“I told you that I mistrusted Markham,” she said, as they drove away. “He did not mean any harm. But that is his life. And I think I told you that I was afraid Constance---- Oh, my dear, a mother has a great many hard offices to undertake in her life--to make up for things which her children may have done--_en gaieté du cœur_, without thought.” “_Gaieté du cœur_--is that what you call it,” cried Frances, “when you murder a man?” Her voice was choked with the passion that filled her. “Frances! Murder! You are the last one in the world from whom I should have expected anything violent.” “Oh,” cried the girl, flushed and wild, her eyes gleaming through an angry dew of pain, “what word is there that is violent enough? He was happy and good, and there were--there might have been--people who could have loved him, and--and made him happy. When one comes in, one who had no business there, one who--and takes him from--the others, and makes a sport of him and a toy to amuse herself, and flings him broken away. It is worse than murder--if there is anything worse than murder,” she cried. Lady Markham could not have been more astonished if some passer-by had presented a pistol at her head. “Frances!” she cried, and took the girl’s hot hands into her own, endeavouring to soothe her; “you speak as if she meant to do it--as if she had some interest in doing it. Frances, you must be just!” “If I were just--if I had the power to be just--is there any punishment which could be great enough? His life? But it is more than his life. It is misery and torture and wretchedness, to him first, and then to--to his mother--to----” She ended as a woman, as a poor little girl, scarcely yet woman grown, must--in an agony of tears.