"Pish!" he cried, impatiently. "You don't know what you're saying. Lead a new life--a life of repentance! I have had a fine preparation for it here. Why, I tell you they would turn a saint here into a fiend! I sinned against their laws, and they sent me here, herded with hundreds, some of whom might have been brought to better lives; but it has been one long course of brutal treatment, and the lash. Hope was dead to us all, and we had to drag on our lives in misery and despair. I tell you I've had to do with people who sought to make us demons, and you talk to me now of repentance for the past." "Yes, and you shall repent!" she cried, wildly. "Silence!" he said, fiercely. "You are my wife, and it is your duty to obey. Not a word of this to Julie. I will speak to her; and as to Crellock--oh, I can manage him." He thrust her aside, and strode out of the room without another word, leaving her standing with her hands clasped together, gazing into vacancy, as if stunned by the blow that had fallen--as if the savage acceptance of the truth of the charges by her husband had robbed her of her reason. During her long trial, whenever a shadowy doubt had crept into her sight, she had slain it. Always he had been her martyr, and she had been ready, in fierce resentment, to turn upon those who would have cast the slightest reflection upon his fame. He, the idol of her young life, her first love, had suffered through misfortune, through an ugly turn of fate, and she had gone on waiting for the day when he would be cleared. In that spirit, she had crossed the wide ocean, bearing with her his freedom, as she believed; and now, after fighting a year against the terrible disillusions that had been showing Robert Hallam in his true light, the veil that she had so obstinately held was rent in twain, torn away for ever. By his own confession, the husband of her love was a despicable thief; and as she realised how she had been made his accomplice in bringing over the fruits of his theft, the blow seemed now greater than she could bear, the future one terrible void. VOLUME FOUR, CHAPTER SIX. THE SHADOW ACROSS THE PATH. What to do? How to bear it? How far she--woman of purest thought--had sinned in participating as she had in Hallam's crime? It was as if the shock had blunted and confused her understanding, so that she could not think clearly or make out any plan for her future proceeding. And all the time she was haunted as by a great horror. Now light would come, and she would seem to see her course clearly and wonder that she should have hesitated before. It was all so simple. Sir Gordon was there in Sydney, her oldest friend. He it was who had been the sufferer by her husband's defalcations, and of course it was her duty to go straight to him and tell him all.