Berenice pleaded, wildly, through raining tears: “Oh, sir, there is one who loves you dearly, one whom you used to love, but your heart is turned against him and he is in bitter sorrow for your anger. It was I who unwittingly came between you, and if I have done aught to merit your favor, the reward I ask is not for myself but him--only this, forgive him, take him back to your heart!” There was an awful silence. Senator Bonair sat still, growing deadly pale through his florid color, like a statue stiffening into stone, his eyes fixed, sternly, on the beautiful, kneeling suppliant. “Who are you, then, if not Miss Brown?” he asked, in a hard, cold voice. “Oh, don’t you know already, sir? Have you not guessed?” she faltered. “Are you my--I mean Charley Bonair’s wife?” “Ah, yes, yes--I am his wife, the little actress you hate because she rivaled proud, rich Rosalind,” she confessed. “Must I go now, must I go?” “Not yet. Wait and tell me if this was a plot to creep back into favor for the sake of my fortune? Did Charley send you here to nurse me so devotedly that I could deny you nothing?” The tone was harsh and grating. Berenice, still kneeling, put up her small hands as if to ward off a blow. “Ah, cruel, cruel!” she moaned. Then bitterly: “How could you think your son so low? Did he show a mercenary spirit when he married poor little Berry Vining? Oh, may I tell you all about it? Will you listen fairly?” “Yes, I will listen, but stop crying first and get up and sit in this chair close by, while you tell me how it happened.” Berenice, looking adorably pretty and pitiful, obeyed him, and after drying her wet eyes again, said patiently: “It was this way, sir: Just as I tell you, Charley loved all of you dearly and grieved over the separation, not for your money’s worth, but for true love’s sake. So that day when he read you were in England, he said he would go and find you and beg your forgiveness. But I--I--was timid and afraid of you, so I stayed here. I refused to go. When he was gone I was lonely, and the maid told me of the desperate case of the sick man up here, with no doctor or nurse, so I thought it must be you and I came to you, asking no one’s leave because I knew when Charley should come back he would feel I had only done my duty coming here to succor his dear father. And I was right, for so he said in his letters afterward. Oh, sir, we are not after your money, we only want your pardon--for him, if not for me, poor Charley! Because he loves you so! As for me, I have done very little, really, for there was no risk nursing you since I had already had the disease years ago. I--I--might never have told you who I was, or claimed any favor, only that you bade me to, and then my heart leaped at the thought of my husband. Oh, cannot you understand?” She broke down and hid her lovely face in her dimpled hands.