Irene was silent, warm blushes drifting over her fair, young face.
"Think," said the gentle lady, "there must surely be some name to which you have a legal right. Is there not, my dear?"
Deeper and warmer grew the blush on the fair, girlish face.
She had suddenly remembered Guy Kenmore, and the ceremony which Mr. Clavering had declared to be binding upon them.
"My name is Mrs. Kenmore," she said to herself, with a strange feeling trembling at her heart as she recalled the handsome man to whom she was bound.
Then a flash of pride usurped the thrill of almost unconscious tenderness.
"He did not wish for me to be his wife," she said to herself. "I remember he regarded me simply as a spoiled child. I shall not claim his name, shall never trouble him more. He shall think me dead."
She looked up gravely at her kind friend.
"Mrs. Leslie," she said, "there is no name from out my past that I wish to claim. I have severed myself violently from all that once bound me. I have done no wrong, I have sinned no sin, but I have been terribly wronged and sinned against. It is true I have borne a name in the world where I used to move, but when I found it was not mine I flung it away. I will not be called by it, I will have nothing to remind me of the past. Now tell me what I shall do."
Mrs. Leslie was silent a few moments. She wondered who had been so cruel as to wrong this beautiful girl, whose words, whose looks, whose every action was so pure and high-toned.