y twenty years. Write to
this man, and tell him that before I receive his wife, I wish to see him
alone. No--do not let him come here until the truth be known. I will go
to him."

It was with some trepidation that Mr. Richard, sitting with his wife on
the afternoon of the 3rd May, 1846, awaited the arrival of his mother.
He had been very nervous and unstrung for some days past, and the
prospect of the coming interview was, for some reason he could not
explain to himself, weighty with fears. "What does she want to come
alone for? And what can she have to say?" he asked himself. "She cannot
suspect anything after all these years, surely?" He endeavoured to
reason with himself, but in vain; the knock at the door which announced
the arrival of his pretended mother made his heart jump.

"I feel deuced shaky, Sarah," he said. "Let's have a nip of something."

"You've been nipping too much for the last five years, Dick." (She had
quite schooled her tongue to the new name.) "Your 'shakiness' is the
result of 'nipping', I'm afraid."

"Oh, don't preach; I am not in the humour for it."

"Help yourself, then. You are quite sure that you are ready with your
story?"

The brandy revived him, and he rose with affected heartiness. "My dear
mother, allow me to present to you--" He paused, for there was that in
Lady Devine's face which confirmed his worst fears.

"I wish to speak to you alone," she said, ignoring with steady eyes the
woman whom she had ostensibly come to see.

John Rex hesitated, but Sarah saw the danger, and hastened to confront
it. "A wife should be a husband's best friend, madam. Your son married
me of his own free will, and even his mother can have nothing to say to
him which it is not my duty and privilege to hear. I am not a girl as
you can see, and I can bear whatever news you bring."

Lady Devine bit her pale lips. She saw at once that the woman before her
was not gently-born, but she felt also that she was a woman of higher
mental calibre than herself. Prepared as she was for the worst, this
sudden and open declaration of hostilities frightened her, as Sarah had
calculated. She began to realize that if she was to prove equal to
the task she had set herself, she must not waste her strength in
skirmishing. Steadily refusing to look at Richard's wife, she addressed
herself to Richard. "My brother will be here in half an hour," she said,
as though the mention of his name would better her position in some wa