Mrs. Leslie felt a light touch on her shoulder. She looked up into the pale, agitated face of Mr. Stuart. He bent down and whispered:
"I can doubt no longer. She is too fatally like Elaine. She is, she must be, my own child. She has my lost wife's face and voice, and it is the same song she sang the night when her fatal beauty and sweetness wiled my heart from me. What must I do?"
She saw that he was deeply agitated, and fearing some impulsive action, whispered back, warningly:
"Do nothing—yet. Stranger coincidences have happened. Wait until you learn more."
With a sigh he acquiesced in her advice, and returned to his seat. But his agitation had not been unobserved by Mrs. Stuart. Her soul was on fire with anger and hatred toward the beautiful singer. She would have given anything she possessed to have heard what her husband had confided to Mrs. Leslie.
Guy Kenmore sat silent, lost in a maze of troubled thought. He had not meant to listen to Mr. Stuart's words, but in his proximity to Mrs. Leslie, the sharp, agonized whisper had penetrated to his hearing. An uncontrollable eagerness came over him to hear Mrs. Leslie's promised story of her beautiful protege.
Irene was playing a waltz now—something as gay and joyous as her song had been sweet and pensive. Guy Kenmore touched Mrs. Leslie's arm.
"Let us go on the balcony. The moonlight is so beautiful," he said.
They went, and though Irene did not turn her head she knew that they had left the room, and her heart sank unaccountably. But she went on playing with tireless fingers, and the gay, sweet music floated deliciously out on the balcony where the young man was saying in a low voice to his companion:
"I must confess to an almost feminine curiosity regarding your promised story of your beautiful protege."
"You wish to hear it now?" said the lady, smilingly.
"Yes," he admitted, frankly.
"After all there is little to tell," she replied. "I know actually nothing of her except that she is a beautiful, fascinating mystery."
"A mystery—how?" he asked.
"I will tell you," she said, "for I do not suppose it is any betrayal of confidence. If I do not tell it you will hear it from others who love her less than I do."
"No one could appreciate your confidence more than I will do," he said, eagerly.
Mrs. Leslie's heart beat quickly. She believed that Mr. Kenmore held the key to the mystery she had promised to unravel for Clarence Stuart. She determined to tell him Irene's story, in the hope of eliciting a like confidence.
"It is nearly four months now since we left Richmond for Italy," she began. "We sailed in Mr. Stuart's own yacht."
"Yes. I saw that fact duly announced in the Richmond papers," he observed.
"But, pardon me for having interrupted your story. Please go on."
"It was the tenth of June when we left Richmond—I like to be particular as to dates," said Mrs. Leslie. "Well, it was lovely weather, and we all planned to get up early the next morning and see the sun rise over the sea. We did so, and as you may be aware, it was a glorious sight; but we only got one glimpse of it, for its first beams showed us a more tragic and interesting sight."
Mr. Kenmore caught his breath, and gazed eagerly at the speaker.
"It was a loud scream for help that first attracted our attention," said Mrs. Leslie. "The sound was not very far away, and we all turned instinctively toward it. To our horror we saw on the level, sun-lighted waves a floating plank, with a human figure clinging to its frail support. Literally, there remained but one plank between her and eternity."
"Ah!" exclaimed Guy Kenmore, with a shudder.
"Mr. Stuart is one of the bravest men in the world, I think. He immediately sprang over the side of the yacht into the sea, and swam toward the floating figure. Before he reached her she lost her hold of the plank, and sank under the water. Mr. Stuart instantly dived, and brought her up in his arms."
"He saved her life. How strange," exclaimed Mr. Kenmore, as if speaking to himself.
"Do you think so?" she asked, looking at him keenly. "Why strange, Mr. Kenmore?"
"I beg your pardon. I did not express myself properly," he said, biting his lips nervously. "Well, Mrs. Leslie, do you mean to tell me that the heroine of that romantic episode was the beautiful Miss Berlin?"
"Yes, it was she," replied Mrs. Leslie.
There was a minute's dead pause. Irene was singing again. In the stillness her full, sweet voice floated out to them softly:
Mrs. Leslie looked at the man's handsome face. It was grave and troubled in the moonlight.
"Is it not strange?" she said. "She would never sing for us until to-night. We did not suspect that she had such a soulful voice. But she was betrothed to Mr. Revington to-day. Perhaps the happiness of her soul finds natural vent in song."
She saw him wince as if she had touched a secret wound. He looked away from her at the lovely Italian landscape bathed in the pearly radiance of the moonlight. When he spoke again he did not look at her.
"Mrs. Leslie. I am curious to hear how your protege came to be in the water?"
"She threw herself in, Mr. Kenmore."
"No," he cried, with a shudder.
"It is true," she replied. "She says she had lost her only friend and did not wish to live."
"Who was that friend?" he asked.
"She declined to say. She declined to speak of her past. She had broken loose from all its ties, and never wished to unite them again. She shrouded herself in mystery, claiming nothing from the life she had left except the sweet, simple name of Irene."
"Yet you called her Berlin," he said.
"Yes, but it was my own maiden name which I gave her because she declared herself nameless," said Mrs. Leslie.
"You were very kind."
"Do you think so? I fell in love with the child, and adopted her as my protege. I am sure she has had a great sorrow in her life, but I am equally sure that she is pure and innocent as a little child."
He looked at her, gratefully.
"And the Stuarts?" he inquired, in a tone of veiled significance.
"Mr. Stuart was as much fascinated by Irene as I was. He wished to adopt her as Lilia's sister, but his jealous wife would not permit him to do so."
"And Revington is her lover?"
"Yes, she accepted him to-day."
"Is it a good match for her?" inquired Mr. Kenmore, dropping into a light, conventional, society tone.
"Not in a worldly way," she replied. "Mr. Revington's fortune is very small, barely sufficient for his own luxurious needs. He is of good family, however, being cousin to Clarence Stuart. I cannot say I have any admiration for the man, and I am disappointed at Irene's choice."
