It was Bertha's voice. She had been to her room, to indulge in a fit of
mad passion and jealousy, but had returned and stood listening at the
door for some moments--long enough indeed to hear all that had been
spoken since Irene had recovered consciousness. Mad with passion she
stood before them.
"He is mine," she said again, hoarsely. "Woe be to you, Irene Brooke, if
you take him from me!"
She looked like some mad creature with the loosened coils of her shining
hair falling down like long black serpents over the corsage of her ruby
satin robe, and her black eyes flashing forth jealousy and defiance. The
jeweled serpents that wreathed her white arms seemed to dart menace from
their gleaming emerald eyes as she shook her hand.
Slowly Guy Kenmore turned and looked at her, honest amazement stamped on
his handsome features.
"Miss Brooke, your assertion is a most strange one," he said. "I cannot
understand why you should wish to complicate this unhappy affair still
further by such a palpable injustice. On what grounds do you base your
claim?"
Her flashing eyes fell a moment before the proud wonder in his. Then she
asked, with a heaving breast and in deep agitation:
"Do you deny that you have made love to me? That you came to Bay View to
woo me?"
A deep, warm color drifted over his face.
"Is it possible, Miss Bertha, that you have taken our idle flirtation in
earnest?" he exclaimed, shame, surprise and self-reproach struggling
together in his voice. "If you have, I beg your forgiveness a thousand
times, for I thought you were simply amusing yourself, as I was. I
admired you, certainly, but I never dreamed of love, I never thought of
marriage."
If love changed to hatred could have slain, Guy Kenmore would have
fallen dead before the vengeful lightnings of the brunette's eyes.
Strong man though he was he shivered under their baleful glare. Her very
voice was changed when she spoke again. It seemed to cut the air like a
keen-bladed knife.
"So you were only amusing yourself," she said. "You made a plaything of
a woman's heart! Did you ever hear of playing with edged tools? Ah,
beware, Guy Kenmore, beware! My love would have been a thousand times
better than my hate! And do you pretend to love _that_ creature?"
pointing a scornful finger at the drooping form of Irene.
Instinctively he moved a step nearer to his girl-bride, as if to shield
her from some threatening danger.
"I make no idle pretences," he answered. "Irene is my wife. Love will
come."
"Love," she sneered. "Love! Your cold, selfish heart is incapable of
that divine passion! I understand why you would hold that willful child
to the fetters so unwittingly forged! It is the Kenmore pride, that is
afraid of being dragged through the mire of the divorce court! You will
never love her, never make her happy! You only take her to save your
overweening pride."
"Oh, Bertha, hush! It is the best way out of our trouble," pleaded
Elaine, gently.
"Best--ah, yes, you never dreamed of such a marriage for your
_fatherless child_? A Kenmore--rich, honorable, high-born--to mate with
the child of shame, the _nameless creature_ whom we have shielded with
our own honest name to save our family honor! Ha, ha, Guy Kenmore, are
you not proud of your high-born bride--Elaine's base-born child, who
never had a father?" screamed Bertha, wild with jealousy and anger, and
flashing the lurid lightning of her great black eyes upon their blanched
faces.
Like some beautiful enraged tigress, Irene sprang from the sofa, and ran
to Bertha. She clutched her small white fingers in the brunette's round
white arm, and their frantic clasp sunk deep into the flesh.
"You wicked, cruel woman, how dare you utter such a fiendish lie?" she
panted, hoarsely. "How dare you malign the honor of my beautiful,
pure-hearted Ellie? How dare you name us--Ellie and me--the honest
daughters of old Ronald Brooke--in the same breath with dishonor!"
"I dare because it is true," hissed Bertha, breaking loose from the
child's frantic grasp, and laughing like a beautiful demon. "Don't take
my word for it! Ask that woman there whom my very words have crushed
down to the earth! Ask her if she is not your mother! Ask her the name
of your father! Ha, ha, Guy Kenmore, accept my congratulations on your
brilliant marriage," she sneered, as she rushed from the room.
Elaine Brooke had indeed sunk wretchedly to the floor at her sister's
terrible charge. She crouched there forlornly, her face hidden in her
trembling hands, her golden hair falling loose, and streaming in sad
beauty over her quivering, prostrate form. Guy Kenmore, with blanched
face and starting eyes, recalled Arthur's words to his faithless
Guinevere. They seemed to fit this crushed woman:
"Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes;
I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere,
I, whose vast pity almost makes me die
To see thee, laying there thy golden head,
My pride in happier summers, at my feet."
With a single bound Irene reached the prostrate form. Her small hand
fell heavily on Elaine's white, quivering shoulder.
"Ellie, Ellie, look at me," she said; "I want to see your face! I want
to see the truth in your eyes!"
With a groan Elaine obeyed the imperious mandate of the sharp, young
voice. She raised her head and looked into Irene's clear, searching eyes
with a woful, white, white, face, on which the very agonies of death
could not have written such despair.
"Irene, my love, my darling, do not curse me," she moaned. "It is true!
I am your wretched mother!"
The beautiful, kneeling figure reeled backward with one hand pressed on
her heart as if it had been pierced by a sword-point.
"My mother--Elaine Brooke my mother," she groaned. "Oh, God, was ever
sin and shame hidden beneath such true, sweet eyes and the face of an
angel before? Do not ask me not to curse you! God may forgive you, but I
never can! Now I know why they hate me, your mother and your sister. I
have no right in the world, I have no name, no place, I am the living
badge of my mother's dishonor! Great God, pity me! Strike me dead this
moment at the feet of my guilty, shameless mother," she prayed, wildly
lifting her wild, white face and anguished eyes to Heaven.
Guy Kenmore gazed like one paralyzed at the unhappy mother and daughter.
He could not speak one word to either. The shocking disclosure of the
maddened Bertha had almost stunned him. He was a proud man, as he had
said. It was horrible to think of the stain on the girl he had
wedded--the willful, naughty, yet beautiful girl whom with all her
faults he had been proud to think was nobly born as the Kenmores.