st hand. You engaged to
find me a bride. Poor, little Lady Constance Quayle, unfortunately for
her, appeared to meet our requirements, being pretty and healthy, and
too innocent and undeveloped to suspect the rather mean advantage we
proposed to take of her.--What? I know it sounds rather gross stated
thus plainly. But, the day of lies being over, dare you deny it?--Well
then, we proceeded to traffic for this desirable bit of young
womanhood, of prospective maternity,--to buy her from such of her
relations as were perverted enough to countenance the transaction, just
as shamelessly as though we had gone into the common bazar, after the
manner of the cynical East, and bargained for her, poor child, in
fat-tailed sheep or cowries. Doesn't it appear to you almost
incredible, almost infamous that we--you and I, mother--should have
done this thing? The price we offered seemed sufficient to some of her
people--not to all, I have learned that past forgetting to-day, thanks
to Lord Fallowfeild's thick-headed, blundering veracity. But, thank
heaven, she had more heart, more sensibility, more self-respect, more
decency, than we allowed for. She plucked up spirit enough to refuse to
be bought and sold like a pedigree filly or heifer. I think that was
rather heroic, considering her traditions and the pressure which had
been brought to bear to keep her silent. I can only honour and
reverence her for coming to tell me frankly, though at the eleventh
hour, that she preferred a man of no particular position or fortune,
but with the ordinary complement of limbs, to Brockhurst, and the house
in London, and my forty to forty-five thousand a year, plus----"

Richard laughed savagely, leaning forward, spreading out his arms.

"Well, my dear mother,--since as I say the day of lies is over,--plus
the remnant of a human being you may see here, at this moment, if you
will only have the kindness to look!"

At first Katherine had listened in mute surprise, bringing her mind,
not without difficulty, into relation to the immediate and the present.
Then watchful sympathy had been aroused, then anxiety, then tenderness,
denying itself expression since the time for it was not yet ripe. But
as the minutes lengthened and the flow of Richard's speech not only
continued, but gained in volume and in force, sympathy, anxiety,
tenderness, were merged in an emotion of ever-deepening anguish, so
that she sat as one who contemplates, spellbound, a scene of ve