Mrs. Guinness sat erect and looked at her in absolute silence. Astonishment and anger Kitty had expected from her at her mention of the name, but there was a certain terror in her face which was unaccountable. "What do you know of Hugh Guinness? I never wished that his name should cross your lips, Catharine." "I know very little. But I have a reason for wishing to know when and how he died. It is for father's sake," she added, startled at the increasing agitation which her mother could not conceal. Still, Mrs. Guinness did not reply. She was not a superstitious woman: she felt no remorse about her treatment of her stepson. There had been evil tongues, even in the church, to lay his ruined life at her door, and to say that bigotry and sternness had driven him to debauchery and a drunkard's death. She knew she had done her duty: she liked best to think of herself as a mother in Israel. Yet there had always been a dull, mysterious terror which linked Hugh Guinness and Catharine together. It was there he would revenge himself. Some day he would put out his dead hand from the grave to work the child's destruction. She had reasoned and laughed at her own folly in the matter for years. But the belief was there. Now it was taking shape. She would meet it face to face. She stood up as though she had been going to throttle some visible foe for ever: "I shall tell you the truth, Catharine. Your father has never known it. He believes his son died in Nicaragua fighting for a cause which he thought good. I let him believe it. There was some comfort in that." "It was not true, then?" "No." She rearranged the vases on the mantel-shelf, turned over the illuminated texts hanging on the wall, until she came to the one for the day. She was trying to convince herself that Hugh Guinness mattered nothing to her. "He died," she said at last, "in New York, a reprobate, as he lived." "But where? how?" "What can that matter to you?" sharply. "But I will tell you where and how. Two winters ago a poor, bloated, penniless wretch took up his lodging in a cheap hotel in New York. He left it only to visit the gambling-houses near. An old friend of mine recognized Hugh, and warned me of his whereabouts. I went up to the city at once, but when I reached it he had disappeared. He had lost his last penny at dice." "Then he _is_ still alive?" "God forbid! No," correcting herself. "A week later the body of a suicide was recovered off Coney Island and placed in the Morgue. It was horribly mutilated. But I knew Hugh Guinness. I think I see him yet, lying on that marble slab and his eyes staring up at me. It was no doing of mine that he lay there." "No, mother, I am sure that it was not," gently. "If your conscience reproaches you, I wish he were here that you could try and bring him into the right path at last."