna Goddard struck her palms together with a gesture bordering upon
despair.

"I do not believe it--I will not believe it!" she panted.

"He began to pity her, for he also was beginning to realize that, if
Isabel Stewart were really the woman whom he had wronged more than
twenty years previous, her situation was indeed deplorable.

"Anna," he said, gravely, and speaking with more calmness and
gentleness than at any time during the interview, "this is a stern
fact, and--we must look it in the face."

His tone and manner carried conviction to her heart.

She sank crouching at his feet, bowing her face upon her hands.

"Gerald! Gerald! it must not be so!" she wailed. "It is only some
cunning story invented to cheat us and avenge her. That woman shall
never separate us--I will never yield to her. Oh, Heaven! why did I
not destroy that paper when I had it? Gerald, give it to me now, if
you have it; it is not too late to burn it even now, and no one can
prove the truth--we can defy her to the last."

The man stooped to raise her from her humiliating position.

"Get up, Anna," he said, kindly. "Come, sit in this chair and let