"Do you know that it is against your father and your father's brother that you invoke God's vengeance ?" She had been kneeling at his bedside; but now, when he pronounced those words, she rose slowly and stood silent for a spell, her eyes seeking his with an awful look that he dared not meet.

At last: "Oh, you rave," she protested, "it is the fever." "Nay, child, my mind is clear, and what I have said is true." "True ?" she echoed, no louder than a whisper, and her eyes grew round with horror.

"True that you and my uncle are the butchers who slew their cousin, this man's wife, and sought to murder him as well--leaving him for dead?
True that you are the thieves who claiming kinship by virtue of that very marriage have usurped his estates and this his castle during all these years, whilst he himself went an outcast, homeless and destitute?
Is that what you ask me to believe ?" "Even so," he assented, with a feeble sob.
Her face was pale--white to the very lips, and her blue eyes smouldered behind the shelter of her drooping lids.

She put her hand to her breast, then to her brow, pushing back the brown hair by a mechanical gesture that was pathetic in the tale of pain it told.

For support she was leaning now against the wall by the head of his couch.