Jewel had to consent to the humiliating condition; and when she made her appearance was not surprised to find her runaway Maria seated complacently in the anteroom with a malicious grin upon her pretty face.
"She knows so many of our secrets already that I thought it would not matter having her here as a precautionary measure for my own safety," Miss Brooke proclaimed, frankly; and as Jewel frowned darkly upon her, she added, coolly: "Yes, I am Flower, as you charged in your note; but I would not own it to you, only that I know you are as anxious to keep my secret as I could be myself."
"You do wish to keep it, then?" Jewel sneered, vindictively.
"Yes, I wish to keep it," the other answered, and a passionate despair thrilled in her low, sweet voice. "Lord Ivon is very proud, and it is hard for him to bear the stain upon my birth. I think it would kill him if he knew that other dark story of man's deceit and betrayed love."
"Tell me how and where you met Lord Ivon, and why he adopted you," her half-sister said, curiously; and in as few words as possible Azalia Brooke related the story.
"So you really are related to that distinguished family?" her half-sister exclaimed, in palpable chagrin.
"Yes; and I have a horror of their ever knowing the whole of my sad story, so I have deceived them, but it is for their own good."
Jewel could not repress a sneer, as she said:
"I thought you too goody-goody to deceive them so, although I remember now that you kept your intimacy with Laurie Meredith hid to the last from your mother, as you then believed her to be. But do you really intend to carry your brazenness so far as to marry Lord Clive without confessing the truth?"
"Oh, Jewel, I can never marry Lord Clive! I never meant to do it, but I promised it to pique Laurie, to force him to a self-betrayal, if possible. He was sitting near by. Lord Clive did not know it, but I did. I thought if Laurie loved me still, that if I were really his wife, he would claim me at once. And so—Heaven forgive me—I toyed with a man's heart just as mine had been treated. I promised to marry Lord Clive, and when I found that Laurie did not care, I almost died of chagrin and repentance. Of course, I can never marry Lord Clive—I, with my soiled fame and broken heart, but day by day I put off the telling—because—because—he loves me so, and it is so hard to wound him—him, and those good people who have taken me to their heart, forgiving the dark stain upon my birth."