Her Dark Inheritance

by Mrs. E. Burke Collins

"Listen!" he cried, in an awful voice, "and before you enact the rôle of grand lady and turn your betters from your doors, first find out if they are your doors. Serena Lynne, go home to your mother as soon as you see fit. You have no right here. You are not my wife!"

A horrible silence fell over the room, and over the astonished group. Unable to speak, Serena stood glaring into the old man's angry face.

"Explain, Uncle Bernard!" said Keith.

"I will. In the first place, I must confess my own crime. Years ago Celia Ray first began to care for me, but I was madly in love with Mildred Dane, and would not think of any other woman. Still, Celia continued to care for me, and her love lived as long as she did. It was the only unselfish affection ever bestowed upon me. But I was a villain; and although at last seeing that my love for Mildred was vain, I consented to make Celia my wife, secretly resolved that the marriage should not be legally solemnized. I have nothing to say in extenuation of my own villainy, only I have suffered since that time more pangs of conscience than enough to atone. Well, the marriage was gone through with, and she believed herself my wife. One child was born to us—a girl—who died in infancy. After a time I told her the truth—that we were not legally married, and that we had better separate. She went away, and for years we did not meet. And now she is dead, and it is too late to atone! But these papers prove, beyond a doubt, a surprising truth, which she knew for years, but was too proud to break to me. She only begged me never to marry, and trusted to my honor to keep my word. But here is the truth. Our marriage was legal! Here is every proof. Serena, you have never been my wife. The fortune for which you married me could not be yours, anyway, for the wealth in my possession was willed to me by Mildred Dane, as she inherited it from my relative, Godfrey Dane, and it was long ago given to Keith Kenyon by deed of gift."

Doctor Darrow was eagerly glancing over the papers in his hand. All at once he uttered a cry of surprise.

"Listen!" he panted, breathlessly. "Why, it is miraculous!"

And then he went on to read Celia Ray's dying confession. When Bernard Dane had taken poor Mildred and her child to the distant North, hoping to prolong her life for a time, Celia had followed them. It was Mildred's child that had died, and Celia had substituted her own in place of it. For she had falsely represented that it was dead, with the hope of bringing about a substitution some day.

So the truth dawned upon the group, and Beatrix, recovered from her swoon, listened with bated breath, and it seemed more than Bernard Dane could bear—this sudden change from grief to happiness. Beatrix was his own child—Celia Ray's little child! The tainted blood of Mildred Dane's ancestors did not flow in her veins. Every necessary proof accompanied Mrs. Ray's deposition—there was no room for doubt.

And so the black clouds rolled away from the lives of Beatrix and Keith, the two who had loved each other so devotedly, and who had so nearly been parted by an awful fate; and Beatrix thanked God that she had been permitted to cheer her dying mother's pathway to the grave.