guish in this thought--this friend, after the
absence of many years, had returned and claimed his friendship, and
had received his confidences. To him he had poured out the grief of
his heart--the confession of life-long sorrows which had been wrought
by the very man to whom he told his tale. And this was the man who,
under the plea of ancient friendship, had bought his son for gold!
Great Heaven! the son of the woman whom he had ruined--and for gold!
He had drawn away his wife to ruin--he had come and drawn away his
son--into what? into a marriage with the daughter of his own mother's
betrayer.

Such were the thoughts, mad, frenzied, that filled Lord Chetwynde's
mind as he sat there stunned--paralyzed by this hideous accumulation
of intolerable griefs. What was Zillah to him now? The child of a
foul traitor. The one to whom his noble son had been sold. That son
had been, as he once said, the solace of his life. For his sake he
had been content to live even under his load of shame and misery. For
him he had labored; for his happiness he had planned. And for what?
What? That which was too hideous to think of--a living death--a union
with one from whom he ought to stand apart for evermore.

Little did Zillah know what thoughts were sweeping and surging
through the mind of Lord Chetwynde as she sat there watching him with
her awful eyes. Little did she dream of the feelings with which, at
that moment, he regarded her. Nothing of this kind came to her. One
only thought was present--the anguish which he was enduring. The
sight of that anguish was intolerable. She looked, and waited, and at
last, unable to bear this any longer, she sprang forward, and tore
his hands away from his face.

"It's not! It's not!" she gasped. "Say you do not believe it! Oh,
father! It's impossible!"

The Earl withdrew his hands, and shrank away from her, regarding her
with that blank gaze which shows that the mind sees not the material
form toward which the eyes are turned, but is taken up with its own
thoughts.

"Impossible?" he repeated. "Yes. That is the word I spoke when I
first heard that she had left me. Impossible? And why? Is a friend
more true than a wife? After Lady Chetwynde failed me, why should I
believe in Neville Pomeroy? And you--why did you not let me end my
life in peace? Why did you bring to me this frightful--this damning
evidence which destroys my faith not in man, but even in Heaven
itself?"

"Father! Oh, father!" moa