his name?" I suggested.

"No, I am in too great doubt. I should hate to do him a second injury."

"You cannot injure him if he is innocent. My methods are very safe."

"If I could forget his cough! but it had that peculiar catch in it that
I remembered so well in the cough of John Graham. I did not pay any
especial heed to it at the time. Old days and old troubles were far
enough from my thoughts; but now that my suspicions are raised, that
low, choking sound comes back to me in a strangely persistent way, and
I seem to see a well-remembered form in the stooping figure of this
beggar. Oh, I hope the good God will forgive me if I attribute to this
disappointed man a wickedness he never com-mitted."

"Who is John Graham?" I urged, "and what was the nature of the wrong you
did him?"

She rose, cast me one appealing glance, and perceiving that I meant to
have her whole story, turned towards the fire and stood warming her feet
before the hearth, with her face turned away from my gaze.

"I was once engaged to marry him," she began. "Not because I loved him,
but because we were very poor--I mean my mother and myself--and he had a
home and seemed both good and generous. The day came when we were to be
married--this was in the West, way out in Kansas--and I was even dressed
for the wedding, when a letter came from my uncle here, a rich uncle,
very rich, who had never had anything to do with my mother since her
marriage, and in it he promised me fortune and everything else desirable
in life if I would come to him, unencumbered by any foolish ties. Think
of it! And I within half an hour of marriage with a man I had never
loved and now suddenly hated. The temptation was overwhelming, and
heartless as my conduct may appear to you, I succumbed to it. Telling my
lover that I had changed my mind, I dismissed the minister when he came,
and announced my intention of proceeding East as soon as possible. Mr.
Graham was simply paralyzed by his disappointment, and during the few
days which intervened before my departure, I was haunted by his face,
which was like that of a man who had died from some overwhelming shock.
But when I was once free of the town, especially after I arrived in New
York, I forgot alike his misery and himself. Everything I saw was so
beautiful! Life was so full of charm, and my uncle so delighted with me
and everything I did! Then there was James Holmes, and after I had
seen him--But I cannot talk of that. We love