“Oh, will you? It is something like the mouse and the lion, now, isn’t it, my dear? Yet the truth remains the same. There is a black and awful secret connected with your mother’s past which, if it were known to Mrs. Yorke, for instance—and I can not say how much that lady already suspects—would effectually cut off all tender passages between yourself and her beloved son. Helen Yorke is far too proud to allow her only son to ally himself with disgrace!”
“He would never do that by marriage with an Arleigh!” cried Violet, proudly.
“No? There, now, you see just how little you know about it, my dear. Disgrace is not a pleasant word, but it ofttimes blackens the fairest escutcheons; and so it has done in this instance. Your mother, my dear Violet, was an uncommonly fine woman—she must have been to have held my heart captive for all these long years; but all the same, there was a time in her life when she made a misstep as well as many another woman. Many a proud lady of fashion and position carries a black secret hidden away in her heart; and Rosamond Arleigh was thus burdened, for she kept hidden away for years the knowledge that her marriage with Harold Arleigh was a sham—a mere farce—and that you, her only child, are illegitimate!”
“Oh, my God!”
The words fell from the girl’s white lips in a broken gasp, a bitter cry of mortal anguish and wordless suffering. She fell upon her knees upon the ground and wrung her small hands in bitter agony.
“Gilbert Warrington, beware!” she cried at length, a mad hope that he was tricking her springing up within her heart; “beware how you slander my mother, my poor dead mother! So help me Heaven!”—she arose to her feet and stood gazing with eyes full of despair into the man’s cruel face—“I will hold you accountable for this! I will go to the authorities in the morning, and you shall prove what you assert, or suffer as you deserve! It is beyond endurance! It is terrible that I must stand here, helpless and alone, and listen to such fearful words from the lips of a bad man like you! Monster! fiend! have you no heart, no pity, no mercy, no feeling of humanity? Surely the world does not need a devil while such men as you exist!”
Gilbert Warrington laughed softly, and his wicked eyes twinkled with malicious satisfaction.
“Well done, well said, my dear little spitfire!” he sneered. “Storm away, my little tempest in a teapot; I like to hear you. It is the most amusing scene that I have witnessed in many a day. Reminds me of a tiny toy terrier snapping at the huge heels of a great Newfoundland, and has just about as much effect. All the same, Violet Arleigh, my words are true. Do you think me silly enough to make such grave assertions without being fully convinced of their truth? You must be mad! No, my dear; I have known for several years that Rosamond and Harold Arleigh were never legally married. What is more, Helen Yorke suspects the truth. She was dead in love with Harold Arleigh, herself, and I was dead in love with Rosamond, so we are fellow-sufferers, she and I. No, Violet, I am not deceiving you nor slandering the dead from brutal motives; I am telling you the plain, hard truth. It is time that you knew it. And I am prepared to prove this grave charge, if you wish the secret exposed to the light of day, the secret which killed your mother. But I offer you terms. Marry me, Violet, share the fortune with me, and I promise to keep the secret to the end of time.”
The girl drew back, her eyes flashing fire.
“If I am not Harold Arleigh’s legitimate child, I am not his legal heir,” she said, coldly; “therefore, the Arleigh fortune will not go with my hand to anybody. Gilbert Warrington, you have overreached yourself in this game. Even I, with my limited knowledge and experience, know better than that.”