“I am all at sea,” concluded Orth.  “What had my little girl to do with the tragedy?  What relation was she to the lady who drove the young man to destruction—?”

“The closest,” interrupted Lady Mildred.  “She was herself!”

Orth stared at her.  Again he had a confused sense of disintegration.  Lady Mildred, gratified by the success of her bolt, proceeded less dramatically: 

“Wally was up here just after I read your book, and I discovered he had given you the wrong history of the picture.  Not that he knew it.  It is a story we have left untold as often as possible, and I tell it to you only because you would probably become a monomaniac if I didn’t.  Blanche Mortlake—­that Blanche—­there had been several of her name, but there has not been one since—­did not die in childhood, but lived to be twenty-four.  She was an angelic child, but little angels sometimes grow up into very naughty girls.  I believe she was delicate as a child, which probably gave her that spiritual look.  Perhaps she was spoiled and flattered, until her poor little soul was stifled, which is likely.  At all events, she was the coquette of her day—­she seemed to care for nothing but breaking hearts; and she did not stop when she married, either.  She hated her husband, and became reckless.  She had no children.  So far, the tale is not an uncommon one; but the worst, and what makes the ugliest stain in our annals, is to come.

“She was alone one summer at Chillingsworth—­where she had taken temporary refuge from her husband—­and she amused herself—­some say, fell in love—­with a young man of the yeomanry, a tenant of the next estate.  His name was Root.  He, so it comes down to us, was a magnificent specimen of his kind, and in those days the yeomanry gave us our great soldiers.  His beauty of face was quite as remarkable as his physique; he led all the rural youth in sport, and was a bit above his class in every way.  He had a wife in no way remarkable, and two little boys, but was always more with his friends than his family.  Where he and Blanche Mortlake met I don’t know—­in the woods, probably, although it has been said that he had the run of the house.  But, at all events, he was wild about her, and she pretended to be about him.  Perhaps she was, for women have stooped before and since.  Some women can be stormed by a fine man in any circumstances; but, although I am a woman of the world, and not easy to shock, there are some things I tolerate so hardly that it is all I can do to bring myself to believe in them; and stooping is one.  Well, they were the scandal of the county for months, and then, either because she had tired of her new toy, or his grammar grated after the first glamour, or because she feared her husband, who was returning from the Continent, she broke off with him and returned to town.  He followed her, and forced his way into her house.  It is said she melted, but made him swear never to attempt to see her again.  He returned to his home, and killed himself.  A few months later she took her own life.  That is all I know.”