Laurie Meredith's trip South furnished him the desired clew.
Springville was such a small place that he had no difficulty in
prosecuting his inquiries into the antecedents of Flower Fielding.
Every one almost in the village could tell him something of ill-fated
Daisy Forrest and the circumstances surrounding her sorrowful death.
From that it was an easy transition to her lovely daughter, who, having
come back for the purpose of visiting her mother's grave, had been so
strangely discovered by the lawyer who had come over from England to
seek an heir for the desolate house of Ivon.
It was from the old sexton himself that Laurie heard the touching
story of all that had happened by Daisy Forrest's grave, and his heart
thrilled with grief over the hapless girl, his adored wife, thus thrown
upon the charity of the cold world.
"I thank Heaven that she found an asylum in her friendliness," he said,
although it was painful to think that she had ceased to love him so
long ago that now she could meet him and conceal her identity in the
fear that he might claim her as his own.
"But I shall never do that, for I am as proud as Lord Ivon's heiress,
and, though I love her to madness, I will never even see her again
unless she recalls me to her side," he mused; and then he realized,
with a start, that now he could not marry Jewel Fielding since he felt
so sure that Azalia Brooke was no other than his lost wife, lovely,
fickle, willful Flower.
"Poor Jewel! she will take it hard, losing me like this," he thought,
remembering her mad love with manly pity.
He asked himself if he should tell Jewel what he had discovered, and
decided that he would not do so.
"Let Azalia Brooke keep her secret. I love her too well to betray her
even to the sister who mourns her as dead. She may even marry Lord
Clive, and believe herself safe under the mask of Lord Ivon's heiress.
If I was wrong in binding her to me ere she fully knew her own
heart, I will atone by 'silence to the death,'" he sighed, with loyal
self-sacrifice.
He rewarded the old sexton most generously for his information; then,
after some grave and thoughtful minutes spent by the grave of Daisy
Forrest, he determined to return at once to Boston.
But while walking back to the little hotel, a startling thought came to
him.
That dream of the mulatto man, Sam--what if it were no dream, but a
reality?
Flower had not drowned herself that night, although Jewel had been so
positive of the fact.
She had borne a child, his unhappy young girl-wife. What had become of
the little one?
If it had died--his dear little child that he had never seen--he should
like to stand beside its grave. If it had lived, and the young mother,
in her desperation, had cast it off, he should like to have it--should
like to carry it home to his mother, and, telling her some of the
circumstances of his secret marriage, ask her to cherish it for the
sake of its lovely young mother, who was dead.
Yes, he would tell her that the child's mother was dead. That would be
best; no one should learn the secret of Lord Ivon's great-granddaughter.
"The child will be all mine, but that fair, proud beauty is not for
me," he sighed, then pulled himself together with a start. "I am
dreaming! Of course the child is dead. But I will go to Virginia all
the same."