There was but one alternative, and Adah met it resolutely, though every fiber of her heart throbbed with keen agony as she told to Irving Stanley the story of her life.

She was a wife, a mother, the sister of Hugh Worthington, they said, the Adah for whom Dr.Richards had sought so long in vain, and for whom Murdock, the wicked father, was seeking still for aught she knew to the contrary.

Even the story of the doctor's secretion in the barn at Sunnymead was confessed.

Nothing was withheld except the fact that even as he professed to love her, so she in turn loved him, or had done so before she knew it was a sin.

Surprise had, for a few moments, stifled every other emotion, and Irving Stanley had sat like one suddenly bereft of motion, when he read who Maria Gordon was.