will mar your white face so
that he will never want to look at you. This is what I carry about for
you."

Lettice watched the hand that held the bottle; but in truth she thought
very little of the threat. Death had done for her already what this
woman was talking about. Alan was past the love or vengeance of either
of them, and all her pleasure in life was gone for ever.

"I thought I should find you here," Cora went on, "waiting at the
prison for your lover! But I am waiting for him, too. I am his wife
still. I have the right to wait for him, and you have not. And if you
are there when he comes out, I shall stay my hand no longer. I warn you;
so be prepared. But perhaps"--and she lifted the bottle, while her eyes
flamed with dangerous light, and her voice sank to a sharp
whisper--"perhaps it would be better to settle the question now!"

"The question," said Lettice, with almost unnatural calm of manner, "is
settled for us. Alan has left his prison. Your husband is dead."

The woman gazed at her in stupefaction. Her hand fell to her side, and
the light died out of her bold black eyes.

"Alan dead!' What is it you say? How do you know?"

"He had a fever in the jail to which you sent him. He has been at
death's door for many weeks. Not an hour ago a warder came here and said
that he was dead. Are you satisfied with your work?"

"My work?" said Cora, drawing back. "I have not killed him!"

"Yes," said Lettice, a surge of bitter anger rising in her heart, "yes,
you have killed him, as surely as you tried to kill him with your pistol
at Aix-les-Bains, and with his own dagger in Surrey Street. You are a
murderess, and you know it well. But for you, Alan Walcott would still
be living an honorable, happy life. You have stabbed him to the heart,
and he is dead. That is the message I have to give you--to tell you that
you have killed him, and that he is gone to a land where your unnatural
hate can no longer follow him!"

Lettice stood over the cowering woman, strong and unpitying in her stern
indignation, lifted out of all thought of herself by the intensity of
her woe. Cora shrank away from her, slipping the bottle into her pocket,
and even covertly making the sign of the cross as Lettice's last words
fell upon her ear--words that sounded to her untutored imagination like
a curse. But she could not be subdued for long. She stood silent for a
few moments when Lettice ceased to speak, but finally a forced laugh
issued f