He made no comment on her words, but remained gazing thoughtfully at the beautiful starry arch of night. Mrs. Leslie thought that it was now her turn to receive confidence.
"Now, I have told you all I know of my interesting protege, you must tell me about your friend whom she resembled so much that she frightened you to-night," she said, blandly.
He started and looked at her, but before he could speak they were interrupted.
Mr. Revington and Irene came out upon the balcony and took seats near them. The girl looked at Mr. Kenmore with a bright, careless smile.
"We have been talking about you, Mr. Kenmore," she said. "We are exceedingly anxious to know how you escaped from the wreck in which you were reported as lost."
She spoke and looked as if he were an utter stranger. He answered with indifference equal to her own:
"I am gratified by your solicitude, Miss Berlin. I can very easily gratify your curiosity. I was rescued by one of the small boats that was lowered from the steamer that sunk us."
"Thank you for your concise explanation," she replied, gaily. "I see you are not disposed to weave any romance around it."
"It was too terribly real to be associated with the thought of romance," he replied, repressing a slight shudder.
"And yet our daily life is often more romantic than fiction," observed Mr. Revington, sentimentally.
No one dissented from the proposition. Mr. Kenmore rose and prepared to take leave.
But when he had bowed formally to Irene and her lover, and returned to the drawing-room, the hospitable host and hostess quite took him by storm.
"Return to Florence that night? They would not hear of such a thing! They could not think of losing such a pleasant addition to their party. Mr. Kenmore must promise to be their guest a week at least." The end of it all was that Mr. Kenmore gracefully accepted their cordial invitation, and promised to send to Florence for his luggage on the morrow.
Very soon afterwards the party separated for the night. Mr. Kenmore went to his room, but he was in no mood for retiring. He threw himself down into a chair at the window and lighted a cigar.
"Decidedly I have made a fine beginning," he said to himself. "I have found out more than I expected to do when I came to Mr. Stuart's villa. Perhaps I had been wise to have remained in America. I am come too late."
He was restless and ill at ease. The four walls of his room, spacious and elegant as it was, seemed to confine and stifle him. A fancy seized him to go out into the night air. It would cool his throbbing brow perhaps and he could think more clearly.
A narrow balcony ran across the front of his window, and a flight of steps led from it to the garden below. He stepped safely through his open window and went down the stairs just as all the clocks in the house simultaneously chimed eleven.
"You have kept me waiting, Julius."
Mrs. Stuart spoke impatiently. She had been waiting some time at the end of the myrtle avenue among its deepest shadows and her temper was not sweetened by the delay.
"I beg your pardon," Mr. Revington replied, "I was smoking a cigar with your husband and could not come any sooner."
He paused a moment, and then added in a rather complaining tone:
"I could not imagine what you wanted of me, anyhow."
"Could you not?" she inquired, with a smothered sneer. "Well, sit down here on this quiet seat and I will tell you."
They seated themselves and began talking softly, unconscious that in the long grass just beyond the thick belt of shrubbery that inclosed the myrtle avenue, a man had flung himself down full length, so absorbed in his own painful thoughts as to be for the moment unaware of their presence.
Suddenly he became aware of the murmuring sound of voices. His first impulse was to rise and leave the spot, but in the next he decided that it would startle the speakers and draw down their ill-will perhaps upon himself.
"Some of the servants out sparking," he laughed to himself. "I will not disturb them. They will be none the worse for my presence."
So he laid his head down again upon his arm, and relapsed into his painful musing.
"I will tell you what I have to say to you, Julius," repeated Mrs. Stuart. "I wish to ask you who is this girl, Irene?"
Julius Revington gave a violent start in the darkness.
"My dear madame, how should I know?" he exclaimed.
"She has promised to be your wife, and it is very likely that she has confided the story of her past to you," replied Mrs. Stuart.
"You are mistaken in the supposition. She has steadily declined any such confidence. I have taken her upon her own merits, mystery and all," he replied.
There was a moment's pause. Their faces were in shadow, and Mrs. Stuart devoutly wished that she could pierce the veil of the darkness, and read upon his weak face whether or not he was deliberately trying to deceive her.
"Perhaps you have formed some opinion of your own," she said.
"I have had no clew upon which to base an opinion," he replied.
"Have you ever seen the pictures in her locket?" she inquired.
Taken by surprise, he stammered faintly: "Ye-es, once, by the merest accident."
"You recognized them?" she asked, coldly.
"How should I?" he asked, startled.
"Why should you not?" she mimicked. "Julius, do not try to beat about the bush with me. I am in desperate earnest. I will not be put off by lies and evasions! You have seen Elaine Brooke's portrait; therefore you must have recognized the face in Irene's locket as hers."
"And if I did?" he asked, sullenly.
"You must have guessed at the girl's name. You could not have helped it. It is written on her face. You know whom she is, but you are trying to deceive me. You know that you are," she said, passionately.
He saw that he had to deal with a passionate, jealous woman, and that his game was all up, so far as concealment of his plans was concerned.
"I shall be forced to admit what I cannot deny," he told himself, grimly.
Aloud, he asked, in a tone of forced suavity: "Whom do you say that the girl is, Mrs. Stuart?"
She bent toward him and answered in a hissing whisper of anger and hate:
"She is the daughter of Clarence Stuart and his first wife, Elaine Brooke."
A cry of dismay and surprise came from his lips.
"You dare not deny it," she hissed.
"I do not intend to. It is quite true," he replied, doggedly.
"I knew it! How I hate her!" exclaimed Mrs. Stuart, vindictively. "Would to God she had perished in the sea that day! From the very first I hated her even before I dreamed of her identity!"
And for a few moments the air was filled with the sharp ravings of her anger and bitter hatred.
"How have you learned so much?" inquired Julius Revington, curiously, for he had fancied that the mystery surrounding Irene was impenetrable to all but himself.
