A silence like death fell for a moment on the group that closed
around that pathetic kneeling figure with its white uplifted face and
streaming golden hair. St. Leon's voice broke it first--hoarse and
terribly stern:
"If you are not Beatrix Gordon, for God's sake tell us _who_ you are?"
And she answered in a voice shaken by blended triumph and despair:
"I am your wife, St. Leon. Do not forget that."
Mrs. Gordon, springing forward, shook her wildly by the arm.
"Look at me, girl," she cried. "What have you done with my daughter, my
blue-eyed Beatrix? Why are you here in her place?"
The great dark eyes, heavy with despair, turned slowly on her face.
"You are her mother?" she said.
"Yes, I am her mother," Mrs. Gordon answered, impatiently. "Tell me,
girl, what have you done with my darling?"
And Laurel answered in a tone of the most pathetic wonder and reproach:
"You are her mother, and yet you did not love her enough to make her
happy. You forget that 'love is lord of all.' Oh, why did not you let
her be happy in her own fashion? Then all this need not have happened!"
"You drive me mad with your strange answers," wailed Mrs. Gordon. "Will
no one make her speak and tell me my child's fate?"
She looked around helplessly into their wondering faces. St. Leon stood
white and moveless as a marble statue, his arms folded tightly over his
broad breast, his pale brow beaded with chilly drops of sweat, his eyes
never turning from that kneeling figure. Mrs. Le Roy, overcome with
agitation, had sunk upon her sofa gasping for breath. Maud Merivale
gazed on the scene with a face of evil joy, and Mr. Gordon looked
dazed, like one staggering under a horrible burden, but at his wife's
piteous appeal he went slowly forward, and touched the arm of the
convicted impostor.
"You hear," he said, "you are driving us mad with your evasions! Where
is my daughter? Is she dead?"
A shudder ran through them all at that ominous word, but Laurel sprung
to her feet suddenly, and faced him with an almost defiant gleam in her
eyes. A dull red glow flared into her cheeks, and she drew her graceful
figure haughtily erect as she extended one slender hand at the agitated
speaker.
"Do you think that I have murdered her that you look at me so
fiercely?" she cried. "Do you think I would harm one hair of her lovely
golden head--she who was so kind to me in my desolation and despair?
No, no, she is not dead, your daughter whom you tried to separate from
her own true lover. She is well and happy. She is married to Cyril
Wentworth, and gone abroad with him!"
"Married!" almost shrieked Mrs. Gordon, and her husband echoed,
blankly, "Married!"
"Yes, she is married," Laurel answered, almost triumphantly. "She took
her fate into her own hands, and sought happiness with her lover."
"Married to Cyril Wentworth! How dared she? how dared she?" Mrs. Gordon
wailed aloud, in frantic anger.
And Laurel looking at her gravely, answered with unconscious pathos:
"Women dare everything for love's sake, you know, Mrs. Gordon."
The chagrined, disappointed mother broke into low, hysterical sobs and
tears. Mr. Gordon drew her gently to his side, and turned his cold,
stern gaze upon Laurel.
"And you--how came you here in Beatrix's place?" he asked.
"She sent me here," Laurel answered. "She had been kind to me, and I
paid my debt of gratitude by taking her place here while she went away
and married Mr. Wentworth."
She felt their eyes burning upon her as she spoke. She knew that they
hated her for what she had done. She felt a dim, passing wonder how she
could stand there and bear it. She wondered that she did not scream
out aloud or fall down dead at their feet. But a strange mechanical
calmness upheld her through it all.
"This is the strangest story I ever heard," said Mr. Gordon. "Can it be
that Beatrix lent herself to such a plot? Tell me all about it."
"There is almost nothing to tell beyond what I have told you," she
said. "She despaired of ever winning your consent to her marriage, and
she could not give up her lover. So she sent me here with Clarice to
act a part, while she married her lover! Then they kept it secret while
they waited for Mr. Wentworth's promised European appointment. When he
received it, she went abroad with him. I saw her myself in London. She
is perfectly happy, only for her longing to be forgiven by her parents."
"I will never forgive her--the false, deceitful jade!" he uttered,
fiercely.
She turned to him pleadingly.
"Do not be hard upon your beautiful daughter," she prayed. "She loved
him so dearly, she could not live without him. Oh, you must forgive
her!"
"Never, never!" Mrs. Gordon sobbed, bitterly.
Vain, proud, ambitious woman as she was, her heart was almost broken by
this terrible shock.
Mr. Gordon's voice broke scornfully upon Laurel's tumultuous thoughts.
"And this dutiful daughter of mine, did she add to her iniquities
by arranging a marriage for you? Did she teach you to deceive this
honorable gentleman and trap him into a marriage with a wretched
impostor?"
The harsh words struck her like the stinging cut of a lash. She
shivered and dropped her eyes, but she did not flinch from answering
him. A marvelous bravery upheld her while she confessed her fault and
exonerated Beatrix.
