A dismayed exclamation went up from every throat, and Lord Clive's voice rang loudest of all:
"Laurie Meredith!"
He sprung toward the door, opened it, and before any one could stay him passed beyond arrest, though Jewel's voice called wildly, frantically on his name.
In the room which he had left there ensued a wild, excited scene. Flower and the younger Meredith girl had fallen fainting on the floor, Jewel Fielding was raving in the wildest hysterics, Lord and Lady Ivon lay back in their chairs, incapable of anything but incoherent ravings, Mrs. Meredith and stately Io had to restrain the agony that ached at their hearts in order to care for the others. Lady Ivon's maid was hastily summoned, and then a physician was called in to administer a sedative to the raving Jewel, who in her while forebodings of her lover's death was realizing so vividly that revenge is a two-edged sword.
"Instead of the heart of thy foe
Thou mayst find it sheathed in thine own!"
[CHAPTER LII.]
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.