"Ah! Now comes the most painful part of the story. I asked her if she were truly guilty, but she refused to answer. And I knew in my heart that she was innocent. I saw a look in her eyes which asked how I--her own son--could dare to doubt her innocence. But not a word did she say." "And you--what did you say?" "I told her--still in the character of a relative--that I did not believe she killed Jenner--for by that name I spoke of him--and I declared that I intended to devote my life to proving her innocence, and that I was about to re-open the case." "What happened then?" asked Geoffrey, seeing, from the growing agitation of the young man, that he was coming to the crisis of his painful tale. "She became angry, and was violently moved. After glancing at the door, she abandoned the attitude she had taken up, of treating me as a stranger, and forbade me to re-open the case; she commanded me to leave things as they were. I refused I swore that I would set her free. In a low voice she implored me to let the matter rest; again I refused, and in spite of all that she could say, I held to my purpose. By this time, as you will understand, we had abandoned our masks. At last she clapped her hands, and said that there was no help for it." "No help for what?" "I am about to tell you. She caught me by the hand, and bent forward to speak in a whisper; and these are her very words: 'Do nothing; I suffer for your sake.'" "Great Heavens! Do you mean to say that she hinted that it was you who killed him?" "She did more than hint. She said that I did. She told me that on that night she had gone away to get some money for my father; that while she was in another part of the house she heard a cry, and came back to the room to find me there standing beside the dead body of my father--the knife still in my hand. She was certain that I had done it, for earlier in the evening I had rushed at him with the same knife. Seeing that my hatred for him was in part her work, she determined to save me, and rushed away into the night and the mist with me in her arms. She was taken, and accused of the crime; for my sake, she held her tongue and suffered. No one knows this--not even Mr. Cass, to whom she gave me that I might be brought up by a good man. All this she told me in a low, hurried voice. Then she bade me leave matters as they were, or her curse would be upon me! I promised to do nothing-she made me promise--then I left her. Since then--oh, what a life mine has been!" and he flung himself on the sofa to bury his face in the cushions. Heron pitied him sincerely. "Are you sure that this is true?" he asked. "For it seems to me that if you had really been guilty of killing your father, you would have remembered something about it."