"No matter. I am not blind to anything around me. I carry too terrible a secret in my breast to run the risk of its detection. I must guard it at every point," she replied. "Can you guess what question I am about to ask you, Julius Revington? You cannot? It is this, then, and mind that you answer me truly. Do you intend to turn traitor?"
"Traitor? What do you mean?" stammered Julius Revington.
"You know well enough what I mean," flashed Mrs. Stuart angrily. "You are going to marry that girl, and of course her welfare will be yours. It will be to your interest to betray me. Do you intend to reveal the secret and drive me and Lilia out into the world nameless and disgraced—— through no fault of mine, remember, but through the sin of that old dotard who should have carried his miserable secret to the grave with him?"
A pause. It seemed to Guy Kenmore that they must hear his heart beating so near them in the stillness. He was thoroughly aroused now, but he could not believe that it was wrong to listen. On the contrary he blessed the fancy that had led him out into the cool night air.
Julius Revington made no reply to Mrs. Stuart's half-piteous appeal.
"Cannot you speak?" she cried out, sharply. "Are you too cowardly to own your vile intentions?"
"You use strong terms, Mrs. Stuart," he said, sullenly. "Is it a vile act to carry out the sacred commands of a dying man? To restore to Clarence Stuart the last love of his youth? To give honor and happiness to a wronged woman? To restore her unhappy child to her father's name and love?"
"Then you do intend to do so! Wretch!" cried the lady, bitterly; then she broke down, sobbing in an abandonment of despair: "Oh, Lilia, Lilia, my poor, fragile darling! This will kill you!"
Julius Revington sat sullenly silent, ashamed of being found out in his designs, yet by no means ready to forego them.
"And you promised to keep the secret for me. You took my bribes, and swore you would never tell the truth to Clarence! You are a perjured villain!" upbraided the lady, violently.
"And you are a——". He bent and whispered the last word in her ear in a tone of threatening. "Beware how you call names, my lady! I am not to be abused and bullied, remember that!"
A wail of pain broke from her lips.
"It was for Lilia's sake," she moaned. "My proud, beautiful child, how could she bear shame and disgrace? Oh, Julius Revington, I would go down on my knees to you, I would bless you forever, I would deem you the noblest man on earth, if you would spare me and my Lilia this shame and ignominy!"
"Irene has lived under the shadow of shame and ignominy all her life. It is her turn now," he retorted, sullenly.
"Does she suspect the truth?" she asked, anxiously.
"No," he replied, ashamed of the bribe he had held out as the means of winning his lovely betrothed.
"She need not ever know. Oh, Julius, why cannot you marry her, and take her away, far away, and leave us in peace?" she cried, miserably.
"You forget that she is the legal heir to her father's fortune," he retorted, with coarse significance.
"Ah! that is the object," she cried. "You are poor, and you cannot forego your grip on the Stuart fortune. Oh, Julius, I bought your silence once; let me do so again."
"It would be at a costly price," he said, in a hard, snappish voice.
"At any price!" she cried, desperately. "Listen, Julius. My own private fortune is as large as Mr. Stuart's. I have complete control of it. I will portion you off handsomely, if you will keep the secret and take Irene away from here—far away—where she can never trouble my peace again. Oh, for pity's sake, Julius, grant my prayer!" She threw herself desperately on the ground and clasped his knees despairingly. "It can matter little to you. You will have the woman you love; and I swear that you shall receive from me as much money as Mr. Stuart would leave her. Will you do this, Julius, for Lilia's sake? If you refuse, it will be the death-warrant of my child!"
"Since you put it like that, I suppose I must yield the point. I do not want to kill the child," he muttered. "But it is hard on Irene, and if a large slice of your fortune isn't handed out, you needn't count on my silence!"
"As much as you wish," she cried, eagerly; "and, oh, Julius, you will marry her as quick as possible—to-morrow—next week—the earliest moment she will consent! And let your wedding tour be to the other end of the world!" she added, feverishly.
"I do not care how far it be so that I have beautiful Irene for my companion, and a large bank account to draw on," Julius Revington answered, with a coarse laugh.
"And this contemptible creature is the man Irene loves, the man she would wed," Guy Kenmore said to himself in bitter disgust.
"What am I to do?" Irene asked herself that night when she was alone in the quiet and seclusion of her chamber.
She had laughed and sung and jested while Guy Kenmore's eyes were upon her, and feigned an indifference she was very far from feeling. But now she had to tear off the mask so proudly worn, and face her fate.
"What am I to do?" she asked herself, miserably, as she walked up and down the floor in her pretty blue dressing-gown, with her white hands twisted together in a childish fashion she had. "I do not believe the heroine of the most impossible novel was ever placed in a more harrowing situation. Here am I betrothed to the villain of the story, when my husband, whom I believed to be dead, unexpectedly pops upon the scene. And instead of his appearance simplifying matters, it tangles them into a Gordian knot, and I can only ask myself what I shall do!"
She laughed—a mocking, mirthless little laugh that startled a dozen eerie little echoes in the corners of the room.
"Heigh-ho! I know what I would do if he loved me," she said to herself, wistfully, "I would fly to my husband's arms, and defy Julius Revington to do his worst. I would say to him proudly, I have here an honest name, and a true love of which your machinations cannot deprive me!"
The quick tears started out beneath her golden-brown lashes.
"Alas, alas! he does not love me," she sighed. "Why should he do so? He never saw me but once before last night. It was my own willful folly that led him into that dreadful marriage. I doubt not he was glad when he thought that my reckless suicide had broken the fetters that had bound him. Last night he pretended not to know me, yet he could hardly have been ignorant of my identity. He could not have forgotten my face so soon. It is a fair one, they say—yet not fair enough to have won his heart."
