As she lay there weeping sorely on her pillow, she recalled that sweet June night, but a few short months ago, when her own willful folly had led her into that deplorable entanglement. She recalled the handsome face of Bertha's lover, as she then deemed him—handsomer then and now to her fancy than any other man she had met. He had given her no word of blame or reproach for her folly that had led him into that mad marriage. Nay, how kindly, how gently he had tried to make the best of it—he had offered to keep faithfully those marriage vows he had taken, even when he knew that she was a nameless child, and her mother a disgraced woman. How kindly he had spoken to poor Elaine, even when her own child madly reproached her. She seemed to feel again the warm, gentle clasp of his arm around her waist while poor Elaine told her sorrowful story.
"I love him. It is not wrong, for he belonged to me, and he is dead," she said to herself, plaintively and sadly, through her falling tears.
She forgot Julius Revington for a while in the shock of this new grief. One hour was given to her sorrow and her tears.
"He is dead, yet I cannot realize it," the girl-widow said to herself, trying to fancy those laughing brown eyes drowned in the salty waves of old ocean—those languid, musical tones hushed in its everlasting roar. It was in vain the effort. It was in life, rather than death that he dwelt in her thoughts.
"He is dead, but no more dead to me than he was in life," she repeated over and over to herself, "for I should never have seen him again."
And suddenly, like an Arctic wave coldly sweeping over her, came the remembrance of Julius Revington.
"I am free now," she repeated to herself, with a shiver of horror. "Nothing lies between my mother and happiness but my own unconquerable repugnance to the man who holds the secret of my mother's wrongs."
Remorseful memory pictured that beautiful mother sad, lonely, bereaved, wasting her heart in unavailing sighs and tears.
"Oh, mother, I was hard, cold, cruel to you that night in my madness," she cried. "I, who shadowed your life with an ever-present memory of shame for sixteen years, now owe you reparation and atonement even to the sacrifice of my poor life."
And in the solemn, mystical midnight hours the great battle was fought between self-pity and mother-love.
It was late when Irene came down to breakfast the next morning.
The breakfast bell had clanged noisily twice, and all the other inmates of the villa were in their places at the table, when Miss Berlin glided in, pale, mute, grave, and took her wonted seat by Mrs. Leslie's side.
Every eye turned curiously on the fair young face. The change was too marked to escape observation. The white cheeks, the dark shadows beneath the eyes, the pathetic droop of the red lips, all had a story of their own. The simple white morning-dress, with the black velvet ribbon at throat and waist was sad and suggestive too. All missed the bright bunch of flowers she was wont to wear on her breast, but none guessed that the simple black and white were mute tokens of bereavement.
"I was sorry to hear of your illness last night. I trust you are better this morning," said Mr. Stuart from his place as host.
His voice was grave and kind, but his eyes were kinder. They often lingered on her as if fascinated, until, with a sharp sigh of pain he would turn away.
"Thank you, I am better," she replied, briefly, and dropped the long lashes over her eyes because Julius Revington was trying to meet them across the table.
He was vexed with her for looking so pale, so wan, so unhappy.
"Am I an ogre that she should look so pale, so ill, so wretched, at the bare idea of having me for a husband?" he said to himself, in a passionate ebullition of wounded vanity.
When breakfast was over he managed to intercept her as she was going out.
"It is a beautiful morning, Miss Berlin. Will you walk out with me?" he asked, pleadingly.
She brought her broad-brimmed sun-hat from the rack in the hall and silently accompanied him.
It was a beautiful morning, as he had said. The sun shone brilliantly, the blue sky mirrored itself in the blue river, birds sang, flowers bloomed, and the air was sweet with the breath of roses. But for once Irene was indifferent to the sweet influences of nature. She walked along silently by his side, her blue eyes downcast, her face pale, her steps slow and languid.
They paused at last to rest on a pretty garden seat beside the murmuring river. Irene flung herself down wearily.
She, who seldom knew what weakness meant, could barely drag her weary limbs along.
"I am sorry to see you looking so ill to-day," murmured the lover.
She glanced up quickly in his face for some sign of relenting.
Alas, his passionate look of admiration dispelled the sudden, springing hope. Her heart sank heavily again.
