He sprang up again, startled, incredulous. “Why should she leave her husband; why should she come to me, madame?” he demanded.
Mrs. Laurens looked at him in a dazed way and muttered, “Was she not your divorced wife?”
“No, a thousand times, no! She was my sweet little friend—no more. My God, what subtle treachery am I about to unearth?” exclaimed John Keith wildly.
Mrs. Laurens sat down and put her hand to her head. “You are deceiving me,” she muttered.
“Madame, I am not,” he answered coldly. “But I begin to scent treachery. Look at this child. She is mine by a heartless wife who divorced herself from me that she might inherit an old woman’s money. The child, deserted by her heartless mother, was left with an aunt, who, in dying, left the child to me. I came here to ask my kind friend, Molly, to keep the child for me until I could make some arrangements. Go, madame, bring Cecil Laurens here! Let me hear his story!”
She rose up from her chair, white and trembling.
“Wait then,” she said in broken tones. “I must tell him first all that you have told me, or else he would murder you at sight!”
CHAPTER XLIII.
She went with uncertain footsteps along the hall to the library, and left him alone. The little child, seeing him fall into a dejected attitude, slipped away and entered the back parlor, which was curtained from the front one by falling velvet curtains.
She found a picture-book and sat down upon the floor to turn the leaves, without noting the presence of an old lady in gray silk, sitting quietly with folded hands in a large arm-chair.