“I have been ill, that is all,” she returned, coldly; “only a little touch of the old heart trouble. You have called here to-night, Gilbert Warrington, to—It is the old business, I suppose.”

“You are right; it is the old affair, that little slip of yours which is fated to follow you through life like a dark shadow, fated to dog your footsteps to the very grave. ‘The sins of the parents’—you know the rest of it, my dear Rosamond. So your sin will fall, in all its black horror and shame and disgrace, upon your child!”

Rosamond Arleigh covered her white face with her cold, trembling hands, and her graceful figure swayed unsteadily.

“You would not!” she faltered, brokenly.

“Would I not? See here, Rosamond.”

Gilbert Warrington rose and stood before her, a man of some five-and-forty years, tall and commanding, with keen gray eyes, and a face as colorless as marble; a heavy black mustache and chin-beard; thin, cruel lips; a restless glitter in the shifting eyes. Not a face to trust.

“You understand me, Rosamond?” he went on, in a low, hissing tone, transfixing his terrified listener with his beady eyes. “I wish to settle this matter absolutely. You will have to marry me or see your child eternally disgraced through the bad black blot upon her name which your own mad deed in the dead and gone past has affixed there. Ah, you need not wince; I mean to use[Pg 17] plain words. I do not intend to handle you with gloves just because you are a purse-proud aristocrat, while I come from the slums. I intend that you shall feel the full sting of the power that I hold over you. You, Rosamond Arleigh, sole representative of an old aristocratic family, one of the best in the land, you whose name is good for many thousands, who move in the most exclusive circle among the rich and great, you are something from which the proud and haughty dames of your select circle would shrink if the truth were known. The veriest wretch in all the land would not take your hand to-night if the truth concerning your past were made public, Rosamond Arleigh.”

[Pg 17]

“Have—mercy!” she falters, brokenly. “Be human, Gilbert Warrington; show me some pity, some consideration. For the sake of the past, in memory of the dead and gone days when I took you by the hand and led you up to prosperity, have pity, have some gratitude——”

“Gratitude? Bah! Talk of something 

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