. The man was not killed, but it was a long time
before he--Mark Telford there--was well again. When he got up, the girl"--

"Poor girl!"

"When he got up the girl was married to the cousin who had periled his
life for her. It was madness, but it was so."

Here she paused. The silence seemed oppressive. Hagar, divining her
thought, got up, went to the archway between the rooms and asked the young
girl to play something. It helped him, he said, when he was thinking how
to paint. He went back.

Mrs. Detlor continued. "But it was a terrible mistake. There was a
valuable property in England which the cousin knew she could get by
proving certain things. The marriage was to him a speculation. When she
waked to that--it was a dreadful awakening--she refused to move in the
matter. Is there anything more shameful than speculation in flesh and
blood--the heart and life of a child?--he was so much older than she! Life
to her was an hourly pain--you see she was wild with indignation and
shame, and alive with a kind of gratitude and reaction when she married
him. And her life? Maternity was to her an agony such as comes to few
women who suffer and live. If her child--her beautiful, noble child--had
lived, she would, perhaps, one day have claimed the property for its
sake. This child was her second love and it died--it died."

She drew from her breast a miniature. He reached out and, first
hesitating, she presently gave it into his hand. It was warm--it had lain
on her bosom. His hand, generally so steady, trembled. He raised the
miniature to his own lips. She reached out her hand, flushing greatly.

"Oh, please, you must not!" she said.

"Go on, tell me all," he urged, but still held the miniature in his hand
for a moment.

"There is little more to tell. He played a part. She came to know how
coarse and brutal he was, how utterly depraved.

"At last he went away to Africa--that was three years ago. Word came that
he was drowned off the coast of Madagascar, but there is nothing sure, and
the woman would not believe that he was dead unless she saw him so or some
one she could trust had seen him buried. Yet people call her a widow--who
wears no mourning" (she smiled bitterly) "nor can until"--

Hagar came to his feet. "You have trusted me," he said, "and I will honor
your confidence. To the world the story I tell on this canvas shall be my
own."

"I like to try and believe," she said, "that there are good men in the
world.