I try to account for by crediting you with
having passed through troubles of which I have no knowledge. But it
does not give you the right to charge me with the things you do. You
shall tell me now the reason of your accusations, or I will leave this
home forever, and will never, of my own free will, set eyes on you
again."

Mercy's thin lips parted into a half-smile.

"And I intend that you shall know these things," she replied promptly.
"You shall know them from my lips. Nor has any one more right to the
telling than I." The smile died abruptly, leaving her burning eyes
shining in an icy setting. "I am cruel, eh?" she went on intensely.
"Cruel because I have refused to bend beneath the injustice of my
fellows and the persecutions ofmy maddest dreams I could
never have hoped for. You brought with you the curse of disaster from
which there was no escape for those to whom you belonged.

"I can see it all now," she went on exultingly. "I can see it as I saw
it then, every detail of it. Your father's gambling had brought him
down to something like want. A week before you were born his home was
sold up, and he and your mother took shelter in a tiny three-roomed
apartment for which they had no money to pay the rent. In desperation
he came to _me_--to _me_ for help. And I gave it him. The day before
you were born I gave him the money for the expenses of your birth and
to tide him over for three months. It was almost