there are circumstances to plead for you!"

"Do you still accuse me, papa? Do you really believe I am the murderer?"

Etienne Rambert shook his head hopelessly.

"Oh, I wish, I wish," he exclaimed, "that for the honour of our name,
and for the sake of those who love us, I could prove you had congenital,
hereditary tendencies that made you not responsible! Why could not I
have watched over your upbringing? Why has fate decreed that I should
only see my son three times at most in eighteen years, and come home to
find him--a criminal? Oh, if science could but establish the fact that
the child of a tainted mother----"

"Tainted?" Charles exclaimed; "what do you mean?"

"Tainted with a terrible and mysterious disease," Etienne Rambert went
on: "a disease before which we are powerless and unarmed--insanity!"

"What?" cried Charles, growing momentarily more distressed and
bewildered; "what is that, papa? Are my wits going? My mother insane?"
And then he added hopelessly: "My God! You must be right! Often and
often I have been amazed by her strange, puzzling looks and behaviour!
But I--I have all my proper senses: I know what I am doing!"

"Was it, perhaps, some appalling hallucination," Etienne Rambert
suggested: "some moment of irresponsibility?"

But Charles saw what he meant and cut him short.

"No, no, papa! I am not mad! I am not mad! I am not mad!"

In his intense excitement the young fellow never thought of moderating
the tone of his voice, but shouted out what was in his mind, shouted it
into the silence of the night, heedless of all but this terrible
discussion he was having with the father whom he loved. Nor did Etienne
Rambert lower his voice: his son's impassioned protest wrung the retort
from him:

"Then, Charles, if you are right, your crime is beyond forgiveness!
Murderer! Murderer!"

The two men stopped short as a slight sound in the passage caught their
attention. A silence fell upon them that they could not break, and they
stood dumbfounded, nervous and overwrought.

The door of the room opened very slowly, and a white form appeared
against the darkness of the corridor outside.

Robed in a long night-dress, Therese stood there, with hair dishevelled,
bloodless lips, and eyes dilated with horror; the child was shaking from
head to foot; as if every movement hurt her, she painfully raised her
arm and pointed to Charles.

"Therese!" Etienne Rambert muttered: "Therese, you were outside?"

The