"I am ill," she cried. "God only knows what I suffered last night. Are you still relentless in your cruel purpose?"
"You use hard words," he said, flinching under her scorn. "Is it cruel to love you, and wish you for my own?"
"It is cruel to try to force me into compliance with your wishes," she answered, with a passing flash of indignation.
"You mistake. I have not tried to force you. I merely gave you a choice of terms," he replied.
"Scylla and Charybdis," murmured the girl, disdainfully.
"As you will," he replied; but in his heart he said, cruelly: "You find it hard, fair lady, to tolerate a master in practice, however fine it may appear in theory."
She sat still, looking dreamily into the rushing river, a look of despair frozen on her white face.
"You may have guessed why I brought you here," he said.
She made him no answer. The cold despair deepened in the lovely, downcast eyes.
"I am impatient for my answer," he went on. "Are you going to be kind to your mother, Irene; kind to yourself, and merciful to me?"
She turned and looked at him, with the fire of scorn flashing all over her beautiful face.
"If you mean am I going to sacrifice myself for my mother's sake, I answer yes," she said. "Here is my hand. Take it. But it is empty—there is no heart in it. There never will be. I shall never love you, were I twenty times your wife. I shall always hate you for driving me to the wall, for making me untrue to myself."
Unheeding her wild words he took the hand and kissed it, but she tore it madly away. It rushed over her drearily how strange it was for Guy Kenmore's widowed bride to be thus plighting her hand to another almost in the first hour of her bereavement.
Mr. Revington duly announced his betrothal to the inhabitants of the villa. Congratulations followed of course, but he could not flatter himself that there was any heart in them.
Mr. Stuart was openly surprised and inwardly disgusted.
"To think that a girl of such beauty and soul as Irene should stoop to mate with that weak, guitar-playing dandy," he said to himself.
Brown and Jones were envious of Revington's good luck. The ladies, with the exception of Mrs. Leslie, thought it quite too good a match for the mysterious Miss Berlin.
"My dear," said Mrs. Leslie, the first time she could draw Irene aside, "I do not know how to congratulate you. You have surprised me too much. I never dreamed that you were in love with Julius Revington."
They were alone on the wide balcony, and the opaline hues of sunset sparkled on the blue horizon. Irene looked very pale and grave in the brilliant light. She gazed sadly at her friend.
"Does it follow that I am in love with him because I have promised to be his wife?" she asked, almost bitterly.
Mrs. Leslie started and gazed keenly at the fair young face.
"It should follow," she said. "No girl should marry a man with whom she is not in love. It is positively sinful to do so. And, my dear child, if you are marrying him for money you are sadly mis——" she paused, for a flood of crimson had drifted into Irene's face.
"Mrs. Leslie, I am quite aware that Mr. Revington's income is extremely small," she said, with girlish dignity.
"Oh, then, it is for love, after all," said the lady, relieved. "Well, that is the best, if you are going to marry him. But I must say it is a great surprise to me. You seemed to belong to me so utterly I never thought of a lover carrying you off."
Her sigh of genuine regret pierced Irene's tender heart.
She longed to throw her arms around the sweet lady's neck and tell her all her sad story—to disclaim all interest and love in the wretch who exacted so costly a price for her mother's happiness; but a feeling of pride held her back.
"Not now, while the shadow of the old disgrace hangs over me," she said to herself. "I could not bear for her to pity me. Only in the hour of my triumph will I tell her my strange story and ask her to rejoice with me."
Lilia came out on the balcony and Mrs. Leslie said no more. The child was exquisitely dressed, as usual, in a rich white robe, with a rose-colored sash. She looked quite pretty with her dark, shining hair falling over her shoulders, her large black eyes beaming with the fires of disease, and a deceptive glow of color on her cheeks.
She came and stood by Irene's side, and with one of her rare impulses of kindness laid her light, fragile hand on her shoulder.
"They tell me you are going to marry my cousin Julius," she said, abruptly.
"Yes," Irene answered, with a smothered sigh.
Mrs. Leslie looked at the two young girls, admiring their different types of beauty. Irene's blonde loveliness was matchless; the darker type of Lilia challenged admiration. Each set off the other, like night and morning.
But as Mrs. Leslie gazed she suddenly smothered a cry upon her lips—a cry of amazement!
