pictured in the print hanging on the wall behind him. They seemed alive.
Both of them seemed alive, and as he saw them thus in conjunction, the
sweet, pure countenance of the child he had instinctively mourned,
peering at him over his guilty shoulder--the sweat started on his
forehead and he uttered a great cry. Then he stood still, swaying from
side to side, the eyes starting from his head in a horror transcending
all that had gone before.

"Take him away!" she cried. "Out of the room! Let him remain anywhere but
here. I pray you; I entreat."

But he was not to be moved.

"Ermentrude," he whispered; "they say her name was Duclos. She gave her
name as Willetts. What _was_ her name? You know the truth and can tell
me."

XXXIII

AGAIN THE CUCKOO-CLOCK

Then to the wonder and admiration of all, this extraordinary woman showed
her full strength and the inexhaustible power she possessed over her own
emotions. With a smile piteous in its triumph over a suffering the depths
of which they were just beginning to sound, she held his gaze in hers and
quietly said:

"You have driven me to the wall, Carleton. If I answer, nothing remains
to us of hope or honor; nothing upon which to stay our souls but a
consciousness of truth. Shall we let all go and meet our fate as people
should who stand on a desolate shore and see the whole world roll away
from before them?"

_"What was her name?"_

At his look, at this repetition of his question, she straightened up, and
addressed herself to Mr. Gryce.

"You were astonished and regarded me curiously when at the sound of that
foolish little clock I entered this room. That little clock means
everything to me, gentlemen." Here she surveyed them one after the other
with her proud and candid eye. "It is the one witness I have--is it not,
Carleton?" she asked, turning quickly upon him. "You have not failed me
in this?"

He shook his head.

"A witness to what I am still ready to ignore, if such is your will,
Carleton."

Terror! terror far beyond anything they had seen in him yet, paled his
cheek and made his face almost unrecognizable; but he could still speak,
and in the murmur he let fall she heard no word of protest.

"May I ask one of you to take down that clock?"

In a few minutes it lay on the table to which she had pointed. Mr. Gryce
who had at that moment in his pocket a copy of the inscription pasted on
its back, expected her to turn it over and show them the to