“You don’t understand,” he groaned. “You can’t.” “Oh! but I do. That old man told you to-day that we were poor, disreputable. I tell you that Sir Gaspard found us starving, and he gave us a chance; a chance to start fair, to pay our debts, to have enough to eat and to wear! And then he died, and it was gone from us--like that!” with a little flick of her exquisite hand. “You need not threaten my mother; we shall be out of your way soon enough.” “Ismay!” he cried, involuntarily, “I could not know she was your mother. What are you going to do?” She took no heed of his words. “Shall you tell Cristiane all you know? Or if I ask you”--there was sudden passion in her even voice, sudden fire in her strange eyes--“will you let us go from here as we came, just the decent, poor relations that her innocent soul thinks us? She will know evil soon enough. Will you tell her it is in her very house?” “I will tell her--nothing,” he answered slowly. “God forbid that I, who promised to be your friend, should say the first word against your mother.” Months afterward he knew that nothing on earth should have kept him from speaking out. Yet to what good? The will was hard and fast; nothing could be done to break it. He turned away from the pleading eyes as if he dared not look in them. It was not till he was out in the frosty air that he remembered he had never even asked after Cristiane le Marchant. CHAPTER XIII. HER HOUR OF TRIUMPH. The solemn memorial service in the parish church for Gaspard le Marchant was over. Mr. Bolton had come away from it a puzzled man. Helen Trelane and her daughter had sat facing him while the rector read, and there was no triumph on either of their faces; only a strained something that might have been despair. Could he have been too hasty? Did Helen Trelane know nothing of that will, whose distasteful pages he must presently read aloud? Cristiane puzzled him, too. Why had she not had her father’s body brought home to rest in peace with his kith and kin? Under her black veil he saw that she sobbed pitifully, and saw, too, that her hand throughout the service was fast in Ismay Trelane’s. Could he have wronged them, mother and daughter? The old man coughed irritably as he sat in the library at Marchant’s Hold, where Sir Gaspard had written that fateful letter to Helen Trelane. Miles Cylmer, who sat there, too, as Sir Gaspard’s old friend had a right, rose suddenly and aroused the old lawyer from his thoughts. The library door was opening; the hour had come for Cristiane le Marchant; from now, good or bad, gentlewoman or adventuress, Helen Trelane held her fate to mold at her will.