Something had flashed over her suddenly and without warning as she watched the two beautiful faces side by side.
It was a subtle, startling, vivid resemblance between the two—the blue-eyed blonde, the dark-eyed brunette.
As she gazed, the wonderful, startling resemblance grew and grew upon her consciousness. Though one was fair and the other dark there was a subtle, haunting likeness in their features strong enough to have existed between sisters.
"What does it mean?" the lady asked herself, wonderingly. "Is it a mere chance likeness?"
While she gazed as if fascinated, Mr. Stuart stepped out upon the balcony. His dark face lighted with pleasure as he noted Lilia's affectionate attitude toward Irene. He stepped softly to his daughter's side and gazed at the two fair girls with a gratified smile upon his lips.
And again Mrs. Leslie suppressed a little cry of wonder.
The subtle likeness between Irene and Lilia was not stronger than that which existed between Irene and Mr. Stuart. They might have passed for father and daughter.
He looked up and arrested her gaze fixed upon his face in wonder and perplexity. He smiled.
"On what weighty subject are you musing so deeply, Mrs. Leslie?" he inquired.
"If you will come and walk with me, I will tell you," she replied, lightly.
"Nothing would give me more pleasure," he answered gallantly.
They went down the wide balcony steps together, leaving the two girls alone. Mrs. Leslie chose a favorite walk along the river bank, and by chance they sat down on the same pretty garden seat where Irene had rested that morning while she gave her promise to be Julius Revington's wife.
Mr. Stuart looked at his friend with a smile on his dark, handsome face.
"Now will you give me the benefit of your thoughts?" he said.
"If you will promise not to laugh—not to call me fanciful," she answered.
"On my honor," he replied, placing his hand on his heart, and bowing with mock gravity.
She was silent a moment, feeling a momentary embarrassment over her promise. He would think her fanciful certainly, perhaps be displeased.
"I am growing very curious," he observed.
"You need not be—— it is nothing of any consequence," she said. "It is only that before you came out on the balcony I was startled by observing the vivid likeness that exists between Lilia and Irene. They are like enough to be sisters. And when you came upon the scene my wonder only grew. Irene is enough like you to be your daughter."
She need not have been afraid that he would laugh at her—that he would think her fanciful. He started and gazed at her with wide, dark eyes and ashen, parted lips.
"Like Lilia! like me!" he repeated, strangely.
"Yes," she answered. "Enough like Lilia to be her sister, enough like you to be your child."
"Before God, I believe that she is!" he answered, startlingly.
She gazed at him in wonder.
"I do not understand you," she said, wondering if her old friend had gone mad.
But he reiterated in tones of suppressed passion:
"I believe that she is my own child. I have loved her since the first hour I looked on her beautiful face, so like that of the fair, cold woman who broke my heart! I have yearned to hold her in my arms, to kiss her fair face, and claim her for my own daughter, the pledge of a love that for a little while was as pure, as true, as beautiful as Heaven! It was the voice of nature speaking in my heart, claiming its own in tones that would not be stilled. Oh, Elaine, Elaine, fairest, dearest, cruelest of women!"
He bowed his head on his hands, and his strong form shook with great, smothered sobs.
Mrs. Leslie gazed at him in wonder and sympathy. What hidden mystery, what aching sorrow had her chance words evoked from the buried past? It was terrible to witness the shuddering emotion of this brave, strong man.
Looking up suddenly, with dark, anguished eyes, he caught her wondering, troubled look.
"Mrs. Leslie, you think me mad," he said, mournfully.
"No, no," she answered, reassuringly. "I must beg your pardon for my ill-advised words," she continued, regretfully. "I fear that I have touched the spring of some secret sorrow."
"You have," he answered, sadly. "But do not reproach yourself. You could not have known. You probed an aching wound by chance."
"I am so sorry. I did not dream," she said, incoherently, full of sorrow for her unconscious fault.
"And she looks like me, you think?" he said, thoughtfully.
"Marvellously," she exclaimed.
"Have you ever seen the woman's face in the locket she wears about her throat?" he asked.
"I am ashamed to confess that my womanly curiosity has made me guilty of peeping into it on one or two occasions," she replied. "It is the loveliest face I ever beheld."
