“Yes, she grew up in abject poverty there in New Market. Her father drove a delivery wagon--till he died--for the tailor his wife sewed for, and there were a host of children, and this girl, the youngest, who grew up idle and rather pretty so that she cared for nothing but flirting and flaunting about, never soiling her hands with honest work. I knew that Charley flirted with her a little, but mamma advised me not to find fault with him, saying it wouldn’t amount to anything. Soon after she disappeared from the town and I never saw her again until that night of the play. I was almost sure that Vera Vane was little frisky, flirting Berry Vining, the little schemer, that has cut me out of my lover!” They hastened to caress her again, assuring her of their warm sympathy, and adding their unalterable determination never to accept the scheming little actress for a sister. Charley could never be their brother again, either; they would punish him by treating him as a stranger. “If he had told you that he loved her best and wanted his freedom, it would not have seemed quite so wicked, but when he told us he had done so, we did not believe him, as you would have told us if such were the case,” added Mrs. Fortescue. “Oh, how could he be totally false? He has never breathed one word of all this to me. If he had I should have freely confided in all of you. You know I have made no secret of my troubles,” sighed Rosalind. “Only wait till papa comes and he will find a way, I’m sure, to break the marriage and bring poor Charley back to his senses,” declared Marie, between tears and anger. CHAPTER XXV. A FAIR BRIDE. Charley Bonair had indeed gone away from his sisters in an angry mood, stung by their reproaches and embittered by their sharp abuse of his wife, the scheming nobody, as they did not scruple to call her to his face. He also, in the fullness of his happiness, had sent off a telegram to his father before he had carried his news up to Bonair, and it ran very simply: “Rosalind and I broke off recently, and I have to-day married another girl who has the truest heart and fairest face in the world, so that I confidently hope for your forgiveness and your blessing.” Charley thought this was a masterly stroke, the prompt confession of his mésalliance, and hoped much from it, little dreaming of the malicious message that followed it from his sisters, entreating Senator Bonair to return home and do something or other to Charley in punishment for the disgrace he had brought on the family, marrying a scheming little actress, an out-and-out nobody, and jilting his beautiful promised bride. In their anger, the sisters did not care to recall the praises they had bestowed on Berry for her beauty and her clever acting, nor the pity they had felt for her after the accident that so nearly ended her life. Her unparalleled impudence in marrying Charley because he asked her and because she loved him blotted out everything else in her favor.