Fair hid her sweet face against her lover’s shoulder, that he might not see and wonder at the mingled joy and sorrow in her expressive eyes—joy that he had loved her, sorrow that through her haste in wedding a miserable impostor she had missed the opportunity of her life.

“Oh, if only I had been true to myself, if I had sent that wretch away and waited, I might have been the happiest of the happy now,” she thought, forgetting, in her keen self-reproach, that her mother had been even more to blame than herself, and that the misguided woman would not have permitted her to throw away what she deemed a golden opportunity.

For a moment, in the sudden courage imparted to her by Bayard Lorraine’s frank confession of the interest he had taken in the poor little working girl, she was half tempted to throw off her mask and confess all.

It were better for her had she done so, but she hesitated, faltered, and lost that golden opportunity for winning his pity and forgiveness.

“I will tell him to-morrow. In this happy hour I cannot do it,” she decided, for she could not bear to throw a shadow on his happy, loving mood.

For as yet Bayard Lorraine did not even know that she was the adopted child of Mrs. Howard. Although the Howards and Lorraines were distantly related, there had been no intimacy between them. Bayard had been abroad when Azalia Howard died, and no murmur of her death had reached him. He did not remember ever having seen his young relative, or hearing her name, until he met her with her mother abroad.

But Fair knew quite well that when Bayard Lorraine came to ask her hand from her adopted mother, Mrs. Howard would tell him the truth. She was a noble, conscientious woman. She would not deceive Fair’s suitor, but would say frankly:

“Bayard, I would not tell you this before, because it was not strictly any affair of yours; but all is changed now. It is right, since you are Fair’s accepted lover, that I should tell you that she is not my own daughter, but a penniless orphan girl, whom I adopted out of pity when my own daughter died. Fair is good and noble, and I love her very dearly, but I cannot give her any fortune. All that I own came to me through my husband, and by some irrevocable clause in his will everything was to go, in the event of Azalia dying unmarried, at my death to a very distant relative.”

This is what Mrs. Howard would say to Bayard Lorraine. Fair knew it, for Mrs. Howard had told her so when first the beauty of the girl began to attract lovers to her side like bees about a flower.

“I should not wish you to marry for money without love in your heart, my dear, but if you could love one of these rich men who come courting you, it would be to your interest to do so, for when I die all my money will go to a distant relative of my husband, and I shall have nothing to leave you but my love,” she had said tenderly, and she was pleased when Fair answered, with passionate impulsiveness:

“All the money in the world could not tempt me to marry without love. Sooner than do it, I would go back to the factory where I worked before I knew you, and toil again for my bread.”

Mrs. Howard sighed and answered:

“I trust it may never come to that again, dear girl; but sometimes I have sad misgivings, for my health is not good, and I am troubled so often with that teasing cough. Much as I love you and prize your companionship, I should be glad to see you married to some good man, for then I should feel easy over your future.”

“But I do not wish to marry!” cried the girl hastily, and the lady answered:

“That is because you have seen no one you love yet. When you fall in love it will be different. I trust when you do it would be with some good man who will not mind your lack of fortune, for, of course, when he proposes for your hand I shall have to tell him that you are only my daughter by adoption.”

The time had come now, for Fair knew quite well that in a day or two at furthest Bayard would speak to her mother.

“He will hear then that I am not her daughter, and he will be surprised and perhaps displeased, but then I will tell him all the rest—all, even that I have kept from dear mother—and I will throw myself on his pity and his mercy. He cannot blame me so much when he hears the whole truth. Indeed, I think he will be sorry for me,” she said to herself, with vague relief at the putting off for even one day the confession that she was the girl on whom her lover had passed his judgment as being even worse than Carl Bernicci. “But he did not know all. He could not judge me aright,” she said to her frightened, throbbing heart, that kept foreboding ill for the future.