There was a moment's perfect silence in the room. The sound of the sea
came to them soft and low, the wind stirred the flowers in the garden,
and sent a gust of exquisite perfume through the windows. In the
stillness Elaine moved a little nearer to her daughter, looking at the
stern young face with unutterable love and longing in her eyes.
Irene turned coldly from that yearning glance and looked at Mr. Kenmore
with a rebellious flash in her eyes.
He was very pale, the sparkle of mirth had died out from his dark eyes,
his lips were compressed sternly.
"Hear your mother's story first," he repeated, gravely. "Do not condemn
her before you know her whole sad secret. See how she suffers."
The calm, grave, masterful tone influenced Irene against her will. She
glanced reluctantly at Elaine's face, and saw how terribly she suffered
beneath the fiery lash of her daughter's scorn, but she spoke no word of
comfort, only lowered her white-lidded eyes to shut out that harrowing
sight.
"Why should I listen to her?" she said, almost sullenly. "What can she
say to excuse her sin?"
"Hear me, and judge, Irene," said Elaine, creeping a little nearer, with
a wistful gaze at the obstinate girl. "You, too, Mr. Kenmore. You have
heard me taunted with my sin. Stay and hear my exculpation."
He bowed silently and placed a chair for her; then he drew Irene down to
a seat upon the sofa beside himself. She yielded with strange
passiveness, unconscious that while she sat there his arm lay lightly
but firmly around her waist, gently detaining her. She was conscious of
nothing but a sharp, tearing pain at her heart, and that she was waiting
with a sort of numb indifference to hear Elaine's palliation of her sin.
Elaine sat silently a minute, with her white hands locked convulsively
in her lap. When she spoke she seemed to be communing with herself.
"Dear God," she whispered, "I had hoped that the child need never know
her mother's secret! Ah, I might have known how hard and cruel Bertha
would be some day!"
She lifted her eyes and fixed them in a sort of unwilling fascination on
Irene's beautiful, mutinous face.
"I have lived years and years of sorrow and despair," she said, "but
when I look back it seems only yesterday that I was a pretty, willful,
loving child, such as Irene was until to-night. Ah, so like, so like,
that I have sometimes shuddered and wept, fearing her fate would be like
mine."
Irene made a passionate gesture of loathing and dissent.
"Ah, my child, you do not know," Elaine said, sadly. "The greatest
temptation of woman has never come to you. You have never loved."
The fresh, young lips curled in utter scorn of that master-passion whose
fire had never breathed over her young heart.
"You have never loved," Elaine repeated, with a gesture of despair.
"When that master passion first came to me I was a younger girl than
you, Irene, and just as willful and headstrong and passionate. Bertha
and I were away at boarding-school when I first met my fate."
She paused, trembling like a leaf in the wind, and resumed, mournfully:
"He was a cousin of one of the pupils, and came to a musical festival
given by us at the first of the mid-winter term. I sang one or two
solos, and it was then and there that this handsome scion of a proud and
wealthy house fell in love with me."
"I have never loved as you say," interrupted Irene in her clear,
bell-like voice, "but I should hesitate to call that feeling which only
aims at the ruin of its object by the pure name of love."
Elaine bowed her golden head wearily.
"Let us say that he pretended to love me, then," she amended, sadly.
"But, ah, Irene, if you had seen and heard him you would have believed
his vows, too--you would have trusted in him as I did. No girl ever had
a handsomer, more adoring lover."
"I was young, romantic, willful," she continued. "It seemed to be a case
of true love at first sight. We met several times, and some foolish
love-letters passed between us. There are more opportunities for such
things than you would guess at the average boarding-school, Mr.
Kenmore," she said, turning her blushing face upon him for a moment. "At
this one, love-letters, stolen walks, secret meetings were carried on to
an alarming extent, one third of the pupils at least being as foolish
and romantic as I was."
"I can understand," Mr. Kenmore answered, gently.
"Mamma was a stern and proud woman," Elaine resumed, with a sigh. "She
was exceedingly proud of my beauty and my fine voice. A brilliant future
was mapped out for me. But first I was to become a perfect prodigy of
learning and accomplishments. At sixteen, when I was to finish the
course at the Institute where I then was, I was to be sent to the Vassar
College for a few years. 'Ossa on Pelion piled,'" she quoted, with a
mournful smile.
"I knew that a love affair on my part would not be tolerated for years,"
she resumed. "My lover, as regards his family, was placed in the same
position comparatively. A marriage of convenience was arranged for him,
and he was forbidden to think of another. Madly in love with each other,
and rebelling against our fetters, we planned an elopement. In three
months after I met him we ran away to another State and were married."
"Married?" Irene echoed, with a hopeful start.
"We were married--_as I believed_," said Elaine, with a shudder. "There
was a ceremony, a ring, a certificate. I was a child, not sixteen yet,
remember, Irene. All appeared satisfactory to me. We went to a luxurious
boarding-house where six months passed in a dream of perfect happiness.
