He paused and looked at her gravely, but she looked back at him fixedly without reply, and he added sadly enough: “Alas! the motive was known to one who loved your mother--her secret lover, the partner in her frailty--but who, though doubting not her guilt, because she had hinted to him a desire for her husband’s death, was too loyal to betray her, and so by his silence saved her life and her honor. For no one had suspected the secret liaison that prompted her to the commission of murder.” He paused, expecting and dreading a terrible outburst, but for a moment she did not speak, only stared before her like one in a trance of horror, her face dead-white, her eyes wild. “Miss Vale!” he cried out, in alarm at her strange looks. She started, shivered, and looked at him, gasping out: “Oh, this is infamous! infamous!” “I am grieved that I had to reveal it to you and destroy your loyal faith in your mother’s goodness,” he replied very sadly. Instantly her eyes flashed with keen displeasure. “Do not think that you have destroyed my faith in her; no, no, you could never do that,” she exclaimed proudly. “No, Mr. Gardner, you have but added another score to the long list of wrongs I have to avenge in my mother’s sacred name. But this man who pretended to be her lover--his name?” “I cannot tell you, Miss Vale.” “Do you know it?” “I do not.” “Then who can tell the traitor’s name?” “No living person, Miss Vale, for the only man who knew the name and the story is believed to be dead.” “Francis Murray?” “Yes.” There came back to her mind the hints Francis Murray had dropped that day in the garden when they had talked of this subject. This was what he had meant. A sudden flush rose over her face, bathing it in a burning tide of shame. So _he_ had believed this horrible slander of her angel mother? She buried her face in her hands for a moment, and he thought it was a mute acknowledgement of her terrible defeat. He began to murmur some words of heartfelt sympathy. She dropped her hands and looked up at him. “You think I have pulled down my colors, that I own myself defeated,” she said curtly. “No, you are mistaken. Mr. Murray believed what he told you, of course, but--where is that man whose silence saved my mother? Why has he never been near her all these years?” “Her crime inspired him with such horror that he refused her plea that he would marry her, and left her to her fate.” Oh, the exquisite scorn of those curled lips, those flashing eyes! “The dastard!” she hissed bitterly, and cried: “He lied, basely lied, and I will yet bring home to him all the infamous slanders that have tracked my mother’s pathway since the hour my father died. Why, it is he, and no other, who murdered my father and followed my mother’s life with such hellish malignity. Oh, God! but to stand at the foot of the gallows-tree and see him swing!” She choked with emotion, and hot tears sprang from her eyes, blinding their fierce glitter.