"--And he loved me--better than life itself. I was so young when it began--only sixteen. My husband's father took me into his home then to bring up; I was an orphan. And Louis Champney loved me then and always--but Almeda Googe, my husband's sister, loved him too--in her way. Her own father could do nothing with her awful will--it crushed everybody that came in contact with it--that opposed it; it crushed me--and in the end, Louis." She took a little of the lemonade to moisten her lips and went on: "She was twelve years older than he. She took him when he was in college; worked on him, lied to him about me; told him I loved her brother; worked backwards, forwards, underhanded--any way to influence him against me and get her hold upon him. He went to Europe; she followed; wrote lying letters to her brother--said she was engaged to be married to Louis before her return; told Louis I was going to marry her brother, Warren Googe--in the end she had her way, and always has had it, and will have it. I married Warren Googe; she was forty when she married Louis at twenty-eight." She paused, straightened herself. Something like animation came into her face. "It does me good to speak--at last. I've never spoken in all these years--and I can tell you. My child was born seven months after my husband's death. Louis Champney came to see me then--up here, in this room; it was the first time we had dared to see each other alone--but the baby lay beside me; _that kept us_. He said but little; but he took up the child and looked at him; then he turned to me. 'This should have been our son, Aurora,' he said, and I--oh, what will you think of me!" She dropped her head into her hands. "I knew in my heart that during all those months I was carrying Warren Googe's child, I had only one thought: 'Oh, if it were only Louis' and mine!' And because I was a widow, I felt free to dwell upon that one thought night and day. Louis' face was always before me. I came in thought to look upon him as the true father of my boy--not that other for whom I had had no love. And I took great comfort in that thought--and--and--my boy is the living image of Louis Champney." She withdrew her hands, clasping them nervously and rubbing them in each other. "Oh, I sinned, I sinned in thought, and I've been punished, but there was never anything more--and last night I had to hear that from her!" For a moment the look of deadly fear returned to the eyes, but only for a moment; her hands continued to work nervously.