"Oh, Jack, don't speak to me like that! I was mad! I know it! The worst thing about the whole devilish business was the way I lost my head. I look back at it now, and wonder if I'm ever safe. It makes me afraid; and I never was afraid of anything else in my life. I'm not a 'fraid-cat woman!" He gave no sign of softening, none of sympathy, but still sat with the air of a judge, cold and inexorable. "What has all this to do with Sibley Langdon?" he asked. "He came there just when the countess sent for her things. I was wild, and I went all to pieces at the sight of a home face. It was like a plank to a shipwrecked fool, I suppose. I broke down and told him the whole thing, and he gave me the money to redeem the necklace. He was awfully kind, Jack. I hate him--but he was kind. I really think I should have killed myself if he hadn't helped me." "And you have never paid him?" "How could I pay him? I've been on the ragged edge of the poorhouse ever since. I don't know if the poorhouse has a ragged edge," she added, with something desperately akin to a smile, "but if it has edges of course they must be ragged." Few persons have ever made a confession, no matter how woeful the circumstances, without some sense of relief at having spoken out the thing which was festering in the secret heart. Shame and bitter contrition may overwhelm this feeling, but they do not entirely destroy it. Mrs. Neligage would hardly have been likely ever to tell her story save under stress of bitter necessity, but there was an air which showed that the revelation had given her comfort. "Has he ever spoken of it?" asked Jack, unmoved by her attempted lightness. "Never directly, and never until recently has he hinted. Jack," she said, her color rising, "he is a bad man!" He did not speak, but his eyes plainly demanded more. "The other day,--Jack, I've known for a long time that it was coming. I've hated him for it, but I didn't know what to do. It was partly for that that I went to Washington." "Well?" Mrs. Neligage was not that day playing a part which was entirely to be commended by the strict moralist. Certainly in her interview with May she had left much to be desired on the score of truthfulness and consideration for others. Hard must be the heart, however, which might not have been touched by the severity of the ordeal which she was now undergoing. Jack's clear brown eyes dominated hers with all the force of the man and the judge, while hers in vain sought to soften them; and the pathos of it was that it was the son judging the mother. "I give you my word, Jack," she said, leaning toward him and speaking with deep earnestness, "that he has never said a word to me that you might not have heard. Silly compliments, of course, and fool things about his wife's not being to his taste; but nothing worse. Only now--"