He made a quick stride toward the door, and placing himself before it, let his enforced calmness fall from him like a mantle of snow from a statue of fire, with all his hatred and disgust concentrated in the low, metallic tones in which he addressed her. "I have only this to say: Your plans, which as yet I only half comprehend, will fail utterly. You fancy, perhaps, that this snare, into which I have fallen, will fetter my hands and prevent me from undoing your work. I cannot give life to the victim whose death lies at your door, the husband who was slain by your sin, but I can rescue your later victim, if her life, too, has not been sacrificed. As for these two wretches, whose parental claim is a figment of your own imagination, and this _lover_, who is the abettor, possibly the instigator, of your crimes, I shall find him out--" "Stop," she cried wildly, "I command you, _stop_!" "Ah, that touches you! I repeat, I shall find him out. To succeed, you should have concealed his existence as effectually as you have concealed poor little Daisy." A death-like pallor overspreads the face of the woman before him. She stretches out her arms imploringly, her form sways as if she were about to fall, and she utters a wailing cry. "As _I_ have concealed Daisy? Oh, my God; my God! I see! I understand! My weakness, my folly, has done its work. I _have_ killed my husband! I _have_ brought a curse upon little Daisy! I _have_ endangered your life and honor! _I_ conceal our Daisy? Hear me, Heaven; henceforth I am nameless, homeless, friendless, until I have found Daisy Warburton and restored her to you!" Her voice died in a low wail. She makes a forward movement, and then falls headlong at the feet of her stern accuser. For the second time in all her life, Leslie Warburton has fainted. One moment Alan Warburton stands looking down upon her, a cynical half smile upon his lips. Then he turns and pulls the bell. "Mrs. Warburton is in a swoon," he says to the servant who appears. "Call some one to her assistance." And without once glancing backward, he strides from the library. CHAPTER XXXV. ALAN "EVOLVES" A PLAN OF ACTION. Kind hands brought Leslie back to life, and to a new sense of pain, for even the hands that love us must sometimes hurt, when they hope to heal. Every servant of the household loved its fair mistress. And while those who could, bustled to and fro, commanded by Winnie, each eager to minister to so kind a mistress, and those who were superfluous went about with anxious, sympathetic faces, Alan Warburton, the one unpitying soul in all that household, paced his room restlessly, troubled and anxious--not because of Leslie's illness, but because of the revelation just received from her lips. [Illustration: "I cannot give life to the victim whose death lies at your door."--page 251.]