“God knows I hate to wound you, Miss Vale, but unless I tell you the truth you will go on with this Quixotic thing, and perhaps bring out hidden facts that your friends would be glad to shield from public knowledge.” “Explain!” she cried out haughtily. And then he said: “Listen, then, my poor child. After I succeeded in clearing your mother from the charge of murder, there came to me from a private source some evidence that was so black and conclusive that it would most surely have convicted her if given to the jury. But this evidence had been withheld by friends who loved Ronald Vale so dearly that they shielded the guilty woman, to save his child from the black disgrace that would have been her portion had the truth been known.” Her bosom heaved, her eyes blazed, she cried out imperiously: “I demand to know the nature of this hidden evidence, although even before I hear it I stamp it as an infamous lie!” “Would to God it might be proved so, for your sake, my poor girl,” Lawyer Gardner answered sadly. “But, alas! it carries such conviction with it that even I, who had all along believed in your poor mother, was forced to accept it as conclusive. But for your own dear sake, I beg you not to insist upon hearing the story!” Italy Vale caught her breath with a great strangling gasp at those words from the lawyer, and sat staring at him for a moment in appalled silence. He on his part looked at her in sympathy and pity mixed with admiration. She was the most dazzlingly beautiful creature he had ever beheld, and as he noted the exquisite face and form, the white-rose skin, the magnificent eyes, the scarlet lips, the shining hair with its rich waves, he thought what a pity it was that this exquisite creature should have had so weak and wicked a mother, should have had the fair promise of her life darkened and blighted by the stain of a mother’s sin. He saw the slender white hands writhing in and out of each other upon the dark crimson of her rich morning-dress, saw the fair face change from horror and shame into swift anger and incredulity. Then she spoke resolutely: “It is good of you to try to spare me, but I am not afraid to hear the story you have to tell, for no evidence can make me believe ill of my mother.” “You have a loyal heart,” the lawyer exclaimed admiringly. “I worshiped my beautiful mother,” she answered, with pearly tears starting out upon her lashes. “Ah, Mr. Gardner, if you had known her as I did, her love, her sorrow for her dead husband, the ineffable sadness of her whole life, you could not doubt she was an angel.” “I hope you will always keep this noble faith in her,” he replied, with a sigh from the bottom of his kindly heart. “I shall, Mr. Gardner, but I must make the world believe in her, too, I must prove her innocence to all.” “My dear Miss Vale, she was acquitted by the law. I beg that you will rest satisfied with the verdict of the jury.” She crested her proud head impatiently.