Elaine took the letter in her trembling hands, and, through a mist of
bitter tears, saw the pretty girlish writing of the daughter she had
mourned as dead. She wiped the dew from her eyes and read the sorrowful
words that had flowed from the girl's burdened heart.
"Dear Mrs. Leslie, my true friend," Irene had written, "forgive me
for going away in seeming ingratitude for all your kindness to me.
Troubles encompass me, from which I have no refuge but in flight. I
do not love Mr. Revington, and I am not free to marry him. But he
has it in his power to work me ill, and I must fly far, far away,
beyond the reach of his power. I have a sorrowful secret, but I
cannot tell it to you; my heart is broken, but I cannot tell you by
whose coldness and cruelty. Enough that I leave you reckless and
despairing, not knowing if we may ever meet again. God forever
bless you for your friendship and kindness to the mysterious
stranger.
"IRENE."
"You have read this?" said Elaine, lifting her tearful eyes to Mr.
Kenmore's grave, sad face.
"Yes; by Mrs. Leslie's kind permission," he replied.
"Is it your coldness and cruelty to which she so sadly refers?" asked
Elaine.
"Mine? by no means," he answered, startled. "I cannot at all understand
what she means by those phrases."
"You are willfully blind," she answered. "I am quite sure she referred
to you. Ah, Mr. Kenmore, my poor child had learned to love you. You
should have claimed her before them all as your wife, if you really
loved her."
He looked very grave and perplexed. A deep flush colored his face.
"God knows I would have done so, gladly enough, but I feared to offend
her. I believed she would be angry if I attempted to claim her for my
own. And you must remember that she bore an assumed name. I was waiting,
with what patience I could, hoping she would relent toward me and
acknowledge her identity."
"Waiting for the child to throw herself into your arms," said Elaine,
with one of her sweet, pensive smiles. "Ah, Mr. Kenmore, you are very
noble and chivalrous, but you know little of the subtle workings of a
woman's heart. My little Irene is very proud, and the circumstances of
her marriage were not such as to make her feel confident of a welcome
from you. I believe she would have died before she would have come to
you and said: 'I am your wife, whom you believed to be dead!'"
"She was cold, proud, indifferent to the verge of rudeness," he
answered, gravely. "She seemed bent on showing me that she loved Julius
Revington."
"Yet you see now that she did not care for him. Ah, Mr. Kenmore, I can
see plainly how pride and sensitiveness stood between you. While you
waited for her to declare herself, she waited for you to claim her, and,
despairing of your love at last, went away."
She extended her white arms to him, imploringly.
"Oh, Mr. Kenmore, you will find her for me, my little girl, my darling,"
she pleaded, piteously.
"Yes, I will find her for you, and for myself--I swear it," he said,
passionately. "I will never give up the search until I find my proud and
willful little wife."
He paused a moment, then went on, anxiously:
"But before I go I have somewhat to ask of you. Perhaps it may be too
great a favor."
"Name it," she answered, gently, and he replied:
"Lilia Stuart--your husband's child, and who should have been yours,
too--lies ill unto death at her father's villa with that fatal malady,
consumption. Last night you carried the child's heart by storm. To-day,
in her illness and pain, she sings over fragments of your songs--they
think if--you would come--that it might make happier her dying hours."
"Let her father comfort her," she said, bitterly, jealous in her heart
of that other woman's child.
He took her hand and gazed deep into her soft, pure eyes, tinctured with
a certain womanly pride.
"Mrs. Stuart," he said, letting his voice linger firmly on the name,
"this is not worthy of you. Your heart harbors resentment against your
husband when he has never wronged you. He has not sinned, he has been
sinned against. Just now he cannot come to the child. He must first bury
his dead."
"How can I sing to her when my heart is so empty and full of pain?" she
asked, drearily.
"Because God will bless your efforts to cheer the last hours of that
motherless child," he said. "Clarence Stuart loves the child, and it
might have been yours as well as his. You must love it for his sake.
Think if it were your own loved Irene, dying in the spring of her life."
"I will go," she answered, tremulously.