It was a rebuke and she felt it to be so; but though she blushed
behind her veil, she did not remove it.

"Pardon me," she begged and very humbly, "but I cannot yet. You
will see why later.--Let me reveal my secret first. I am coming to
it, Judge Ostrander; I cannot keep it back much longer."

He was too much of a gentleman to insist upon his wishes, but she
saw by the gloom of his eye and a certain nervous twitching of his
hands that it was not from mere impassiveness that his features
had acquired their rigidity. Smitten with compunction, she altered
her tone into one more deprecatory:

"My story will be best told," she now said, "if I keep all
personal element out of it. You must imagine Reuther, dressed in
her wedding finery, waiting for her bridegroom to take her to
church. We were sitting, she and I, in our little parlour,
watching the clock,--for it was very near the hour. At times, her
face turned towards me for a brief moment, and I felt all the pang
of motherhood again, for her loveliness was not of this earth but
of a land where there is no sin, no--There! the memory was a
little too much for me, sir; but I'll not transgress again; the
future holds too many possibilities of suffering for me to dwell
upon the past. She was lovely and her loveliness sprang from a
pure hope. We will let that suffice, and what I dreaded was not
what happened, inexcusable as such blindness and presumption may
appear in a woman who has had her troubles and seen the desperate
side of life.

"A carriage had driven up; and we heard his step; but it was not