"Is--is there no hope, auntie?" she asked helplessly.
Mercy Lascelles looked up from the crystal. She eyed her niece steadily, as though to read all there was hidden behind the desperate blue eyes.
Slowly she shook her head.
Again came that spasm of panic, and Joan seemed to hurl her whole young strength into denial.
"But there is. There must be," she cried, with a fierceness that held the other in something like astonishment. "There must be," she reiterated desperately. "No God could be so cruel--so--so wicked. What have I done to deserve this? The injustice is demoniacal. Far better go and throw myself before a passing train than live to carry such a pestilence with me wherever I go through life. If you can read these things--read on. Read on and tell me, for I swear that I will not live with this curse forever tied about my neck."
"You will live--you must live. It is written here." Mercy pointed at the crystal. Then she laughed her cold, mirthless laugh. "There was one power that served me, that helped me to save my reason through all those early days. God knows how it may help you--for I can't see. I loved your father with a passion nothing, no disaster could destroy. I loved him so that I could crush every other feeling down, subservient to my passion. Go you, child, and find such a love. Go you and find a love so strong that no disaster can kill it. And maybe life may still have some compensations for you, maybe it will lift the curse from your suffering shoulders. It--it is the only thing in the world that is stronger than disaster. It is the only thing in the world that is stronger than--death."
Joan had no answer. She stared straight ahead of her, focusing some trifling detail of the pattern on the wall paper. Her face was stony--stony as the face of the woman who was watching her. The moments passed rapidly. A minute passed, and neither spoke.
Then at last the girl abruptly rose from her seat. Almost mechanically she moved over to a mirror, and, removing her hat, deftly patted her beautiful hair till it assumed its wonted appearance. And quite suddenly she turned about.
"I have nearly fifty thousand dollars, auntie. I am going to realize that capital. I am going to leave this house--I am going to leave it forever. I shall change my name, and cover up my tracks, for I intend going where I am not known. I am going where men cannot figure in my life, which I intend to begin all over again. The burden Fate has imposed upon me is too great. I am going to run from it."