“I’ve come to make your aunt—­pay.  When I saw you before—­you and your supposed sister—­your aunt had all the cards in her hands, but I told her then that murder would out—­and by God! it has—­and now it is pay day.”  The years had coarsened Thornton.

Joan stared at the man across the table as if he had suddenly gone mad before her eyes.  She was frightened; she heard distant voices—­the cook speaking to Jed—­she wanted to call out; meant to—­but instead she asked dully: 

“What do you mean by—­my supposed sister?”

Thornton shifted his position and leaned forward over the table.

“So—­eh?  She didn’t tell you all?  I see.  She confined the story to—­me.  And—­you’ve believed all your life—­that—­that the girl, Nancy, was your sister?  Well—­by heaven!  Doris has taken a chance.”

“You have got to tell me what you mean!”

Joan was no longer filled with personal fear—­it was wider, deeper than that.

“And you must not lie,” she added, fiercely—­anger was giving her strength.  Thornton regarded her through half-closed eyes.

“Lying isn’t my big line,” he said, roughly, “if it had seen, I might have escaped the infernal mess that I hatched by—­telling the truth in the first place.  Since your aunt has neglected her duty—­I will tell you the truth!”

Thornton took small heed of the stricken girl near him.  Hate and revenge for the moment swayed him, but not for an instant did Joan disbelieve what was burning into her consciousness.  Truth rang in every word of the almost unbelievable story.  And while she listened and shrank back she was conscious of inanimate things taking on human attributes that pleaded with her.  The chair by the hearth where Doris had but recently sat smiling so happily because her ideals had been real to her!  Nancy and she, Joan seemed to know, were the ideals—­Nancy and she!  For them Doris had done the one, big, daring thing in her life.  The loom by the window suddenly cried out, too, as if Nancy were bending over it—­working on her unfinished but perfect pattern.

“Oh!” The word escaped Joan and found its way to Thornton’s sympathy at last.  He paused as he watched the suffering his words were causing.

“It’s a damned ugly thing she did to you,” he said, “a damned ugly one.  I warned her about the time when you would have to know.  I’ve travelled a long distance to set you straight.  She’ll pay—­now!”

Joan tried to speak—­failed—­then tried again.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, huskily, at last.

Thornton regarded her with a dark frown.

“Do?” he repeated, “claim my own—­and let her pay.”

“What good—­would that do—­now?”

Thornton stared.  Where had he heard words like those before?  Why should they seem to defy him? defeat him?

“I’m going to have the truth known at last or——­”

“Or—­what?”

Shame held Thornton silent for a moment, but life had him at close grip—­he was beaten unless help were given.