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first shot rang out from them he fell to the ground.
    He found himself in bed in his own home, with the doctor just turning away and Alice and Emily seated at his bedside. From the gravity of their expressions and his own sensations (or lack of them) he perceived at once that he was a dying man. He fixed his eyes on Emily with intense yearning.
    â€œI must be alone with Simon, Alice,” murmured Emily. “Leave us together.”
    Alice bowed her head and left the room.
    Yes, he was dying, reflected Simon. Pity. Yet, in a way, he was relieved. In a few minutes his life would be over, and he would have succeeded in his great aim: he would have kept his secret to the end. No longer must he maintain his incessant watch and ward. He felt himself slipping towards the dark. Yes, it was a relief, his success. Emily would now never know. The long struggle was over. He moved his lips to make the motion of a kiss. Emily bent over him. But she did not yield him an embrace. Her eyes were hard and burning.
    â€œI know your secret, Simon,” she murmured. “I’ve always known.”
    Simon gazed at her in awful horror.
    â€œHow—how—”
    â€œIn the court, when you told the magistrates I was trying to teach Wilfred to read. You couldn’t have known that unless you’d seen him that afternoon. We’d kept all that bother about his reading, from you. I told him, when he went out to look for you, he’d better make a clean breast of it.”
    â€œThen why—why—”
    â€œWhy didn’t I tell on you? I owed you silence, Simon, for marrying me and giving Wilfred a name.”
    â€œEmily—”
    â€œI shall never tell on you, Simon, never. But I shall never forgive you.”
    Simon looked at her lovingly, and smiled, and died.
    He smiled with joy. He could still think well of himself, since Emily did not know his secret. For it was not, in fact, a patch of oil which had caused Harry to fall, all those long years ago. Simon with a well-placed foot had tripped his cousin.

Cruel as the Grave
    1880

    It all became clear to me later, as you will see, that there was a deep cause of stress, an emotion indestructible, whether hostile or friendly or both, between the two men, before this story opens. One of the people who knew it told me the whole thing at last. But this happened only very recently. Even then I had to rely chiefly on my long knowledge of those concerned, derived simply from living with them for many years. From these sources, once given the major clue, I have devised, deduced, guessed, whichever you prefer, some of the incidents which so fatally directed the story’s course.
    Certainly my knowledge came scarcely at all from anything my mother vouchsafed on the subject to me. In my experience emotions in the previous generation always strike the following generation as either incredible or obscene. So my mother was not likely to embark upon this matter with her daughter, even if she knew it. But indeed, as you will see, she did not know it; half a lifetime was devoted to keeping her in ignorance.
    I might have heard the story from my grandmother, Hannah, if she had known it and if I had known her in her younger days. But I am sure that more than half a lifetime had been devoted to concealing it from her. And in any case I knew her only in her old age; in black silk dress and shawl, carrying on her thick faded red hair one of those lace capsdecked with ribbon bows which were the correct wear for old ladies at that time—my grandmother was very particular about the cut and elegance of these caps, which were accordingly the bane of my mother’s existence, for she had to make them—and also, presently, of mine, for the same reason.
    Many grandmothers, I am told, are very confidential with their grandchildren. Mine was not. In fact, she was something of a terror to us. She had all the vehement temper, the fierce determination, the knowledge that she was