For a moment Mrs. Brooke and Bertha were almost as much unnerved and
startled as the old housekeeper had been. They stared in speechless
amaze at the fair, young face, like, yet unlike, Irene Brooke's--like it
in the bright, captivating beauty that had been the girl's glorious
dower, yet changed because a woman's soul with all its love and sorrow
had subtly transformed it, adding the one only grace it needed to make
it simply peerless.
At last--
"You are not Irene," gasped Bertha, "she is dead!"
"I was not drowned," the girl answered, simply. "God did not let me
perish in my wickedness that night. I was saved by a passing yacht after
floating several hours on a plank in the water. Look at me, Bertha. Do
you not see that I am Irene, alive and in the flesh?"
Bertha regarded her a moment with steady, contemptuous eyes and curling
lips.
"No, you are not Irene! You are a miserable impostor!" she flashed out,
in scathing anger and bitterness.
Irene stood regarding her, disconcerted and amazed for an instant. It
had never occurred to her that they would deny her.
Her lips quivered and the tears sparkled into her sweet, blue eyes.
"How dare you utter such a falsehood, Bertha?" she cried, with something
of her old, imperious anger. "You know who I am perfectly well. You are
wicked and cruel to call me an impostor."
Then she turned from the scornfully silent girl and crossed the room to
Mrs. Brooke, who still sat in her easy chair with old Faith crouching in
dumb terror at her feet.
"Grandmamma, you will not deny me," she pleaded, "I am Elaine's
child--she whose shame and sorrow you shielded so long beneath the
honest name of Brooke. Will you not speak to me, little Irene that
grandpapa used to love so dearly?"
The handsome old lady returned her gaze with a hard, cruel stare. She
was not ready to acknowledge her granddaughter yet. It flashed dimly
over her bewildered mind that Irene had come back to claim her
protection and support.
In her straightened circumstances she was not ready to accord her
either, and the faint pity that was struggling in her heart was
smothered by the warning flash of Bertha's black eyes.
Irene saw herself disowned and rejected again. She looked at them in
hapless bewilderment. Nothing equal to this cavalier scorn had ever
occurred to her. She had been girlishly amused at the housekeeper's
terror, but this was worse. Her young bosom heaved with stormy
indignation.
"Where is my mother?" she asked, bitterly. "Will she deny me, too? Will
she be sorry that the sea has given up its dead?"
No one answered her except old Faith, who gave a low, whimpering moan
that might mean everything or nothing.
Irene went up to her and shook her by the arm with gentle violence.
"Come, old Faith, you are not quite daft, I think," she said, bitterly.
"Tell me where to find your Miss Elaine!"
The fat old housekeeper seemed to be somewhat reassured by the very
realistic touch of the warm, white hand. She shook herself like a big,
shaggy dog, and rose to a standing posture. Some of the abject terror
died out of her face.
"Is my mother up-stairs in her room?" inquired Irene, impatiently.
"Miss Irene, where have you been all these long months?" inquired Faith,
irrelevantly.
"I have been in Italy, Faith. I was rescued that night when I tried to
drown myself, by a yacht bound for Italy. The people were very kind to
me, and I went there with them. But I have come back to find mamma.
Where is she, Faith? Go and bring her to me," exclaimed the young girl,
impatiently.
"Oh, miss, she isn't here. She went away after you did, She's gone away
off to that place where you said you were," stammered Faith.
"To--to Italy?" exclaimed Irene, blankly.
"Yes, Miss Irene--she went away with her old music teacher to learn to
be a great singer. Oh, Mrs. Brooke," sighed the old woman, turning
anxiously to her mistress, "you can tell her better than I can about the
letter that Miss Elaine wrote you before she went away."
"How dare you tell our private matters to this impostor, Faith?"
demanded Bertha, fire flashing from her brilliant eyes. "Have you no
sense, no judgment?"
"Oh, ma'am, 'tis certainly _our_ Irene. I was an old fool at first and
took her for a ghost, but now I could swear 'tis Miss Elaine's own
little daughter," pleaded Faith, with a loving glance at the shrinking
young girl who stood anxiously awaiting her reply.
