“Dearest, you talk wildly. Percy Seabright loved your father too well to harm him! Yet, I confess these suspicions came to me. But they were baseless. He was in New York that night, and--he reached home--only in time for the funeral. He fainted over the coffin, and was ill afterward for days. But he behaved generously after that. He combatted the world’s verdict that I was guilty. He advanced and clung to the theory that Ronald committed suicide. He rejoiced when I was cleared, and offered me his friendship in that winning way so few can resist. I think he was sorry for me, sympathized with me in our common sorrow over a loved one’s death. But--my nature is not a forgiving one--I could not forget nor forgive his former enmity. I turned my back on him, coldly declined his friendship, and--have never seen him since.” “And you do not believe that he is your enemy still?” “No, dear, not in the face of his proffered friendship and his seemingly sincere repentance. Doubtless he believed all that he charged against me, but why should he war with me further--a woman whose heart was broken!” “And you cannot learn to tolerate him, mama?” “No, Italy, every instinct of my nature is in revolt against this man despite his repentance. I hope never to gaze on his false, smiling face again.” Italy kissed her tenderly, without replying. She was thinking of that Mephistophelian smile she had sometimes caught on Percy Seabright’s lips. It had always revolted her, and suddenly it came to her that a man with so evil a smile might be capable of any wickedness. She went to the window again and looked out at the snowy street and the passing sleighs with her head in a whirl. “I wish I had known all this before,” she thought. “It puts a new face on everything. What if--what if this man is a fiend in disguise! Oh, how my head whirls! Francis Murray, I remember he tried to lay the crime on you! Let me think, let me think! Oh, what a flood of suspicions crowd upon me! Is this man, this Percy Seabright, who loved my father so dearly, a saint or a fiend? I _must_ know; I will watch him, I will try to trap him. Dear Heaven, help me, I implore!” She heard her mother’s passionate sobs from the sofa, where she crouched in an agony of reawakened recollection, and her heart grew hard as stone toward Percy Seabright. “Liar!” she breathed hoarsely. “Perhaps it was from you that Francis Murray heard that dark and blighting story of my mother’s dishonor--that falsehood that should have seared the lips that breathed it. Ah, at last I have a clue! I must follow it warily, and perhaps it may lead to the awful truth! If only Francis Murray were here, I believe he would help me now! Shall I tell Mr. Gardner what is in my mind? No, not yet, for he is as blind as my mother, who believes in Percy Seabright’s honesty of purpose in spite of her dislike of him. The path is dark, dark, but I must venture on it a little way alone. Oh, for a guiding hand in this black darkness!”