"Mine is the fault," she said. "If your daughter had suspected the
madness that filled me, she would have betrayed me--she would never
have tolerated it for one hour. She wished me to go abroad with her;
she did not dream of the truth. But I--I sent Clarice back to her, and
I stayed on at Eden. The fault is mine; the consequences," her voice
faltered almost to a moan, "be upon my own head."
St. Leon had never yet spoken a word. Pale, statue-like, he stood, his
hearing strained to catch every word that fell from the lips of his
wife--his wife, whom he had believed to be an angel, but whom he now
knew as a false and reckless woman who had stolen into his home and
heart under a lying guise.
"And you," said Mr. Gordon, sternly--"who are you that have dared do
this terrible wrong? What is your name? Whence came you?"
She turned suddenly and lifted her dark, anguished eyes to her
husband's face in mute wonder and entreaty. In its lightning scorn, its
terrible indignation, she read her doom. With a moan of despair she let
the long, dark lashes fall until they shaded her burning cheeks and
answered Mr. Gordon:
"Do not ask me my name nor my history. What can it matter to you who
hate me? My heart is broken. Let me shroud myself in merciful mystery."
"You refuse to disclose your identity?" said Mr. Gordon, wonderingly.
"I refuse," she answered, with a reckless defiance born of despair.
And at that moment a mocking laugh, cruel as a fiend's, rang
startlingly through the splendid room.
Every eye turned toward the sound. Through the wide lace curtains that
shaded the low French windows a man stepped into the room--Ross Powell!
Laurel saw him, and a shriek of despair rose from her lips at the sight
of her enemy's evil, triumphant face. She covered her face with her
trembling hands and sunk down upon the floor, crouching like a guilty
creature from the angry judges surrounding her.
Ross Powell went forward to his employer, Mr. Gordon.
"Sir," he said, respectfully, "you wish to know the name of this
matchless hypocrite and deceiver. I can soon enlighten you."
"Speak, then," Mr. Gordon answered, quickly, gazing at his clerk in
surprise and wonder.
"You remember Vane, the drunken writer, who died almost a year ago?"
said Ross Powell brutally.
"Yes; but what has Louis Vane to do with this mysterious girl?"
inquired Mr. Gordon, bluntly.
"Everything," answered the villain, sarcastically, "for this fine
lady--the mistress of Eden--is old Vane's daughter!"
"No!" exclaimed Mr. Gordon, astonished.
"Yes," triumphantly. "Her name is Laurel Vane, and she belonged to me.
She was promised to me, but when her tippling father drank himself
to death, she ran away, and, though I have been on her track ever
since, I could never find her until to-night. And no wonder; for, with
her humble antecedents, I never dreamed of looking for my runaway
sweetheart in the wife of the aristocratic Mr. Le Roy!"
Slow, cold, stinging, every word fell on Laurel's heart like a drop of
ice. She sprung to her feet and faced him, her dark eyes blazing with
scorn and wrath.
"Yes, I am Laurel Vane. That is true," she cried; "but every other
word you have uttered, Ross Powell, is a base and cruel lie! I never
belonged to you; I have never seen you but once or twice in my life,
and then I feared and hated you as one hates the slimy, crawling
serpent! I have never belonged to any man but Mr. Le Roy."
"After the terrible way in which you have deceived Mr. Le Roy, you will
not find him willing to believe your later assertions," sneered the
wretch.
The wretched young creature turned again and looked at her husband,
but he still preserved his quiet, statue-like position, his arms
folded over, his lips set in a thin, hard line, his eyes blazing with
a gloomy, lurid fire beneath the broad, massive brow that was beaded
with great, chilly drops of dew. It was the darkest hour of his life.
His humiliation was almost greater than he could bear. There was no
tenderness, no pity in his somber gaze as it met the wild, appealing
eyes of the girl who had deceived him.
But she went to him, she stood humbly and suppliantly before him, her
face lighted with passionate love and appeal, upheld by the strength of
her girlish will, longing to be forgiven for her sin and taken to his
heart again.
"St. Leon, he speaks falsely," she said. "I never belonged to him.
I never saw him until after my father's death, and then he basely
insulted my helplessness and poverty. In my anger I struck him in the
face, and he swore revenge for the blow. You see how he takes it in
vilifying my name. Do not listen to him, my husband. I have never loved
but you, never belonged to any one but you. I deceived you in the one
thing only. Will you not believe me?"
His stern lips parted to answer her, but Maud Merivale rushed forward
and shook him violently by the arm.
"St. Leon, look to your mother," she cried. "She has fainted."
He turned and looked, and saw that it was true. Without a word to
Laurel he rushed to her aid.
Mrs. Merivale caught the unhappy wife rudely by the arm; she looked
down into the dark, anguished eyes, and laughed low and mockingly.
"You see how he scorns you," she said, in tones of bitter triumph.
"Your reign is over, impostor! Your sin has found you out. He will
drive you away in loathing and contempt. Ah, I am revenged now before
I even lifted a finger to punish you. Did I not warn you--'who
breaks--pays'?"
Laurel had no words to answer her. Her brave heart had failed her. She
slipped from her enemy's vindictive grasp and fell like a log heavily
to the floor.