“But I knew the worthlessness of this hope as well as my misconception of her motive, when Frank’s child by another wife returned to my memory, and Bella’s sin stood exposed.”

“But only to myself.  I alone knew that the fortune now wholly hers, and in consequence her boy’s, had been won by a crime.  That if her hand had fallen in comfort on her husband’s forehead instead of in pressure on his mouth, he would have outlived his brother long enough to have become owner of his millions; in which case a rightful portion would have been insured to his daughter, now left a penniless waif.  The thought made my hair rise, as the proceedings over, I faced her and made my first and last effort to rid my conscience of its new and intolerable burden.

“But the woman I had known and loved was no longer before me.  The crown had touched her brows, and her charm which had been mainly sexual up to this hour had merged into an intellectual force, with which few men’s mentality could cope.  Mine yielded at once to it.  From the first instant, I knew that a slavery of spirit, as well as of heart, was henceforth to be mine.

“She did not wait for me to speak; she had assumed the dictator’s attitude at once.

“‘I know of what you are thinking,"’ said she, ’and it is a subject you may dismiss at once from your mind.  Mr. Postlethwaite’s child by his first wife is coming to live with us.  I have expressed my wishes in this regard to my lawyer, and there is nothing left to be said.  You, with your close mouth and dependable nature, are to remain here as before, and occupy the same position towards my boy that you did towards his father.  We shall move soon into a larger house, and the nature of our duties will be changed and their scope greatly increased; but I know that you can be trusted to enlarge with them and meet every requirement I shall see fit to make.  Do not try to express your thanks.  I see them in your face.’

“Did she, or just the last feeble struggle my conscience was making to break the bonds in which she held me, and win back my own respect?  I shall never know, for she left me on completion of this speech, not to resume the subject, then or ever.

“But though I succumbed outwardly to her demands, I had not passed the point where inner conflict ends and peace begins.  Her recognition of Helena and her reception into the family calmed me for a while, and gave me hope that all would yet be well.  But I had never sounded the full bitterness of madam’s morbid heart, well as I thought I knew it.  The hatred she had felt from the first for her husband’s child ripened into frenzied dislike when she found her a living image of the mother whose picture she had come across among Frank’s personal effects.  To win a tear from those meek eyes instead of a smile to the sensitive lips was her daily play.  She seemed to exult in the joy of impressing upon the girl by how little she had missed a great fortune,