"I am going away," she cried. "I have been guilty of a great wrong. I can not tell you all that I have done, but I must atone for it if it is in my power while yet there is time. Pity me, but do not censure me;" and sobbing as if her heart would break, she knelt at the feet of the kind friend Heaven had given her and told her all. Mrs. Tudor listened in painful interest and amazement. It was a strange story this young girl told her; it seemed more like a romance than a page from life's history. "You say you must prevent this marriage at Whitestone Hall." She took Daisy's clasped hands from her weeping face, and holding them in her own looked into it silently, keenly, steadily. "How could you do it? What is Rexford Lyon to you?" Lower and lower drooped the golden bowed head, and a voice like no other voice, like nothing human, said: "I am Rex Lyon's wife, his wretched, unhappy, abandoned wife." Mrs. Tudor dropped her hands with a low cry of dismay. "You will keep my secret," sobbed Daisy; and in her great sorrow she did not notice the lady did not promise. In vain Mrs. Tudor pleaded with her to go back to her husband and beg him to hear her. "No," said Daisy, brokenly. "He said I had spoiled his life, and he would never forgive me. I have never taken his name, and I never shall. I will be Daisy Brooks until I die." "Daisy Brooks!" The name seemed familiar to Mrs. Tudor, yet she could not tell where she had heard it before. Persuasion was useless. "Perhaps Heaven knows best," sighed Mrs. Tudor, and with tears in her eyes (for she had really loved the beautiful young stranger, thrown for so many long weeks upon her mercy and kindness) she saw Daisy depart. "May God grant you may not be too late!" she cried, fervently, clasping the young girl, for the last time, in her arms. Too late! The words sounded like a fatal warning to her. No, no; she could not, she must not, be too late! * * * * * At the very moment Daisy had left the detective's house, Basil Hurlhurst was closeted with Mr. Tudor in his private office, relating minutely the disappearance of his infant daughter, as told him by the dying housekeeper, Mrs. Corliss. "I will make you a rich man for life," he cried, vehemently, "if you can trace my long-lost child, either dead or alive!" Mr. Tudor shook his head. "I am inclined to think there is little hope, after all these years."