u speak to
me?"

"My God, Antoinette, listen!" cried Nick; "Mrs. Clive is not her name. I
know her, David knows her. She is an--adventuress!"

Mrs. Temple gave a cry, and the girl shot at him a frightened, bewildered
glance, in which a new-born love struggled with an older affection.

"An adventuress!" she repeated, her hand dropping, "oh, I do not believe
it. I cannot believe it."

"You shall believe it," said Nick, fiercely. "Her name is not Clive.
Ask David what her name is."

Antoinette's lips moved, but she shirked the question. And Nick seized
me roughly.

"Tell her," he said, "tell her! My God, how can I do it? Tell her,
David."

For the life of me I could not frame the speech at once, my pity and a
new-found and surprising respect for her making it doubly hard to
pronounce her sentence. Suddenly she raised her head, not proudly, but
with a dignity seemingly conferred by years of sorrow and of suffering.
Her tones were even, bereft of every vestige of hope.

"Antoinette, I have deceived you, though as God is my witness, I thought
no harm could come of it. I deluded myself into believing that I had
found friends and a refuge at last. I am Mrs. Temple."

"Mrs. Temple!" The girl repeated the name sorrowfully, but perplexedly,
not grasping its full significance.

"She is my mother," said Nick, with a bitterness I had not thought in
him, "she is my mother, or I would curse her. For she has ruined my life
and brought shame on a good name."

He paused, his breath catching for very anger. Mrs. Temple hid her face
in her hands, while the girl shrank back in terror. I grasped him by the
arm.

"Have you no compassion?" I cried. But Mrs. Temple interrupted me.

"He has the right," she faltered; "it is my just punishment."

He tore himself away, and took a step to her.

"Where is Riddle?" he cried. "As God lives, I will kill him without
mercy!"

His mother lifted her head again.

"God has judged him," she said quietly; "he is beyond your vengeance--he
is dead." A sob shook her, but she conquered it with a marvellous
courage. "Harry Riddle loved me, he was kind to me, and he was a better
man than John Temple."

Nick recoiled. The fierceness of his anger seemed to go, leaving a more
dangerous humor.

"Then I have been blessed with parents," he said.

At that she swayed, but when I would have caught her she motioned me away
and turned to Antoinette. Twice Mrs. Temple tried to speak.

"I was going awa