"Fairest and falsest," he replied. "Mrs. Leslie, what will you think when I tell you that that woman was once bound to me by the dearest tie upon earth? She was my wife."
"I do not know what to think," she replied, and in truth she was half dazed by his words. She could not understand him.
"You look incredulous," he said, sadly. "But, Mrs. Leslie, you have known me for long years. Let your mind go back to the years before I married Miss Lessington. Did no faint rumor ever reach you of a boyish entanglement, hushed up by my father for fear it should reach the ears of the heiress selected for me?"
"Yes," she answered, with a start, "I recall it now—the merest whisper of a boyish fancy that your father would not tolerate. It was true, then?"
"It was true," he answered, sadly. "Mrs. Leslie, may I tell you my story? They say that a woman's wit is very keen. Perhaps you can help me to solve the problem of Irene's identity."
"You may tell me, and I will gladly help you if I can," she replied, with gentle, womanly sympathy.
In her heart she had always been sorry for Clarence Stuart. She believed him to be one of nature's noblemen, and she knew that he was mated with a cold, hard, jealous woman who was proud of her wealth, her birth, her station, and whose hard heart held neither pity nor sympathy for those whom she proudly held as inferiors. She intuitively felt that he had never loved the haughty heiress his proud father had selected for him.
"I must go back more than seventeen years to the romance of my life," he said. "I was barely twenty-one, then, an eager, impetuous, romantic boy, chafing at the rein my father tried to hold over me, and disgusted with the idea of the mariage de convenance he had arranged for me."
He sighed, and resumed:
"Nellie Ford, my cousin, who was away at a fashionable boarding-school, sent me an invitation to a musical soiree. I went, carelessly enough, and at that entertainment I met my fate—a blue-eyed girl looking much as Irene does now.
"She was not only beautiful, she was gifted with the sweetest voice I ever heard," he continued. "She sang, and I was enraptured. I sought and obtained an introduction to my divinity. Before we parted that evening my heart was irrevocably lost to sweet Elaine Brooke."
Heavy sighs rippled over his lips as he paused and seemed to contemplate in fancy the fair, flower-face, so long ago lost out of his life.
"That was not the last time we met," he continued. "Both loved, although it seemed indeed a mad, hopeless passion. I was destined to Lilia Lessington, and Elaine's ambitious mother intended to make a pedant of her daughter. She was destined to several years at Vassar College. Young blood flows hastily, you know, Mrs. Leslie," with a sad smile. "The hopelessness of my love maddened me. I persuaded my darling to elope with me to a distant city, where we were married."
"All for love, and the world well-lost," Mrs. Leslie quoted.
"Well-lost, indeed, if only she had been true," Clarence Stuart answered, with one of those long, labored sighs, that seem to cleave a strong man's heart in twain.
He was silent a few moments then, watching with gloomy eyes the softly lapsing river, on which the haze of twilight began to fall—
"So life runs away," he said, sadly. "Wave by wave, in sunshine or shadow. Ah! my old friend, the stream of my life has flowed for more than sixteen years in the shadow of a great sorrow. Only a few months of happiness were granted me with my beautiful bride."
"She was false, you said?" murmured Mrs. Leslie, sympathetically.
"False," he echoed.
"I have said that a few months only of happiness were granted me," he continued, after a moment's pause. "In a distant city, our whereabouts and our fate a mystery to all our relatives, we spent a few months of blind, delirious happiness, forgetting all save each other. Never was bride more wildly worshiped than I worshiped my beautiful Elaine; never was husband more adored than she seemed to adore me. We lived but for each other.
"To this sweet idyl, this beautiful romance, came a most prosaic ending.
"The considerable sum of money with which I had left home was quite exhausted by our idle, happy, luxurious life. I was forced to leave my wife for a short time, and go home, like the prodigal, to my father's house, confess my marriage, and entreat his forgiveness and assistance.
"There were hard words and a stormy scene at first. I had expected as much; for I was well aware of his ambitious plans for me. But at last, as I was about leaving his roof in anger, he relented. He gave me his paternal forgiveness, and promised to receive my wife as a daughter. It was arranged that I should leave early the next morning to bring Elaine home. Perhaps you can fancy my happiness, Mrs. Leslie."
"Yes," she replied, sympathetically, her kind blue eyes shining through a suspicious mist.
