me without previous
warning, for I need all my strength to bear me up in this emergency. Nor
would I meet Mr. Gregory without due preparation--even of apparel," and
I glanced at my dress of spotted lawn, faded and unseasonable as it
seemed in the autumn weather. "I know his fastidiousness on this
subject, and from this time it ought to, it must be my study to try to
please him."

Why was not the fate of Ananias or Sapphira mine after that false
utterance? Why did I triumph in the strength of guile that desperation
gave me, rather than sink abashed and penitent beneath it? And this was
the woman who had once lectured on duplicity and expediency, and deemed
herself above them!

Bitter and nauseous as was this bowl to me, I drank it without a
grimace; so much depended on the measure of deceit--hope, love, honor,
life itself perhaps--for my terrors whispered that even such warnings as
those Gregory had given were not to be disregarded where there was
question of success or failure to Basil Bainrothe! But one alternative
presented itself--escape! Delay, I scarce could hope for, and, even if
granted, how could it avail me in the end? Those words--"He will make
you dead!" rang in my ears, and seemed written on the wall. They
confronted me everywhere. It was so easy to do this--so easy to repeat
what the papers had already told the world--so easy to confine me in a
maniac's cell under an assumed name, and by the aid of my own gold, and
say, "She perished at sea!"

It would be to the interest of all who knew it, to preserve the secret,
except the poor ship's captain, and he had been a dupe, and would
scarcely recognize his folly, or, if he did, be the first to boast of
and publish it. Besides that, should the matter be inquired into, how
easy for Bainrothe to allege that my own family had sanctioned his
course to save my reputation! For innuendo was over on this disgraceful
subject. He had declared openly his base design.

Years might elapse before the final exposition, years of utter ruin to
my prospects and my hopes. Wentworth might be married by that time, or
indifferent, or dead; Ernie too old to make the matter of a year or two
of consequence in the carrying out of the nefarious scheme to sustain
which it would be so easy to summon and suborn witnesses.

All these possibilities represented themselves to me with frightful
distinctness; my mind became imbued with them to the exclusion of all
else--of reason even. I was