His stern lips parted to answer her, but Maud Merivale rushed forward and shook him violently by the arm.
"St. Leon, look to your mother," she cried. "She has fainted."
He turned and looked, and saw that it was true. Without a word to Laurel he rushed to her aid.
Mrs. Merivale caught the unhappy wife rudely by the arm; she looked down into the dark, anguished eyes, and laughed low and mockingly.
"You see how he scorns you," she said, in tones of bitter triumph. "Your reign is over, impostor! Your sin has found you out. He will drive you away in loathing and contempt. Ah, I am revenged now before I even lifted a finger to punish you. Did I not warn you—'who breaks—pays'?"
Laurel had no words to answer her. Her brave heart had failed her. She slipped from her enemy's vindictive grasp and fell like a log heavily to the floor.
[CHAPTER XLI.]
St. Leon lifted his mother's senseless form, and bore her away to her room. Mrs. Gordon lay weeping, moaning, and wildly lamenting in her husband's arms. Ross Powell, having accomplished his wicked work, and finding himself unnoticed, stole quietly away from the scene of his villainy. No one seemed to heed the prostrate form, lying prone upon the floor like one dead, the marble-white face, with its closed eyes and night-black lashes, upturned to the light—no one save Mrs. Merivale, and she actually spurned it with her dainty foot, and glared upon it with envenomed hatred in her turquois-blue eyes.