"You will be sorry," said Jane pitifully.
"Let me be. Anything rather than the doubt. Give me the truth."
"Well then." She turned her back now: and looked from the window with her grave, sad face, and spoke in a dull, measured way, like the swinging of a pendulum. "I am a convict's daughter. My father is in the State prison of New York at Auburn."
"For what crime?"
"Murder. It was in the first degree. The Governor commuted it to imprisonment for life. There were extenuating circumstances. I went down on my knees and prayed that he might be saved from the gallows."
"And his victim?"
"Was his wife—my mother."