self!"

"Enough!" she exclaimed quite coolly. "I know the dread charge against
me. I know too well the impossibility of clearing myself, especially in
the face of that letter I wrote to Lady Heyburn; but it was you and she
who entrapped me, and who held me in fear because of my inexperience."

"Tell us the truth, the whole truth, darling," urged Murie, standing at
her side and taking her hand confidently in his.

"The truth!" she said, in a strange voice as though speaking to herself.
"Yes, let me tell you! I know that it will sound extraordinary, yet I
swear to you, by the love you bear for me, Walter, that the words I am
about to utter are the actual truth."

"I believe you," declared her lover reassuringly.

"Which is more than anyone else will," interposed Flockart with a sneer,
but perfectly confident. It was the hour of his triumph. She had defied
him, and he therefore intended to ruin her once and for all.

The girl was standing pale and erect, one hand grasping the back of a
chair, the other held in her lover's clasp, while her father had risen,
his expressionless face turned towards them, his hand groping until it
touched a small table upon which stood an old punch-bowl full of
sweet-smelling pot-pourri.

"Listen, dad," she said, heedless of Flockart's remark. "Hear me before
you condemn me. I know that the charge made against me by this man is a
terrible one. God alone knows what I have suffered these last two years,
how I have prayed for deliverance from the hands of this man and his
friends. It happened a few months before I left Amiens. Lady Heyburn,
you'll recollect, rented a pretty flat in the Rue Leonce-Reynaud in
Paris. She obtained permission for me to leave school and visit her for
a few weeks."

"I recollect perfectly," remarked her father in a low voice.

"Well, there came many times to visit us an American girl named Bryant,
who was studying art, and who lived somewhere off the Boulevard Michel,
as well as a Frenchman named Felix Krail and an Englishman called
Hamilton."

"Hamilton!" echoed Murie. "Was his name Edgar Hamilton--my friend?"

"Yes, the same," was her quiet reply. Then she turned to Murie, and
said, "We all went about a great deal together, for it was summer-time,
and we made many pleasant excursions in the district. Edna Bryant was a
merry, cheerful girl, and I soon grew to be very friendly with her,
until one day Lady Heyburn, when alone with me, repeated in strict
confi