Oh, why had Michael fallen in love with her when they were boy and girl! She remembered with horror and disgust those early days, that exquisite dawn of young passion in the time of primroses.

It had brought her to _this_--to this horrible place of tears and shame and shuddering--to these wretched days and hideous nights.

Oh, why, why, had he loved her! Why had she let herself love him! Suddenly she said to herself, "They may reprieve him yet.

If his sentence is not commuted to imprisonment I will speak, so help me God I will." It could never be known whether she would have kept that oath, for the next day she heard that Michael had been sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment.

Why had Andrea been so cruel as to let her imagine for a whole horrible night that Michael's would be a death sentence, when in Italy it seemed there was no capital punishment as in England?
It was just like Andrea to torture her needlessly! When the sentence reached her Fay drew breath.