Her heart was hardened against them all. She believed that her mother had left her to perish without one effort at rescue. "She was glad to be rid of her illegitimate child," she said to herself, with inexpressible bitterness. Mr. Stuart, thinking she had not heard him, repeated his question. "You will be glad to return to your home and friends?" She raised her large, beautiful eyes to his face. They were dark with unutterable despair. "I have neither home nor friends--nor name!" she said. He started, and looked at her keenly. "You must have borne some name in the world," he said, almost sternly. "I did; but I had no right to it, and I have renounced it forever. I am called Irene. That is the only name I can rightfully claim," she answered, bitterly, and drooping her shamed eyes from his earnest gaze. For a moment both were silent. Mr. Stuart's dark, sad eyes were fixed on her with a look that was almost pain. This fair, mysterious waif from the sea, stirred his soul to its deepest depths. His presence held the same mysterious fascination for her. Lilia, the most innocent child in the world, and who had been listening with deepest interest, broke the silence, wide-eyed. "You have only one name," she said. "How strange! I thought everyone had two names. I have. Mine is Lilia Stuart. Mamma's is the same. Papa's name is Clarence Stuart." She paused, for a stifled cry broke from Irene's lips. The dainty saloon, the faces of the father and child seemed to fade before her. She was back in the parlor of Bay View, that fatal night when they had brought old Ronald Brooke home dead. Again she saw, through the blinding mist of her tears, Guy Kenmore extricating the fragment of paper from the dead hand. Again she looked over his arm and read: "That the truth may be revealed, and my death-bed repentance accepted of Heaven, I pray humbly. "CLARENCE STUART, Senior." "My God! what does it mean?" she asked herself; and Guy Kenmore's ambiguous answer recurred to her mind: "A great deal--or nothing!" "Irene, are you ill?" asked Lilia, anxiously. "You almost screamed out, and your face is as white as chalk!" "I am very nervous. You must not let me frighten you, Lilia," the girl answered, sadly. Lilia came coaxingly to her side. "I am going to tell you something," she said, with her pretty air of a spoiled child. "While you were asleep I was very naughty. I peeped at the beautiful lady in your locket!" "Lilia!" her father exclaimed. "All the ladies looked, papa," Lilia answered, self-excusingly. "And I am going to have one more peep! Irene will not care, I know!" She flashed the lid open suddenly before his dazzled eyes. He could not choose but see that fair face, with its haunting eyes, and tremulous smile, and golden hair, Elaine's perfect image, even to the shadow of a tragedy that even a stranger could read on her beauty.