Miss Porter was in the upper hall, but turned aside at my approach with a meaning gesture in the direction of the boudoir. I thought that her eyes looked red; certainly she was trembling very much; and with this poor preparation for an interview before which the strongest and most experienced man might quail, I advanced for the second time that morning to the door behind which the distracted mother awaited me. If I knocked I do not remember it. I rather think she opened the door for me herself upon hearing my step in the hall. At all events we were soon standing again face to face, and the battle of our two wills--for it would be nothing less now--had begun. She was the first to speak. Braving my inquiring look with eyes in whose depths determination struggled with growing despair, she asked me peremptorily, almost wildly: "Have you told any one? Do you mean to publish my shame to the world? I see decision in your face. Does it mean that? Tell me! Does it mean that?" "No, madam; far be it from me to harbor such an intention unless driven to it by the greatest necessity. Your secret is your own; my only reason for betraying my knowledge of it was the hope I cherished of its affording us some clue to the identity of Gwendolen's abductor. It has not done so yet, may never do so; then let us leave that topic and return to the clue offered by the carrying of that child into the long-closed room back of the bungalow. Mrs. Ocumpaugh, intentionally or unintentionally, the proof upon which I relied for settling the identity of the person so carrying her has been destroyed." With a flush which her seemingly bloodless condition made perfectly startling, she drew back, breaking into wild disclaimers: "I know--I fear--I was too wild--too eager. I thought only of what might lie under that floor." "In a half-foot of earth, madam? The spades did not enter any deeper." With a sudden access of courage, born possibly of her despair, she sought neither to attempt denial nor palliate the fact. "And if this was my intention--though I don't acknowledge it--you must recognize my reason. I do not believe--you can not make me believe--that Gwendolen was carried into that room by Mrs. Carew. But I could see that you believed it, and to save her the shame of such an accusation and all that might follow from it, I--oh, Mr. Trevitt, you do not think this possible! Do you know so little of the impulses of a mind, bewildered as mine has been by intolerable suffering?" "I can understand madness, and I am willing to think that you were mad just then--especially as no harm has been done and I can still accuse Mrs. Carew of a visit to that room, with the proof in my hand."