The servants were too astounded at the sight that met their gaze to believe the evidence of their own eyes.
Mrs. Fairfax was the first to recover herself.
"What is the meaning of this!" she exclaimed, striding forward and facing Faynie and the horror-stricken man who stood facing her, his teeth chattering, as he muttered:
"It is her ghost!—her ghost!"
"Faynie Fairfax, why do I find you here, in the library, in the dead of the night, in the company of the man who is to wed my daughter Claire, and who parted from her scarcely two hours since, supposedly to leave the house? Why are you two here together! Explain this most extraordinary and most atrocious scene at once. I command you!" she cried, her voice rising to a shrill scream in her rising anger.
Faynie turned a face toward her white as a marble statue, but no word broke from her lips.
The presence of the others seemed to bring Kendale back to his senses.
"It means," spoke Faynie, after a full moment's pause, "that the hour has come in which I must confess to all gathered here the pitiful story I have to tell, and which will explain what has long been an unsolved mystery to you—where, how and with whom I spent the time from the hour in which I left this roof until I returned to it.
"You say that this is the man who is your daughter's lover, Mrs. Fairfax—the man who is soon to marry Claire.
"I declare that this marriage can never be, because this man has a living wife," she cried, in a high, clear voice.