self-excusingly: "Poor Elaine, I would not blacken her name still more, only to help Bertha. If she marries him I shall manage to let him find out the real truth about Elaine directly afterward. She shall not lie under that base imposition any longer than is necessary for Bertha's welfare."
She was startled when she saw how reproachfully and sternly his brown eyes gleamed upon her.
"A mother is the last person to impute sin to her child," he said.
Mrs. Brooke only sobbed into her handkerchief by way of answer to this reproach.
"I have become deeply interested in your daughter's sad story, Mrs. Brooke," he went on. "Pray do not think me inquisitive if I ask you one question."
She looked it him in startled surprise.
"It is only this, Mrs. Brooke," he said. "Will you tell me in what city lived the man who so cruelly wronged beautiful Elaine?"
"It can do no good to rake up these old things," she said, half-fretfully.
"It was only a single question. It cannot hurt you to answer," he said, almost pleadingly.
She said to herself that it could not matter indeed, and she did not wish to offend the young man whom she hoped to capture for her son-in-law.
"It is very painful re-opening these old wounds," she sighed; "but since you insist upon it I will answer your question. The young villain lived at Richmond."
He bowed his thanks.
"I already know his name," he said, "and since you have no son to send upon this delicate mission, Mrs. Brooke, I will make it my business to inquire if your elder daughter has indeed deserted you for her base betrayer."
She was about to protest against his doing so on the first pretext she could think of, when Bertha's entrance suddenly closed the conversation.
He made his adieux and departed, giving an evasive reply to the young lady's wishes for his swift return.
One week later Mrs. Brooke received a letter from him dated at Richmond.
"You wronged your daughter by your unkind suspicions," he wrote; "she is not with the man you thought. Clarence Stuart left Richmond on the very day of your husband's death, in his own yacht, with his wife and daughter, and a party of friends. They were on a pleasure-trip to Italy. You will no doubt be glad to hear that Elaine is not so wicked as you believed her."
Thus the letter closed abruptly. Mrs. Brooke, in a curt note, thanked Mr. Kenmore for his information. She did not dare give way to her indignation at his interference, dreading that it would injure the success of Bertha's husband-hunting.
CHAPTER XVII
Lilia Stuart was very much frightened by her father's strange seizure. She was about to scream loudly for help when Irene, with a sensitive horror of scenes, laid her white hand gently but firmly over the parted lips.
"Do not be frightened, Lilia," she said. "Get some cold water. That is all that is necessary."
Lilia sprang to the ice-flagon and returned with a glass of cold water in her trembling grasp. Irene thrust her white hand into the cold fluid, and deluged Mr. Stuart's rigid white face with it.
It produced the desired effect. Mr. Stuart shivered, opened his eyes, and stared blankly around him for a moment.
"Oh, papa, you are better," cried Lilia, springing to throw her arms around his neck. "I am so frightened, dearest papa, shall I not call mamma?"
Something like dread or fear flashed for a moment into his open dark eyes.
"No, for Heaven's sake, don't!" he exclaimed, testily; "I detest scenes! There is nothing at all the matter with me! Say nothing to your mother, Lilia. You understand me?"
"Yes, papa," the girl replied, obediently. "But what made you faint?" she continued, curiously.
An expression of deep annoyance clouded Mr. Stuart's handsome face.
"Pooh, I did not faint," he said, sharply. "A mere dizziness overcame me. Don't let your fancies run away with your reason, Lilia."
He rose as he spoke, and without a glance at Irene or the open locket that still swung at her throat, hastily quitted the room. Lilia, forgetting her guest, followed after him.
Irene thus left alone, fell into a startled revery.
She had not been deceived like Lilia by Mr. Stuart's short assertion of dizziness. She knew that he had actually fainted, and she believed that the bare sight of her mother's face in the locket had been the cause of his agitation.
"He recognized the face, and it had power to stay the very pulses of his life for a moment," she said to herself.
A terrible suspicion darted into her young mind, chilling the blood in her veins, and driving it coldly back upon her heart.
"Can this man be my father, my mother's base betrayer?" she thought.
She did not like to think so. Her heart had gone out strangely to this man, the savior of her young life. She liked to think that he was noble, good and brave. For the villain who had betrayed her trusting young mother she had nothing in her heart but hatred, and a burning desire for revenge.
Suddenly the saloon door opened softly. Mr. Stuart had eluded Lilia and returned.
He came to her side and sat down again. His dark face was strangely pale still. There was a troubled look in his large, dark eyes.
"You must have thought my agitation strange just now, Irene," he said.
"Yes," she answered, gravely.
"And—you guessed the reason?" he inquired, slowly, fixing a keen glance on her face.
She raised her beautiful, troubled blue eyes steadily to his.
"You recognized the pictures in my locket," she replied, touching it with her trembling hand.
"My God, yes!" he answered hoarsely. "Irene, child, for the love of Heaven, tell me what this man and woman are to you."
She had no answer for him. In her own heart she was saying, dumbly:
"I cannot tell him. It is my mother's secret. She guarded it for sixteen years, and I must not betray her."
He looked at the white, agonized face of the girl, and repeated his question:
"Tell me what this man and woman are to you."
"I cannot tell you, Mr. Stuart," she replied, falteringly.
"You mean you will not," he said, studying her downcast face, with grave, attentive eyes.
"I cannot," she replied. "It is a secret that belongs to others. I cannot betray confidence."
A baffled look came into his troubled, marble-white face.
"Do you mean to preserve an utter incognito among us?" he asked.
"I must," she answered, while great, trembling tears started beneath her drooping lashes. "I can say no more than what I have told you already. I am homeless, friendless, nameless!"
"How old are you?" he inquired.
"I was sixteen years old but a few days ago," she answered.
He looked again keenly at her face, and bending forward, again looked at the beautiful, pictured face of Elaine Brooke.
A shudder shook his form.
"You are strangely like her—strangely like," he said. "Child, I would give much to hear you say what this beautiful woman is to you."
Irene looked gravely at him, her young bosom shaken by a storm of suspicion.
"Confidence invites confidence," she said, harshly. "I will tell you what this woman is to me if you tell me what she once was to you."
CHAPTER XVIII
Irene's stern, abrupt question produced a startling effect upon Mr. Stuart. His face grew ashy pale, even to his lips, and he gazed suspiciously, almost angrily, at the girl's grave face. Seeing only an earnest wonder mirrored in her clear, sweet eyes, he sprang