Julius Revington stood looking in silence at the beautiful, agitated
girl as she repeated, sadly:
"The secret belongs to another. I have no right to reveal it."
"Is it a secret of shame?" Julius Revington asked, slowly.
Irene started, and flashed a look of anger upon him through her tear-wet
lashes.
"You are impertinent," she said, sharply; "you have no right to seek to
penetrate the secret of my past!"
"I have the same right as the physician who probes the wound to heal
it," he replied, coolly.
"You!--you can heal no wound of mine!" she flashed, almost disdainfully.
"You think so, but you are wrong," said Julius Revington. "Sit down,
Miss Berlin, I have much to say to you. It is for your own good that you
should listen to it."
The earnestness of his tone impressed Irene against her will. She sat
down slowly on the soft, green grass, still with a mutinous pout on her
lips, and her eyes turned coldly away from him.
Mr. Revington seated himself also, and glanced carefully around, to make
sure that no one was in hearing distance of himself and his fair
companion.
"I see that you have no faith in my power of making an interesting
communication to you," he said, addressing himself to Irene.
"No, I cannot imagine your telling me anything I should like to hear,"
she retorted, coldly.
An angry light flared into the man's dark eyes a moment, but he bit his
lip to keep back a sharp rejoinder. Her willfulness, her pretty
petulances, had an actual fascination for him.
"Such an answer from any one but you, Miss Berlin, would be actual
rudeness," he said, lightly. "But whether frowning or smiling you are
ever charming to me. You remind me of nothing so much as one of
Tennyson's heroines, 'a rosebud set with little willful thorns.'"
She answered not a word. Her fair face was averted, and her blue eyes
gazed at the silvery Arno softly gliding past.
"You have been a beautiful, enchanting mystery to me ever since I met
you," he continued, slowly. "I have wondered whence you came and to whom
you belonged, but with no hope of unsealing your beautiful lips or the
secret they held so close. But chance--or shall I call it fate?--has
solved the mystery for me."
She turned her head and looked at him suddenly, her blue eyes dark with
fear and wonder.
"What can you mean?" she exclaimed.
"I mean that when I came upon your picture in your locket just now the
mystery of your identity was solved for me," he replied, coolly, glad
that he had roused her at last.
"I do not understand you," she said through her lips that had suddenly
grown white and trembling.
A slight smile curved Julius Revington's mustached lips, as he saw how
much he had startled her.
"Master rather than slave," he repeated to himself, vindictively, for
that was the way he interpreted her eloquent description of her ideal.
"I told you the faces were not strange to me," he said. "Shall I tell
you their names?"
"You cannot," she returned, miserably.
"Do not deceive yourself," he retorted. "The old man is Ronald Brooke,
the beautiful woman is his daughter, Elaine."
A startled cry broke from her lips, she flashed her eyes upon him in a
swift, horrified gaze, a terrible suspicion darting through her heart.
"You know her?" she cried out, hoarsely.
His answer dispelled the horrible dread that had clutched at her heart
with icy fingers.
"No, I have never met her in my life, but I have seen her picture
before," he said.
She gave a gasp of relief. It had been horrible to fancy for a moment
that this man whom she despised in her heart could be her mother's
betrayer.
"You have seen her picture before?" she repeated. "Where?"
"It depends on yourself whether I ever answer that question or not," he
said.
"On me?" she asked, with some wonder.
"Yes," he replied; "for if I should answer that question it would
involve a long story. Before I tell it to you I shall expect to receive
a like confidence from you."
She shut her lips tightly over her little clenched teeth, and he saw the
blue eyes flash mutinously.
"You refuse?" he asked.
"Yes," she replied, dauntlessly. "You have startled and surprised me and
I know not how much you know of me and my past. But at least you will
never learn more from me."
He could not forbear a glance of annoyance.
"Miss Berlin, you are certainly the most willful child I ever saw," he
exclaimed. "What good can it do you to refuse to tell me what
relationship you bear to Ronald Brooke and his daughter?"