My husband remained the same fond, faithful lover he had been from the
first day we met until the fateful hour when we parted--never to meet
again," sobbed Elaine, yielding to a momentary burst of despairing grief
that showed how well and faithfully she had loved the traitor who had
ruined her life.
But feeling her daughter's cold, young eyes upon her, she soon stemmed
the bitter tide of her hopeless grief.
"Our funds ran low," she continued, after a moment, "and he was
compelled to leave me to go to his father and ask pardon and help. We
were both young, and having been reared in the enervating atmosphere of
luxury, knew not how to earn a penny. He went and--never came again."
"Villain!" Guy Kenmore uttered, indignantly.
"After waiting vainly a week I wrote to him," said Elaine, bowing her
lovely head upon her hands. "His father came, full of pity and surprise.
My God! I had been deceived by a mock marriage. He whom I loved so
dearly, whom I believed my husband, had gone home, wedded the woman of
his father's choice, and taken her abroad on a wedding trip. I had been
ruthlessly forsaken.
"Then I remembered papa, whom I had loved truly and tenderly as you did,
Irene. In my extremity and despair I wrote to him. He came, the dear
father I had deserted and forgotten in the flush of my wifely happiness.
He pitied and forgave me.
"Mamma and Bertha would not forgive, but they plotted to save the family
honor. The affair had never been publicly known. We went abroad, and
among strangers, where in a few months you were born, my poor wronged
Irene. When we came home mamma claimed my child for her own, and by her
stern command I took my place in society and played my part as calmly as
if my heart were not broken. Now, Irene, you know the full extent of
your mother's sin. I have been wronged as well as you, my darling. You
are nameless, but not through sin of mine."
Her faltering voice died into silence. Irene made no answer. She had
dropped her face in her small white hands. Guy Kenmore felt the slight
form trembling against his arm.
"I was mistaken in my first estimate of her," he thought. "She has more
depth, more character than I thought."
Then he turned to Elaine.
"You have indeed been wronged bitterly," he said. "The fault is not
yours, save through your disobedience to your parents."
"Yes, I was willful and thoughtless, and I have been most terribly
punished for my fault," she replied, sorrowfully.
"Is there no possibility that you have been deceived by your husband's
father? Such things have been," said Mr. Kenmore, thoughtfully.
"There was no deception. He was armed with every proof, even the
newspaper, with the marriage of his son to the wealthy heiress whom his
family had chosen for him," answered Elaine, blushing crimson for her
unmerited shame and disgrace.
"Then your lover was a villain unworthy the name of man. He deserved
death," exclaimed Guy Kenmore.
Elaine's angelic face grew pale as death. She sighed heavily, but made
no answer.
Suddenly Irene sprang to her feet, with blazing eyes.
"His name!" she cried, wildly, "his name!"
"My poor child, why would you know it?" faltered Elaine.
"That I may hunt him down!" Irene blazed out. "That I may punish him for
your wrongs and mine!"
"Alas, my darling, vengeance belongs to Heaven," sighed the martyred
Elaine.
"It belongs to you and to me," cried Irene. "His name, his name!"
"I cannot tell you, dear," wept the wronged woman.
"Then I will go to Bertha," flashed the maddened girl.
"Bertha is bound by an oath never to reveal that fatal name," Elaine
answered.
The door opened, Mrs. Brooke entered, stern and pale. She glanced
scornfully at Irene, then turned to her daughter:
"Elaine, I am sorry this has happened," she said. "I could not keep
Bertha from betraying you. The poor girl was driven mad by her wrongs.
If Irene had remained away from the ball to-night, as I bade her do, you
would have been spared all this. Her disobedience has caused it all."
Old Faith put her head, with its flaring cap-ruffles, inside the door
before Elaine could speak.
"Oh, Mrs. Brooke, Mrs. Brooke!" she cried, and wrung her plump old hands
disconsolately.
"Well, what is it? Speak!" cried her mistress, sharply.
"Oh, ma'am, some men have come--with news--they found master down on the
shore--oh, oh, they told me to break it to you gently," cried the old
housekeeper, incoherently.
A flying white figure darted past old Faith and ran wildly down the
broad, moon-lighted hall, to the old-fashioned porch, bathed in the
glorious beams of the moonlight.
Mrs. Brooke went up to the woman and shook her roughly by the arm.
"What are you trying to tell me, Faith? What of your master?" she
exclaimed. "Speak this instant!"
Elaine came up to her other side, and looked at her with wide, startled
eyes.
"Oh, Faith, what is it?" she cried.
"They told me to break it gently," whimpered the fat old woman.
At this moment a shrill young voice, sharpened by keenest agony, wild
with futile despair, came floating loudly back through the echoing
halls:
"_Papa, oh, darling papa! Oh, my God, dead, dead, dead!_"