"Oh, no, a thousand times!" she cried. "Oh, believe me, I did not wilfully murder my own child--I did not, indeed! Let me tell you. You are a just and merciful man, John Ford; let me tell you--you must hear my story; you shall give me my sentence--I will leave it in your hands. I will tell you all." "You had better tell Lance, not me," I cried. "What can I do?" "No; you listen; you judge. It may be that when you have heard all, you will take pity on me; you may spare me--you may say to yourself that I have been more sinned against than sinning--you may think that I have suffered enough, and that I may live out the rest of my life with Lance. Let me tell you, and you shall judge me." She fell over on her knees again, rocking backwards and forwards. "Ah, why," she cried--"why is the world so unfair?--why, when there is sin and sorrow, why does the punishment fall all on the woman, and the man go free? I am here in disgrace and humiliation, in shame and sorrow--in fear of losing my home, my husband, it may even be my life--while he, who was a thousand times more guilty than I was, is welcomed, flattered, courted! It is cruel and unjust. "I have told you," she said, "how hard my childhood was, how lonely and desolate and miserable I was with my girl's heart full of love and no one to love. "When I was eighteen I went to live with a very wealthy family in London, the name--I will not hide one detail from you--the name was Cleveland; they had one little girl, and I was her governess. I went with them to their place in the country, and there a visitor came to them, a handsome young nobleman, Lord Dacius by name. "It was a beautiful sunlit county. I had little to do, plenty of leisure, and he could do as he would with his time. We had met and had fallen in love with each other. I did not love him, I idolized him; remember in your judgment that no one had ever loved me. No one had ever kissed my face and said kind words to me; and I, oh! wretched, miserable me, I was in Heaven. To be loved for the first time, and by one so handsome, so charming, so fascinating! A few weeks passed like a dream. I met him in the early morning, I met him in the gloaming. He swore a hundred times each day that he would marry me when he came of age. We must wait until then. I never dreamed of harm or wrong, I believed in him implicitly, as I loved him. I believe every word that came from his lips. May Heaven spare me! I need tell you no more. A girl of eighteen madly, passionately in love; a girl as ignorant as any girl could be, and a handsome, experienced man of the world. "There was no hope, no chance. I fell; yet almost without knowing how I had fallen. You will spare me the rest, I know.