"There was a man who did my mother a great wrong once," she said. "They had loved each other in a mad sort of way for a long time, but in the end, I suppose, he got tired, for suddenly he went away. When he was gone, my mother did not speak of him and it was as if he had never lived, but she grew haggard and dreadful and lost her beauty. I was a little child and she took me with her and began to travel from one place to another. I did not know why at first, but I found out afterward. She was following him. She found him in Paris, at last, after two years. One foggy night she took me to a narrow street near one of the theaters, and after we got there I knew she was waiting for some one, because she walked to and fro between two of the street lamps dragging me by the hand. She walked so for half an hour, and then the man came, not knowing we were there. She went to him, dragging me with her, and when she stood in front of him, threw back her veil and let the light shine upon her. She lifted her hand and struck him--struck him full upon the face, panting for breath. 'I am a woman,' she said. 'I am a woman and I have _struck_ you! Remember it to your last hour as I shall!' I thought that he would strike her back, but he did not. His hands fell at his sides, and he stood before her pale and helpless. I think it was even more terrible than she had meant it to be----" Mrs. Murdoch stopped her, almost angrily. "Why do you go back to it?" she demanded. "Why should you think of such a story now?" "It came to me," she answered. "I was thinking that it is true that I am like her,--I bear a grudge such a long time, and it will not die out. It is her blood which is strong in me. She spoke the truth." Early in the afternoon Rachel Ffrench, sauntering about the garden in the sun, saw Murdoch coming down the road toward the house,--not until he had first seen her, however. His eyes were fixed upon her when she turned, and it seemed as if he found it impossible to remove them, even for a breath's time. Since his glance had first caught the pale blue of her dress he had not once looked away from it. All the morning, in the midst of the smoke and din of the workrooms, he had been thinking of the hours to come. The rest of the day lay before him. The weather was dazzling; the heat of summer was in the air; the garden was ablaze with flowers whose brightness seemed never to have been there before; there was here and there the drone of a bee, and now and again a stir of leaves. The day before had been of another color and so might the morrow be, but to-day left nothing to be believed in except its own sun and beauty.