ng my mind by
the study of the French language," she said. "The General knows nothing
of French authors since the days of Racine, and will think me quite
laudably employed in reading a modern French novel."

"The General is not likely to find you anywhere to-day, nor for many a
day to come."

"Is he dead?" asked his sister, ruffling the pages of her book. She did
not look as if anybody's death could disturb her perfect equanimity.

"Are you a fiend, Florence," Hubert burst out angrily, "that you can
speak in that manner of a man who has been so great a benefactor, so
kind a friend, to both of us? Have you no heart at all?"

"I am not sure. If ever I had one, I think that it was killed--three
months ago."

Her voice sank to a whisper as she uttered the last few words. Her
breath came a little faster for a second or two--then she was calm
again. Her brother looked at her with an air of stupefaction.

"How dare you allude to that shameful episode in your life," he said
sternly, "and to me, of all people!"

"If not to you, I should certainly speak of it to no one," she answered
quietly. There was a sudden blaze of light in the red-brown eyes beneath
the heavily-veined eyelids.

"You are my only safety-valve; I must speak sometimes--or die.
Besides"--in a still lower tone--"I see nothing shameful about it. We
have done no harm. If he loved me better than he loved his chattering
commonplace little wife, I was not to blame. How could I help it if I
loved him too? It was _kismet_--it had to be. You should not have
interfered."

"And pray what would have happened if I had not interfered? What shame,
what ruin, what disgrace!"

"It is useless for you to rant and rave in that manner," said Florence
Lepel, letting her eyes drop once more to the open pages of her French
novel. "You did interfere, and there is an end of it. And what an end!
You must be proud of your work. He dead, Marion dying, the General
nearly mad with grief, the man Westwood hanged for a crime that he never
committed!"

"Westwood has been reprieved," said Hubert sharply.

"What a relief to you!" commented his sister, with almost incredible
coolness.

He turned away from her, catching at his throat as if something rose to
choke him there. His face was very pale; the lines of pain about his
eyes and mouth were plainer and deeper than they had been before.
Florence glanced up at him and smiled faintly. There was a strange
malignity in her smile.