As we are sisters, and I almost a mother to you, shut my face away from his eyes--or I shall rise in my casket and the tangle of our lives will be renewed.' "I tell you this--I bare my sister's broken heart to you, giving you her very words, sacred as they are to me and--and to others, who are present, and must listen to all I say--because it is right that you should understand her frenzy, and know all that passed between us in that awful hour." This was irregular, highly irregular--but District Attorney Fox sat on, unmoved.

Possibly he feared to prejudice the jury; possibly he recognised the danger of an interruption now, not only to the continuity of her testimony, but to the witness herself; or--what is just as likely--possibly he cherished a hope that, in giving her a free rein and allowing her to tell her story thus artlessly, she would herself supply the clew he needed to reconstruct his case on the new lines upon which it was being slowly forced by these unexpected revelations.

Whatever the cause, he let these expressions of feeling pass.
At a gesture from Mr.Moffat, Carmel proceeded: "I tottered at this threat; and she, a mother to me from my cradle, started instinctively to catch me; but the feeling left her before she had taken two steps, and she stopped still.

'Drop your hand,' she cried.
'I want to see your whole face while I ask you one last question.

I could not read the note.