That momentous question, "What am I to do?" echoed drearily in her heart. She could find no answer to it; she could think of no refuge from her sorrow. For the first time since that awful night in the cold, dark waves, she wished that the friendly plank had not drifted to her reach—that she had perished miserably then rather than have lived to find herself in this terrible strait.
"I cannot marry Mr. Revington now," she thought. "I must take back my promise of yesterday, with no reason save that of a woman's fickleness. He will be very angry; he will tell my miserable story to Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Leslie, to all of these people that sneer at the mystery that enshrouds my past. What shall I do?"
A passionate shame surged over her at the thought of the cold looks and sneering words that would be thrown at her when her discarded suitor should tell these strangers that her mother was a dishonored woman, and that she, her child, had no right to her father's name. She fancied that Mrs. Leslie and Mr. Stuart, the only two friends she had, would be turned against her, too. She would be utterly alone and wretched—friendless and forsaken.
"And yet I cannot be sorry that Guy Kenmore lives," she murmured. "Though he hate me and deny me; though he bring down shame and sorrow on my head, I must still be glad that he did not perish in the cold and dark waves. How strange it seems that only twenty-four hours ago I wept him dead, and now I weep him living. Alas! living or dead, he is lost to me the same. I must ever remain an unloved, unacknowledged bride."
Worn out by the weary vigils of the past two nights she threw herself down on the bed, dressed as she was, and fell into an exhausted slumber. She slept late and dreamlessly, and when she opened her bewildered blue eyes the next morning upon the beautiful sunny day no answer had come to the question that vexed her brain last night.
But in the golden light of the new day her woful strait did not look so grievous as it did last night. A feverish hope sprang up in her heart that God would befriend her in her sorrow and helplessness and show her some way out of her trouble.
When she had made her simple, pretty toilet, and gone down-stairs, she found that everyone had breakfasted except Mr. Revington, who had sentimentally waited for her. She swallowed her breakfast with what appetite she could, and then he asked her to take a walk with him.
"All the ladies of the family are out in the garden," he said. "Mrs. Leslie and her admirer, Mr. Kenmore, have been out almost an hour. That will be a match, I think."
"I think you are mistaken," Irene answered, almost angrily.
Irene brought her shady sun-hat and went out into the beautiful garden with her lover. Mr. Revington carried his guitar, thinking that he would beguile the hours with music.
They went to Irene's favorite seat under the orange trees, where she could watch the river gliding past. She was very languid and quiescent this morning, the natural result of last night's emotion. She said to herself that she would make no struggle against her fate to-day; she would just drift quietly with the tide and see where it would bear her.
She little dreamed what subject was agitating Mr. Revington's mind.
He was full of the new idea Mrs. Stuart had suggested, and had brought his betrothed out expressly to ask her to name an early day for their marriage.
Some little remorse for the treachery he meditated toward her disturbed his mind, but it was not deep enough to cause him to repent of the promise Mrs. Stuart had exacted from him. Once he was safely married to beautiful Irene he intended to invent some plausible story of losing the documents he had promised her as proving her mother's honorable marriage. Oh, he would manage cleverly enough. Once bound to him Irene could not help herself, doggedly reasoned the dastard.
But somehow he did not find it easy to broach the subject uppermost in his thoughts. Irene was grave and distrait this morning, with a chilly reserve about her that did not court lover-like advances. All her bright spirits and coquettish wiles of last night had vanished. He was dismayed at her relapse into her old, ennuyed self. She would not encourage his advances. She was absolutely frigid.
So he was obliged to plunge into the subject with an inward shiver like one about taking a bath in ice-cold water.
"My darling, can you guess what I am going to ask you this morning?" he ventured.
She looked at him with a crimsoning face and flashing eyes.
"I wish you would not call me names, Mr. Revington," she said, with petulant dignity.
"Names!" he echoed, blankly.
"Yes," she replied, loftily. "Darling, and all such names as belong to the jargon of love, I heartily despise, and I must beg you to spare me their infliction."
"But you have promised to marry me, Irene," he expostulated.
"I have not promised to love you, though," she retorted with spirit. "Please remember that, Mr. Revington, and spare me your love-sick phrases!"
He stared at her, angered and abashed. Her purple-blue eyes sparkled with scorn, her sweet, red lips were curled disdainfully. He kept down his bitter anger with an effort, remembering the boon he wished to crave.
"Do not forget that our compact was a mere matter of the bargain and sale of the secret you held," Irene continued, bitterly. "You drove me into it by your threats of disgracing me in the eyes of the world. Let us keep to the letter of our bargain. You will never have any terms of endearment from me, and I expect and desire none from you. On such terms they are simply revolting."
"As you will," he retorted, in sullen wrath. "But I cannot see what you expect to gain by your stand-off and let-alone policy. I shall be your husband all the same, and instead of having me for your devoted slave, you will make me a tyrannical master."
A queer little smile curled her lips. Her heart beat with a sudden exultant thought.
Fate had placed it out of her power to sacrifice herself for her mother's sake. She could not but be glad, although her heart bled for that mother's griefs and wrongs.
"Shall I tell him?" she asked herself, almost tempted to defy him then and there.
Her weak heart failed her at the thought of the story the wretch would pour into Mrs. Leslie's ears. How would she meet pity and contempt in those dear eyes that had looked at her so kindly.
"I will wait. I cannot tell him yet," she concluded, weakly.
But his next words fell like a thunder-clap on her startled hearing. "Irene, I wish you would name an early day for our marriage," he said.
"Early," she stammered, taken aback.
He smiled grimly.
"Yes, it's a mere bargain, you know, and, like all business compacts, should be ratified early."
She quivered all over with resentment at his tone, but she held her peace.
"Not yet," she answered to her beating heart that longed to defy him.
"It seems to me that in your peculiar situation, being a mere dependent on Mrs. Leslie's charity, that the sooner you have a home and a husband the better for you," he continued, coarsely. "I am most anxious to take you back to your mother with the good tidings we have to carry her. Do you remember, Irene, that the longer you delay our marriage the more you prolong your mother's pain?"
