when she made them. The affair has created a profound sensation."

"Mock marriage!" The words whirled before the girl's eyes in letters
of fire. Bertha Harris! Yes, that was the name. It had struck her at
the time when Sanderson dropped the ring. Langdon had said "Bertha
Harris has found it."

The light of her reason seemed to be going out. From the blackness
that engulfed her, the words "mock marriage" rang in her ear like the
cry of the drowning.

"God, oh God!" she called and the pent up agony of her wrecked life was
in the cry.

They found her senseless a moment later, staring up at the ceiling with
glassy eyes, the crumpled paper crushed in her hand.

"She is dead," wailed her mother. The old servant wasted no time in
words. She lifted up the fragile form and laid it tenderly on the bed.
Then she raised the window and called to the first passerby to run for
the nearest doctor.




CHAPTER VII.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.