It was a tragic moment in the lives of the three who stood in that
closed room looking into one another's faces with dilated eyes.
Flower had fallen on her knees and dropped her shamed face in her
hands when Jewel tore away her cloak. But at those startling words,
uttered so triumphantly by her twin sister, the little white hands fell
helplessly at her sides, and the blue eyes stared in bewilderment at
her mother.
Did she hear aright? Was she dreaming, or was that Jewel, her twin
sister, plucking eagerly at her mother's sleeve and saying such strange
things in that hard, triumphant voice.
"Don't take it so hard, mamma. Her disgrace can not touch you nor me.
Ah, mamma, I have fathomed the secret that has tortured you so long.
This is the girl that was foisted on you by your faithless husband in
place of my dead twin sister. This is Daisy Forrest's daughter."
The room seemed to reel, the solid walls to go up and down in some
strange fashion before Flower's dim eyes, but she tried to keep her
senses and hear what her mother would say to this monstrous charge.
She saw the dark-eyed, white-haired woman reel backward and throw up
her arms into the air, while a strange, unearthly cry burst from her
lips--a cry that was half-fierce joy and half a strangling horror.
Jewel laughed triumphantly, and continued:
"I was determined to find out Maria's secret--the terrible secret
that had changed you so, but you would not satisfy my curiosity. So
I watched and waited, and at last I heard you talking to Sam about
some papers that he had hidden from you. I have been seeking them ever
since, and to-day I found them, read them, and so became acquainted
with all my father's villainy, and the share taken in it by our old
nurse."
Mrs. Fielding's eyes began to blaze with a wild, maniacal light. She
held out her hands with a commanding gesture.
"The papers! Give them to me!" she cried, hoarsely.
Jewel shook her head.
"Wait," she said; "they are half burned anyhow. It seems as if my
father intended to burn them and never let you know the deceit he had
practiced on you. He had written the whole story out, from time to
time, in his diary, and on the day he committed suicide he must have
flung it into the fire, and old Maria pulled it out--"
"Yes, that is what she said. Give me the book, Jewel!" Mrs. Fielding
cried, in wild impatience; but again the clever, wicked girl refused.
"Not yet," she said; and suddenly turned on Flower, pointing a scornful
finger at her wan, white face. "Get up; you look like a fool kneeling
down there!" she exclaimed, roughly. "Sit down there in that chair;
mamma is going to tell you who and what you are."
Flower dragged her trembling form up from the floor, and obeyed,
looking toward Mrs. Fielding with wistful, frightened eyes.
"Now, mamma!" Jewel cried, eagerly; but the wretched woman uttered a
low moan of distress and sunk like a log to the floor.
Instinctively Flower rose to go to her assistance, but Jewel pushed her
back roughly into her chair.
"Do not you dare touch her!" she exclaimed, with such a lightning-like
glance that Flower fell abashed into the chair.
Jewel knelt by her mother a minute; then rose, and said:
"It is nothing but a faint; she will come to herself presently. In the
meantime, I will tell you the story of my mother's ruined life, for
which _your_ mother is to blame."
"My mother?" Flower echoed, bewilderedly.
"Yes," Jewel answered; and pointing at Mrs. Fielding, she said: "That
woman is no relation of yours; but you are my half-sister--made so by
the sin of our father."
A low, startled cry shrilled from Flower's white lips; but Jewel did
not heed it--only went on, like a young fury:
"He was a villain, that Charley Fielding! Your mother, who was
beautiful, but poor and of obscure birth, he betrayed; and my mother,
who was rich, and his social equal, he married for money, still keeping
up his intrigue with the girl Daisy Forrest. So that you and I were
born within twenty-four hours of each other."
Flower sat bolt upright, listening with burning eyes and a deathly pale
face.
"She--your mother--died soon after your birth," Jewel went on, in a
thick, excited voice. "My little twin sister died, too, in a few hours
after she came into the world. Then old Maria, who lived until then
with Daisy Forrest, allowed her master to persuade her into a cruel
wrong. In short, my dead twin sister was buried upon Daisy Forrest's
breast, and you, her loving child, were imposed upon my mother as her
own--my mother, who hated your mother with the bitterest hate, and who,
if she had dreamed of your identity, would have gone mad with rage."
There was a slight movement of the still figure on the floor. Mrs.
Fielding was recovering.
Jewel went on:
"It was this secret that our old nurse revealed on her death-bed to my
mother. That one of the children she claimed as her own was not hers,
but she could not remember which child--you or I--was Daisy Forrest's.
She told mamma that there were papers in her old chest that she thought
would prove the truth. Those papers Sam hid, and to-day I searched the
cabin and found them."
With a moan Mrs. Fielding lifted her head, but neither of the two girls
heeded her, so absorbed were they--Flower in this terrible story, Jewel
in gloating over her rival's dismay.
"I read the papers--the torn leaves from his diary that he flung into
the fire and that Maria rescued," Jewel added, with blazing eyes. "It
set at rest the doubt that has tormented my mother so long. It said
that the child with his own blue eyes and golden hair was the child of
Daisy Forrest, whose death drove him to suicide."