"Aren't you ashamed of yourself, old Faith?" she said. "I'm not a ghost—I am Irene, living and breathing! Pinch me if you don't think I'm telling the truth. I've come to see my mother," her eager glance roving around the room. "Oh, where is she, where is she?"
[CHAPTER L.]
For a moment Mrs. Brooke and Bertha were almost as much unnerved and startled as the old housekeeper had been. They stared in speechless amaze at the fair, young face, like, yet unlike, Irene Brooke's—like it in the bright, captivating beauty that had been the girl's glorious dower, yet changed because a woman's soul with all its love and sorrow had subtly transformed it, adding the one only grace it needed to make it simply peerless.
At last—
"You are not Irene," gasped Bertha, "she is dead!"
"I was not drowned," the girl answered, simply. "God did not let me perish in my wickedness that night. I was saved by a passing yacht after floating several hours on a plank in the water. Look at me, Bertha. Do you not see that I am Irene, alive and in the flesh?"
Bertha regarded her a moment with steady, contemptuous eyes and curling lips.
"No, you are not Irene! You are a miserable impostor!" she flashed out, in scathing anger and bitterness.
Irene stood regarding her, disconcerted and amazed for an instant. It had never occurred to her that they would deny her.