"What do—you mean?" she gasped, her voice almost uncontrollable in its tremulousness.
"Don't imagine that you can deceive me!" he exclaimed, contemptuously. "I am quite aware that Bertram Chalmers was a myth. I know your life, Louise, year by year, day by day, almost hour by hour, from the time you were a school-girl, and even before. There is not an incident that I could not repeat to you with such exactitude as to be almost startling. I doubt if you could recite it so well yourself. But there are only a few years with which I have to do. You were young, beautiful, when you came to Mexico, where your little one was born. It was in your way, poor little morsel, and you abandoned it. What did you care whether it was brought up in the hut of a peon, or left to die in the sun-scorched swamps? I saw you then and loved you, in spite of your heartlessness, for we know little of sin in Mexico. It is only love that affects us. I was the only person about that attracted you then, and you yielded to me your smiles for the time, only, as I afterward discovered, to make me your tool, to force me to do that which you could not do yourself. I became your dupe, your accomplice at cards—no matter what. I do not regret a single sin that I ever committed for you, a single folly. If you had loved me, you would have found that I knew better than most men how to be a devoted slave, but you didn't. And after a time you returned to America. What became of your abandoned little one? I know, Louise!"
"You—know?"
"Yes."
"She lives?"
"It can't be that you are interested after all these years!" he cried, mockingly. "Yes, she lives."
"Where? For Heaven's sake, tell me!
"In Mexico, known as—my daughter. Ah! you see I loved you better even than you thought. She has grown to be a beautiful woman, but not like her mother. Your hair in those days was dark, Louise, though your eyes were blue. Her eyes are dark. Her hair black as night. Brought up in that tropical climate, she possesses all the attributes of a Mexican, even to the hot, ungovernable temper—tender and impulsive as a child under love's direction, but a fury, a very fiend, when opposition comes. She wants to know her mother, Louise."
"You—you have—told her?" the dry, stiff lips questioned.