But soon the present returned. Justine still was weeping; he no longer saw her tears, he heard them. Surely she would forgive again. It could not be that everything had gone for naught. He would speak to her, plead if need were, and in the end she would yield. She must do that, he told himself, and he groped after some falsity that should palliate the offence. He would tell her that he had been drinking again; he would deny his own words, or, if necessary, he would insist she had not heard them aright. Indeed, there was nothing that might have weight with her which he was not ready and anxious to affirm. If she would but begin, if in some splendor of indignation such as he had beheld before she would rise up and upbraid him, his task would be diminished by half. Anything, indeed, would be better than this, and nothing could be worse; it was not Justine alone that the tears were carrying from him, it was the Dunellen millions as well. Oh, abysses of the human heart! As he queried with himself, at the very moment he was experiencing his first remorse, the old self returned, and it was less of the injury he had inflicted that he thought than of the counter-effect that injury might have on him. In the attempt to throttle the child he had been balked, yet of that attempt he believed Justine to be suspicionless. Other opportunities he would have in plenty; and even were it otherwise, the child was weakly, and croup might do its work. With the future for which he had striven, there, in the very palm of his hand, how was it possible that he should have made this misstep? But he could retrieve it, he told himself; he was a good actor, it was not too late. For a little while yet he could still support the mask, and, recalling the sentimental reveries of a moment before, the forerunner of a sneer came and loitered beneath the fringes of his mustache. "Justine!" He moved a step or two to where she lay. "Justine--" His voice was very low and penitent, but at the sound of it she seemed to shrink. "Could she _know_?" he wondered. Then immediately, through the scantness of the apartment, he heard the outer bell resound. Enervated as he was, the interruption affected him like a barb. There was some one there whom he could vent his irritation on. He hurried to the hall, but a servant had preceded him. The door was open, and on the threshold Thorold stood. Mistrial nodded--the nod of one who is about to throw his coat aside and roll his shirt-sleeves up. "Is it for your bill you come?" he asked. Thorold hesitated, and his face grew very black. He affected, however, to ignore the taunt. He turned to the servant that still was waiting there. "Is my cousin at home?" he asked. "She is," Mistrial announced, "but not to you." "In that case," Thorold answered, "I must speak to someone in her stead." Mistrial made a gesture, and the servant withdrew.