He went home, triumphant in his future plans, little dreaming that Mrs. Elaine Willoughby had called Justine to her bedside at Lakemere a half an hour before. “I have been robbed, and robbed here, in my own house,” the lady sternly said. “You alone know of the paper hidden in my corset. Explain at once.” CHAPTER XII. MINE AND COUNTERMINE. The mistress of Lakemere was frozen into a forced calm as she keenly eyed Justine Duprez standing with open-eyed astonishment before the woman whose heart was still racked with the sharp battle with Garston. But Justine’s heart was tranquil. The nurse was far away over the seas now. The one man living who knew the vital secret of her life had thrown off his mask in the bitter conflict of the afternoon. “If you will not bring me into your life again, Margaret,” he cried, “I swear that I will fight my way to that child’s side, and she shall know how your cold pride is throttling a father’s honest love. It has been a hard life, the lonely one I’ve led. “And to that child’s side, I will yet win my way. “Remember, Alynton and his friends must listen to me. I can crush you. “The walls of your flimsy social fortification will fall around you at my touch. Tell me, where have you hidden our child—your child, Margaret Cranstoun! My child!” And a new fear had entered into the mother’s soul, all bereft of a husband’s love. The Senator’s appeal was the hoarse, pleading cry of a last despair, and in it were the echoes of the last agony of a desperate man. There before him, still defiant, stood the wife of his youth, glowing in her autumn beauty, and at the last, madly desired by the revenge of an outraged love. All the triumphs of his life were only Dead Sea fruit, apples of Sodom. For he knew that the proud, silent lips before him might tell the story of a father’s shame to that unknown girl whose lovely face now haunted him. The girl whose picture still rested on the heart of the yet unbought Vreeland. For the schemer had carefully reclaimed his property. “The past is sealed. You shall never hear her call you father. Mine she is forever, brought forth in tears, nurtured in sorrow and mine alone,” defiantly cried Elaine. “I have bought my freedom, with all these long and lonely years, and it is Nature’s revolt against the recreated passion of your youth. “Tell me,” she sternly said, “had you found me poor, faded, broken, in obscurity, would you have then begged to atone?” She faced him like a tigress. His quivering lips refused to lie, but he drew nearer to her menacingly. “Stand off!” she panted. “Your ownership is forfeit. The brute tyranny of marriage as made by man; you can not reforge the chain I wore once. Every fiber of my flesh revolts against your touch. And she—the pure, the innocent, you shall never see. I swear it!” He had thus raged at her side in brutal menaces.