Broken sounds, unintelligible murmurings, were all that greeted me.
"You are punished," I went on, "in the misery of your daughter. Nemesis has reached you. The blood of Honora Urquhart has called aloud from these walls, and not yourself only, but the still viler being whose name you have so falsely shared, must answer to man and God for the life you so heartlessly sacrificed and the rights you so falsely usurped."
"Mercy!" came in one quick gasp from the crushed heap of humanity before me.
But I was inexorable. I remembered Honora Urquhart's sweet face, and at that moment could think of nothing else. So I went on.
"You have had years of triumph. You have borne your victim's name, worn your victim's clothes, sported with your victim's money. And he, her husband, has looked on and smiled. Day after day, month after month, year after year, you have gone in and out before your friends, unmolested and unafraid; but God's vengeance, though it halts, is sure and keen. Across land and across water the memories of this room have drawn you, and not content with awakening suspicion, you must make suspicion certainty by moving a spring unknown even to myself, and entering this spot, from which the bones of your victim were taken only two months ago, Marah Leighton!"
Moved by the name, she stood up. Tottering and agonized with pain, but firm once more and determined, she towered before me, her face turned toward the room she had left, her hand lifted, her whole attitude that of one listening.
"Hark!" she cried.
It was a knock, a faint, low, trembling knock that we heard, then the word "Mamma" came in muffled accents from the hallway.
A convulsion crossed the countenance of the miserable woman before me.
"Oh, God! my daughter, my daughter!" she cried. And falling at my feet, she groveled in anguish as she pleaded: