I remained silent, preparing for a deadly struggle with the only being on earth I had ever really feared. 'I have fully kept my word, Henry,' said she, 'and have done for you more than my duty to your father's memory warranted me in doing.' 'But, mother, you did not do all that you promised to do; you did not prevent all risk of Winifred's finding it. She may find it even yet.' 'That is not likely now. I have performed my part of the compact, and I expect you to perform yours.' 'You did not use all means to save my Winifred from worse than death--from madness; you did not use all means to save me from dying of self-murder or of a broken heart; and the compact is broken. Whether or not I could have kept my faith with you by breaking troth with her, it is you who have set me free. Mother,' I said, fiercely, 'in such a compact it must be the letter of the bond.' 'Mean subterfuge, unworthy of your descent,' said my mother quietly, but with one of those looks of hers that used to frighten me once. 'No, no, mother; you have not kept the letter of the bond, and I am free. You did _not_ take the fullest and best means to save Winifred. Your compact was to save her from the risk I told you of. And, mother, mother, listen to me!' I cried, in a state of crazy excitement now: 'in the darkest moment of my life, when I was prostrate and helpless, you were pitiless as Pride. Listen, mother: Winifred Wynne shall be mine. Not all the Aylwins that have ever eaten of wheat and fattened the worms shall prevent that. She shall be mine. I say, she shall be mine!' 'The daughter of the man who desecrated my husband's tomb!' 'And my father's! That man's daughter shall be my wife,' I said, sitting up in bed and looking into those eyes, bright and proud, which had been wont to make all other eyes blink and quail. 'Cursed by your father, and cursed by God--' 'That curse--for what it may be worth--I take upon my own head; the curse shall be mine. Even if I believed the threat about the "desolate places," I would be there; if bare-footed she had to beg from door to door, rest assured, mother, that an Aylwin would hold the wallet--would leave the whole Aylwin brood, their rank, their money, and their stupid, vulgar British pride, to walk beside the beggar.' The look on my mother's face would have terrified most people. It would have terrified me once, but in the frenzy into which I had then passed, nothing would have made me quail. 'Your services, mother, are no longer needed,' I said. 'Wynne's corpse might have been washed up by the tide, and your compact was to be there to see; but now, most likely, it is hidden, not under the loose fragments as I had feared, but under the great mass of earth,--hidden for ever.' 'But you forget,' said my mother, 'that the amulet has to be recovered.'