"I sat up quite late that night, talking to my father, expatiating with boyish enthusiasm on the beauty and sweetness of my young bride. My father heard me indulgently, and suffered me to run on unchecked. At length we drank some wine together, and I retired to rest in buoyant spirits, to dream of my darling, who was so soon to be welcomed as a beloved daughter to my father's splendid home.
"Instead of awaking early the next morning to start on my return to Elaine, as I had proposed doing, I slumbered on deeply and dreamlessly until noon. I awoke, burning with fever, parched with thirst, and seriously ill almost to the verge of delirium. Physicians were summoned, who declared that a severe and probably long attack of illness lay before me. I entreated my father to write to my wife to come to me, and was assured that he had already done so. He received no reply. Elaine neither wrote nor came to my sick bed. At my wild and urgent solicitations he wrote again and again, receiving not a line in reply. To allay my terrible anxiety, as soon as my illness took a turn for the better, my father went himself to bring my wife to me."
He paused, and fixed his dark, sad eyes on Mrs. Leslie's face. Their intense, anguished gaze seemed to burn through her.
After a moment, he said, hollowly:
"My friend, he returned alone."
"She was not worthy your love," Mrs. Leslie began, indignantly.
"Listen, and you shall judge," he replied. "After I left Elaine, her parents by some means obtained a clew to her whereabouts. They went to her, and, by dint of threats and persuasions, induced her to renounce me forever—me, her husband, who lay languishing upon his sick bed, almost dying for a sight of her worshiped face."
His voice broke slightly here. After the lapse of sixteen years memory was still potent to shake the iron self-possession he had tried to build up against his sorrow. He collected himself with an effort and resumed:
"Cold, hard man as my father was, the tears of pity for his outraged son stood thickly in his eyes when he told me this story. Elaine had gone home with her father and mother, but she sent me a cold, hard letter, upbraiding me with having beguiled her from her duty to her parents, and declaring that she would never live with me again, and never even wished to see again the man who had persuaded her into an entanglement which now she bitterly regretted and deplored."
"She was young and her parents unduly influenced her," said Mrs. Leslie, instinctively excusing the beautiful child-wife.
"Do you think so?" asked Mr. Stuart sadly. "Yes, she was very young, but that was a poor love that could thus lightly be turned away from its object."
And again he murmured hollowly from his favorite poet:
"You have had a sad experience," the lady said, gently.
"Have I not?" he said bitterly. "Ah, Mrs. Leslie, I cannot tell you what I suffered in learning my wife had cast me off. It seemed to me that I had gone mad in my grief and despair. I had a relapse of my illness and for long weeks struggled between life and death. I would sooner have died, but it was fated not to be. Slowly, wearily, I came back to life, and when I asked my father for tidings of her he told me that her parents had taken her abroad. Do I weary you, my friend, with the long recital of my sorrows?" he asked, pausing abruptly and gazing into her face with his beautiful, sad, black eyes.
"No, I am deeply interested," she replied. "I wish to hear all that there is to tell."
"There is little more to tell," he answered, sadly. "I was very proud, I loved my wife still, but I had no mind to force her obedience. I did not follow her to beg for her favor. I lent myself to my father's efforts to amuse and interest me, and tried to drown my sorrow in the mad whirl of dissipation and excess. In a few, a very few months, a formal letter came to my father from the Brookes abroad. Elaine, my willful child-wife, had died in giving birth to a little daughter. They wrote my father later on that the babe was dead, too."
He stifled the hollow groan that rose to his lips, and bowed his face on his arm. Mrs. Leslie regarded him in silent pity, but she could offer no acceptable words of sympathy to the sharp pathos of a grief like this.
"It grows late, I must hasten with my story," he exclaimed, glancing up at the sky from which all the sunset brightness was fading into "sober-suited grey." "You understand, Mrs. Leslie, that life was over and done for me then. I cared little what became of me, and my father urged me so persistently that a year later I married Lilia Lessington, the heiress he had chosen for me. I did not pretend to love her. I think she suspected something of my story, for she has always been bitterly jealous of me, and we have never been happy together."
"You should have told her your story. She could not have been jealous of the dead," Mrs. Leslie said, gently.
