“Tell me what you mean? You have said strange things to me, mother. You have talked of ruin, and innocence, and money paid for silence, and as your daughter I have a right to know what you mean. And you must tell me, too, before I look on Queenie’s face again. What is it, mother? What was the secret between you and Mr. Hetherton? What have you done, which you would hide from me? Speak, and I will forgive you, even if it brings disgrace to me. If you do not tell, and suffer me to live on with these horrid suspicions torturing me to madness, I can never touch your hand again in love, or think of you as I have done.” She had risen from her chair, and stood with folded arms looking down upon the wretched woman, who moaned: “Do not, Margie, do not drive me to tell, for the telling will involve so much—so much! Some will be disgraced and others benefited; do not make me tell, please do not.” She stretched her arms toward Margery, who stood immovable as a rock, and said, with a hard ring in her voice: “Disgrace to me, I suppose. Well, I can bear that better than suspense and uncertainty.” “No, Margie, not disgrace to you, thank Heaven! not disgrace to you in the way you think,” Mrs. La Rue cried. And with this horrid fear lifted from her mind, Margery came nearer to her mother, and said: “If there is no disgrace for me, then tell me at once what it is. I shall never leave this room till I know.” “Then listen.” And raising herself erect in her chair, while the blood came surging back to her face, and her eyes flashed with the fire of a maniac, Mrs. La Rue continued: “Listen; but sit down first. The story is long, and you will need all your strength before it is through. Sit down,” and she pointed to a chair, into which Margery sank mechanically, while a strange, prickling sensation ran through her frame, and she felt a sickening dread of what she was to hear. “I am ready,” she said; but her voice was the fainter now of the two, for her mother’s was calm and steady as she commenced the story, which she told in all its details, beginning at the day when she first saw Mr. Hetherton’s advertisement for a waiting-maid for his wife. For a time the story was pleasant enough to listen to, for Mrs. La Rue dwelt at length upon the goodness and sweetness of her mistress, who trusted her so implicitly; but at last there came a change, and Margery’s eyes grew dark with horror and pain, and her cheek paled, as she listened to a tale which curdled the blood in her veins and seemed turning her into stone.