So she described to him briefly the course of her married life up to the time when she first began to notice the mason at work upon the terrace wall. Without accusing Archie, she made the judge nevertheless comprehend why she no longer could bear his name. From her first meeting with her cousin she was much more detailed in her story, giving everything chronologically, anxious to omit nothing which might be of importance. She told all the circumstances of her slow comprehension of the truth, that this stone mason was her second cousin and should have inherited equally with herself the riches of Clark's Field. She told squarely of her weeks of hesitation and final decision not to reveal to the mason or to any one her knowledge of the truth. Then came the night of the fire and her personal tragedy in the ruin of Highcourt. And all this she told, dry-eyed, without passion, quite baldly, as if that was the only way in which she could face it. Lastly she told of sending for the mason the next morning and before her husband confessing her useless secret, and then briefly she spoke of the subsequent steps that had brought her to the city to see the Washington Trust Company. "And they told you?" queried the judge, leaning forward to poke the coal fire into flame. "They said that nothing could be done now for these California Clarks, because it would make a lot of trouble and harm innocent people to go back of the new titles to the property," Adelle replied. "And they were perfectly right," Judge Orcutt said, with a long sigh, after a moment of consideration. "It was the only thing they could say to you!" He went into the law of it and explained to Adelle, more clearly than it had ever been done, just how the uncertain title had finally been "quieted," all the legal steps which had been duly taken to notify the unknown heirs, and the judicial sale ordered by the court, with the meaning of the process. "So you can see that the law took great pains to find these people, and make sure that no wrong should be done to any rightful claimants, and because it failed to find the lost heirs there is no reason why people who bought the land in good faith should be made to suffer. You see?" Adelle saw, but she was disappointed. It was the same thing the trust company had said to her, only now she felt sure of it. What could she say to her young cousin? That troubled her a great deal. She hated to disappoint his expectations, which she had ignorantly aroused.