"The dead," he repeated in a strange voice. "Ah, my friend, is she dead? For sixteen years I never doubted it, but since that morning months ago, when I saved Irene's life, I have been haunted by terrible doubts and tears. The girl is the living, breathing image of my lost child-wife. She looks at me with Elaine's eyes, she speaks to me with Elaine's voice, she smiles at me with Elaine's face. And the face she wears around her neck is Elaine's face, only older, graver, sadder, with the brightness and archness faded from it, and the look of a martyred angel in its place."
"What do you suspect?" she asked, in a low and startled tone.
"I suspect that Elaine lives—that your mysterious protege, is her child and mine—I suspect that I have been deeply, darkly, terribly wronged—but, oh, my God, by whom?" he added, fiercely, striking his clenched hand against his high brow all beaded with drops of dew.
Mrs. Leslie stared, aghast and speechless. Had Clarence Stuart, indeed, been thus foully wronged? If so, whose soul was black with the stain of this sin?
"I have told you my story," he said. "I know you will keep it inviolate, but, Mrs. Leslie, if there is aught in the boasted keenness and wit of woman, I pray you find out this girl's secret for me. Let me know if my heart has spoken truly, when day and night it claims her for its very own, its first-born child, dearer than aught on earth beside, because she bears her mother's face."
"If woman's wit can avail, I will find out the truth for you," Mrs. Leslie answered, from the depths of her warm, womanly heart.
Then they rose and walked back to the villa in the hush of the beautiful twilight, outwardly silent, but with full hearts.
As the footsteps of Mr. Stuart and his companion died away, there was a sudden rustling in the thick shrubbery that shaded the garden-seat. The branches parted and the face of Mrs. Stuart appeared. It was white with commingled fear and anger, the eyes flashed luridly, her white, jeweled hands were tightly clenched, the breath came gaspingly between her parted lips.
She sat down on the garden-seat, and gazed gloomily before her into the deepening dusk.
"He suspects all," she uttered, huskily. "My God, what if he should learn the truth? That girl—I have always instinctively hated her. Can she be his child, indeed? If so, she must be removed as soon as possible. Does Julius Revington suspect whom she is, and is he laying a plan for my dethronement? I must see him privately and learn the truth. I cannot, I will not, be ousted from my place. I have dared and risked too much to lose all now!"
She made her way rapidly back to the house by a roundabout path, and going to her room, arranged her disordered hair and dress. Then she descended to the drawing-room in search of Mr. Revington.
The lamps were lighted and most of her guests were in the room amusing themselves in various fashions. She missed Mr. Revington, but the tinkle of his inevitable guitar came to her from the balcony. She went out and found him pouring out a plaintive love-song into the unappreciative ears of Irene. At the appearance of her hostess the girl effected a precipitate escape into the house, leaving her lover to finish his ditty to the desert air.
Mrs. Stuart went up to his side and laid her hand on his arm.
"Julius, I wish to speak to you," she said, in a low, strange voice.
The strings twanged discordantly under his hand. He looked up with something like a guilty start.
"Now?" he asked.
"Of course not," impatiently, "but as soon as possible. Can we manage a private meeting?"
"I can, of course," he answered, with an emphasis on the pronoun. "The risk is yours, not mine. What can you have to say to me?"
The impatient, almost insolent tone in which he addressed her, sent the hot blood to her face.
"You take a high tone," she breathed in suppressed anger.
"Pardon me," he replied, with a fine latent sarcasm in his tone that angered her yet more.
But she kept down her seething resentment with a powerful effort of will.
"Can you come out into the grounds to-night? I have something very important to speak about. I can slip out unnoticed about eleven o'clock," she whispered.
"I will come," he replied, laconically.
She named a place for meeting, then returned to her guests in the drawing-room. Her glance, full of envenomed hate and deadly malice, fell on Irene.
The girl was standing at an open window half-hidden by the falling drapery of the lace curtains, her beautiful, sad young face turned toward the sky. She was looking wondrously lovely in her simple, white mull dress with a great cluster of purple golden-hearted pansies nestled in the filmy lace at her throat, and the veil of her golden hair half hiding the slim, graceful form. Mrs. Stuart wondered at the air of deep sadness that marked the girlish face and caused that pathetic droop of the rosy lips.
