During the months which preceded his death, Senator Cheney’s only pleasure seemed to be in the companionship of his son-in-law. The strong attachment between the two men ripened with every day’s association. One day the rector was sitting by the invalid’s couch, reading aloud, when Preston Cheney laid his hand on the young man’s arm and said: “Close your book and let me tell you a true story which is stranger than fiction. It is the story of an ambitious man and all the disasters which his realised ambition brought into the lives of others. It is a story whose details are known to but two beings on earth, if indeed the other being still exists on earth. I have long wanted to tell you this story—indeed, I wanted to tell it to you before you made Alice your wife, yet the fear that I would be wrecking the life and reason of my child kept me silent. No doubt if I had told you, and you had been influenced by my experience against a loveless marriage, I should to-day be blaming myself for her condition, which I see plainly now is but the culmination of three generations of hysterical women. But I want to tell you the story and urge you to use it as a warning in your position of counsellor and friend of ambitious young men. “No matter what else a man may do for position, don’t let him marry a woman he does not love, especially if he crucifies a vital passion for another, in order to do this.” Then Preston Cheney told the story of his life to his son-in-law; and as the tale proceeded, a strange interest which increased until it became violent excitement, took possession of the rector’s brain and heart. The story was so familiar—so very familiar; and at length, when the name of _Berene Dumont_ escaped the speaker’s lips, Arthur Stuart clutched his hands and clenched his teeth to keep silent until the end of the story came. “From the hour Berene disappeared, to this very day, no word or message ever came from her,” the invalid said. “I have never known whether she was dead or alive, married, or, terrible thought, perhaps driven into a reckless life by her one false step with me. This last fear has been a constant torture to me all these years. “The world is cruel in its judgment of woman. And yet I know that it is woman herself who has shaped the opinions of the world regarding these matters. If men had had their way since the world began, there would be no virtuous women. Woman has realised this fact, and she has in consequence walled herself about with rules and conventions which have in a measure protected her from man. When any woman breaks through these conventions and errs, she suffers the scorn of others who have kept these self-protecting and society-protecting laws; and, conscious of their scorn, she believes all hope is lost for ever.