e speaker seem to dance about and,
by gripping her hands closer, she steadied herself.

"I suppose you have never heard of me before?"

"Oh! yes!" Joan listened to her own voice critically; "Aunt Doris told
Nancy and me all about you."

"All, eh?" Thornton could barely keep the surprise and relief from his
voice. This simplified matters and he could talk freely.

"What do you want?" The question as Joan spoke it sounded brutal. "I do
not suppose you have come here, after all these years, for nothing."

Thornton flushed angrily, and his resentment of old flamed into speech.

"I've come to make your aunt--pay. When I saw you before--you and your
supposed sister--your aunt had all the cards in her hands, but I told
her then that murder would out--and by God! it has--and now it is pay
day." The years had coarsened Thornton.

Joan stared at the man across the table as if he had suddenly gone mad
before her eyes. She was frightened; she heard distant voices--the cook
speaking to Jed--she wanted to call out; meant to--but instead she asked
dully:

"What do you mean by--my supposed sister?"

Thornton shifted his position and leaned forward over the table.

"So--eh? She didn't tell you all? I see. She confined the story to--me.
And--you've believed all your life--that--that the girl, Nancy, was your
sister? Well--by heaven! Doris has taken a chance."

"You have got to tell me what you mean!"

Joan was no longer filled with personal fear--it was wider, deeper than
that.

"And you must not lie," she added, fiercely--anger was giving her
strength. Thornton regarded her through half-closed eyes.

"Lying isn't my big line," he said, roughly, "if it had seen, I might
have escaped the infernal mess that I hatched by--telling the truth in
the first place. Since your aunt has neglected her duty--I will tell you
the truth!"

Thornton took small heed of the stricken girl near him. Hate and revenge
for the moment swayed him, but not for an instant did Joan disbelieve
what was burning into her consciousness. Truth rang in every word of the
almost unbelievable story. And while she listened and shrank back she
was conscious of inanimate things taking on human attributes that
pleaded with her. The chair by the hearth where Doris had but recently
sat smiling so happily because her ideals had been real to her! Nancy
and she, Joan seemed to know, were the ideals--Nancy and she! For them
Doris had done the one, big, daring thing i