"No, I cannot deny it!" said Edith, with a weary sigh. "All that you have read in that paper really happened; but—"
"Aha! Well, but what?" interposed the woman, with a malicious sneer that instantly aroused all Edith's spirit.
"Pardon me," she said, drawing herself proudly erect and speaking with offended dignity, "but I cannot understand what right you, an utter stranger to me, have to intrude upon me thus. Who are you, madam, and why have you forced yourself here to question me in such a dictatorial manner?"
"Ha! ha! ha!" The mirthless laugh was scarcely audible, but it was replete with a bitterness that made Edith shiver with a nameless horror. "Who am I, indeed? Let me assure you that I am one who would never take the stand that you have just taken; who would never refuse to be known as the wife of Emil Correlli, or to be called by his name if I could but have the right to such a position. Look at me!" she commanded, tearing the veil from her face. "We have met before."
Edith beheld her, and was amazed, for it needed but a glance to show her that she was the girl who had accosted Emil Correlli on the street that afternoon when he had overtaken and walked home with her after the singular accident and encounter with Mrs. Stewart.
"Aha! and so you know me," the girl went on—for she could not have been a day older than Edith herself, Although there were lines of care and suffering upon her brilliant face—seeking the look of recognition in her eyes; "you remember how I confronted him that day when he was walking with you."
"Yes, I remember; but—"
"But that does not tell you who—or what I am, would perhaps be the better way of putting it," said the stranger, with bitter irony. "Look here; perhaps this will tell you better than any other form of introduction," she added, almost fiercely, as, with one hand, she snatched the cap off her child's head and then turned his face toward Edith.
The startled girl involuntarily uttered a cry of mingled surprise and dismay, for, in face and form and bearing, she beheld—a miniature Emil Correlli!
For a moment she was speechless, thrilled with greater loathing for the man than she had ever before experienced, as a suspicion of the truth flashed through her brain.