"This child is not mine. I swear it before my God. Her father left me for another woman. Marcel can testify to that. My heart broke within me, and later, when my poor sister died, I went away. I went to—to Langley’s cabin in the woods. I fought out my trouble there, and then came back to my years of labour, that you all know of. I never knew, until long after, the black thoughts that were held against me. I lived alone—alone." Here Jo rose majestically, threw back her head, and let her flaming eyes rest upon the two petrified listeners. Her hand was still touching with a marvellously gentle touch the bent head of Donelle, who was crouched on the floor at her feet, and was listening, listening, her breath coming in quick, soft little gasps. "And then," the stern voice went on, "Pierre Gavot did me the most hideous wrong a man can do a woman, Gavot, Pierre Gavot, a man unworthy of looking at an honest woman, offered to—to marry me, for my money! He sought to get control of the only thing that I had won from life for my own protection. But out of his foul lips something was sent to guide me. He somehow made me see that I might yet have what my soul had hungered and almost died for—a child! I went to St. Michael’s. I meant to take what some other woman had disinherited. I meant to take a man-child, because I felt I could not see another woman endure what I had endured! But God worked a miracle. He drove me aside, He sent"—and here Jo’s eyes fell upon Donelle with a glance of supreme pity and of worship—"He sent this girl to me, I found her in the woods. During the weeks of her sickness, which followed her coming to my house, she revealed—her identity. It was marvellous. I was frightened, but in my soul I knew God was having His way with me. He had sent me the child of the man I had loved, of the woman who had betrayed me! "I went, when I could, to St. Michael’s and got the Sisters’ story, and I found——" Jo paused. Even now she hesitated before delivering her best beloved to the danger she long had feared. Then she remembered Tom Gavot and lifted her eyes. "This girl’s father had been accused of taking the life of his wife. He was bringing his child to me because he knew I would understand. He died before he could reach me. But a man, who, before God, I believe was the guilty one, was after the girl, wanted to get possession of her. For what reason, who can tell? The Sisters saved her. When I took her, I tried to save her by giving her my name. I felt that I was less harmful to her than—than the things the world might say. But I see," poor Jo’s voice quivered, almost broke, "I see I was wrong. How could I prove my belief in the innocence of Henry Langley, though I could stake my soul’s salvation on my belief that he did not kill his wife?" Donelle was slowly rising to her feet. A dazed but brilliant light flooded her eyes, she reached out to Jo as she used to do in those first nights of delirium and fever.