"It _is_ Joel McPherson, Lady Vera, at your service," he answers, in honest, hearty tones. "I am glad you remembered me, my lady. I knew you again instantly although you look prettier and happier than you did that morning when your father took you away from Glenwood." "Oh, then, you can tell me all about that dreadful night," she cries, repressing the shudder that always steals over her at the thought of her living entombment. "Yes, my lady, that is why I came to England with Mr. Sharpe," he answers, respectfully. "I told your father that day that it was wrong to keep the story of your burial from you. He answered me that he meant to tell you all some day when you grew well and strong again." "Poor father! He was too tender-hearted to keep that promise," Lady Vera murmurs, dropping into a chair, and hiding her tearful face in her hands. "You wish to hear how you came to be rescued from your living grave, dear Lady Vera?" says the baronet, anxious to distract her mournful thoughts from her dead father. "Yes, oh, yes," she murmurs, lifting her head, and looking at Mr. McPherson's grave, kindly face. "You will tell me, will you not, sir?" "You see it was this way, my lady. On the evening of the day that you were buried, your father went to Mrs. Cleveland's to seek his wife and child. She told him cruelly to seek you both in your graves at Glenwood. He could scarcely believe it. It seemed too horrible to believe, and in the horror with which his enemy's words inspired him, he fell down like one dead at her feet. He came to himself lying out on the pavement with the wild rain and wind beating into his uncovered face. She had cast him out into the street to die like the veriest wretch, unfriended and alone." "Heartless!" Sir Harry Clive utters, indignantly, while Lady Vera's choking sobs attest the strain upon his feelings. "Then he came to me," continued Joel McPherson, his kind eyes moist at the remembrance of the earl's despair. "I could only confirm Mrs. Cleveland's story. Both his wife and child were dead. Then a longing came over him to look at the face of the dead wife. He had wronged her living, he said, and he could not rest until he saw her face again. He offered me gold to open the grave, but it was not the bribe, it was the misery on his face that made me yield to his wish." He pauses, drawing a long breath, and wiping the moisture from his eyes, waits for Lady Vera to grow calmer. The sound of her suppressed sobbing fills the room. Sir Harry touches her arm gently. "This is too much for you," he says kindly. "Shall we defer the story's conclusion until you are better, my dear?" "No, I will be calm," she answers, repressing with an effort the sobs that rise at these reminiscences of the past; "I will not disturb you again. Go on with your story, Mr. McPherson."