eyes of both were attracted to Mrs. Falchion. I believe in that moment
there was a kind of revelation among the three. While I talked to Mr.
Devlin I watched them, standing a little apart, Justine Caron with us.
It must have been a painful situation for them; to the young girl because
a shadow was trailing across the light of her first love; to Roscoe
because the shadow came out of his past; to Mrs. Falchion because she was
the shadow. I felt that trouble was at hand. In this trouble I knew
that I was to play a part; for, if Roscoe had his secret and Mrs.
Falchion had the key to it, I also held a secret which, in case of
desperate need, I should use. I did not wish to use it, for though
it was mine it was also another's. I did not like the look in Mrs.
Falchion's eyes as she glanced at Ruth: I was certain that she resented
Roscoe's regard for Ruth and Ruth's regard for Roscoe; but, up to that
moment, I had not thought it possible that she cared for him deeply.
Once she had influenced me, but she had never cared for me.

I could see a change in her. Out of it came that glance at Ruth, which
seemed to me the talon-like hatred that shot from the eyes of Goneril and
Regan: and I was sure that if she loved Roscoe there would be mad trouble
for him and for the girl. Heretofore she had been passionless, but there
was a dormant power in her which had only to be wickedly aroused to wreck
her own and others' happiness. Hers was one of those volcanic natures,
defying calculation and ordinary conceptions of life; having the fullest
capacity for all the elementary passions--hatred, love, cruelty, delight,
loyalty, revolt, jealousy. She had never from her birth until now felt
love for any one. She had never been awakened. Even her affection for
her father had been dutiful rather than instinctive. She had provoked
love, but had never given it. She had been self-centred, compulsive,
unrelenting. She had unmoved seen and let her husband go to his doom--
it was his doom and death so far as she knew.