Helen sank back upon her chair, perfectly helpless. This thing was too much for her to grasp. She looked up at the woman who had spoken these marvelous words, half frightened, altogether bewildered. "You are Sir Allan Beaumerville's wife," she repeated slowly. "I do not understand; I never knew that he was married. And Bernard Maddison his son!" Helen sat quite still for a moment. Then light began to stream in upon her darkened understanding. Suddenly she sprang to her feet. "Who was it? then, who killed--Oh, my God, I see it all now. It was----" She ceased, and looked at her visitor with blanched cheeks. A low, tremulous cry of horror broke from Lady Beaumerville's white lips. Her calmness seemed gone. She was trembling from head to foot. "God help him! it was my husband who killed Sir Geoffrey Kynaston," she cried; "and the sin is on my head." Helen was scarcely less agitated. She caught hold of the edge of the table to steady herself. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance. "Sir Allan! I do not understand. Why did he do that horrible thing?" "Sir Geoffrey Kynaston and my husband were mortal enemies," answered Lady Beaumerville, her voice scarcely raised above a whisper. "Mine was the fault, mine the guilt. Alas! alas!" The stately head with its wealth of silvery white hair was buried in her hands. Her attitude, the agony which quivered in her tone dying away in her final expression of despair like chords of wild, sad music, and above all her likeness to the man she loved, appealed irresistibly to Helen. A great pity filled her heart. She passed her arm round Lady Beaumerville, and drew her on to the sofa. There were no words between them then. Only, after a while, Helen asked quietly: "Sir Allan--must he confess?" "It is already done," her visitor answered. "To-morrow the world will know his guilt and my shame. Ah," she cried, her voice suddenly changing, "I had forgotten. Turn your face away from me, Helen Thurwell, and listen." In the silence of the half-darkened chamber she told her story--told it in the low, humbled tone of saintly penitence, rising sometimes into passion and at others falling into an agonized whisper. She spoke of her girlhood, of the falsehood by which she had been cheated into a loveless marriage, and the utter misery which it had brought. Then she told her of her sin, committed in a moment of madness after her husband's brutal treatment, and so soon repented of. Lightly she touched upon her many years of solitary penance, her whole lifetime dedicated willingly and earnestly to the expiation of that dark stain, and of the coming to her quiet home of the awful news of Sir Geoffrey's murder. In her old age her sin had risen up against her, remorseless and unsatiated. Almost she had counted herself forgiven. Almost she had dared to hope that she might die in peace. But sin is everlasting, its punishment eternal.