Elizabeth looked down and tapped the folded paper against her fingertips. Whether it was mere thoughtfulness or a desire to veil a profound emotion from Terence, her brother could not tell. But he knew that something of importance was in the air. He scented it as clearly as the smoke of a forest fire.
"I thought," she said in her new and icy manner, "that that would be your one regret."
She looked suddenly up at Terence.
"Twenty-four years," she said, "have passed since I took you into my life. At that time I was told that I was doing a rash thing, a dangerous thing--that before your twenty-fifth birthday the bad blood would out; that you would, in short, have shot a man. And the prophecy has come true. By an irony of chance it has happened on the very last day. And by another irony you