"I remember," she said, in a stifled voice.
"Then will you not consent to name this day week for our wedding-day?
"So soon? No, I will not," she flashed back, in indignant surprise.
"For your mother's sake," he pleaded artfully.
"Not for an angel's sake!" declared Irene angrily.
Her lover was dumfounded at this indignant denial.
"How soon, then, can I count upon your fulfilment of your promise?" he demanded, in a crestfallen tone.
The girl's red lips trembled with the defiant answer, "Never," but she bit them hard to keep back the passionate word. She knew his power, and though she felt that the threatening sword that hung over her head must fall at last, she dreaded to utter the word that must precipitate its downfall.
"I have not thought about that matter yet," she said, determined to temporize with the wretch, and gain a few days' respite. "I supposed it lay far away in the future. I hoped so at least."
"I hope you will give it your earliest attention, then," he replied, sullenly. "I have no mind to wait long, I can assure you."
"How long will be the limit of your patience?" she inquired sarcastically.
"I shall wait two weeks on your pleasure. If you are not ready then to keep your promise I shall throw prudence to the winds and reveal all," he answered, stung by her scorn and goaded to retaliation.
Her beautiful blue eyes flashed scorn and contempt upon him.
"Wretch," she cried, "how I hate you! Leave my presence instantly, and do not intrude upon me again to-day. I am free yet, and I will not tolerate you until I am compelled to do so. Go this instant!"
The flash of her eye assured him that prudence was the better part of valor. He rose angrily.
"Very well, since you choose to play the shrew!" he said, "enjoy your liberty while you may! I assure you it will not last long once you are legally mine!"
And with a muttered curse on his lips he stalked angrily away, his heart full of blended love and hate for his beautiful, disdainful betrothed.
"Mrs. Leslie, I want to ask you one question," said Guy Kenmore.
They two were walking in the wide, beautiful villa-garden among the roses and lilies and beautiful crimson flowers drooping from grand white marble vases. The sun shone on the beautiful terraced walks, on the sparkling fountains, and the glistening green leaves and golden fruit of the orange and lemon trees, the air perfumed with the fragrance of countless flowers.
Mrs. Leslie was walking by her friend's side looking thoughtfully down at the drifts of pink myrtle blossoms that blew across the path beneath her dainty feet. She looked up with a smile, and answered:
"As many as you please, Mr. Kenmore."
"Thank you," he replied, but for a moment he was silent over the momentous question that hovered on his lips. Looking at him curiously she saw that he was very pale and grave, with a fathomless sadness in the dark brown eyes usually so bright and laughing.
"It must be a very important question, you look so grave over it," she said.
"It is important," he replied, and then he went on, meditatively. "You told me, I believe, Mrs. Leslie, that Mr. Stuart's yacht left Richmond on the tenth of June?"
"Yes," she replied.
"The question I have to ask you is this: Did the yacht go steadily on that day and night, or did she stop at any landing on the Bay?"
Mrs. Leslie pursed up her pretty lips, and reflected.
"Let me see," she said. "Ah, yes, I remember. We did stop that night, about nine o'clock, at a landing in the Bay. It was at a place called Brooke's Wharf, and was noted for the fine fruit to be obtained there. I think it was at Mr. Revington's instance we stopped, and Mr. Stuart obtained a supply of the most luscious fruit."
Outwardly calm and composed, Guy Kenmore inwardly trembled with excitement. Was he about to find a clew to Ronald Brooke's slayer?
"Did anyone leave the yacht and go on shore?" he inquired.
"Oh, yes, we all did," said Mrs. Leslie, readily enough. "I mean all except the captain and crew. It was the most beautiful night I ever saw, I think. These Italian nights are not lovelier. We went on shore, and rambled about in the moonlight. I remember the night perfectly."
Ah! did he not, too, he groaned, silently, to himself. How vividly it all rushed over him. His careless visit to Bertha Brooke, from which so much had arisen. Memory recalled the lovely, willful girl, who had carried him off to the hall perforce that night, and he thought, with a softened tenderness, of the childish spite and self-will that had so vexed him then. Poor little Irene! she had suffered enough from Bertha's rage to atone for her willfulness. A feeling of pity and remorse mingled with the love he bore his hapless child-wife.
"Poor child! I was vexed and annoyed when I first found out the truth that we were legally married that night. It came upon me so suddenly, and I showed my feelings too plainly, and she—she was equally averse to having me for a husband. But, better, far better for her, if she had taken me at my word when I offered to make the best of my sad mistake than to have given her heart to that dandy jackanapes," he concluded, bitterly, for he had gauged the depth of Julius Revington at first sight, and the conspiracy he had overheard last night had filled him with horror and contempt for the traitor.
"To think that, she—my own beautiful and beloved wife—should turn coldly from me to lavish her precious love on a thing like that," he thought, jealously.
Mr. Kenmore, in his indolent way, though unconsciously to himself, had possessed some little complacent conceit of himself. His mirror had told him he was noble-looking and handsome, and women's eyes had repeated it. His progress through society had been a complete ovation to his pride and his vanity. Men had honored him for his manliness as much as for his great wealth, and women had angled for him as a most unexceptionable parti. But the complacent conceit that the world had fostered in him for years, had received a terrible blow from Irene's indifference and her palpable preference for the weakly-handsome, guitar-playing and tenor-singing Julius Revington.
"A compound of the dandy and the villain—a man who can plan behind her back to rob her of the knowledge of her honorable name, who cares nothing for the grief and shame of her wronged mother! To think that she should love him! And most probably she hates me for having re-appeared when she believed me dead. I have a most disagreeable task before me, for I must prove to her the unworthiness of the villain on whom she has set her heart," he mused, gravely.
"Are you through with your questioning?" inquired Mrs. Leslie, noting his pre-occupied silence.
