'And what may that be?' he made answer coldly. 'Let me remind you that the last words I heard you speak caused my ruin, body and soul.'

'For God's sake, don't talk to me like that,' she said. 'I'm the most miserable woman this day that walks the earth. I've helped to ruin you, I know, but how I've suffered for it! I'm risking my life in coming here to-day, and except to warn you for your good I wouldn't have done it. Look at me, Lance, and see if I'm speaking true or false!'

'You took a false oath once,' he said slowly; 'why should I trust you now, Kate?'

But while he spoke he could not avoid marking the unmistakable traces which misery had imprinted upon her face and form. His voice softened, his heart relented in spite of his just scorn and indignation. How changed was she indeed! And could that haggard woman, who, with streaming eyes and sorrow-laden features, stood before him in a suppliant attitude, be the Kate Lawless of old days?

The trim and lissom girl, with an air of wild unconscious grace, lithe of form and displaying in her every movement the instinctive charm of early womanhood, had disappeared for ever. In her place stood a hard-faced woman—bitter, reckless, and despairing. Her dress, that unfailing test of feeling, showed that she had ceased to concern herself about her personal appearance. Her fair hair was carelessly twisted into a large knot, which showed behind the old felt hat which she wore: a shabby kirtle was secured with a belt around her waist above a torn and faded gray tweed riding-skirt. A red silk handkerchief knotted loosely round her neck furnished the only coquettish-looking bit of colour that her dress afforded, and, in spite of the carelessness and disorder of her apparel, formed an effective contrast to her dark gray eyes, still bright, and her abundant hair.

'You are changed, indeed, Kate,' he said musingly. 'So am I. Don't you think, by the way, I ought to call you Mrs. Trevenna?'

'Call me Kate this time,' she said; 'God knows whether we shall ever meet again. Do I look miserable, neglected, downtrodden to the very ground? For that's what I am, besides being the wife of the greatest brute, the meanest villain, ever God made. But it serves me right, Lance Trevanion; it serves me well right!'

Here the wretched woman burst into a fit of passionate weeping. Hiding her face in her hands, she sat down upon the log, and in broken sentences detailed her wrongs and described the cruelty with which she was habitually treated. Why did she marry him? Well, she hardly knew. She was restless and miserable after the trial. Ned was gone, and she was half mad, and could have drowned herself when all was over. Once in Trevenna's power, the brute had shown her that one of his reasons for making her his wife was to wreak his spite upon her as a former favourite of his enemy; to punish her by every ingenious device of callous cruelty for having preferred Trevanion to himself. She had been worked upon before the trial by the artfulness of Dayrell and Trevenna, the former having caused a letter to be written, as if from Lance to his cousin, sneering at her low birth and bush manners in a way which led her to believe that he had from the first intended to impose upon her ignorance. Hasty, credulous, and madly ungovernable in her fits of ill-temper, she had been practised on to bear false witness at the trial. Then Tessie, ignorant of the wonderful likeness of the two men to each other, had really mistaken Trevenna for Lance, having come upon him unexpectedly in one of his trips to Eumeralla.

'And this is what I've brought you to,' she continued, gazing at his rude attire, his changed aspect; for never does the look of freedom and careless pride return to the man who has known the prison garb, the clanking chain,—who has once answered mechanically to the harsh summons of the gaol warder. 'A working digger, and worse. Oh, my God! An escaped prisoner. God forgive me! I don't see as you can. No man could that has gone through what you have!'

And here the frantic woman cast herself at his feet and bowed her head to the earth in an attitude of despairing supplication almost oriental in intense self-abasement.