It was of all these stirring events that Azalia Brooks was thinking as
she sat in Raynold Clinton's library, crushing in her jeweled hands the
paper that held those two names with their magic power to evoke the
past, her sad eyes full of retrospection, her heart heavy with pain.
Since that May day, more than two years ago, when William Kelso had so
opportunely found her beside her mother's grave, she had been a most
fortunate girl, for Lord Ivon and his wife, in their loneliness and
their desire for an heir to reign after them, welcomed her with open
arms, overlooked the dark stain upon her birth, and only stipulated
that it should be kept from the knowledge of the world. In order to
further this end, and to destroy her identity with Daisy Forrest's
illegitimate daughter, they changed her name to Azalia Brooke, and
as no one in England knew any better, except William Kelso, who kept
the secret inviolate, her right to the name remained undisputed. She
remained for a year secluded at Lord Ivon's magnificent country house
in Cornwall, under the care of accomplished governesses and masters,
and when she was presented in society created the greatest _furore_ by
her grace and beauty. The lovely American, as she was called, was all
the rage, and scores of suitors bowed before her, but all in vain, for
no one ever awakened her heart, they said, and Lord and Lady Ivon began
to feel sorely disappointed. They had hoped she would fall in love with
some of her noble suitors and marry.
"Perhaps you have left a lover in America, dear?" Lady Ivon said,
anxiously, one day; and she never forgot the look of pain that shadowed
the beautiful face as Azalia replied:
"No, grandmamma, I did not. I never had but one lover, and he died in a
few months after we became acquainted."
"But you must have been so very young at the time that you could not
have cared for him so very much," said Lady Ivon, anxiously.
"Yes, I was very young," Azalia answered, dreamily; but she added to
herself that she cared so much that she should never forget her dead
husband, and sighed:
"Forget thee? Yes, when life shall cease
To thrill this heart of mine;
But not till then can I forget
One look or tone of thine!"
There was a burden on her heart--the burden of the secret she had not
dared to confess either to Mr. Kelso or to her great-grandparents.
She feared that they would not receive her if she confessed that she
had been married in secret to a man who had deserted her so strangely,
and that she had borne a little child that was dead and had been buried
in a secret grave.
"If I told them they might say, like Jewel, that it was all a sham,
that the man had deceived me," she thought, with burning cheeks. "They
might drive me out into the cold, hard world, of which I am so terribly
afraid. No, no, I dare not speak!"
So she kept her sorrowful secret hidden in her own heart; and when Lady
Ivon sometimes caught that look of sad retrospection on the fair face,
she thought that she was thinking of a dead lover--not a dead husband
and child.
"I fear that she must have cared more than I suspected," the old lady
would say to herself, uneasily; and, could she have gazed upon Azalia
now, she would have felt more anxious than ever.
She said to herself that she must find out the truth as to this Laurie
Meredith. But how to accomplish it was the question that occurred to
her, since she dare not ask any questions.
No answer presented itself to her mind, and she could only hope that
she might meet this Laurie Meredith in society.
"But what if I should meet Jewel, too? Would she recognize me? Would
she tax me with my identity? If she did, I should not acknowledge the
truth."