My suspicion, from that time, I felt was a truth.  I knew that there were characters so complex that no human being could understand them.  Here was a beautiful surface—­Heaven only knew what lay underneath.  There was no outward brand of murder on the white brow, or red stain on the soft, white hand.  But day by day the certainty grew in my mind.  Another thing struck me very much.  We were sitting one day quite alone on the grass near a pretty little pool of water, called “Dutton Pool.”  In some parts it was very shallow, in some very deep.  Lance had gone somewhere on business, and had left us to entertain each other.  I had often noticed that one of Mrs. Fleming’s favorite ornaments was a golden locket with one fine diamond in the center; she wore it suspended by a small chain from her neck.  As she sat talking to me she was playing with the chain, when it suddenly became unfastened and the locket fell from it.  In less than a second it was hidden in the long grass.  She looked for it in silence for some minutes, then she said, gently: 

“I have dropped my locket, Mr. Ford; is it near you?  I cannot find it.”

“Is it one you prize very much?” I asked.

“I should not like to lose it,” she replied, and her face paled as searching in the long grass she saw nothing of it.

I found it in a few minutes, but it was lying open; the fall had loosened the spring.  I could not help seeing the contents as I gave it to her—­a round ring of pale golden hair.

“A baby’s curl?” I said, as I returned it to her.

Her whole face went blood-red in one minute.

“The only thing I have belonging to my little sister,” she said.  “She died when I was a child.”

“You must prize it,” I said; but I could not keep the dryness of suspicion from my voice.

“Mrs. Fleming,” I asked, suddenly, “are you like Lance and myself, without relations?”

“Almost,” she replied, briefly.

“Strange that three people should be almost alone in the world but for each other!” I said.

“I was left an orphan when I was four years old,” she said.  “Only Heaven knows how I have cried out upon my parents for leaving me.  I never had one happy hour.  Can you imagine a whole childhood passed without one happy hour?”

“Hardly,” I said.

With white, nervous fingers she fastened the gold chain round her neck again.

“Not one happy hour,” she said.  “I was left under the care of my grandmother, a proud, cold, cruel woman, who never said a kind word to me, and who grudged me every slice of bread and butter I ate.”

She looked at me, still holding the golden locket in her white fingers.

“If I had been like other girls,” she said “if I had parents to love me, brothers and sisters, friends or relatives, I should have been different.  Believe me, Mr. Ford, there are white slaves in England whose slavery is worse than that of an African child.  I was one of them.  I think of my youth with a sick shudder; I think of my childhood with horror, and I almost thank Heaven that the tyrant is dead who blighted my life.”