How little she dreamed that the girl she hated so jealously was thinking of one dead in the cruel sea as she stood there watching the starry constellations of Heaven sparkling through the misty veil of night. She did not dream what mournful thoughts filled the young heart nor how sadly Irene murmured over to herself some plaintive words that seemed to fit her melancholy vein:
All unheeded and unnoted by its object, Mrs. Stuart's angry glance dwelt on Irene. The girl was so absorbed in her own sad thoughts that the ripple of talk and laughter in the room seemed to flow past her like a dream so faint and far-away it sounded. A feeling of utter loneliness and pain, of vague longing and sharp regret possessed her. Only half conscious of outward things she leaned against the window mournfully musing.
Suddenly to her dulled senses penetrated the noise of a somewhat unusual bustle in the room, the rustle of a silken robe as its wearer hastily rose, and a sharp cry of wonder and surprise in the voice of Mrs. Leslie:
"Mr. ——!" Irene lost the name in her apathy. "Can this be you, or am I dreaming?"
"I heard at Florence that you were here, Mrs. Leslie, and I could not resist the temptation of calling," said a deep, sweet, musical voice.
That voice! Every drop of blood in Irene's heart seemed to answer it! It shocked her out of her apathetic sorrow. She would have cried out in the suddenness of her surprise, but her lips were parched and dry, her tongue failed her.
Instinctively she shrank further into the shadow and turned her head toward the sound.
Her heart had not deceived her. The world had never held but one voice that could stir the secret depths of her heart.
And this was he! She had thought him dead—
But there he stood—tall, large, handsome, with that easy, gracious, indolent air she recalled so well—a smile on his lips as he replied to Mrs. Leslie's eager questions and exclamations.
Then Irene, watching with startled eyes, saw and heard the hum of greetings and introductions. Even Mrs. Stuart unbent from her supercilious hauteur to do honor to the stranger. She had heard of him, and knew that he was well-born and wealthy.
"What shall I do? Will he know me?" Irene asked herself, with a great suffocating heart-beat.
She saw Mrs. Leslie coming to the window with her friend, and nerved herself for the ordeal. Her thoughts flew confusedly back over the past. How strangely they had parted, how strangely they were meeting.
Mrs. Leslie pushed back the rich lace curtain with her white, ringed hand, and showed the beautiful, silent, statue-like girl.
"Miss Berlin, allow me to present my friend, Mr. Kenmore, the dead-alive," she said, smilingly.
There was one instant of breathless silence as Mrs. Leslie's kind introductory words thus fell on the ears of the husband and wife, who until that moment had believed the other dead. Then, with a great effort of will Irene raised her pale face and dark blue eyes to meet Guy Kenmore's gaze.
He was staring at her with parted lips, with dilated eyes, and a death-white face as if he had seen a ghost, and suddenly, without words or bow, or slightest greeting, he turned away and walked to another window, leaning from it as if stifled for want of air.
Mrs. Leslie gazed after him, stupefied. She had never beheld such unparalleled rudeness.
"Irene might have been a ghost," she said to herself. "What does it mean?"
In the next instant Mr. Kenmore walked quickly back to them. He bowed his head humbly before Irene.
"Miss Berlin, I crave your pardon," he said. "Pray do not think me rude. Your face startled me as if I had seen a ghost. You are the image of one—who is dead."
He looked at her strangely as if expecting her to refute his words, but she only bowed her graceful head and drooped her deep blue eyes before his earnest gaze. Her heart was throbbing wildly with the wonder if he would claim her before all these curious, gazing eyes. It would not have surprised her if he had said:
"You are Irene Brooke, whom I married and whom I thought dead. I know not how you came back from your watery grave, but I cannot be deceived in your identity."
She stood speechless before him, expecting every moment to hear him utter those words. She wondered what she would say to him in reply. Should she own the truth—she, who had promised to give herself to Julius Revington to purchase honor and happiness for her wronged mother?
She could not answer her own question; a mist swam before her eyes, her heart beat in her ears, it seemed to her that her strength failed her, and in another moment she must fall upon the floor at his feet.
Through it all she heard his voice breaking clearly, musically upon her tumultuous thoughts.
"I am most happy to make your acquaintance, Miss Berlin," he said, in the courteous, kindly voice of a stranger, and extended his hand to her.
