"It was love for the daughter which drew the mother here, not the spell of her crime or the accusing spirit of the dead. The woman who wronged you has some heart; she was willing to risk detection, and with it her reputation and life, to see if by any possibility she could venture to give happiness to the one being whom she really loves."
"Explain; I do not understand. How could she hope to find happiness for her child here?"
"By settling the question which evidently tortured her. By determining once for all whether the crime of sixteen years back had ever been discovered, and if she found it had not, to satisfy at once her own pride and her daughter's heart by giving that daughter to as noble a gentleman as ever carried a sword."
"And they are here now?"
"They are here."
"And she has discovered—"
"The futility of all her hopes."
He drew back, and his heavy breath echoed in deep pants through the room.
"What an end for Marah Leighton!" he gasped.
"What an end! And she is here!" he went on, after a moment of silent emotion—"under this roof! No wonder I felt myself called hither. And she knows her crime is detected? How came she to know this? Did you recognize her and tell her?"