She began by relating her visit to the Loker’s family, and the confession of John Loker, her adventure with the ruffian upon the street, her escape, and his subsequent entrance to her room during the same night. His face grew grave and troubled as she told him how persistently she had refused to reveal the hiding-place of the precious paper. “My darling, you ran a terrible risk; he might have taken your life,” he said, with a shudder. “But it was the only proof of _your honor_; it alone would give you back the respect and esteem of men, and I _would not_ give it to him,” she said, with a sparkle of the old defiance in her eye, then continued: “I did not think he would quite dare do me any personal violence, and I was willing to suffer a great deal rather than lose anything so precious. I do not seem to remember much of what happened after he seized my hands and looked at me in that dreadful way; only it seemed at times, when he spoke to me, as if some force within me was trying to part soul and body—until I found myself here with this strange woman. I was left quietly with her for two or three days, when he came again and tried to frighten me into telling him what he wanted to know. I always refused until he lost his patience and temper, when he would dart toward me, seize my hands, look into my eyes, and almost instantly everything would be a blank to me, and when I came to myself again I would be so exhausted and ill I could not rise.” “The villain mesmerized you,” Earle said, with a white, stern face. “Yes, that was the only explanation that I could think of to account for his peculiar power over me. He has told me almost every time he came that he would allow me to go home if I would tell him my secret; but, of course, I would not do that when I was myself, and, from the fact of his continuing to exercise his influence, I suppose I am just as wilful when under his magnetic control regarding that one thing. Earle,” she concluded, slipping her hand confidingly into his, “you have given me a blessed release. I do not believe I could have borne it very much longer, for I have been growing very weak of late; but my prayer night and day has been that I might be spared to you, and that God would not allow him to wring my precious secret from me.” “Why did I find him torturing you with such strange questions about your name and parentage to-night?” Earle asked. Editha shook her head with a sad smile. “He almost always came in the night; I suppose there was less danger of his being discovered then; but as for his questions and my answers, I know no more about them than you could have done during all these weeks. Everything became a blank as soon as he touched me and looked at me in a certain way, and I do not know, what I have done or said; I only know that I have suffered horribly sometimes;” and a trembling seized her at the remembrance.