CHAPTER XL
A silence like death fell for a moment on the group that closed around that pathetic kneeling figure with its white uplifted face and streaming golden hair. St. Leon's voice broke it first—hoarse and terribly stern:
"If you are not Beatrix Gordon, for God's sake tell us who you are?"
And she answered in a voice shaken by blended triumph and despair:
"I am your wife, St. Leon. Do not forget that."
Mrs. Gordon, springing forward, shook her wildly by the arm.
"Look at me, girl," she cried. "What have you done with my daughter, my blue-eyed Beatrix? Why are you here in her place?"
The great dark eyes, heavy with despair, turned slowly on her face.
"You are her mother?" she said.
"Yes, I am her mother," Mrs. Gordon answered, impatiently. "Tell me, girl, what have you done with my darling?"
And Laurel answered in a tone of the most pathetic wonder and reproach:
"You are her mother, and yet you did not love her enough to make her happy. You forget that 'love is lord of all.' Oh, why did not you let her be happy in her own fashion? Then all this need not have happened!"
"You drive me mad with your strange answers," wailed Mrs. Gordon. "Will no one make her speak and tell me my child's fate?"
She looked around helplessly into their wondering faces. St. Leon stood white and moveless as a marble statue, his arms folded tightly over his broad breast, his pale brow beaded with chilly drops of sweat, his eyes never turning from that kneeling figure. Mrs. Le Roy, overcome with agitation, had sunk upon her sofa gasping for breath. Maud Merivale gazed on the scene with a face of evil joy, and Mr. Gordon looked dazed, like one staggering under a horrible burden, but at his wife's piteous appeal, he went slowly forward and touched the arm of the convicted impostor.
"You hear," he said, "you are driving us mad with your evasions! Where is my daughter? Is she dead?"
A shudder ran through them all at that ominous word, but Laurel sprung to her feet suddenly and faced him with an almost defiant gleam in her eyes. A dull red glow flared into her cheeks, and she drew her graceful figure haughtily erect as she extended one slender hand at the agitated speaker.
"Do you think that I have murdered her that you look at me so fiercely?" she cried. "Do you think I would harm one hair of her lovely golden head—she who was so kind to me in my desolation and despair? No, no, she is not dead, your daughter whom you tried to separate from her own true lover. She is well and happy. She is married to Cyril Wentworth, and gone abroad with him!"
"Married!" almost shrieked Mrs. Gordon, and her husband echoed, blankly, "Married!"
"Yes, she is married," Laurel answered, almost triumphantly. "She took her fate into her own hands, and sought happiness with her lover."
"Married to Cyril Wentworth! How dared she? how dared she?" Mrs. Gordon wailed aloud, in frantic anger.
And Laurel looking at her gravely, answered with unconscious pathos:
"Women dare everything for love's sake, you know, Mrs. Gordon."
The chagrined, disappointed mother broke into low, hysterical sobs and tears. Mr. Gordon drew her gently to his side and turned his cold, stern gaze upon Laurel.
"And you—how came you here in Beatrix's place?" he asked.
"She sent me here," Laurel answered. "She had been kind to me, and I paid my debt of gratitude by taking her place here while she went away and married Mr. Wentworth."
She felt their eyes burning upon her as she spoke. She knew that they hated her for what she had done. She felt a dim, passing wonder how she could stand there and bear it. She wondered that she did not scream out aloud or fall down dead at their feet. But a strange mechanical calmness upheld her through it all.
"This is the strangest story I ever heard," said Mr. Gordon. "Can it be that Beatrix lent herself to such a plot? Tell me all about it."
"There is almost nothing to tell beyond what I have told you," she said. "She despaired of ever winning your consent to her marriage, and she could not give up her lover. So she sent me here with Clarice to act a part, while she married her lover! Then they kept it secret while they waited for Mr. Wentworth's promised European appointment. When he received it, she went abroad with him. I saw her myself in London. She is perfectly happy, only for her longing to be forgiven by her parents."
"I will never forgive her—the false, deceitful jade!" he uttered, fiercely.
She turned to him pleadingly.
"Do not be hard upon your beautiful daughter," she prayed. "She loved him so dearly, she could not live without him. Oh, you must forgive her!"
"Never, never!" Mrs. Gordon sobbed, bitterly.
Vain, proud, ambitious woman as she was, her heart was almost broken by this terrible shock.
Mr. Gordon's voice broke scornfully upon Laurel's tumultuous thoughts.
"And this dutiful daughter of mine, did she add to her iniquities by arranging a marriage for you? Did she teach you to deceive this honorable gentleman and trap him into a marriage with a wretched impostor?"
The harsh words struck her like the stinging cut of a lash. She shivered and dropped her eyes, but she did not flinch from answering him. A marvelous bravery upheld her while she confessed her fault and exonerated Beatrix.
