Lady Lochore suffered herself to be led to her room; to be unclothed and assisted into the great four-post bed. Margery’s presence, her touch, was agony to her, and yet, when she left the room, Lady Lochore could have shrieked after her. But she closed her lips, closed her eyes. At last she was shut in alone with her own conscience. She had never before been afraid, this woman who had been ready to take death as recklessly as she had taken life. After a while, she crawled out of bed and into the adjoining room. Above the throbbing of her pulses and her own gasping respiration she could hear the light breathing from the cot. Noiselessly she parted the curtains and let an opalescent ray of moon in upon the little sleeper. Surely, surely, when she looked upon him for whom she had done it—her boy, whom a fool and a wanton would have conspired to keep out of his rights!—this horrible agony would leave her. She would be proud of her own courage, proud to have been strong enough to act. Crime! What was crime? The crime had been to try and defraud her child! “Ten drops madness!” How many drops could that phial have contained? Madness! Well, he had method enough in his madness to remember the way to his mistress’s arms!... “After that darkness”—the long, long Darkness! Her teeth chattered. What then? It was but retribution if his long sleep came upon him thus! Ah, they had caught the scheming widow red-handed. Red-handed was the word—oh, the hussy’s conscience was not so clear either! Why had she covered him up from their sight? Let her answer for it, she and her poisoning old father! But what was this fantastic water? Surely it was his hideous drug, little as she had had of it, that drove out this clammy sweat upon her, made her heart sink—sink with this awful sickness, filled her brain with those black fleeting shadows that even the child’s warm presence could not conjure away. She closed her eyes, for it was almost as if the unconscious baby-visage added to her terror. But a glare swam before her inner vision, and out of it and in the midst of it, in some horrible fashion, Barnaby’s face with accusing eyes looked forth. What had brought Barnaby in Mrs. Marvel’s room—Barnaby who knew? She put her hands to her throat as if she still felt the clutch of his fingers upon it. The next instant, with a spasm of relief, she had almost called aloud with guilty Macbeth—“Thou canst not say I did it!” Let the deaf and dumb boy point and mouth and gibber, what he had seen he never could bear witness to.... Deaf and dumb—oh rare! She stood beside the cot and gazed with a desperate tenderness upon it. There now slept the lord of Bindon! His fortune was secured, and by her deed. She bent her head to kiss the little chubby hand. But before her lips had reached it she shuddered back:—between her and her child’s hand rose the vision of another hand, pale, limp, with a signet-ring.