Mr. Laurens, who had a good, kind face, and looked distressed beyond measure, replied, sadly:
“My poor Cecil, I fear it is the bitter truth. Mrs. Barry has every proof that she was imposed on by that poor girl there, who took advantage of her credulity to make herself your wife.”
“I will not believe it!” thundered Cecil Laurens, fiercely. He caught his mother’s vinaigrette from the chain that secured it to her belt, and held it to Molly’s nostrils. “My darling, my darling!” he cried, frantically: “arise and face your accusers!”
But Molly never stirred from her death-like swoon, and the golden-haired stranger cried out, imploringly:
“Oh, sir, listen to me, and I will convince you of my truth! Aunt Thalia, after long years of estrangement because of my father’s second marriage, wrote to me that she had relented, and would make me her heiress if I were still unmarried, but would have nothing to do with me in case I were. She also invited me to make her a visit, that we might become acquainted with each other, as we had not met since my early childhood.”
“Yes, yes; that was what I wrote to Louise,” muttered old Mrs. Barry, nodding her head till her cap-strings fluttered as if in a breeze; and still Molly lay there unconscious.
The new claimant resumed:
“That letter fell into the hands of my madcap step-sister, Molly, instead of mine, and she instantly formed a clever plan of personating me, and becoming my aunt’s heiress. She was a wild girl, and fond of what she called ‘larks,’ and I suppose she thought this would be a capital one. So she hid the letter and ran away to Ferndale, arranging everything so cleverly that we thought she had run away to marry an objectionable lover whom she favored, one John Keith.”
At that name a stifled groan escaped Cecil Laurens, and Louise Barry said, quickly:
“Ah! you have heard of him, perhaps?”