"Yes," he replied, adding, with a slight smile: "Perhaps you would like to ask me some questions now."
"Yes, I would," she smiled, with engaging frankness.
"I am ready to reply to you," he answered, cordially.
"Perhaps I shall startle you," she said; "I am going to ask you a leading question, as a lawyer would say. You must remember that I give you carte blanche not to answer it unless you wish."
"Thank you for the permission," he said. "Let me hear it."
She looked at him with an odd gleam in her bright, kindly eyes.
"It is this," she said. "I believe that you and Irene Berlin, my protege, have met before last night. Am I right?"
He looked at her with a curious, intent gaze.
"Mrs. Leslie," he said, "I can better answer that question if you will tell me whether I may count on your silence and friendship in the strange dilemma in which I find myself placed."
She put out her hand to him impulsively.
"No one can say that Laura Leslie ever failed them in the hour of trouble," she said, gravely. "You may count on my silence and my truest friendship if it can avail you."
He pressed her hand, gratefully. "It will be an incalculable benefit to me," he said. "Perhaps you can help me and advise me."
"I will do both if I can," replied the charming widow.
"Then I shall tell you my secret," he replied. "Mrs. Leslie, it was not mere chance as I pretended that brought me here last night. I have followed Clarence Stuart across the ocean on a self-appointed mission to right the wrongs of the innocent and bring the guilty to justice."
Looking at his grave, agitated face, she started and uttered a cry of comprehension.
"You come from Elaine Brooke—— she lives!" she cried.
He started in his turn.
"What do you know?" he cried.
"No matter—— I must hear your story first," she said. "And you have not answered my leading question yet."
"I will tell you my story, and then you may be able to answer it for yourself," he said.
They sought a beautiful, secluded spot where they were not likely to be interrupted or overheard, and Guy Kenmore confided to her sympathizing ears the story of that fatal tenth of June, when old Ronald Brooke had met his death and Irene Brooke had become his wife.
The lady listened with eager, breathless interest, with parted lips and shining eyes, and color that varied from white to red and red to white.
When he had finished he looked at her with something like a smile in his dark-brown eyes.
"Mrs. Leslie, I have given you my confidence now. Perhaps you can answer your own question."
She laughed, merrily.
"I can put two and two together as cleverly as any woman, I think," she replied. "And you have made this case quite clear. My pretty Irene is your wife."
"Yes," he replied. "And she is the daughter of Clarence Stuart."
"That is quite true," she answered. "I have suspected it before, now I am assured of the fact. No one will rejoice more over it than will Clarence Stuart, himself."
"I do not understand you," he replied, in a puzzled tone.
Mrs. Leslie found that she had a confidence to make too. She told him Mr. Stuart's sorrowful story, and he in turn related the conversation he had heard the night before. Many things were made clear to both by the confidence thus reposed in each other.
"It is as I supposed," Guy Kenmore said. "Clarence Stuart and his wife were foully deceived and separated by the machinations of old Mr. Stuart."
"And the whole secret of it lies in the possession of Julius Revington, and the proud usurper of Elaine Brooke's name and rights," added Mrs. Leslie.
"More than that," said he, with a shudder, "the death of old Ronald Brooke lies between those two."
She was silent a few moments, gravely reviewing the case. It was a baffling one, she confessed to herself, with a sigh.
"What shall we do?" she asked him, at last. "Shall we take Mr. Stuart and Irene into our confidence?"
"Not yet," he replied, thoughtfully. "Let us deal with Julius Revington first. We must study out a plan to bring that villain to confession."
Irene sat still where her angry lover had left her, lost in a trance-like maze of troubled thought. With her small, white hands folded in her lap, and her dreamy blue eyes fixed on vacancy, she remained there, statue-like and unheeding, and time, albeit its wings were clogged with sorrow, flew past unnoted, until the noon-day sun rode high in the heavens.
A step, a voice, startled her from her dreamy revery.
"Ah, Miss Berlin, you see I have discovered your charming retreat," said Guy Kenmore. "Will you permit me to share it?"
The swift color flew to her brow, as she looked up into the handsome face, with the slightly wistful smile about the firm lips.
"This spot is free to all Mr. Stuart's guests," she replied, coldly. "I have no right to forbid you to come here."
"Would you, if you had?" he asked, throwing himself down in the grass at her feet, and lifting to her face his slightly quizzical brown eyes.
"Why should I?" she retorted, gazing down into his face with an air of the most serene indifference.
"Why, indeed?" he asked himself, with sudden bitterness. "Serene, in her fancied incognito, she cares not whether I go or stay. I am no more to her than the earth beneath her feet," and aloud, he answered calmly as he could speak, and in a slight tone of banter:
"I fancied you might prefer to share this lovely solitude with some more favored friend—for instance, Mr. Revington."
The hot flush deepened on the beautiful face, and she answered with an impulse of passionate willfulness:
"That would be natural, would it not? I suppose you have heard that I am to marry, Mr. Kenmore?"
His brown eyes flashed beneath their shady lashes.
"She dares to twit me with her preference for that puppy," he said, angrily to himself. "Does she indeed believe that I am blinded by her borrowed name, and that I am unaware of her real identity? Will she attempt to carry the farce through to the end?"
An impulse came over him to claim her then and there as his own; to take the slight young figure in his arms and press it to his beating heart; to kiss the beautiful, proud face and the defiant eyes, and to say, jealously: "You are my own wife, Irene, and whether you love me or not, no one shall take you from me."
Ah, if only he had obeyed the prompting of his heart, how much sooner happiness would have come home to them to crown their lives with bliss; but their mutual pride stood like a wall between. He shook off the tempting impulse to claim his own, and believed that he was but obeying the command of chivalry and honor in keeping stern silence.
"What, claim an unwilling, reluctant bride?" he thought to himself, sadly. "No, no! never! I must wait until of her own free will she owns her fealty to me. I must woo and win her before I claim her."