He had been startled out of himself, but only for a moment. Now he was the cool, polished man of the world again. He spoke to her and looked at her as a stranger.
Her heart gave a sudden throb of relief, then sank like ice in her breast. She gave him her hand, her small head crested with sudden pride, though a subtle thrill ran through her veins as his warm fingers clasped hers in a momentary pressure.
There is a subtle language in a hand-clasp. Guy Kenmore's pressure of Irene's hand said, as plain as words:
"I love you!"
Every drop of blood in Irene's heart acknowledged the confession, but her colder reason disdainfully rejected it.
"He will not acknowledge me. He is sorry to find that I am living," she said to herself, with a sudden, hot thrill of shame and anger. "Well, I shall not force myself upon him. I can be as cold and indifferent as he is."
Her strong will and her latent pride came to her aid. She knew that he regarded her as a spoiled child. A longing came over her to show him that she was a woman—a fascinating woman, too.
When Julius Revington came to her side again he was astonished at the bright, charming wiles she put forth for his benefit.
He knew that her moods were changeful as an April day. He had found a certain charm in the fact, although more clouds than sunshine had been meted out to him. But suddenly he found everything inexplicably changed.
From a lovely, willful, capricious child, Irene was transformed into a beautiful, dignified, brilliant woman. She talked with charming ease and grace. Her laugh rang out like a chime of silver bells. No one had ever seen her so gay and sparkling before, nor one-half so beautiful.
Her eyes sparkled beneath their drooping lashes with interest and animation. Her cheeks were flushed like the heart of a rose, the delicious dimples played hide and seek around her lovely lips. Her words, her looks, her gestures, were all full of grace and beauty.
Julius Revington was enthralled by the newly developed charms of his betrothed. He believed that she had softened to him at last, and that her graciousness indicated a dawning love for himself.
He was thrilled with joy at the thought, and gave free rein to the emotions of his heart. His eager adoration showed in his every glance.
Meanwhile Guy Kenmore, seated across the room by the side of Mrs. Leslie, could not keep his eyes and his thoughts from the lovely girl who had so startled him out of his self-possession. Not a movement or word escaped his notice, although he was outwardly courteous and attentive to the lady he had called to see.
But the pretty, graceful widow was gifted with keen perceptions. She did not fail to note her caller's wandering glance. She was not envious of her beautiful protege, but she could not repress a slight feeling of pique as she saw with what an effort he maintained his apparent interest in herself.
At length she tapped him lightly on his shoulder and brought his wandering glances back to meet her own.
"Forewarned is forearmed," she whispered, gaily. "Do not lose your heart to my beautiful protege, Mr. Kenmore. She is already betrothed."
He started, and a dark-red flush mounted to his temples.
"Your protege!" he exclaimed, catching eagerly at the word.
"Yes," she replied. "She belongs to me, and her story is a most romantic one. Some time I will tell it you, and you shall tell me about that dead friend of yours whom Irene resembles."
"Is her name Irene?" he inquired, and she did not fail to notice the uncontrollable start he gave.
"Yes, it is Irene—Irene Berlin. Do you not think it a pretty name?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered, "I like it very much, and it gives me a new interest in the owner. The name of my lost friend was Irene."
"And if I am not mistaken my protege is the friend whom you believed lost. I have stumbled on a romance and a mystery," thought the lady, shrewdly, to herself; but aloud she only said, with apparent unsuspiciousness: "That is quite a coincidence."
Then she said no more, for to her utter surprise she saw Julius Revington leading Irene to the piano.
Irene had always declined to play and sing before to-night, so her friend was quite excusable for the almost open-mouthed surprise with which she regarded her movements.
The white figure settled itself on the piano stool, the white hands fluttered over the keys, a melancholy chord was softly struck, then——
Mrs. Leslie held her breath.
Irene was singing in a voice no one had suspected her of possessing—pure, clear, rarely tender and sweet—those sad, pathetic verses, "Remember and Forget."
A sudden silence fell on every one in the room. No one was less surprised than Mrs. Leslie. No one had dreamed how obstinately Irene had concealed her gift of a sweet, bird-like voice until now. As the clear, well-trained tones rose and fell, every one was dumb with astonishment and delight.