"My daughter Cora stole the baby from your wife's breast, and she loved it so that I daren't take it away, lest she should die. So I let her keep it, and when her own child came she wouldn't never have naught to do with it, but clung to the other one, poor, crazy thing! So I thought I would raise them as twins, but when Doctor Jay sent me to get one from the foundling asylum in its place, the devil tempted me to keep your baby because Cora loved it so, and I put my own grandchild in your wife's arms, hoping you wouldn't find out the truth, and that Cora's child would be a great rich lady. My poor girl went stark mad, and they put her in the crazy asylum for life, but I was ashamed of the disgrace. I told every one she had run away again to be an actress. And I kept the baby to work for me till it grew a great girl, with a face like an angel, and a heart like an angel, too, but somehow I always hated her, because I had a bad heart!" "And then your grandchild found out the truth, and came and told you to kill Liane?" cried her accuser. "How did you know that?" she demanded, shrinking in deadly fear. "No matter how. You know it is true." The light of mingled madness and defiance glared out of the woman's eyes. She growled: "Well, I had to do it when she told me. Roma always would have her way, just like Cora, her mother! I said I hated to do it, the girl was such a lamb; so sweet, so gentle; but you cannot take Roma's place from her now, since Liane's dead: though I hated to do it, she was such a little angel." Sophie Nutter burst into violent sobbing, Mr. Clarke's lips twitched nervously so that he could not speak, but Cisneros, with flashing eyes, exclaimed: "So you killed the sweet angel, you fiend from Hades! Well, I hope you will swing for your diabolical crimes! A dozen lives like yours would not pay for one like hers! Come, now, we want to know where you hid her body." She glanced at him resentfully, answering, to his surprise: "They may hang me if they want to! I don't love my life since I killed Liane! I miss her so, sweet lamb, I miss her so! I thought I hated her, and I used her cruelly, but when she was dead, when I saw the blood on her white face, I loved her! I kissed her little cold hand. I told her I was sorry I had done it, and wished I could bring her back to life! She was good to me, little angel, and I hate Roma because she made me kill her! I told her it was not right to kill her, but she hounded me to it! Now she can keep Liane's place at Cliffdene, but I don't want to see her any more. Cruel, wicked Roma, that made me a murderess!" She rocked her body miserably to and fro, maundering hoarsely on, while Sophie's vehement sobbing filled the room as she recalled last night, when she had looked her last on Liane's still, white face, cruelly fooled by the old woman's lies. Mr. Clarke cried, with fierce, despairing anger: "No more of this paltering, woman! Tell us where to find Liane's body!"