"My sister!" he said. "Great God! My sister! And I love her as a man loves his wife!" A new passion, a new force had entered his life now. His longing for revenge was conquered by another feeling, a nobler feeling. Love for Mary Bolitho was stronger than a desire to be revenged on his father. At all hazards she must not suffer. But--but---- No, he could not grasp it. His brain refused to fasten upon the real issues of the case. His thoughts were as elusive as a mist cloud. His brain swam. Everything was real, terribly real, but nothing was real! What could he do? Never, surely, was man placed in such a horrible position. He had thought a few nights before, when he had fought his battle between love for his own mother and the desire to keep disgrace and death from her, and the love for his own life, a life which could be made bright and beautiful, that the great struggle was over. It seemed to him then that he had fought his last battle and had won it. Duty had overcome self-love. But it seemed as nothing compared with the issues which now stared him in the face. "My sister! My sister!" he repeated. "The same father, although not the same mother. Do I love her the less? Does my heart cry out for her one whit the less because we are children of the same father?" No. Why, he could not understand, but she seemed even more to him than ever. The new link which bound them together seemed also, if possible, to strengthen his love and to make him more than ever long for her happiness. "He's your father; you believe that?" said the woman, who had been looking at him as though she would read his very soul. "Yes," he replied. "And she is your sister." "Yes." "Then if your birth is honourable, hers is base," said the mother passionately. Even at that moment the longing to do justice to her son was uppermost in her mind and heart. "I am his true wife; remember that! He married me. I can't be robbed of that, Paul, can I?" He saw what her questions meant, knew the thought that was burning in her brain, realised her mad desire to proclaim her right as a wife and as an honourable mother. Paul Stepaside loved his mother, and never more than then. All those feelings of filial affection which had been aroused in his heart by the remembrance of her sad story were intensified at that moment. Yes, she was his mother, and she must have her rights. But if she had them? That was the question, the supreme question. His desire for revenge had lost its power now. A new motive force was at work, a new set of circumstances clamoured for recognition. Oh, what a muddle life was! Who could explain its mystery? Who could unravel the entanglement? The steps of the warder were heard in the corridor outside, and Paul knew that his mother's visit must come to an end. "What will you do? What will you do?" she asked. "I must wait--I must think," was his reply. "Of course, you have told nothing to anyone else?"