[CHAPTER XIV.]
Mrs. Fielding staggered to her feet. She stood looking at Flower with a tortured face.
"Ah! even a mother's instinct has played me false in this. I thought, I hoped—" she cried out, passionately, then checked herself, and the agony of her face changed to wrath and fury.
Advancing toward the shrinking, terrified girl, she exclaimed, hoarsely, angrily:
"So I have wasted my love on you—you, my rival's child! She had his heart and you his face—my false husband's beautiful face! Are you not afraid that I will strike you dead for having deceived me so bitterly!"
"I, mamma, I deceive you? Ah, no, no, for I did not know!" Flower moaned, faintly, and shrinking in terror from the wild-eyed woman towering over her so fiercely, and who cried out, scornfully, now:
"No, that is true, you did not know what a heritage of shame was yours, what a cloud hung over your birth—and yet you proved yourself true to your inherited nature, to your mother's false, light instincts. You rushed into your sin, into shame—"
"Hush!" Flower cried, indignantly, her face dyed red with shame. She stood upright, and holding to the arms of the chair to steady her trembling form, said, eagerly: "I am Laurie Meredith's wife!"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Jewel, with scornful incredulity.