"All the facts--I will hear them from your own lips--speak." She was silent. "I know--I have been on your track for days. It was not enough that you destroyed my life, trampled on my honor, but you must choose for the partner of your guilt the man who had most cruelly wronged me--the one foe I had on earth." "No, no! I never saw that man--never!" "Peace, woman! I tell you that man standing yonder with a grin of Satan on his lips, is William Ford." She did cry out then--this was a horror of which she had not dreamed. "I never knew it; I never knew it." "And you love this wretch? Through him you shall suffer!" "I hate him, loathe him!" she cried. "Oh, in this one thing believe me--I never knew it was Ford. The name was changed to deceive me." "I would not believe a word from your lips though you brought an angel to witness it." Then he looked down at the little coffin, and a fierce gust of insanity swept over him. "I will send for some officer of justice." She caught his arm and held him firmly. "For Elsie's sake--don't overshadow her life with the shame you hurl on me. Let me go away--you shall never hear of me again--I will never cross your path! I do not ask for mercy, but for your sister's sake, for your own honored name, let me go away and die." CHAPTER LXIV. BURIED OUT OF SIGHT. Lost and guilty as this woman was, there existed still one human virtue in her soul--even in his rage Mellen could feel that she spoke the truth--she was not asking mercy for herself--she was pleading for the innocent girl whose future would be destroyed were it known how vile the creature was with whom she had been the associate. "Where will you go--what will you do?" "Anything--anything! You shall never hear from me again." "You are going with this man!" "There is no life so horrible that I would not prefer it to his presence," she said; "no death so shameful that it would not be heaven compared to seeing his face again." There was a brief pause then; Mellen grasped her by the arm. She thought he was about to kill her. She sank on her knees and a broken prayer rose to her lips. She would not have struggled; she would have knelt there and received death patiently from his hands. "Do you think me lost and vile as yourself?" he cried, reading her thoughts in this gesture. "I do not want your life--do with it what you will! For my innocent sister's sake I will spare you--but go--go where I never can hear your name--let me have no reason to know that you exist! If you cross my path again, nothing shall keep me from exposing you to the whole world." All at once, North came out from the shadows that had concealed his face, and stood before the man he had so foully wronged. "Grantley Mellen," he said, "for your own sake, believe me. If this woman will not speak, I am not coward enough to keep silent." Elizabeth stepped forward, her head raised, her eyes flashing.