Perhaps the struggle in his heart betrayed itself on his face, for the resentment died out of her blue eyes and they were filled with a mute, pathetic longing.
"Ah, if he would only love me, if he would only claim me," she thought. "I would tell him how I hate and despise Julius Revington! He might help me to right my mother's wrongs!"
At that moment his downcast gaze fell on Julius Revington's guitar which that worthy had forgotten in his hurried and angry exit from Irene's presence. A jealous gleam lightened in his brown eyes.
"Ah, I see that Mr. Revington has already been with you this morning," he said frigidly.
"Yes," she replied, with coldness equal to his own.
"Are you fond of music?" he inquired, taking up the instrument, and striking a few chords, softly.
"Passionately," she replied.
Obeying a sudden impulse he played a soft, sweet symphony and began to sing in a mellow baritone. He had chosen the beautiful song, "My Queen," and the girl's heart vibrated painfully to the sweetness of the strain.
"Who will be his queen?" she asked herself, with a jealous pang at her heart. "He is so grand and handsome, he will only love some one gifted beyond her sex with beauty and genius. Ah, why did I come between him and his future?"
She looked at him wistfully when he had finished.
"I did not know you could sing like that," she said.
"Is it equal to Revington's performances?" he inquired, smiling at her implied compliment.
To his dismay she sprang up crimson with anger and resentment.
"Revington, Revington! It is always Revington with you," she cried, and flung away disdainfully from him.
Irene preserved a dignified reserve toward Mr. Kenmore after that day when he had so angered her by his allusions to Julius Revington. She never spoke to him when she could avoid it, she never looked at him, she never seemed to know that he was in the room. She froze him by her coldness and indifference. He did not even dare speak to her unless courtesy strictly required it. Yet all the while her heart was aching with its doubt and pain, while as for him, his love for his beautiful, willful girl-bride grew stronger every hour, though in his pride and resentment at her coldness and scorn he would have died rather than avow it.
A few days after his arrival at the villa some of the gentlemen rode into Florence, and when they returned they brought tickets for a grand concert to be given that night. They reported that the music-loving Italians were in ecstasies over it.
It appeared that one of their countrymen, a musician, had gone to America twenty years before, where he had remained until two months ago, when he had returned to Florence, bringing with him a beautiful young lady whose voice he designed to cultivate for the operatic stage. The curiosity of the volatile Italians had run high over this pupil of the great musician, and unable to resist the importunities of his countrymen, Professor Bozzaotra had promised a public concert in which the American singer would make her debut. Her name was down on the programme as Miss Brooke. Strange to say, not one of the villa inhabitants to whom that name was so sadly familiar, were struck by its similarity to Clarence Stuart's first wife's. It failed to suggest any probabilities to their minds. One and all were eager to attend the promised feast of music.
But at the very last moment Irene declined to accompany the merry, expectant party to the concert.
A headache was the alleged feminine excuse for her refusal.
In vain Mr. Revington pleaded and Mrs. Leslie added her protests. They could not persuade Irene that the ride in the fresh air would benefit her head, or that the music would cause her to forget indisposition.
"I do not wish to go," she reiterated, firmly, and Mrs. Leslie wondered a little at the tears in the girl's blue eyes, as she kissed her good-night, and the more than usual fervency of her embrace.
When they were all gone, and the villa was left to the occupancy of herself and the servants, Irene retired to her room. She sat down and wrote a hasty letter to Mrs. Leslie, which, after sealing and addressing, she placed in a conspicuous place on the toilet table.
"She will think me unkind and ungrateful," she sighed to herself; "but what can I do?"
She removed her pretty blue dinner dress, and substituted a plain, black cashmere. Then, with trembling fingers and nervous haste, she packed a change of clothing into a small hand-bag. Lastly she took out her little shell purse, and counted its contents. There was something more than a hundred dollars, the gift of her munificent friend, Mrs. Leslie.
"She little thought for what purpose I would use it," sighed poor Irene. "But I have no other refuge left me!"
She put the purse into her pocket, drew on a dark gray travelling ulster, and a little cap with a thick veil. Then taking the hand-bag in her little trembling hands, she stole silently as a ghost from the great house, and did not draw a free breath until she stood alone in the moonlighted garden.
Then she paused and lifted her white face and tear-wet eyes to the starry sky.
"If only he had loved me I need not have gone," she sighed. "Ah, my husband, my darling, farewell!"
Without another word she was gone, flitting away, a small, dark shadow, to mingle with the shadows of the night.
Meanwhile the party from the villa were seated in the great concert hall awaiting the appearance of the lovely American debutante.
They occupied two boxes, and conspicuous in the foremost one was Mrs. Stuart, with her daughter and her husband.
Mrs. Stuart was elegantly dressed in rose-colored satin and point lace, with magnificent diamonds. With the aid of pearl powder and rouge she had been made up by her maid into quite a beauty for this occasion.
Lilia wore soft white mull and pearls. As she sat by the side of her handsome, dark-eyed father her likeness to him was marked and conspicuous. No one could have failed to see that they were father and child.
Impatience was at its hight. The orchestra had rendered its overture, and been vociferously applauded by the enthusiastic Italians. Professor Bozzaotra himself had executed a magnificent violin solo, and responded twice to encores that could not be suppressed. The curtain had fallen, to rise the next time on the lovely debutante whom Rumor credited with the beauty of an angel and the voice of a siren.
It rose at last, and the hundreds of curious eyes fell on her, standing there with modestly drooping head, yet quiet, calm, and self-possessed, and so lovely, withal, that before she opened her lips for a single note a thunder of applause shook the building. Silently and by the mere force of her peerless beauty she had carried all their hearts by storm.
For Clarence Stuart, sitting pale and silent by the side of his dying daughter and his faded wife, it seemed as if a ghost had sprung up before his eyes.
