, Miss Lucilla
looked appealingly at Diane, who rose.

"Don't go, Mr. Pruyn," she said, forcing herself to show firmness. "You
arrive very opportunely. I have just asked my mother-in-law to come to
my aid in some of the things we discussed last night. Won't you do me
the justice to hear her?"

She crossed the room to where Mrs. Eveleth appeared on the threshold,
and, taking her by the hand, led her to the chair which Pruyn placed for
her.

"I'd better go, Diane dear," Miss Lucilla whispered, tremblingly.

"Please don't," Diane insisted. "I'd much rather have you stay. I've no
secrets from Miss Lucilla," she added, speaking to Derek. "I need a
woman friend; and I've found one."

"You couldn't find a better," Pruyn murmured, while Miss Lucilla slipped
her arm around Diane's waist, rather to steady herself than to support
her friend.

"Miss Lucilla knows everything that you know, petite mere," Diane
continued, turning to where her mother-in-law sat, slightly bowed, her
extended hand resting on her cane, like some graceful Sibyl. "She knows
everything that you know, and she knows one thing more. She knows what
some cruel people say was the way in which--George died."

Diane uttered the last two words in a kind of sob, and Mrs. Eveleth
looked up, startled.

"George--died?" she questioned, slowly, with a look of wonder.

Diane nodded, unable, for the minute, to speak.

"But we know how--he died."

"Mr. Pruyn tells me that we don't."

"I beg you not to put it in that way," Derek said, hurriedly. "I
repeated only what was told me, and what was afterward verified. Do you
not think we can spare Mrs. Eveleth what must be so painful?"

"There's no need to spare me, Mr. Pruyn. I think I've reached the point
to which old people often come--where they can't feel any more."

"Oh, mother, don't say that," Diane wailed, with a curiously childlike
cry. She had never before called Mrs. Eveleth mother, and the word
sounded strangely in this room which had not heard it since Miss Lucilla
was a little girl. "My mother would rather know," she declared, almost
proudly, speaking again to Pruyn, "than be kept in ignorance of
something in which she could help me so much."

"What is it?" Mrs. Eveleth asked, eagerly.

Then Diane told her. It had been stated, so she said, that George had
not fallen in her defence, but by his own hand--to escape her; and
there was no one in the world but his own mother to give this monstrous
calum