"You have served a long term of imprisonment--your life has been broken and spoilt and ruined," went on the man at the table, setting my guardian aside. "Naturally you hate those who have drawn you into that; naturally your mind is filled with the desire to get even with them--to settle that old account." "I don't understand," I murmured, looking from one to the other. Jervis Fanshawe seized my arm, and shook me fiercely. "Years ago you suffered, like a fool, for the sake of a woman; she cared nothing for you, and married another man. Do you remember that?" "Yes. Her name was Barbara," I replied slowly. Fanshawe turned to the stranger. "You see he remembers something," he said. Then he turned again impatiently to me. "I have already told you that a new Barbara has sprung up in her place--a child--a girl." Glancing at the face of the stranger at the table, I decided to hide my knowledge of what I had seen; I said nothing. Perhaps here I was to be shown the way to do what was in my mind; perhaps I was to be helped, as I had never expected to be helped at all. "You understand, Avaline," went on the stranger, in his deadly voice, "that I take an interest in this new Barbara, who is like the Barbara you so mistakenly loved twenty years ago. In other words, for her own sake it is necessary that I should see much of her--communicate with her often. That is difficult without a third person, because the lady herself is a little obdurate. Do you follow me?" "Yes," I replied, looking at him for a moment, and then turning to my guardian. "I begin to understand." "So that if I can introduce to her some one she does not know--some one who is bound, by reasons of policy, to do what he is told, without thought of the consequences--I am a gainer," went on the man at the table. "You have reason to hate a girl, so unfortunately formed in the image of the woman who deceived you, and brought disaster upon you; you have reason to be loyal to me, because I can keep you from starving, and can give you clothes and shelter. You're a poor broken worn-out thing, and I take pity on you. Now do you understand the situation?" I understood it so well that my mind, for the first time since I had stepped out from the prison gates, was clear, and I was fully alive. I looked eagerly from one to the other; I told the man brokenly that I would do all he asked; I think I suggested that I would be his slave. He might tell me to do anything; I was eager to take up that old story that I had been compelled to lay down. "For your revenge?" he asked, with a grin. "For my revenge!" I said; and burst into a shout of laughter. "Don't take any notice of him," I heard my guardian whisper. "The poor fool is only half-witted; his years of prison life have told upon him. But he's the man you want!" CHAPTER III I ENTER UPON SERVITUDE