"Mine is the fault," she said. "If your daughter had suspected the madness that filled me, she would have betrayed me—she would never have tolerated it for one hour. She wished me to go abroad with her; she did not dream of the truth. But I—I sent Clarice back to her, and I stayed on at Eden. The fault is mine; the consequences," her voice faltered almost to a moan, "be upon my own head."
St. Leon had never yet spoken a word. Pale, statue-like, he stood, his hearing strained to catch every word that fell from the lips of his wife—his wife, whom he had believed to be an angel, but whom he now knew as a false and reckless woman who had stolen into his home and heart under a lying guise.
"And you," said Mr. Gordon, sternly—"who are you that have dared do this terrible wrong? What is your name? Whence came you?"
She turned suddenly and lifted her dark, anguished eyes to her husband's face in mute wonder and entreaty. In its lightning scorn, its terrible indignation, she read her doom. With a moan of despair, she let the long, dark lashes fall until they shaded her burning cheeks and answered Mr. Gordon:
"Do not ask me my name nor my history. What can it matter to you who hate me? My heart is broken. Let me shroud myself in merciful mystery."
"You refuse to disclose your identity?" said Mr. Gordon, wonderingly.
"I refuse," she answered, with a reckless defiance born of despair.
And at that moment a mocking laugh, cruel as a fiend's, rang startlingly through the splendid room.
Every eye turned toward the sound. Through the wide lace curtains that shaded the low French windows, a man stepped into the room—Ross Powell!
Laurel saw him, and a shriek of despair rose from her lips at the sight of her enemy's evil, triumphant face. She covered her face with her trembling hands and sunk down upon the floor, crouching like a guilty creature from the angry judges surrounding her.
Ross Powell went forward to his employer, Mr. Gordon.
"Sir," he said, respectfully, "you wish to know the name of this matchless hypocrite and deceiver. I can soon enlighten you."
"Speak, then," Mr. Gordon answered, quickly, gazing at his clerk in surprise and wonder.
"You remember Vane, the drunken writer, who died almost a year ago?" said Ross Powell brutally.
"Yes; but what has Louis Vane to do with this mysterious girl?" inquired Mr. Gordon, bluntly.
"Everything," answered the villain, sarcastically, "for this fine lady—the mistress of Eden—is old Vane's daughter!"
"No!" exclaimed Mr. Gordon, astonished.
"Yes," triumphantly. "Her name is Laurel Vane, and she belonged to me. She was promised to me, but when her tippling father drank himself to death, she ran away, and, though I have been on her track ever since, I could never find her until tonight. And no wonder; for, with her humble antecedents, I never dreamed of looking for my runaway sweetheart in the wife of the aristocratic Mr. Le Roy!"
Slow, cold, stinging, every word fell on Laurel's heart like a drop of ice. She sprung to her feet and faced him, her dark eyes blazing with scorn and wrath.
"Yes, I am Laurel Vane. That is true," she cried; "but every other word you have uttered, Ross Powell, is a base and cruel lie! I never belonged to you; I have never seen you but once or twice in my life, and then I feared and hated you as one hates the slimy, crawling serpent! I have never belonged to any man but Mr. Le Roy."
"After the terrible way in which you have deceived Mr. Le Roy, you will not find him willing to believe your later assertions," sneered the wretch.
The wretched young creature turned again and looked at her husband, but he still preserved his quiet, statue-like position, his arms folded over, his lips set in a thin, hard line, his eyes blazing with a gloomy, lurid fire beneath the broad, massive brow that was beaded with great, chilly drops of dew. It was the darkest hour of his life. His humiliation was almost greater than he could bear. There was no tenderness, no pity in his somber gaze as it met the wild, appealing eyes of the girl who had deceived him.
But she went to him, she stood humbly and suppliantly before him, her face lighted with passionate love and appeal, upheld by the strength of her girlish will, longing to be forgiven for her sin and taken to his heart again.
"St. Leon, he speaks falsely," she said. "I never belonged to him. I never saw him until after my father's death, and then he basely insulted my helplessness and poverty. In my anger, I struck him in the face, and he swore revenge for the blow. You see how he takes it in vilifying my name. Do not listen to him, my husband. I have never loved but you, never belonged to anyone but you. I deceived you in the one thing only. Will you not believe me?"
His stern lips parted to answer her, but Maud Merivale rushed forward and shook him violently by the arm.
"St. Leon, look to your mother," she cried. "She has fainted."
He turned and looked, and saw that it was true. Without a word to Laurel, he rushed to her aid.
Mrs. Merivale caught the unhappy wife rudely by the arm; she looked down into the dark, anguished eyes, and laughed low and mockingly.
"You see how he scorns you," she said, in tones of bitter triumph. "Your reign is over, impostor! Your sin has found you out. He will drive you away in loathing and contempt. Ah, I am revenged now before I even lifted a finger to punish you. Did I not warn you—'who breaks—pays'?"
Laurel had no words to answer her. Her brave heart had failed her. She slipped from her enemy's vindictive grasp and fell like a log heavily to the floor.
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