All the morning he remained in Florence making arrangements for the double burial. Elaine had returned to her hotel, and Mr. Stuart sent her by Guy Kenmore the blood-stained confession to read at her leisure. Then he gave up his time to the burial of his dead. He sent a messenger out to the villa to break the tidings of death to all but Lilia, who was to be kept in ignorance of her mother's fate until he could tell her himself. The messenger returned with tidings as sad as he had carried away. Lilia lay unconscious and dying, having suffered a relapse of her insidious disease that morning which had brought on fatal hemorrhage. CHAPTER XLVI. It was more than Elaine could bear to read the dying confession of the wicked old man who had blighted her life and branded her daughter's young life with shame. It almost killed her to look at it and to feel that through it her kind, noble old father had lost his life. "Better, far better, if old Clarence Stuart had died with the secret of his villainy untold!" she cried. "Better that I should have borne the brand of shame forever than you to have died by the assassin's hand, my father, oh, my father!" Yet she knew, even while she bewailed him, that her father would have given his life twice over to purchase honor and happiness for her, his best-loved child. "Irene must never know," she said to Mr. Kenmore. "She loved my father so dearly, and she is so passionate and impetuous that it would break her heart. We must spare mamma and Bertha, too. That wicked woman is dead now, and earthly vengeance cannot reach her, so for her husband's sake we will shield her memory." He agreed with her that it was best so, and she gave him the confession to read for her, telling him frankly that she could not bear to hold it in her hand. Yet her heart burned and her cheek glowed as she heard the story of the deep-laid scheme by which she and her adoring young husband had been separated. "Irene must read that--and mamma and Bertha," she said, wistfully, and Guy Kenmore understood then how bitterly the woman's pure heart had shrunk under the lash of scorn they had laid upon her shoulders. "It is almost impossible to imagine anyone so heartless as that old man," he said. "With what devilish art he laid his plans. To you he told the story of the fraudulent marriage ceremony, and your husband's second marriage. To his son he presented your fraudulent letter of renunciation, and later on the false notice of your death abroad. No wonder the wings of his soul were clogged in dying by the weight of his terrible sins." He told her the story of Irene's rescue from death, and how he had subsequently met her at Mr. Stuart's villa on the Arno. "Does it not seem like some strange recompense of Providence that she should have been saved from death by her father?" he said, thoughtfully. She agreed with him, and then he saw a wistful look stealing into her gentle eyes. "You are longing for your child?" he asked.