“Yes, yes, my little treasure!” cried the poor young mother, pressing the infant to her breast. Then her dark eyes gleamed. “Yes, I must live, live to hunt down Craig’s murderer and bring him to justice!” Italy’s eyes had been wandering helplessly around the room. Suddenly they stopped at a portrait on an easel. Her frame seemed to grow rigid. “It is the face of that monster--and I have lived two months under the same roof with his widow--the woman he was false to--yet who mourns him so truly,” she thought shudderingly. Again Mrs. Mays interposed anxiously: “Isabel, dear, do not talk so wildly! You frighten Miss Vale with your talk of bringing murderers to justice.” “Mama, go away and leave us, please, I want to ask Miss Vale to help me name baby. You know she has never had a name yet,” the sick girl answered more calmly, and with a wan smile. Mrs. Mays, mindful of pressing household duties, retired, and then Mrs. Severn resumed eagerly: “Mama does not care anything about poor Craig because she hates him and believed slanders about him; but they were not true, Miss Vale, indeed they were not true. He loved me devotedly, and I worshiped him. Yes, and I have sworn to bring the murderer to justice.” A faint film seemed to pass before Italy’s eyes. The room seemed to fade, and in its place gleamed a window-pane shattered by a bullet. Behind it shone the white face and lifted, writhing hands of the murderess! She was back in fancy with that fatal night, struggling with the villain who had lured her to that house where he met his sudden death. “Miss Vale,” began Mrs. Severn, and Italy came back to the present with a dreadful start, and looked into the big, solemn black eyes opposite. Their owner was saying: “I have the greatest faith that I shall succeed, for already I have one important clue. You see, my husband was never seen alive after he left Mr. Gardner’s law-office on the evening of the eighteenth of August. But there was a woman mixed up in the mystery, somehow. Mr. Gardner’s office-boy has told me that a beautiful young girl went into the office just before closing-time, and that my husband took her away afterward in a cab. The boy says that he would know the girl’s beautiful face again anywhere. He is watching for that face and will let me know when he sees it again.” CHAPTER XIII. NAMING THE BABY. Italy Vale sat looking at the beautiful, excited young widow with a white face of utter consternation. The words that she had spoken seemed to burn themselves in on her brain in letters of fire. “The boy says that he would know that beautiful face anywhere, and he is watching for it, and will let me know if he sees it again.” It seemed to Italy as if she were walking over a powder-mine that might at any moment explode beneath her feet. Yet she knew that she was not guilty of Craig Severn’s death.