A startled look came over Elaine's face at those strange words from the
lips of the dying man.
"Wronged and parted," she repeated, vaguely.
"Yes," he replied, and at that moment the door unclosed and Mr. Stuart
came again into the room.
"Let all go out now except Mr. Stuart and this lady," said Julius
Revington, feebly.
But Elaine interposed:
"I should like for my friend, Mr. Kenmore, to stay," she said. "He knows
all the story of my life, and if I have been deceived beyond what I know
I should like for him to hear it."
Julius Revington looked curiously at the man whom Elaine claimed as her
friend.
The doctor and the priest had retired, and the four were alone in the
room.
"What is he to you?" he asked, in his weak, painful tones.
Elaine looked up at Guy.
"Shall I tell him?" she asked.
He bowed his head in acquiescence, and she replied:
"He is my daughter's husband."
"Irene's husband!" exclaimed the dying man, feebly, and Clarence Stuart
echoed the startled cry, "Irene's husband!"
"Yes, she is my wife, but she believed me dead when she promised to
marry you," replied Guy Kenmore, looking at the dying man.
"My God," exclaimed Julius Revington, and for a few moments he lay
silent contemplating this strange piece of news, then he looked
curiously at the handsome, noble-looking man.
"You did not claim her when you came," he said.
"It was her secret. I was waiting until she gave me leave to divulge
it," was the quiet reply.
Elaine had been listening with startled eyes. She sprang up and caught
Mr. Kenmore's arm.
"I--do not--understand you," she panted. "You speak as if--as if my
child were yet alive!"
He took her trembling hands and held them gently in his own.
"I meant to break it to you gently," he said. "But do not be shocked.
That is the news I had for you. Irene is alive, and but a few miles away
from you. You shall see her soon."
An ominous gasp from Julius Revington recalled them to his side.
"That news will wait," he said. "But I--I have but a little while to
live. Listen to me first."
With a beating heart and a face radiant with sudden joy Elaine knelt
down beside him. She could have touched Clarence Stuart as he sat by the
litter, but she shrunk sensitively back, without looking at him. Guy
Kenmore stood apart at a little distance, with his arms folded over his
broad breast, his clear brown eyes fixed gravely on the little group.
"Clarence," said the dying man, turning his dim eyes on the face of his
cousin, "you believed that this lady deserted you sixteen years ago of
her own free will and desire. It was not true."
"Not true!" gasped Clarence Stuart.
"No, it was not true. She loved you and she was true to you. The wicked
machinations of your father parted you from each other."
"My father! Oh, God, no!" exclaimed Mr. Stuart, in an agony of grief.
"It is horrible, but it is true," said Julius Revington. "He was
bitterly enraged against you because of your marriage with Miss Brooke
instead of the heiress he had selected for you. He laid his plans
cleverly to circumvent you. Your severe illness that prevented you from
returning to your wife was caused from drugs administered by him in the
wine you drank that night."
"What authority have you for making these statements? Remember that you
are dying, Julius, and do not try to falsify anything," exclaimed Mr.
Stuart, almost sternly.
"I do not forget that I am dying," moaned the sufferer. "I speak the
truth as God hears me--the truth as I received it from the lips of your
father upon his death-bed."
"He revealed the truth to you instead of to me--strange!" cried the
tortured man, almost incredulously.
"Yes; can you guess why?"
"I cannot."
"He repented of his sin, but he was afraid to confess it to you. He
dreaded your terrible anger and dreadful despair. He feared that you
would curse him upon his dying bed."
"I am afraid I should have done so, indeed," muttered Clarence Stuart.
"So he selected me as the instrument to right the wrong," went on
Revington. "He wrote out a full confession of his sin, detailing the
means he had used to separate you, and he deputed me to carry it to Bay
View, where your first wife had been living all the time while you
believed her dead in a foreign land."
"And you failed in your promise to the dead," exclaimed Mr. Stuart,
fixing a glance of deep reproach upon his cousin.
