"Rats always desert a sinking ship," flung in Bertha with coarse irony. Again her elder sister had no answer for her. "I am going away," she repeated. "Even if papa had left us a fortune it would be the same, I could not stay here after--all that has happened." "You mean,"--said Mrs. Brooke, then paused. "I mean since I have lost papa and Irene," her daughter answered, sadly. "You know, mamma, you and Bertha have never been kind to me since my great--trouble. You only tolerated me because my father wished it. I have long been in your way. It is all over now. To-morrow I shall leave you forever." "Forever," Mrs. Brooke repeated, blandly, while Bertha exclaimed with a coarse, spiteful sneer: "You will return to the life of shame from which papa rescued you perhaps." "I am going to New York to earn my living by honest work," Elaine said, speaking pointedly to her mother. "You know I have a good voice, and talent for music. I shall give music lessons, probably." "My daughter giving music lessons! Oh, what a disgrace to the family!" cried the aristocratic lady. "Are you not ashamed to put yourself so low, Elaine?" "Don't be silly, mamma," flashed Bertha, sharply. "It is a very good plan, I think. Besides, it is only right for Elaine to give up the remainder of her property to us. If we had not been burdened with the support of her daughter for sixteen years there would have been more money for me." "It is quite settled, mamma, I shall go," said poor Elaine, and the selfish mother weakly acquiesced. The next day she went, glad of her freedom, glad to fling off the slavery of sixteen years. "I could not have stayed even if poor papa had left me a fortune," she said to herself. "The sound of the waves sighing over Irene's watery grave in the lonesome nights breaks my heart!" CHAPTER XII. We must return to Irene Brooke that fatal night, whose accumulating horrors induced a transient madness that drove the wretched girl to seek oblivion from her woes in self-destruction. Life is sweet, even to the wretched. Irene's sudden, violent plunge into the cold waves cooled the fever of her heart and brain like magic. In that one awful, tragic moment in which the waters closed darkly over her golden head, a sharp remorse, a terrible regret woke to life within her heart. Out of that swift repentance and awful despair, a cry for pity broke wildly from her almost strangling lips: "Oh, Lord, pardon and save me!" As she came back from the depths with a swift rebound to the surface of the water, the girl threw out her white arms gropingly, as if to seize upon some support, however slight and frail, on which to buoy her drenched and sinking frame.