My lady rose from the floor, haggard and gaunt, and passed her long fingers through her hair. The selfish cruelty of him for whose sake she had gone through the torture was better for her than kindness would have been. A little sympathy and she would have become hysterical. Like a sharp fillip, it strung her nerves. That from which she had shrunk so long was here in all its accumulated fulness. Well! it was part of a penance; so much was past that the remainder could matter little. 'Not so,' she said mournfully; and Shane, clinging to a reed, returned to his seat and drew her towards him. 'The secret may rest where it is,' she continued, placing a loving hand upon his head. 'No one living knows of it save you and I and--and that woman. If she meant to speak, she would have spoken long since. It may come out some day, and Terence will claim what the law will call his own, and possibly revenge himself on you for having kept him unwittingly from its enjoyment. But you shall not be brought to beggary. Alas! my deary, you are unfitted to battle with the world. Two things must be done--and done at once--betide afterwards what may. You must marry Doreen. She is an heiress, and the only one available. Your own mode of life has kept others from your path, though you might have chosen among hundreds. Her father would be glad, I know, and she is too much broken by recent afflictions to offer resistance when strong pressure is brought to bear on her.' 'Government has offered me forty-five thousand pounds for my vote and influence in the coming contest,' Lord Glandore observed presently, with a sinister smile. 'It is imminent. If Croppy can only be kept in the dark till then!'