"No, I kept my promise. You remember the night we stopped at Brooke
Wharf on our way to Italy, Clarence?"
"Yes, I remember."
"Well, that night while you lay in your stores of fruit, and the rest of
our party rambled about, I fulfilled my mission. I went to Bay View
Hall, and I persuaded old Mr. Brooke to come out on the shore with me. I
told him of your father's death-bed repentance, and I confided to his
care the written confession. He promised to deliver it to his daughter
Elaine, and I came away and left him."
Elaine hid her face in her hands and low moans of pain came from her
lips.
Julius Revington lay still a moment, breathing hard and painfully, then
he resumed slowly:
"There was one who, by some means, had become cognizant of the secret
confided me by the dying man. I will call no names. Your own heart may
suggest who that person was, Clarence Stuart. She sought me and
endeavored to buy my silence by costly bribes. I refused her
importunities. I was bound by a solemn pledge to the dead, and I kept my
vow. God knows how she learned my mission that night, but she followed
me at a distance. She concealed herself, and when I had gone she felled
the old man with a sharp blow on the temple from a thick stone she
carried, and then she wrested the precious confession from his clenched
hand and fled back to the yacht."
A piercing cry broke from Elaine's lips.
"Oh, God, papa, my own papa, you were most foully murdered," and
throwing up her arms, she fell like one dead upon the floor.
Guy Kenmore placed a cushion beneath her head with gentle care, but he
made no effort to restore her to consciousness.
"It is better thus," he said. "I have long known or believed, that
Ronald Brooke met his death by violence, but I would have been glad to
spare this poor soul that harrowing knowledge if I could."
"You knew it!" both Clarence Stuart and the dying man reiterated in
surprise.
"I suspected it," said Mr. Kenmore, "but the physician said that he died
of heart disease, and I had no right to go beyond his verdict. I alone
observed the purplish mark of a blow upon his temple. I alone knew that
some important paper had been wrested from his hand in that last
dreadful struggle. I kept silence, but I have been on the track of his
slayer ever since. But go on with your story, Mr. Revington. Do not wait
for this broken-hearted woman to recover. She has heard enough."
"There is little more to tell," he answered, weakly. "When I went back
to the yacht, I missed the lady who was so interested in old Mr.
Stuart's dying confession. Suspecting and dreading I scarcely knew what,
I hurried back along the path I had come, and met her flying like a mad
thing toward me, with the precious confession clasped tightly in her
hand. Wrenching it rudely enough from her, I ran forward to restore it
to Mr. Brooke, and found the old man's dead body lying on the sands,
with its convulsed face upturned to the moonlight."
"A murderess--the mother of my loved Lilia a murderess!" groaned
Clarence Stuart, hoarsely.
"I went back and charged her with her sin," continued Julius Revington.
"She was horrified. She declared that she had not meant to kill him,
only to stun him that she might obtain the coveted paper. It was then
that she bribed me to keep the secret. But it was not alone her gold
that bought me, I was sorry for her. She had been my friend for years,
and I was not acquainted with Miss Brooke, although I had seen her
portrait, and knew that she was the loveliest of women. But I thought it
best to leave matters as they were. I reflected that if the secret were
revealed, it would only shift the disgrace from one innocent wife and
child to another, for Mrs. Stuart believed her husband free when she
married him. So I kept silence, and now I realize my sin. I have here
your father's death-bed confession, but I fear it will prove valueless
to you, for the signature is gone."
He drew it from his breast, all dabbled with his life-blood, and
Clarence shuddered as he took it in his hand. Guy Kenmore came slowly
forward with a narrow slip of paper.
"Here is the signature and the remainder of the confession which I found
clinched in Mr. Brooke's hand after death," he said; "I restore it to
you, Mr. Stuart, and I also have a brief confession to make."
"You?"--and Mr. Stuart looked up in wonder.
"Yes, and it is this: I believed that you were old Ronald Brooke's
murderer. I followed you to Italy to ferret out your secret, if I could,
for the sake of poor Elaine Brooke, for I believed that Irene, my little
bride, was dead then. I will tell you my own strange story by-and-by.
