“Murdered not four miles from here, as he was driving on the road, and his body thrown down into a ravine. Some boys found it. Fortunately, everybody thinks it was an accident. The men who brought the news thought so.” She had spoken the words coldly, as if they were commonplaces and had been learnt by rote; but all the passion of her being was flaming in her eyes, which transfixed him with their stare. “Mur-dered!” the young man stammered, feeling his senses reeling. “Albert murdered! Oh-h this must be nonsense! It is too terrible to think of even! You are out of your mind, Isabel!” Her lips quivered: “It would be no wonder if I were, after _this!_” The darkened rooms, the sobbing of his Aunt upstairs, the sounds of anguish that he knew now had partially awakened him, the crazed demeanor of Isabel--all these rose around him, like a black fog, to choke and confound his mind. Her fixed gaze burned him. “Tell me what you know!” he cried, wildly. “Wouldn’t it be easier to tell me what _you_ know?” The chilling tone of the words startled him, as might a sudden contact of warm flesh with ice, before his bewildered brain had grasped their meaning. Then, like the crimson, all-pervading outburst of a conflagration, the thing dawned upon him, and his thoughts seemed blood-red in its hideous light. He pushed her from him fiercely, returning her piteous look of fright with a glare, and biting his tongue for words that should be great enough to fairly overwhelm her. As she cowered, he strode toward her: “You thought I did it!” he shouted at her. Her only answer was to bury her face in her hands, and sink weakly at his knees. He stood relentlessly glowering down upon her. The bitter, brutal words that might be heaped upon her, nay, that ought to be, crowded upon his tongue. It was too great a task to restrain them, to keep silence. “_You_ thought _I_ did it,” he repeated. “And you didn’t object--you didn’t shrink from me! Why, I remember--my God!--you kissed my hand! You said: ‘it was done for me! ’ Oh-h!” The woman at his feet, her face hidden, had been sobbing violently. She lifted her eyes now, and strove appealingly to conquer him with their power. She rose, unaided, to her feet, and confronted him. Terror and tenderness visibly struggled for the mastery of her facial expression, as for the mood behind it. “Don’t, Seth, don’t! Can’t you see how I am suffering? Have you no pity? How _can_ you have the heart to speak to me like this?” “_You_ talk about pity--about hearts!” “How long ago was it that they were on your tongue--that you had your arms stretched open for me?” “Don’t recall it!”