The ice around Xenie's frozen heart melted at that wordless prayer. Slowly she laid the beautiful, dark-eyed boy in the yearning arms of the young mother.
"Take him, Lora," she said, "I absolve you from your vow of silence. I cannot withhold this crowning joy that will complete your happiness, although it wrecks my own. Upon my head fall all the bitter consequences of my sin."
With the words she turned to leave the room, but that bitter renunciation before her deadly foe had been too hard for her.
She staggered blindly a moment, then fell to the floor like one bereft of life.
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
On the deck of a noble steamer outward bound, Lora Mainwaring leaned upon her husband's arm and waved a fond farewell to her mother and sister who watched her tearfully from the shore.
Captain Mainwaring was about to make his first voyage as the commander of the vessel, and his wife chose to go with him, declaring that she feared the dangers of the sea far less than the anguish of a second separation from her husband.
Yet the tears stood thickly in her eyes as she clasped the dimpled hand of her little son and watched those two sad figures on the shore—the beloved mother and sister whom she was leaving for long and weary months—and it might be, for who could tell—perhaps forever!
Two months had passed since the eventful day when Lora had returned to the dear ones who mourned her as dead—two months of passionate happiness to her, yet crowded with bitterness and humiliation to her beautiful and high-spirited sister.