"What have you done?" she cried indignantly, her emotion begetting a kind of unreason, and making her bitter in her words. "What have I done in my misery and misfortune that you should take advantage of my position? That man to-night has told me all." "I hardly understand you," he said gravely. "Not understand? He has told me that when that terrible trouble came upon me, it did not come singly, and that I was left penniless to battle with the world. Is this true?" Bayle refrained for a few moments before answering. "Is this wise?" he said at last. "For your own sake--for the sake of Julie, you have need of all your fortitude to bear up against a painful series of farewells. Why trouble about this trifle now?" "Trifle!" she cried angrily. "Stop! Let me think." She stood with her hands pressed to her forehead, as if struggling to drag something from the past--from out of the mist and turmoil of those terrible days and nights, when her brain seemed to have been on fire, and she lay almost at the point of death. "Yes," she cried, as if a flash had suddenly illumined her brain, "I see now. I know. Tell me: is what that man said true?" He was slow to answer, but at last the words came, uttered sadly, and in a low voice: "If he told you that at that terrible time you were left in distress, it is true." "I knew it," she said, passionately. "Now tell me this--I will know. When my poor husband lay there helpless--in prison--yes, it all comes back clearly now--my illness seems to have covered it as with a mist, but I remember that there was powerful counsel engaged for his defence, and great efforts were made to save him. Who did this? I have kept it hidden away, not daring to drag these matters out into the light of the present, but I must know now. Who did this?" He did not answer. "Your silence convicts you," she cried, angrily. "It was you." "Yes," he said, quietly, "it was I." "Then we were left penniless, and it is to you we owe everything--for all these years?" Again he was silent. "Answer me," she cried imperiously. "Did I not acknowledge it before," he said calmly. "Mrs Hallam, have I committed so grave a social crime, that you speak to me like this?" "It was cruel--to me--to my child," she cried, indignantly. "You have kept us in a false position all these years. Man, can you not understand the degradation and shame I felt when I was enlightened here only an hour ago?" He stood there silent again for a few moments, before speaking; and then took her hand. "If I have done wrong," he said, "forgive me. When that blow fell, and in your position, all the past seemed to come back--that day when in my boyish vanity I--" "Oh! hush!" she cried.