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OLD her tight!" Odell's sharp warning cut through the dreadful cachinnation. "Don't hurt her, but look out for a sudden effort of strength."

"Effie!" Unmindful of his broken ribs Richard Lorne had started up on the couch, and his horror-stricken eyes stared at his sister-in-law. "My God, Effie, what is the matter with you?"

At the sound of his voice the woman's wild laughter ceased abruptly, and her body relaxed; but she returned his stare malevolently, and a sneer, infinitely sly and crafty, curled her lip.

"I fooled you all—all!" she cried; and freeing one arm by a lightning-like gesture, she beat her thin breast. "How I have laughed at you here, here, in these long years while you have patronized me, thrust me into corners! Me, the old maid, the one who stood aside, meek and docile and a nonentity—but useful! Ah, I saw to that! I wanted to be near you where I could watch you all and think of what I had planned!"

"The second generation!" Samuel Titheredge interjected solemnly.

"I hated her always; that yellow-haired vixen who stole my toys and finery when I was a child, whose doll-face 291