"Don't take it so hard, mamma. Her disgrace can not touch you nor me. Ah, mamma, I have fathomed the secret that has tortured you so long. This is the girl that was foisted on you by your faithless husband in place of my dead twin sister. This is Daisy Forrest's daughter."
The room seemed to reel, the solid walls to go up and down in some strange fashion before Flower's dim eyes, but she tried to keep her senses and hear what her mother would say to this monstrous charge.
She saw the dark-eyed, white-haired woman reel backward and throw up her arms into the air, while a strange, unearthly cry burst from her lips—a cry that was half-fierce joy and half a strangling horror.
Jewel laughed triumphantly, and continued:
"I was determined to find out Maria's secret—the terrible secret that had changed you so, but you would not satisfy my curiosity. So I watched and waited, and at last I heard you talking to Sam about some papers that he had hidden from you. I have been seeking them ever since, and to-day I found them, read them, and so became acquainted with all my father's villainy, and the share taken in it by our old nurse."
Mrs. Fielding's eyes began to blaze with a wild, maniacal light. She held out her hands with a commanding gesture.
"The papers! Give them to me!" she cried, hoarsely.
Jewel shook her head.
"Wait," she said; "they are half burned anyhow. It seems as if my father intended to burn them and never let you know the deceit he had practiced on you. He had written the whole story out, from time to time, in his diary, and on the day he committed suicide he must have flung it into the fire, and old Maria pulled it out—"