"Hush, not another word!" raged Bertha. "How dare you set yourself up
against me? I tell you this girl is nothing to us and she shall leave
this house! Go to your room, Faith, and remain there. You have no
business in the parlor."
"Go," echoed Mrs. Brooke, bestowing a glance of stern displeasure upon
the old housekeeper.
Faith slowly left the room, after bestowing a glance of love and pity
upon the forlorn young creature who looked after her as if her last
friend on earth were departing.
A rush of cold air met the old woman in the hall, and she went to close
the heavy door which was banging loudly back and forth.
To her dismay she met a gentleman just crossing the threshold. Ashamed
of her recent idiotic display of fear, the old woman held her ground
bravely, and stopped to hold a parley with the intruder.
Irene remained standing in the center of the room looking blankly from
one to the other of the two cruel women who so coldly denied her. A look
of pain and grief shadowed her fair face.
"Is it true that your daughter has gone to Italy, madam?" she asked,
timidly, looking at her grandmother whom she dreaded less than the
wrathful Bertha.
"Yes, it is true," Mrs. Brooke replied, without raising her eyes from
the contemplation of the shining rings on her plump fingers.
"When is she coming back?" inquired the girl.
"What is that to you?" demanded Bertha, pitilessly.
The beautiful girl flashed a look of deep reproach upon the cruel woman.
"It is everything to me," she said, mournfully. "She is my mother. I
love her, and she is all I have to love me. I have crossed the sea to
throw myself into her arms, and now that I am here she is gone--she is
gone, oh, God, have pity on me," she wailed, despairingly, while the hot
tears of disappointment and sorrow streamed down her cheeks.
"This is all very fine acting, but it does not impose upon mamma and
me," sneered Bertha. "You are nothing to us, and you are nothing to my
sister. You are a vile adventuress and impostor. You are trying to trade
upon my sister's unfortunate secret which you have somehow discovered,
but you will get nothing from us--nothing! Begone now, before I call the
servants to put you out," she concluded, loftily.
Irene turned her pale, distressful face upon the merciless woman.
"Do you know that I have nowhere to go?" she asked, in a low, fearful
voice. "I have spent the last penny in my purse coming here to find my
mother. If you turn me out to-night I must perish in the cold."
"That is no concern of mine," Bertha answered, angrily. "Go, I tell
you!"
"Do you sanction Bertha in her cruelty, madam?" said Irene, appealing to
her grandmother. "Must I indeed go forth to my death?"
"Go where you please, so that you leave my room instantly," replied the
hard-hearted woman, resolutely sustaining Bertha in her cruelty.
"You hear my mother's decision. Now go!" cried Bertha flinging wide the
door, and pointing to it with her white, ringed hand.
But even as she was about to thrust Irene out of the room, her hand
fell, and she uttered a shrill scream of dismay.
Her malevolent black eyes had encountered the gaze of a pair of flashing
brown ones, whose scathing contempt and bitter anger seemed to wither
her where she stood.
"May God forgive you both!" said the poor forsaken girl, as she turned
to obey their wicked mandates; "for I am surely going out to meet my
death!"
Blinded by her bitter tears, she crossed the threshold, seeing nothing,
and so ran into the manly arms that were outstretched to clasp her.
"You are going no further than your husband's arms, my darling," said
the low music of the voice she had learned to love beneath the blue
Italian skies. "To your husband's arms, never to leave him again!"
And holding his little wife tightly clasped to his beating heart, Guy
Kenmore turned to Bertha.
"God may forgive you for this wanton cruelty," he said, "but I never
will. None but fiends in human form could have showed themselves so
pitiless to this helpless child. I hope I may never see either of your
faces again."
And with no more words, he led his little bride from those inhospitable
doors out into the cold, bleak night again. But they were no longer
conscious of the cold, sharp wind and the driving snow. There was a
warmth and summer in their hearts that made the night more fair to them
than that June-tide with all its moonlight and roses when they had first
met.
"I followed you from Italy here, my darling," he said, "and I shall
never lose sight of you again. I love you, Irene. I have loved you ever
since the night that made you my unwilling bride. Will you promise to
stay with me always now, my little wife?"
And in her tender, timid "yes," and the pressure of the small hand on
his arm he read the sweet, wifely love he was too generous and too
chivalrous to ask his shy little bride to avow.