"It grows late, I must hasten with my story," he exclaimed, glancing up at the sky from which all the sunset brightness was fading into "sober-suited grey." "You understand, Mrs. Leslie, that life was over and done for me then. I cared little what became of me, and my father urged me so persistently that a year later I married Lilia Lessington, the heiress he had chosen for me. I did not pretend to love her. I think she suspected something of my story, for she has always been bitterly jealous of me, and we have never been happy together."
"You should have told her your story. She could not have been jealous of the dead," Mrs. Leslie said, gently.
"The dead," he repeated in a strange voice. "Ah, my friend, is she dead? For sixteen years I never doubted it, but since that morning months ago, when I saved Irene's life, I have been haunted by terrible doubts and tears. The girl is the living, breathing image of my lost child-wife. She looks at me with Elaine's eyes, she speaks to me with Elaine's voice, she smiles at me with Elaine's face. And the face she wears around her neck is Elaine's face, only older, graver, sadder, with the brightness and archness faded from it, and the look of a martyred angel in its place."
"What do you suspect?" she asked, in a low and startled tone.
"I suspect that Elaine lives—that your mysterious protege, is her child and mine—I suspect that I have been deeply, darkly, terribly wronged—but, oh, my God, by whom?" he added, fiercely, striking his clenched hand against his high brow all beaded with drops of dew.
Mrs. Leslie stared, aghast and speechless. Had Clarence Stuart, indeed, been thus foully wronged? If so, whose soul was black with the stain of this sin?
"I have told you my story," he said. "I know you will keep it inviolate, but, Mrs. Leslie, if there is aught in the boasted keenness and wit of woman, I pray you find out this girl's secret for me. Let me know if my heart has spoken truly, when day and night it claims her for its very own, its first-born child, dearer than aught on earth beside, because she bears her mother's face."
"If woman's wit can avail, I will find out the truth for you," Mrs. Leslie answered, from the depths of her warm, womanly heart.
Then they rose and walked back to the villa in the hush of the beautiful twilight, outwardly silent, but with full hearts.