. She--what did she suffer, compared
with her who wrote this revelation of a lifetime of pain, of bitter and
torturing knowledge! She looked up at the picture on the wall, at
the still, proud, emotionless face, the conventional, uninspired
personality, behind which no one had seen, which had agonised alone till
the last. With what tender yet pitiless hand had she laid bare the lives
of her husband and her son! How had the neglected mother told the bitter
truth of him to whom she had given birth! "So brilliant and able, and
unscrupulous, like yourself; but, oh, sure of winning a great place
in the world... so calculating and determined and ambitious.... That
laboratory which I have hated so. It has always seemed to me the
place where some native evil and cruelty in your blood worked out its
will...."

With a deep-drawn sigh Hylda said to herself: "If I were dying
to-morrow, would I say that? She loved them so--at first must have loved
them so; and yet this at the last! And I--oh, no, no, no!" She looked at
a portrait of Eglington on the table near, touched it caressingly, and
added, with a sob in her voice: "Oh, Harry, no, it is not true! It is
not native evil and cruelty in your blood. It has all been a mistake.
You will do right. We will do right, Harry. You will suffer, it will
hurt, the lesson will be hard--to give up what has meant so much to you;
but we will work it out together, you and I, my very dear. Oh, say that
we shall, that...." She suddenly grew silent. A tremor ran through her,
she became conscious of his presence near her, and turned, as though he
were behind her. There was nothing. Yet she felt him near, and, as she
did so, the soul-deep feeling with which she had spoken to the portrait
fled. Why was it that, so often, when absent from him, her imagination
helped her to make excuses for him, inspired her to press the real truth
out of sight, and to make believe that he was worthy of a love which,
but through some inner fault of her own, might be his altogether, and
all the love of which he was capable might be hers?

She felt him near her, and the feelings possessing her a moment before
slowly chilled and sank away. Instinctively her eyes glanced towards
the door. She saw the handle turn, and she slipped the letter inside the
portfolio again.

The door opened briskly now, and Eglington entered with what his enemies
in the newspaper press had called his "professional smile"--a criticism
which had ange