e hour of the
night when life is at its lowest ebb, and, sleepless, man faces himself
as he is.

The necklace slipped snakily over his hand--one of those white, firm
hands which could guide the knife so well--and Anthony Dexter
shuddered. He flung the box far from him into the shrubbery, went back
into the house, and slammed the door.

He sat down at the table, but could not eat. The Past had come from
its grave, veiled, like the ghost in the garden that he had seen
yesterday.

It was not an hallucination, then. Only one person in the world could
have laid those discoloured pearls at his door in the dead of night.
The black figure in the garden, with the chiffon fluttering about its
head, was Evelina Grey--or what was left of her.

"Why?" he questioned uneasily of himself. "Why?" He had repeatedly
told himself that any other man, in his position, would do as he had
done, yet it was as though some one had slipped a stiletto under his
armour and found a vulnerable spot.

Before his mental vision hovered two women. One was a girl of twenty,
laughing, exquisitely lovely. The other was a bent and broken woman in
black, whose veil concealed the dreadful hideousness of her face.

"Pshaw!" grumbled Doctor Dexter, aloud. "I've overworked, that's all."

He determined to vanquish the spectre that had reared itself before
him, not perceiving that Remorse incarnate, in the shape of Evelina,
had come back to haunt him until his dying day.

V

Araminta

"Araminta," said Miss Mehitable, "go and get your sewing and do your
stent."

"Yes, Aunt Hitty," answered the girl, obediently.

Each year, Araminta made a new patchwork quilt. Seven were neatly
folded and put away in an old trunk in the attic. The eighth was
progressing well, but the young seamstress was becoming sated with
quilts. She had never been to school, but Miss Mehitable had taught
her all she knew. Unkind critics might have intimated that Araminta
had not been taught much, but she could sew nicely, keep house
neatly, and write a stilted letter in a queer, old-fashioned hand
almost exactly like Miss Mehitable's.

That valiant dame saw no practical use in further knowledge. She was
concerned with no books except the Bible and the ancient ledger in
which, with painstaking exactness, she kept her household accounts.
She deemed it wise, moreover, that Araminta should not know too much.

From a drawer in the high, black-walnut bureau in the up