To Leonard, listening in that little back room with the gathering twilight and the red fire to the soft, sad voice of the mournful lady, there came again the vision of two women, both in widows’ weeds, in the cottage among the flowers--tree fuchsias, climbing roses, myrtles, and Passion-flowers. All through his childhood they sat together, seldom speaking, pale-faced, sorrowful. He understood now. It was not their husbands for whom they wept; it was for the fate which they imagined to be hanging over the heads of the children. Once he heard his mother say--now the words came back to him--“Thank God! I have but one.” “Leonard,” the old woman was going on, “for fifty years I have been considering and thinking. It means some great crime. The misfortunes began with my father; his life has been wrecked and ruined in punishment for someone else’s crime. His was the first generation; mine was the second. All our lives have been wrecked in punishment for that crime. His was the first generation, I say”--she repeated the words as if to drive them home--“mine was the second; all our lives have been wrecked in punishment for that crime. Then came the third--your father died early, and his brother ran away because he was a forger. Oh! to think of a Campaigne doing such a thing! That was the third generation. You are the fourth--and the curse will be removed. Unto the third and fourth--but not the fifth.” “Yes,” said Leonard. “I believe--I now remember--they thought--at home--something of this kind. But, my dear lady, consider. If misfortune falls upon us in consequence of some great crime committed long ago, and impossible to be repaired or undone, what is there for us but to sit down quietly and to go on with our work?” She shook her head. “It is very well to talk. Wait till the blows begin. If we could find out the crime--but we never can. If we could atone--but we cannot. We are so powerless--oh, my God! so powerless, and yet so innocent!” She rose. Her face was buried in her handkerchief. I think it consoled her to cry over the recollection of her sorrows almost as much as to tell them to her grand-nephew. “I pray daily--day and night--that the hand of wrath may be stayed. Sitting here, I think all day long. I have forgotten how to read, I think----” Leonard glanced at the walls. There were a few books.