ell you the secret?"

There was no answer.

"Shall I, mamma?"

"I don't think you can, my love."

"Yes, I am afraid I can. The secret--which is no secret to me or to
anyone else in the world, any more than the place where the ostrich has
put his head is a secret when his body is sticking up out of the
sand--the secret is that, after being for seventeen happy honourable
years the wife of the best and tiniest of men--the kindest, most
devoted, and most generous of husbands--you are going to take another
husband, who comes to you with no better credentials than a smooth
tongue and a carefully-drilled figure, and who will punish your want of
faith and constancy to my dead father by making the rest of your life
miserable--as you will deserve that it shall be. Yes, mother, I, your
only child, say so. You will deserve to be wretched if you marry
Captain Winstanley."

The widow gave a faint scream, half indignation, half terror. For the
moment she felt as if some prophetic curse had been hurled upon her.
The tall straight figure in the white gown, standing in the full flood
of moonlight, looked awful as Cassandra, prophesying death and doom in
the wicked house at Argos.

"It is too bad," sobbed Mrs. Tempest; "it is cruel, undutiful,
disrespectful, positively wicked for a daughter to talk to a mother as
you have talked to me to-night. How can Miss McCroke have brought you
up, I wonder, that you are capable of using such language? Have you
forgotten the Fifth Commandment?"

"No. It tells me to honour my father and my mother. I honour my dead
father, I honour you, when I try to save you from the perdition of a
second marriage."

"Perdition!" echoed Mrs. Tempest faintly, "what language!"

"I knew when that adventurer came here, that he intended to make
himself master of this house--to steal my dead father's place," cried
Vixen passionately.

"You have no right to call him an adventurer. He is an officer and a
gentleman. You offer him a cruel, an unprovoked insult. You insult me
still more deeply by your abuse of him. Am I so old, or so ugly, or so
altogether horrid, that a man cannot love me for my own sake?"

"Not such a man as Captain Winstanley. He does not know what love
means. He would have made me marry him if he could, because I am to
have the estate by-and-bye. Failing that, he has made you accept him
for your husband. Yes, he has conquered you, as a cat conquers a bird,
fascinating the poor wretch with its h