“You--have--Charles--Thorne--under--arrest?” she said, and her very tone was grey. She did not deny the truth of the charge; she did not express satisfaction that the murderer was found; she merely asked whether they had Charles Thorne under arrest. “Yes.” Her eyes closed and her head dropped suddenly back against the chair. We stepped swiftly forward, but before we could take any measures to revive her, her eyes had opened again. The lips moved. She was speaking, but so gaspingly that we bent to hear. “It is the end of the long night,” she said with many halts; “the end of the long night. A life’s nightmare is done. God have mercy on me--” She stopped completely. Then: “God pity all mothers who bear as I bore--” Another long pause. She was by strong effort retaining the clarity of her faculties under some heavy shock. She repeated: “Who bear as I bore!” The silence became acutely poignant. “It must be told,” she breathed finally. “You have asked me why I did not tell you my suspicions. I will tell you now. Charles Thorne--” Her next words came so low that had it not been for the pregnant silence of the great drawing-room they could not have been heard. “_Is my son._” I found I had been holding my breath; and I glanced quickly at Lanagan, to see his breast falling with a deep exhalation. “My husband did not know,” she continued, colourlessly. “Charles Thorne does not know I am his mother. I have tried to live a full Christian life. I have given by tens of thousands to aid the erring. I have thought to make all atonement.... “And yet the blood of my blood slew the heart of my heart, my dear husband, one of God’s noble men....” After that wrenching confession her normal poise began by degrees to return as the strength of an extraordinary mind began to assert itself. The story was soon told: of an alliance before her marriage to Swanson, of the boy, taken by the father, to be sent back to her after fifteen years. The dissolute father, on his deathbed, sent Charles back to the mother. For fifteen years since that day she had steadily stood sponsor for the boy. To her husband he was but one of the many others of her objects of charity. It may be said the boy inherited the dissolute traits of his father. Finally, her own children by Swanson all marrying, that profound mysterious quality of motherhood prompted her to make one last effort to redeem the boy under her own eyes, and she adopted the dangerous course, for her, of bringing him to the house as a chauffeur. That he was given to drugs she did not know. Thorne had been caught in a series of petty thefts. Swanson had finally been compelled to discharge him. He had left the house with maledictions upon Swanson. Instinctively she had felt he was the author of the crime.