Constance went upon her mission heavy-hearted; and in the hovel across the river found comfort in the giving of comfort. The David children were all little ones, too young to fully realize their loss; and when they had been fed and hushed to sleep, and one of David's fellow workmen had taken the husband away for the night, Constance sat down in the room with the dead to wait for Margaret. For a heart less pitiful or a soul less steadfast, the silence of the night and the solitary watch with the sheeted figure on the bed might have been unnerving; but in all her life Constance had never had to reckon with fear. Hence, when the door opened behind her without a preliminary knock, and a footstep crossed the threshold, she thought it was one of the neighbors and rose softly with her finger on her lip. But when she saw who it was, she started back and made as if she would retreat to the room where the children were. "You!" she said. "Why are you here?" "I beg your pardon." Jeffard said it deferentially, almost humbly. "I didn't expect to find you here; I was looking for--for the man, you know. What has become of him?" The hesitant pause in the midst of the explanation opened the door for a swift suspicion,--a suspicion too horrible to be entertained, and yet too strong to be driven forth. There was righteous indignation in her eyes when she went close to him and said:-- "Can you stand here in the presence of that"--pointing to the sheeted figure on the bed--"and lie to me? You expected to meet Margaret Gannon here. You have made an appointment with her--an assignation in the house of the dead. Shame on you!" It should have crushed him. It did for the moment. And when he rallied it was apparently in a spirit of the sheerest hardihood. "You are right," he said; "I did expect to meet Margaret. With your permission, I'll go outside and wait for her." She flashed between him and the door and put her back to it. "Not until you have heard what I have to say, Mr. Jeffard. I've been wanting to say it ever since Tommie told me, but you have been very careful not to give me a chance. You know this girl's story, and what she has had to fight from day to day. Are you so lost to every sense of justice and mercy as to try to drag her back into sin and shame after all her pitiful strugglings?" "It would seem so," Jeffard retorted, and his smile was harder than his words. "It is quite conceivable that you should believe it of the man who once took your charity and made a mock of it. May I go now?" "Oh, no, not yet; not until you have promised me to spare and slay not, for this once. Think of it a moment; it is the price of a human soul! And it is such a little thing for you to concede." The hard smile came and went again. "Another man might say that Margaret has come to be very beautiful, Miss Elliott." The indignation was gone out of her eyes, and her lips were trembling. "Oh, how can you be so hard!" she faltered. "Will nothing move you?"