CHAPTER XX.
Cecil was standing close to his wife with his arms folded across his breast, his grave, troubled blue eyes fixed anxiously on her face. She met that expressive glance, cowered, shivered, and flung up her hands to hide her guilty face.
At that expressive action in which Molly mutely acknowledged her sin, a moment of intense silence fell. Cecil Laurens himself broke it in a voice of poignant anguish.
“It is true then, child? You have deceived Mrs. Barry, deceived me, and become my wife under a borrowed name!”
Molly drew one hand from before her face and pointed at the real Louise Barry.
“It was her fault,” she said, passionately, and Louise Barry answered, coldly:
“Do not add any more falsehoods to what you have already done, Molly, for no one will believe you now!”
There was a veiled significance in the tone that the poor, cowering girl understood but too well. Shudderingly she lifted her dark eyes to the face of Cecil Laurens which had suddenly grown ashy pale and stern. She half extended her trembling hand to him.
“Cecil, you will believe me when I explain all?” she said, beseechingly.
But he replied with unmoved sternness: