"Stop! let me go on," Virginia said, in a low, desperate tone. "I’m going to tell the whole horrible thing and be done with it forever. He said he had sent his best horse to Darley to sell it, and that the man would be back about ten o’clock at night with the money. He told me, mother, that he wanted me to slip away from home after you went to sleep and come there for the money. I didn’t hesitate long. I wanted to save your life. I agreed. I might have failed to go after I parted with him if I’d had time to reflect, but when I came in to supper you were more desperate than ever. You went to your room praying and moaning, and kept it up till you dropped asleep only a few minutes before the appointed time. Well, I slipped away and—_went_." "Oh, God have mercy on me—mercy, mercy, mercy!" Jane groaned. "You went there to that man!" Virginia nodded mutely and then continued her recital. Jane Hemingway’s knees bent under her as she stood holding to the bedpost, and she slowly sank to the floor a few feet away. With a low, moaning sound like a suffering dumb brute, she crawled on her hands and knees to her daughter and mutely clutched the girl’s cold, bare ankles. "You say he locked you in his _bedroom_!" she said, in a rasping whisper. "_Locked_ you—actually _locked_ you in! Oh, Lord have mercy!" "Then, after a long wait," the girl went on, "in which I was praying only for the money, mother—the money to save your life and put you out of agony—I heard steps, first on the stairs and then at the door. Somebody touched the latch. The door held fast. Then the key was turned, and as I sat there with covered face, now with the dread of death upon me for the first time, somebody came in and stood over me." "The scoundrel! The beast!" Jane’s hands slipped from their hold on the girl’s ankles and fell; her head and shoulders sank till her brow touched the floor. "A hand was laid on my head," Virginia went on. "I heard a voice—" "The fiend from hell!" Jane raised her haggard face and glaring eyes. "Don’t, don’t tell me that he dared to—" "It was Mrs. Boyd, mother—Ann Boyd," said Virginia. "Ann Boyd!" Jane groaned. "I see it now; _she_ was at the bottom of it; it was all _her_ doing. _That_ was her plot. Ah, God, I see it now!" "You are mistaken," the girl said. "She had accidentally overheard my agreement to go there, and came for no other reason than to save me, mother—to save me." "To save you?" Jane raised herself on her two hands like a four-footed animal looking up from its food. "Save your" she repeated, with the helpless glare of insanity in her blearing eyes. "Yes, to save me. She was acting on impulse, an impulse for good that she was even then fighting against. When she heard of that appointment she actually gloated over it, but, mother, she found herself unequal to it. As the time which had been set drew near, she plunged out into the night and got there only a few minutes before—"