Then Georgie took the blanched hand of the motherless girl, and entreated her. "Do tell me, darling; you must tell me, Lucy. Something is preying on your mind; trust me, do trust me, pet." Not then did Lucy Warrender tell her trouble to her cousin. But that night, unwillingly and ungraciously enough, she told her grief. Pale as a ghost, her fingers intertwined in a convulsive grip, she knelt by her cousin's bed and told her shameful story. She made her pitiful appeal. With dilated eyes, Georgina listened in terror to Lucy's confidence. It was the old tale. Lucy was about to become a mother; this was all she told. Was it not enough? She looked imploringly up at her cousin as she whispered: "You can save me, Georgie, if you will--if you love me, as I know you do; and if you won't, there is nothing left for me but the lake, the cold, cruel lake." Here she laughed hysterically, and nestled to her cousin's breast. The elder girl was struck dumb. The shame of it, the bitter shame of this accursed thing. There was a silence, only broken by the monotonous ticking of the carved Swiss clock and the deep sobs of the kneeling girl. There was a sudden whiz of spinning wheels--"Cuckoo! cuckoo!" screamed the little painted bird derisively, as he appeared for an instant from his tiny box to mark the hour. Both girls started at the inauspicious interruption. "I save you, my darling! How can I save you? And father, poor father. Oh, Lucy! how could you--how could you so deceive us all? But _he_ must be sent for--who is the man? He must marry you--he will marry you, of course, at once, _this gentleman_!" But Lucy only sobbed the more. "He will never marry me, Georgie. You can save me, you alone!" She never named the man. They talked on far into the night; and as they wept and whispered, the painted wooden demon ever and again sprang from his box and startled them with his discordant cry, "Cuckoo! cuckoo!" How could she refuse? Much against her will at last she yielded; she agreed to deceive the absent husband who trusted her--that heartless husband whom she idolized. From that day forward the sound of a cuckoo clock--the voice of the bird himself, as she heard him in the woods--sounded in her ear as the cry of a mocking devil. Little did she dream that, in weakly yielding to her cousin's piteous entreaty, she was sowing the seed of which she and hers should reap the bitter harvest.