d it into the impalpable darkness of the hole and
pressed it down, leaning his whole weight upon it.

She shivered violently now. A sharp pain ran through her chest, as if
she, too, had been putting forth some great physical energy. Shadows
from the disturbed cypress boughs were falling all about her, breaking
and forming again in a thousand fantastic movements. But one shadow,
dark, solid and still, fell across a gleam of moonlight at her feet,
freezing her to the heart. She looked slowly up and saw her husband.

CHAPTER LXIII.

FACE TO FACE.

For several seconds the husband and wife remained looking at each other
in utter silence; the moaning of the cypress boughs sounded louder and
more weird; through the whirl of her senses Elizabeth heard it still.

"Come forward," she heard her husband's voice say at length, in the
hard, icy tones of concentrated passion. "Come forward, woman, that I
may see your face."

The words seemed to come from a great distance; looking over at him, it
seemed as if that shallow trench between them was a bottomless abyss
which no power could bridge over,--the gulf between them for ever and
ever.

"Come forward, I say."

She staggered slowly into the moonlight; the warning was fulfilled;
ruin, disgrace had come; yet there she stood speechless, motionless,
unable even to give utterance to a moan.

The man who had been digging, flung down his spade with a smothered
oath.

For a little time Mellen stood almost as still and helpless as herself.
Suddenly, in a voice that sounded scarcely human, he turned upon this
man.

"Take up the spade, and finish your work!"

With something between a laugh and an oath, North snatched the spade,
plunged it into the grave, and pressed all his force upon it. Slowly the
edge of a box appeared. That evil man seemed to triumph in his gloomy
work: placed one foot on the handle of the spade to hold it firmly, bent
down and dragged the box into the moonlight.

Pulling the spade up from the crumbling earth, he raised it on high, and
was about to dash the box open. Elizabeth lifted her hands in mute
appeal.

She hoped nothing from her husband's forbearance. The action was only an
instinct of her whirling senses, such as makes a drowning man clutch at
straws; but with it her limbs gave way, and she fell upon her knees by
the box, still lifting her white face to that stem, determined
countenance.

"Do you think to oppose me even now?" he exclaim