“Now sit down, my dear, and make yourself comfortable. You already know that I have a painful revelation to make to my son and daughter here; but as the misfortune to be spoken of was caused by no conscious complicity of theirs, it should not cause either of them too much grief, I think.” “No, indeed! It was not their fault, so they should not mourn over it,” warmly assented Julia. “See here, sir! Are you going to discuss private family matters in the presence of this person?” demanded Clay Legg. “‘This person,’ sir, is my beloved wife. I have no secrets from her. She already knows as much as I do myself, and as much as I have to tell you,” replied John Legg, speaking for the first time with some severity. “Tell me one thing, if you please, sir.” “What is that?” “Am I personally concerned in what you are about to communicate in the presence of a stranger?” “No, not personally—not at all interested except through your sister.” “Then that is her concern. If she choose——” And he turned on his heel and left his sentence unfinished. “You had better let me go, John, dear, if the young people object to my presence during this interview,” said Julia gently. “My daughter, do you object to my wife’s presence here while I make the revelation of which she knows the whole nature?” whispered John Legg to the agonized girl on his bosom. “Oh! why should I object to anything? I know—before you tell me—that your dreadful news—concerns some crime of my wretched husband! If not a murder, that would hang him, then a forgery or some other felony that will send him to penal servitude, and will, in any case, be known all over England to-morrow. Let whom you like hear the horrid story,” replied the woman. When she first began to speak she gasped and panted, but as she went on she gained more command over her voice. Julia Legg was full of pity for this ungracious creature, and she came and knelt down beside her husband’s chair, and took his daughter’s hand in hers and kissed it, murmuring softly: “Believe me, oh! believe me! I will do all in my power to lighten any trouble you may have, and to make you comfortable and contented, if not happy.” Lamia—as we must continue to call her because that is the name by which the reader has known her from the first—Lamia drew her hand away from the kindly hands that clasped it, and Julia Legg, with a sigh, arose and resumed her seat. “My own dear daughter, before I tell you anything more I must remind you again that in my heart and in my home you have a haven of peace and love, of rest and safety from all the storms of life. Do you not know and feel this, my daughter?” “Oh, yes; you are my father, and that is understood,” she answered coldly, as if a parent’s boundless love, pity and forgiveness were such mere matters of course that they needed no recognition. “But I wish you would tell me at once, and be done with it. What has my miserable husband, Randolph Hay, done?” she demanded.