rned.

"Tell me," she asked, her sultry eyes flashing with vistas of victory.
"Tell me how my mother would have acted, had such an indignity been put
on her. Tell me," she repeated, "and through your knowledge of her, so
will I act. Yes," she added, and then paused, amazed at the expression
of her father's face. It was as though some unseen hand had stabbed him
from behind. The mouth twitched in the contraction of sudden pain, the
nostrils quivered, and he bowed his head; then, his eyes lowered and
turned from her, he answered in a voice that trembled just a little and
yet was perfectly distinct:

"It was such a thing as this that marred your mother's life; let it not
mar your own."

For the moment Eden could not credit her hearing. The words seemed
meaningless. She had caught them in a crescendo of stupor. "It is
impossible," she murmured. She stared at her father, her eyes dilated,
her heart throbbing, and every sense alert. "It is impossible," she
repeated, beneath her breath. And as she stared, her father's attitude
accentuated the words, reiterating that the avowal which had been wrung
from him was not the impossible, but the truth. No, there was no
mistake. She had heard aright, and presently, as the understanding of it
reached her, she moved back and away from him. For the first time that
day the tears came to her eyes. "I have drunk of shame," she sobbed;
"now let me drink of death."

IX.

For some time father and daughter were silent. Eden suppressed her sob,
and Mr. Menemon fidgeted nervously in his chair. The funeral across the
way, he told himself, would be gayer than this, and for the moment he
regretted that he had not taken time by its bang and gone to other
lands. Grief was always distressing to him, and the grief of his
daughter was torment. The idea that Usselex had been derelict, he put
from him. He had an interpretation of his own for the incidents on which
he had been called to sit in judgment. Trivialities such as they left
him unaffected. His enervation came of an inability to cope with Eden.
She treated an argument like a cobweb. And besides, had he not in a
spasm of discouragement disclosed a secret which for two decades he had
kept close-locked and secure?

Truly, if Eden had come to him with a valid complaint, he would have
taken arms in an instant. He was by no means one to suffer a child of
his to be treated with contumely. The bit of lignum vitae which served
him for a heart