No sooner had she arrived at this than she shrank from the idea with horror. What could she have been thinking! To go to Sir Gordon was to denounce her husband as a criminal, and the result would be to send him back to the prison lines and the hideous convict life that had changed him from a man of refinement to a brutal sensualist, from whom in future she felt that she must shrink with horror. Those last thoughts distracted her. Shrink with horror from him whom she had so dearly loved, from him whom she had believed a martyr to a terribly involved chain of evidence! It was too terrible! But what was she to do? She could not lead this life of luxury, purchased by the money she had so innocently brought; that was certain. She and Julia must leave there at once. They could not stay. She shivered as she thought of the difficulties that would rise up. For where were they? Out here, in this half-civilised place, penniless; and what defence had she to bring forward if Robert Hallam, her husband and master, said no, she should stay, and claimed her and her child as his? There was light again. She could appeal to the governor, for Hallam had forfeited his social rights, and she would be free. Down came the darkness and shut out that light, closing her in with a blackness so terrible that she shuddered. It was impossible--impossible! "He is my husband," she moaned, "and were he ten times the sinner, I could not take a step that would injure the man I loved--the father of my child!" Christie Bayle! Yes; Christie Bayle, truest and most faithful of friends, who in the days of his boyish love had resigned himself to her wishes, and promised to be her brother through life. How good he had been; and how she had in her agony of spirit reviled him, and called him her husband's enemy! How his conduct seemed to stand out now, bright and shining! How full of patient self-denial! Brother, indeed, through all, while she had been--she knew it now, and shivered in her agony--so obstinately blind. Christie Bayle would help her and protect Julia, whom he loved as if she were his child. He would--yes, she reiterated the thought with a strange feeling of joy--he would help her, as he had helped her before, in this time of anguish, and protect Julia from that man. For now came, in all its solid horror, the reality of that which had only been cast, so far, as a shadow across her path. This man, Crellock, who had seemed like Hallam's evil genius from the first, but whom she saw now as her husband's willing tool, had conceived a passion for her darling child. More--he was her husband's chosen companion in pleasure and in guilt, and Hallam would--if he had not done so already--accept him.