Now, I wish to ask your pardon for the wrong I did you in my thoughts.
Instead of the guilty sinner I believed you, I find that you are a
wronged and miserable man."
He held out his hand, and Mr. Stuart pressed it firmly in his own,
while his dark eyes wandered to the still white face of the woman whom
he had never ceased to love, even while he thought her dead. Heavy sighs
breathed over his lips.
"And Irene is your wife?" said Julius Revington's gasping voice.
"Irene is my wife," replied Guy Kenmore.
"And you love her?" said the dying man, wistfully.
"As my life," was the low, fervent reply.
"I loved her, too, but it was a selfish love," sighed the sufferer. "She
despised me, but I bought her promise to be mine by a selfish barter. I
had told her that her mother was legally married, and that I would give
her her grandfather's confession on the day she became my wife. I was
hard and cruel to her. Ask her to forgive me if she can, Mr. Kenmore."
"I will," answered Guy Kenmore, whose grave face had suddenly grown
radiant.
A moment later Mr. Stuart asked, gravely:
"And did you really fire a pistol at Elaine's horses to-night, Julius?"
"Yes, and found my death in doing so," he groaned. "The same hand
incited me to that desperate deed that did old Ronald Brooke to death.
She was furious with rage and fear when she saw her rival on the stage,
and she conceived that terrible plan for putting her out of the way. But
I am thankful that my nefarious deed failed, although I can scarcely
conceive how my victims escaped."
"I can tell you in a moment," answered Guy Kenmore. "In turning an
abrupt corner of a street, the carriage parted from the horses, and left
us safe, though sadly bruised and frightened in the battered vehicle."
"Thank God!" echoed Julius Revington, in his weak tones, and then he
added, plaintively: "Call the priest in now, I wish to take my solemn
oath to the confession I have made."
At that moment Elaine gasped and opened her eyes. They fell upon
Clarence Stuart, who bent over her wistfully regarding her.
"Elaine, my poor, wronged darling, what can we say to each other?" he
whispered, mournfully.
She regarded him with grave, reproachful eyes.
"Nothing," she answered, firmly. "You forged other ties when you thought
me dead. Be true to them."
She could not repress that little outburst of jealous reproach, pure and
angelic as she was, and with the words she took Guy Kenmore's arm and
passed from the room.
With a heavy sigh, Clarence Stuart bent over the dying man. Death had
blotted out all resentment.
"My poor fellow, what can I do for you?" he inquired.
"Nothing, only leave me with the priest," he answered, heavily. "I want
him to pray for me. I have done with the things of this world."
And when he had sworn solemnly to the truth of his confession, he bade
his cousin a long and last farewell, and sent him from the room.
On the threshold he met the physician coming in with a solemn face.
Taking him by the arm, he said, gravely:
"My dear sir, prepare yourself for a great shock. The lady's swoon was
more serious than we thought. She never revived from it. Her terrible
excitement killed her."
Well, it was best so. How could he have ever looked in her face again,
knowing that the death of old Ronald Brooke lay on her white, woman
hands?
Just before daybreak they brought him word that Julius Revington was
dead. He went and looked a moment at the still, white face, and the old
priest told him that his cousin had died peacefully, trusting to the
full in the mercy and pardon of Heaven.
Clarence Stuart shuddered and thought of that other one who had gone
swiftly and unrepentantly before the bar of that God whose commands she
had outraged.
All the morning he remained in Florence making arrangements for the
double burial. Elaine had returned to her hotel, and Mr. Stuart sent her
by Guy Kenmore the blood-stained confession to read at her leisure. Then
he gave up his time to the burial of his dead. He sent a messenger out
to the villa to break the tidings of death to all but Lilia, who was to
be kept in ignorance of her mother's fate until he could tell her
himself.
The messenger returned with tidings as sad as he had carried away. Lilia
lay unconscious and dying, having suffered a relapse of her insidious
disease that morning which had brought on fatal hemorrhage.