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 visit us. Then one night I heard someone on the balcony of my room. I was so frightened I could not cry out. It was good I was like that, for the curtain was pulled open and Ah Tsong came in.”

She clutched convulsively at the arms of her chair.

“He told me!” she said in a very low voice.

Then, looking up pitifully:

“Do you know?” she asked in her quaint way. “It was a mock marriage. He had done it and thought no shame, because it was so with my mother. Oh!”

Her beautiful eyes flashed, and for the first time since I had met Ysola Camber I saw the real Spanish spirit of the woman leap to life.

“He did not know me. Perhaps I did not know myself. That night, with no money, without a ring, a piece of lace, a peseta, anything that had belonged to him, I went with Ah Tsong. We made our way to a half-sister of my father’s who lived in Puerto Principe, and at first—she would not have me. I was talked about, she said, in all the islands. She told me of my poor father. She told me I had dragged the name of de Valera in the dirt. At last I made her understand—that what everyone else had known, I had never even dreamed of.”

She looked up wistfully, as if thinking that we might doubt her.

“Do you know?” she whispered.

“I know—oh! I know!” said Val Beverley. I loved her for the sympathy in her voice and in her eyes. “It is very, very brave of you to tell us this, Mrs. Camber.”

“Yes? Do you think so?” asked the girl, simply. “What does it matter if it can help Colin?

“This aunt of mine,” she presently continued, “was a poor woman, and it was while I was hiding in her