"It is not true," cried Rich. "You must speak now. It was to our house you came." "What!" "I remember now. I heard your voice. You were with my father--in the surgery." "Rich," he said, almost savagely, as he caught her wrist, "think of what you are saying!" "Rich dear, don't say that!" cried Janet piteously. "I know what I am saying," she said excitedly; and though her face was calm, it was evident that she was suffering terribly. "No, no," he cried; "no, dear, you are wrong." "No, Mark, I am right: you told us you took refuge with a friend--that friend was my father." "What! Rich, do you know what you are saying--do you know what this means if the police should hear?" "Yes," she cried; "the clearing up of a terrible mystery; perhaps the restoration of all that you have lost." "Janet, is she mad?" cried Mark. "Do you not see what all this means?" Janet shook her head with a helpless look on her face. "Then I will tell you," he thundered: "it means ruin--misery to us all. Girl, for pity's sake, be silent! Rich, dear Rich, I love you with a man's first strong love. Have I not slaved for you all these years, to win you for my own true wife? Don't--don't raise this up between us. What is poverty to such a shadow as this?" "I do not understand you," she cried; "but it is true. You did come to my father's house that night." He gazed at her in blank despair. "Why do you look at me like that? Do you not see the light?" "The light!" he cried, with a bitter laugh. "I see you--the woman I love--trying to force me into a position which I would sooner die than hold. Hush, for mercy's sake! No, no, no!" he muttered; and then aloud, "Call it a lie, or a desperate man's last cry for help. I did not come to your father's house that night." Rich gazed at him in blank astonishment for the moment, and then she flung her arms about his neck, and with her eyes close to his, she cried. "What are you thinking--that it was my father who drugged and robbed you, or my brother? Oh, Mark?" She seemed to throw him off as she stepped back, her pale face flushing, and a look of indignant anger in her eyes. "What does this mean?" cried Janet; but her words fell unheeded. "Shame on you! You are silent. How could you think this thing?" "Heaven help me!" groaned Mark. "And I fought so hard!" By a sudden revulsion of feeling, Rich turned to him again, and with her sweet rich voice, fall of the agony of her heart, she caught his hands. "How could you think it of him, Mark! My poor gentle-hearted father! Do you not see? Did you not tell us that you were hunted from place to place by those men?" "Rich, my darling," groaned Mark, as he strained her to his breast, "do you not see that you are digging a gulf between us, and that you will soon be standing on the other side, shrinking from me in abhorrence as the man who has brought this charge against your father? And God knows how I have striven to bear all in silence!" "But, Mark--"