"I knew it must come," she said. "Now, let me try to think what I must do. I meet now that which I have dreaded so long. Oh, Lance! my love, Lance! my love, Lance! You will not tell him?" she cried, turning to me with impassioned appeal. "You will not!--you could not break his heart and mine!--you could not kill me! Oh, for Heaven's sake, say you will not tell him?" Then I found her on her knees at my feet, sobbing passionate cries--I must not tell him, it would kill him, She must go away, if I said she must; she would go from the heart and the home where she had nestled in safety so long; she would die; she would do anything, if only I would not tell him. He had loved and trusted her so--she loved him so dearly. I must not tell. If I liked, she would go to the river and throw herself in. She would give her life freely, gladly--if only I would not tell him. So I sat holding, as it were, the passionate, aching heart in my hand. "You must calm yourself," I said. "Let us talk reasonably. We cannot talk while you are like this." She beat her white hands together, and I could not still her cries; they were all for "Lance!"--"her love, Lance!" CHAPTER XI. "You must listen to me," I said; "I want you to see how truly this is the work of Providence, and not of mere chance." I told her how I often had been attracted to the pier; I told her all that was said by the crowd around; of the man who carried the little dead child to the work-house; of the tiny little body that lay in its white dress in the bare, large, desolate room, and of the flowers that the kindly matron had covered it with. I told her how I had taken compassion on the forlorn little creature, had purchased its grave, and of the white stone with "Marah" upon it. "Marah, found drowned." And then, poor soul--poor, hapless soul, she clung to my hands and covered them with kisses and tears. "Did you--did you do that?" she moaned. "How good you are, but you will not tell him. I was mad when I did that, mad as women often are, with sorrow, shame and despair. I will suffer anything if you will only promise not to tell Lance." "Do you think it is fair," I asked, "that he should be so cruelly deceived?--that he should lavish the whole love of his heart upon a murderess?" I shall not forget her. She sprang from the ground where she had been kneeling and stood erect before me. "No, thank Heaven! I am not that," she said; "I am everything else that is base and vile, but not that." "You were that, indeed," I replied. "The child you flung into the sea was living, not dead." "It was not living," she cried--"it was dead an hour before I reached there." "The doctors said--for there was an inquest on the tiny body--they said the child had been drugged before it was drowned, but that it had died from drowning."