failed
in his worst plot against her, and used a legitimate means to cripple
her life. She could scarcely have recalled anything Mrs. Prichard had
said, for the life of her. She was face to face with the past, yet
standing at bay to conceal her identity.

Think how hard pressed she was, and forgive her for resorting to an
excusable fiction. It was risky, but what could she do? "I knew your
wife," said she briefly. "Twenty-two years agone."

"You mean the girl I married?" He had had to marry one of them, but
could only marry one. That was how he classed her. "What became of that
girl, I wonder? Maybe you know? Is she alive or dead?"

"I couldn't say, at this len'th of time." Then, she remembered a
servant, at the house where her child was born, and saw safety for her
own fiction in assuming this girl's identity. Invention was stimulated
by despair. "She was confined of a girl, where I was in service. She
gave me letters to post to her husband. R. Thornton Daverill." That was
safe, anyhow. For she remembered giving letters, so directed, to this
girl.

The convict sat down on the table, looking at her no longer, which she
found a relief. "Did that kid live or die?" said he. "Blest if I
recollect!"

"Born dead. She had a bad time of it. She came back to London, and I
never see any more of her." Aunt M'riar should have commented on this
oblivion of his own child. She was letting her knowledge of the story
influence her, and endangering her version of it.

The man stopped and thought a little. Then he turned upon her suddenly.
"How came you to remember that name for twenty-two years?" said he.

A thing she recollected of this servant-girl helped her at a pinch. "She
asked me to direct a letter when she hurt her hand," she said. "When
you've wrote a name, you bear it in mind."

"What did she call the child?"

"It was born dead."

"What did she mean to call it?"

The answer should have been "She didn't tell me." But Aunt M'riar was a
poor fiction-monger after all. For what must she say but "Polly, after
herself"?

"Not Mary?"

Then Aunt M'riar forgot herself completely. "No--Polly. After the name
you called her, at The Tun." She saw her mistake, too late.

Daverill turned his gaze on her again, slowly. "You seem to remember a
fat lot about this and that!" said he. He got down off the table, and
stepped between Aunt M'riar and the door, saying: --"Come you here,
mistress!" The harshness of his voice was hideo