“In good time, James, you will know what manner of woman I am,” she interrupted quietly. Sinking back in the chair, she resumed the broken strain, all the time watching him through half--closed eyes. “She died ten years ago. Her boy was twelve years old. She never saw him after the night you turned her away from this house. On her death-bed, as she was releasing her pure, undefiled soul to God's keeping, she repeated to the priest who went through the unnecessary form of absolving her, she repeated her solemn declaration that she had never wronged you by thought or deed. I had always believed her, the holy priest believed her, God believed her. You would have believed her, too, James Brood. She was a good woman. Do you hear? And you put a curse upon her and drove her out into the night. That was not all. You persecuted her to the end of her unhappy life. You did that to my sister!” “And yet you married me,” he muttered thickly. “Not because I loved you; oh, no! She loved you to the day of her death, after all the misery and suffering you had heaped upon her. No woman ever endured the anguish that she suffered throughout those hungry years. You kept her child from her. You denied him to her, even though you denied him to yourself. Why did you keep him from her? She was his mother. She had borne him; he was all hers. But no! It was your revenge to deprive her of the child she had brought into the world. You worked deliberately in this plan to crush what little there was left in life for her. “You kept him with you, though you branded him with a name I cannot utter; you guarded him as if he were your most precious possession, and not a curse to your pride; you did this because you knew that you could drive the barb more deeply into her tortured heart. You allowed her to die, after years of pleading, after years of vain endeavour, without one glimpse of her boy, without ever having heard the word mother on his lips. That is what you did to my sister. For twelve long years you gloated over her misery. Man, man, how I hated you when I married you!” She paused, breathless. “You are creating an excuse for your devilish conduct!” he exclaimed harshly. “You are like Matilde, false to the core. You married me for the luxury I could provide, notwithstanding the curse I had put upon your sister. I don't believe a word of what you are saying to------” “Don't you believe that I am her sister?” “You, yes; I must believe that. Why have I been so blind? You are the little Thérèse, and you hated me in those other days. I remember well the------”