I was roused to full consciousness by the sound of voices, which I had heard indistinctly mingling with my dreams for some time before.

Mr. Bainrothe and Evelyn were conversing or discussing some subject, somewhat angrily.

“You had the lion’s share,” I heard him say; “you have no reason to complain.  The rest came in afterward, and was all merged in that sinking ship, and went down with it into the deep waters.  It would not have been as much as you received, had it been saved, which it was not.”

“That is not my concern,” she rejoined, dryly; “but for my communication, Miriam would have secured all next morning.  She was bent upon it.  You ought never to forget this.”

“Nor do I; but, after all, you are the chief beneficiary, Evelyn.”

“And your son—­do you count his welfare as nothing?  Will he not share with me?  Nay, was it not for his sake, chiefly, I warned you, knowing how implacable else you might be toward us both, and how ’gold would gild every thing’ in your estimation.”

“True, true; but still something is due to me.  Undertake this office—­succeed—­and command me, eternally.  I love that girl, as you know, as Claude could never love any one, and it will go hard with me if I do not still inspire her with somewhat of the same sentiment—­that is, with your coincidence.”

“Never, never!” she exclaimed with asperity; “her hatred is too implacable—­the Judaic principle is too firmly grafted in her life.  Truly, she is one of a stiff-necked generation.  Her heart is especially hard toward you, Basil Bainrothe—­and, I confess, you were precipitate.”

“I know, I know—­but that error can be repaired.  I did not think of marriage then, I confess; after her bankruptcy and scorn to me, things had not gone so far; her own severity has made me consider the subject seriously.  She is not one to be treated lightly, Evelyn!”

“Your son found that out to his cost!” was the bitter rejoinder, and I heard her draw in her breath hard between her closed teeth, with the hissing sound so familiar to me, and peculiar to her when she labored under excitement—­a sound like that of a roused serpent.

“Yes, to his cost; but there is no question of that now.  Though, I must say, I think he erred.  He, like the base Judean, cast away a pearl richer than all his tribe!”

“Thank you!” was Evelyn’s curt, ungracious reply.

I rose from the couch, my hand was on the curtain; painful as it was to me, I would go forth and confront them both with the acknowledgment of their conspiracy, their fraud.  I would not again listen to bitter truths as I had done before, involuntarily, when bound hand and foot by the weakness of my condition.  I was strong and courageous now.  I had no excuse for hearing another syllable—­I would defy them, utterly!

All this passed like a flash through my mind.

On what slight pivots our fate turns sometimes!  How small are the guiding-points of destiny!  A momentary entanglement of my bracelet, with one of the tassels of the curtain, delayed me an instant, inevitably, in my impulsive endeavor to extricate myself from its meshes, and what I then heard, determined me to remain where I was, at any cost to my own sense of pride and honor.