"Miss, mistress,
or widow, as you choose, for I have been all the three, and that
not once nor twice only. Ay, and something beyond all these.
But, as for you, you have never been anything!"
"Ay, ay! and so you are Bell Calvert? Well, I thought so--I
thought so," said Mrs. Logan; and, helping herself to a seat, she
came and sat down dose by the prisoner's knee. "So you are
indeed Bell Calvert, so called once. Well, of all the world you are
the woman whom I have longed and travailed the most to see.
But you were invisible; a being to be heard of, not seen."
"There have been days, madam," returned she, "when I was to be
seen, and when there were few to be seen like me. But since that
time there have indeed been days on which I was not to be seen.
My crimes have been great, but my sufferings have been greater.
So great that neither you nor the world can ever either know or
conceive them. I hope they will be taken into account by the Most
High. Mine have been crimes of utter desperation. But whom am
I speaking to? You had better leave me to myself, mistress."
"Leave you to yourself? That I will be loth to do till you tell me
where you were that night my young master was murdered.
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