“Did you—­did you do that?” she moaned.  “How good you are, but you will not tell him.  I was mad when I did that, mad as women often are, with sorrow, shame and despair.  I will suffer anything if you will only promise not to tell Lance.”

“Do you think it is fair,” I asked, “that he should be so cruelly deceived?—­that he should lavish the whole love of his heart upon a murderess?”

I shall not forget her.  She sprang from the ground where she had been kneeling and stood erect before me.

“No, thank Heaven!  I am not that,” she said; “I am everything else that is base and vile, but not that.”

“You were that, indeed,” I replied.  “The child you flung into the sea was living, not dead.”

“It was not living,” she cried—­“it was dead an hour before I reached there.”

“The doctors said—­for there was an inquest on the tiny body—­they said the child had been drugged before it was drowned, but that it had died from drowning.”

“Oh, no, a thousand times!” she cried.  “Oh, believe me, I did not wilfully murder my own child—­I did not, indeed!  Let me tell you.  You are a just and merciful man, John Ford; let me tell you—­you must hear my story; you shall give me my sentence—­I will leave it in your hands.  I will tell you all.”

“You had better tell Lance, not me,” I cried.  “What can I do?”

“No; you listen; you judge.  It may be that when you have heard all, you will take pity on me; you may spare me—­you may say to yourself that I have been more sinned against than sinning—­you may think that I have suffered enough, and that I may live out the rest of my life with Lance.  Let me tell you, and you shall judge me.”

She fell over on her knees again, rocking backwards and forwards.

“Ah, why,” she cried—­“why is the world so unfair?—­why, when there is sin and sorrow, why does the punishment fall all on the woman, and the man go free?  I am here in disgrace and humiliation, in shame and sorrow—­in fear of losing my home, my husband, it may even be my life—­while he, who was a thousand times more guilty than I was, is welcomed, flattered, courted!  It is cruel and unjust.

“I have told you,” she said, “how hard my childhood was, how lonely and desolate and miserable I was with my girl’s heart full of love and no one to love.

“When I was eighteen I went to live with a very wealthy family in London, the name—­I will not hide one detail from you—­the name was Cleveland; they had one little girl, and I was her governess.  I went with them to their place in the country, and there a visitor came to them, a handsome young nobleman, Lord Dacius by name.