He knew her instantly—that fair, false wife who had forsworn him so long ago, and whom all these long, long years he had believed to be lying dead under foreign skies, with her baby on her breast. It was Elaine, the woman, lovelier in her splendid prime than she had been in her spring. As she stood there, "gowned in pure white that fitted to the shape," her only ornaments the clusters of pure white roses on her breast and in her golden hair, she looked queen-like, bride-like, and the man's heart swelled with a great despair as he gazed upon her, remembering how he had lost her forever. But he spoke not, he scarcely breathed, only sat and gazed with an eternity of despair shining out of his wide dark eyes.
There was one other, too, who gazed as if petrified upon that beautiful vision.
It was Guy Kenmore, who instantly recognized Elaine Brooke, but whose great wonder and surprise held him still and speechless, while her rich, clear voice rose and fell in waves of mellow sweetness on the tranced air. She sang a difficult, classic song, which the professor had chosen to display the great beauty and volume of her voice, and every note rung clear and true as liquid gold. When the first verse was ended, and she stood waiting for the tumultuous applause to die away, she suddenly lifted her eyes to the box above, as if drawn by some strange, magnetic power, and her glance met full those dark, burning, anguished eyes with which her husband gazed upon her.
A start, a shiver! Those who gazed closely at the beautiful singer saw her reel slightly; saw her white-gloved hand pressed convulsively upon her heart as if in pain. She stood thus, statue-like and immovable, for an instant, her eye held as if fascinated by that conspicuous group in the box; then suddenly, as the professor struck the opening notes of the next verse, she seemed to recall her wandering senses by a supreme effort of will. For weary years she had nerved herself for this chance meeting, which had come about so strangely at last. She would not let herself be conquered by it.
The beautiful voice rose clear, strong, delicious. There was just one falter in the first notes, just one tremor like a sob of agony. Then the woman's will conquered the woman's heart. She sang on to the end sweetly, bravely gathered up one or two of the fragrant floral tributes that rained at her feet, and with just the proper bow and smile retired.
Tumultuous applause, passionate encores followed her retreating footsteps. She did not respond to them. They thought her chary of her exquisite voice; they did not know that she had fallen down like one dead on the floor of the little dressing room, and that the lips that had sang to them so sweetly were now flecked with drops of blood forced out by the heart's great emotion. The flowers had fallen from her hands, and they were clenched so tightly that the white gloves were torn and spoiled.
"Oh, Clarence, Clarence, my traitor-love, we have met at last," she moaned. "Oh, God, how hard it is that I love him still! That perjured wretch who blighted my life and that of our innocent child! He has not forgotten me! It was remorse that looked out from his eyes at me to-night. Yet that was his wife and child who sat beside him! Oh, heavens, what humiliation for me who stood there beneath their cold, critic eyes to remember that I was once his wife, that I rested in his bosom, that my arms cradled his child! Oh, Irene, my lost one, my darling, I must crush down this weak love that blazed afresh in my heart when I met the eyes of the man I once held as the truest and noblest of men! I must remember that the knowledge of his sin drove you to death, my darling, and I must hate him for your wrongs and mine!"
So she raved on in her impotent despair, while the thunders of the orchestra filled the house, and people chanted her praises, prophesying for her a career equal to Patti or Nilsson. She, whose voice was sweeter than nightingale's notes or the sound of falling waters, lay there like a broken flower, crushed by her terrible despair.
When she had retreated from the stage, Mrs. Leslie touched Guy Kenmore's arm. Turning to look at her face, he saw that her eyes were wide and startled.
"Well!" he said.
She answered in a voice that was hoarse with emotion:
"It was the face that Irene wears in her locket. What does it mean?"
He whispered back softly, "It was Irene's mother! It was Elaine Brooke."
"Merciful heavens," exclaimed the lady, and turned to look at Mr. Stuart.
Then she saw Mrs. Stuart and Lilia hanging over him in an agony of despair, and gentlemen crowding into their box. Mr. Stuart was a brave and a strong man, but when that ghost from the past had risen to confront him, then faded quietly again, heart and strength had failed him, and sitting in his chair, he had silently swooned away.
They said that the heat had overcome him, and bore him out into the fresh air, where he revived a little. Some advised him not to return to the concert hall, but he waved them quietly aside, ashamed of his womanly weakness, and returned to Lilia, who was sobbing with grief and fear.
"It is nothing, my dear. I am quite well again," he said, gravely. "But shall I take you home now?"
"No, no, papa, I wish to hear the beautiful lady sing again," she replied, turning eagerly back to the stage.
Mrs. Stuart said nothing to her husband. She was whispering with Julius Revington, who had come into her box a little while before. The gleam of hate in the lady's eyes flashed almost brighter than her diamonds, her cheek glowed through its rouge with a deep natural red, and her jeweled hands clenched each other nervously in her lap.
Miss Brooke came again after a little interval, which was filled up by other performers. She had fought down her terrible emotion, but her lovely face was very pale and sad, and she never lifted her dark blue eyes while she sang. This time it was an Italian chanson, and the words flowed easily from her lips in that liquid southern tongue that is so sweet and soft. The Florentines were charmed, as the professor had intended they should be, at hearing one of their native songs warbled by the sweet lips of the stranger. She retired again under a storm of bouquets and applause, but, as before, she did not respond to their encores. It was too keen an agony to go back and sing to them again before those burning dark eyes, whose gaze she intuitively felt upon her, though she would not lift her own to meet their flashing light. It was all that she could bear to go on when her turn came.
But when she had sung her last song and the liquid Italian recall followed her again, Professor Bozzaotra went to her. He was radiant with joy.
"Let me beg you to humor them, my child," he said, radiantly. "You have carried their warm hearts by storm. Be kind to them. Sing them something, anything to satisfy their craving."
She went back and stood before them, with bowed head and an almost divine sadness on her face. She sang some words that were "as sad as earth, as sweet as Heaven."