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She spoke sadly. “Why should I tell you? I do not know, except that it seemed to me you would understand. Yet I hope men like you forget what is best forgotten; and I feel–oh, do you really care to hear it?”

“I love to listen to you.”

“That girl was fatherless, brotherless. There was no man with any right to stand her friend at the time–to avenge her–though, God knows, she wished for no revenge–except a distant cousin who had come from England to see her mother and herself; to marry her if he could. She did not know his motives; she believed that he really cared for her; she was young, and she was sorry for his disappointment. When that thing happened”–her eyes were on the picture, dry and hard–“he came forward, determined–so he said–to make the deceiver pay for his deceit with his life. It seemed brave, and what a man would do, what a southerner would do. He was an Englishman, and so it looked still more brave in him. He went to the man’s rooms and offered him a chance for his life by a duel. He had brought revolvers. He turned the key in the door and then laid the pistols he had brought on the table. Without warning the other snatched up a small sword and stabbed him with it. He managed to get one of the revolvers, fired, and brought the man down. The man was not killed, but it was a long time before he–Mark Telford there–was well again. When he got up, the girl”–

“Poor girl!”

“When he got up the girl was married to the cousin who had periled his life for her. It was madness, but it was so.”

Here she paused. The silence seemed oppressive. Hagar, divining her thought, got up, went to the archway between the rooms and asked the young girl to play something. It helped him, he said, when he was thinking how to paint. He went back.

Mrs. Detlor continued. “But it was a terrible mistake. There was a valuable property in England which the cousin knew she could get by proving certain things. The marriage was to him a speculation. When she waked to that–it was a dreadful awakening–she refused to move in the matter. Is there anything more shameful than speculation in flesh and blood–the heart and life of a child?–he was so much older than she! Life to her was an hourly pain–you see she was wild with indignation and shame, and alive with a kind of gratitude and reaction when she married him. And her life? Maternity was to her an agony such as comes to few women who suffer and live. If her child–her beautiful, noble child–had lived, she would, perhaps, one day have claimed the property for its sake. This child was her second love and it died–it died.”

She drew from her breast a miniature. He reached out and, first hesitating, she presently gave it into his hand. It was warm–it had lain on her bosom. His hand, generally so steady, trembled. He raised the miniature to his own lips. She reached out her hand, flushing greatly.

“Oh, please, you must not!” she said.

“Go on, tell me all,” he urged, but still held the miniature in his hand for a moment.

“There is little more to tell. He played a part. She came to know how coarse and brutal he was, how utterly depraved.

“At last he went away to Africa–that was three years ago. Word came that he was drowned off the coast of Madagascar, but there is nothing sure, and the woman would not believe that he was dead unless she saw him so or some one she could trust had seen him buried. Yet people call her a widow–who wears no mourning” (she smiled bitterly) “nor can until”–

Hagar came to his feet. “You have trusted me,” he said, “and I will honor your confidence. To the world the story I tell on this canvas shall be my own.”