"This is all very fine acting, but it does not impose upon mamma and me," sneered Bertha. "You are nothing to us, and you are nothing to my sister. You are a vile adventuress and impostor. You are trying to trade upon my sister's unfortunate secret which you have somehow discovered, but you will get nothing from us--nothing! Begone now, before I call the servants to put you out," she concluded, loftily. Irene turned her pale, distressful face upon the merciless woman. "Do you know that I have nowhere to go?" she asked, in a low, fearful voice. "I have spent the last penny in my purse coming here to find my mother. If you turn me out to-night I must perish in the cold." "That is no concern of mine," Bertha answered, angrily. "Go, I tell you!" "Do you sanction Bertha in her cruelty, madam?" said Irene, appealing to her grandmother. "Must I indeed go forth to my death?" "Go where you please, so that you leave my room instantly," replied the hard-hearted woman, resolutely sustaining Bertha in her cruelty. "You hear my mother's decision. Now go!" cried Bertha flinging wide the door, and pointing to it with her white, ringed hand. But even as she was about to thrust Irene out of the room, her hand fell, and she uttered a shrill scream of dismay. Her malevolent black eyes had encountered the gaze of a pair of flashing brown ones, whose scathing contempt and bitter anger seemed to wither her where she stood. "May God forgive you both!" said the poor forsaken girl, as she turned to obey their wicked mandates; "for I am surely going out to meet my death!" Blinded by her bitter tears, she crossed the threshold, seeing nothing, and so ran into the manly arms that were outstretched to clasp her. "You are going no further than your husband's arms, my darling," said the low music of the voice she had learned to love beneath the blue Italian skies. "To your husband's arms, never to leave him again!" And holding his little wife tightly clasped to his beating heart, Guy Kenmore turned to Bertha. "God may forgive you for this wanton cruelty," he said, "but I never will. None but fiends in human form could have showed themselves so pitiless to this helpless child. I hope I may never see either of your faces again." And with no more words, he led his little bride from those inhospitable doors out into the cold, bleak night again. But they were no longer conscious of the cold, sharp wind and the driving snow. There was a warmth and summer in their hearts that made the night more fair to them than that June-tide with all its moonlight and roses when they had first met. "I followed you from Italy here, my darling," he said, "and I shall never lose sight of you again. I love you, Irene. I have loved you ever since the night that made you my unwilling bride. Will you promise to stay with me always now, my little wife?"