The hands of the shuddering figure beneath him suddenly dropped--the ghastly uncovered face looked up at him, with such a panic stare in the eyes, such a fearful quivering and distortion of all the features, that it tried even his firmness of nerve to look at it steadily. In spite of himself; he went back to his chair, and sat down doggedly by the table, and was silent. A low murmuring and moaning, amid which a few disconnected words made themselves faintly distinguishable, caused him to look round again. He saw that the ghastly face was once more hidden. He heard the disconnected words reiterated, always in the same stifled wailing tones. Now and then, a half finished phrase was audible from behind the withered hands, still clasped over the face, He heard such fragments of sentences as these:--“Have pity on my wife”--“accept the remorse of many years”--“spare me the disgrace--” After those four last words, he listened for no more. The merciless spirit was roused in him again the moment he heard them. “Spare you the disgrace?” he repeated, starting to his feet. “Did you spare _her?_--Not you!” Once more the hands dropped; once more the ghastly face slowly and horribly confronted him. But this time he never recoiled from it. There was no mercy in him--none in his looks, none in his tones--as he went on. “What! it would disgrace you, would it? Then disgraced you shall be! You’ve kep’ it a secret, have you? You shall tell that secret to every soul that comes about the house! You shall own Mary’s disgrace, Mary’s death, and Mary’s child before every man who’s put his name down on that bit of paper!--You shall, as soon as to-morrow if I like! You shall, if I have to bring your child with me to make you; if I have to stand up, hand in hand along with her, here on your own hearthstone.” He stopped. The cowering figure was struggling upward from the chair: one of the withered hands, slowly raised, was stretching itself out towards him; the panic-stricken eyes were growing less vacant, and were staring straight into his with a fearful meaning in their look; the pale lips were muttering rapidly--at first he could not tell what; then he succeeded in catching the two words, “Mary’s child?” quickly, faintly, incessantly reiterated, until he spoke again, “Yes,” he said, pitiless as ever. “Yes: Mary’s child. Your child. Haven’t you seen her? Is it _that_ you’re staring and trembling about? Go and look at her: she lives within gunshot of you. Ask Zack’s friend, the Painter-Man, to show you the deaf and dumb girl he picked up among the horse-riders. Look here--look at this bracelet! Do you remember your own hair in it? The hands that brought up Mary’s child, took that bracelet from Mary’s pocket. Look at it again! Look at it as close as you like--”