id,
increased the secret exasperation in her companion.

"Believe me, dear Sir James," she said at last, lifting her clear brown
eyes, "I am very grateful to you. It must have been a great effort for
you to tell me this awful story, and I thank you for the confidence you
have reposed in me."

Sir James pushed his chair back.

"I did it, of course, for a special reason," he said, sharply. "I hope I
have given you cause to change your mind."

She shook her head slowly.

"What have you proved to me? That Mrs. Sparling's crime was not so
hideous as some of us supposed?--that she did not fall to the lowest
depths of all?--and that she endured great provocation? But could
anything really be more vile than the history of those weeks of
excitement and fraud?--of base yielding to temptation?--of cruelty to
her husband and child?--even as you have told it? Her conduct led
directly to adultery and violence. If, by God's mercy, she was saved
from the worst crimes imputed to her, does it make much difference to
the moral judgment we must form?"

He looked at her in amazement.

"No difference!--between murder and a kind of accident?--between
adultery and fidelity?"

Lady Lucy hesitated--then resumed, with stubbornness: "You put it--like
an advocate. But look at the indelible facts--look at the future. If my
son married the daughter of such a woman and had children, what must
happen? First of all, could he, could any one, be free from the dread of
inherited lawlessness and passion? A woman does not gamble, steal, and
take life in a moment of violence without some exceptional flaw in
temperament and will, and we see again and again how such flaws reappear
in the descendants of weak and wicked people. Then again--Oliver must
renounce and throw away all that is implied in family memories and
traditions. His wife could never speak to her children and his of her
own mother and bringing up. They would be kept in ignorance, as she
herself was kept, till the time came that they must know. Say what you
will, Juliet Sparling was condemned to death for murder in a notorious
case--after a trial which also branded her as a thief. Think of a boy at
Eton or Oxford--a girl in her first youth--hearing for the first
time--perhaps in some casual way--the story of the woman whose blood ran
in theirs!--What a cloud on a family!--what a danger and drawback for
young lives!"

Her delicate features, under the crown of white hair, were once more