g her hands down upon his
shoulders as though she would sweep some impediment from her path, she
endeavored to advance. "Why is that man here?" she cried, indicating
her husband with one quivering hand. "What has he done that he should be
brought here to confront me at this awful time?"

'"I told her to come here to meet her uncle's murderer," whispered Mr.
Gryce into my ear.

But before I could reply to her, before Mr. Clavering himself could
murmur a word, the guilty wretch before her had started to his feet.

"Don't you know? then I will tell you. It is because these gentlemen,
chivalrous and honorable as they consider themselves, think that you,
the beauty and the Sybarite, committed with your own white hand the deed
of blood which has brought you freedom and fortune. Yes, yes, this
man"--turning and pointing at me--"friend as he has made himself out to
be, kindly and honorable as you have doubtless believed him, but who in
every look he has bestowed upon you, every word he has uttered in your
hearing during all these four horrible weeks, has been weaving a cord
for your neck--thinks you the assassin of your uncle, unknowing that a
man stood at your side ready to sweep half the world from your path if
that same white hand rose in bidding. That I----"

"You?" Ah! now she could see him: now she could hear him!

"Yes," clutching her robe again as she hastily recoiled; "didn't you
know it? When in that dreadful hour of your rejection by your uncle, you
cried aloud for some one to help you, didn't you know----"

"Don't!" she shrieked, bursting from him with a look of unspeakable
horror. "Don't say that! Oh!" she gasped, "is the mad cry of a stricken
woman for aid and sympathy the call for a murderer?" And turning away
in horror, she moaned: "Who that ever looks at me now will forget that
a man--such a man!--dared to think that, because I was in mortal
perplexity, I would accept the murder of my best friend as a relief from
it!" Her horror was unbounded. "Oh, what a chastisement for folly!" she
murmured. "What a punishment for the love of money which has always been
my curse!"

Henry Clavering could no longer restrain himself, leaping to her side,
he bent over her. "Was it nothing but folly, Mary? Are you guiltless of
any deeper wrong? Is there no link of complicity between you two? Have
you nothing on your soul but an inordinate desire to preserve your place
in your uncle's will, even at the risk of breaking my he