isoner. He had faced a jury of his peers and was
condemned to face the gallows. Meantime he had said farewell to love and
hope and faithfulness, even as he bade farewell to life. "Since she has
forsaken me whom I thought faithful," said he to himself, "why, let it
end, for life is a mockery I would not live out." And thenceforth,
haggard but laughing, pale but with unbroken courage, he trod on his way
through his few remaining days, the wonder of those who saw him.

As for Mary Connynge, surely she had matters enough which were best kept
secret in her own soul. While Lady Catharine was hoping, and praying,
and dreaming and believing, even as the roses left her cheek and the
hollows fell beneath her eyes, she saw about her in the daily walks of
life Mary Connynge, sleek and rounded as ever. They sat at table
together, and neither did the one make sign to the other of her own
anxiety, nor did that other give sign of her own treachery. Mary
Connynge, false guest, false friend, false woman, deceived so perfectly
that she left no indication of deceit. She herself knew, and blindly
satisfied herself with the knowledge, that she alone now came close into
the life of "Beau" Law, the convict; "Jessamy" Law, the student, the
financier, the thinker; John Law, her lord and master. Herein she found
the sole compensation possible in her savage nature. She had found the
master whom she sought!

Cynically mirthful or irreverently indifferent, yet never did her
master's strength forsake him, never did his heart lose its
undauntedness. And when he bade Mary Connynge do this or that she obeyed
him; when he bade her arise she arose; at his word she came or departed.
A dozen nights in the month she was absent from the house of Knollys. A
dozen nights Will Law was cozened into frenzy, alternating between a
heaven of delight and a hell of despair, and ignorant of her twofold
duplicity. A dozen nights John Law knew well enough where Mary Connynge
was, though no one else might know. There was feminine triumph now in
full in the heart of this Mary Connynge, who had gone white with rage at
the sight of a rose offered across her face to another woman. Had she
not her master? Was he not hers, all hers, belonging in no wise to any
other?

For the future, Mary Connynge did not ponder it. An ephemera, once
buried generations deep in the mire and slime of lower conditions, and
now craving blindly but the sunlight of the day, she would have sought
th