saw there, and the manifestations of a stricken conscience. It was the
criminal who feared detection, the wrong-doer on the constant look-out
for discovery--a criminal most venerable, a wrong-doer who must have
suffered; but if a criminal, one of dark and bitter memories, and one
whose thoughts, reaching over the years, must have been as gloomy as
death.

And this was Wiggins!

Not the Mephistopheles which she had imagined; not the evil mocking
fiend; but one rather who originally had not been without good
instincts, and who might have become a virtuous man had fate not
prevented. It was not the leering, sneering tempter that she saw, but
rather some representation of that archangel ruined, for it was as
though "his brow deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care sat on
his faded cheek."

At first the woman's heart of Edith made itself felt, and she pitied
him; but quickly the daughter's heart spoke, and it denounced him. If
this man felt remorse, it could only be for one great crime, and what
crime was so great as that of the betrayal of Frederick Dalton? Was it
this that had crushed the traitor? Thoughts like these flashed through
her mind, and her glance, which at first had softened from
commiseration, now grew stern and cold and hard; and the fixed, eager
look which came to her from those gloomy and mournful eyes was returned
by one which was hard and pitiless and repellent. Back to her heart came
that feeling which for a moment had faltered: the old hate, nourished
through her lifetime, and magnified during the last few days to
all-absorbing proportions: the strongest feeling of her nature, the hate
of the enemy of herself and the destroyer of her father.