A hint from him might show her the shortest and the easiest way of making her confession.

Delicately and briefly he gave her the hint.

"The first time I met you," he said, "I saw that your life had had its troubles.

Let us hear how those troubles began." He withdrew to his place in the recess.

For the first time, since the fatal evening when she and Grace Roseberry had met in the French cottage, Mercy Merrick looked back into the purgatory on earth of her past life, and told her sad story simply and truly in these words..