"I dare because it is true," hissed Bertha, breaking loose from the child's frantic grasp, and laughing like a beautiful demon. "Don't take my word for it! Ask that woman there whom my very words have crushed down to the earth! Ask her if she is not your mother! Ask her the name of your father! Ha, ha, Guy Kenmore, accept my congratulations on your brilliant marriage," she sneered, as she rushed from the room. Elaine Brooke had indeed sunk wretchedly to the floor at her sister's terrible charge. She crouched there forlornly, her face hidden in her trembling hands, her golden hair falling loose, and streaming in sad beauty over her quivering, prostrate form. Guy Kenmore, with blanched face and starting eyes, recalled Arthur's words to his faithless Guinevere. They seemed to fit this crushed woman: "Yet think not that I come to urge thy crimes; I did not come to curse thee, Guinevere, I, whose vast pity almost makes me die To see thee, laying there thy golden head, My pride in happier summers, at my feet." With a single bound Irene reached the prostrate form. Her small hand fell heavily on Elaine's white, quivering shoulder. "Ellie, Ellie, look at me," she said; "I want to see your face! I want to see the truth in your eyes!" With a groan Elaine obeyed the imperious mandate of the sharp, young voice. She raised her head and looked into Irene's clear, searching eyes with a woful, white, white, face, on which the very agonies of death could not have written such despair. "Irene, my love, my darling, do not curse me," she moaned. "It is true! I am your wretched mother!" The beautiful, kneeling figure reeled backward with one hand pressed on her heart as if it had been pierced by a sword-point. "My mother--Elaine Brooke my mother," she groaned. "Oh, God, was ever sin and shame hidden beneath such true, sweet eyes and the face of an angel before? Do not ask me not to curse you! God may forgive you, but I never can! Now I know why they hate me, your mother and your sister. I have no right in the world, I have no name, no place, I am the living badge of my mother's dishonor! Great God, pity me! Strike me dead this moment at the feet of my guilty, shameless mother," she prayed, wildly lifting her wild, white face and anguished eyes to Heaven. Guy Kenmore gazed like one paralyzed at the unhappy mother and daughter. He could not speak one word to either. The shocking disclosure of the maddened Bertha had almost stunned him. He was a proud man, as he had said. It was horrible to think of the stain on the girl he had wedded--the willful, naughty, yet beautiful girl whom with all her faults he had been proud to think was nobly born as the Kenmores. CHAPTER VII. Elaine dragged herself up from the floor, and held out her arms imploringly to the lovely, imperious young creature, who regarded her with angry, scornful eyes. "Irene, hear me," she said, humbly. But Irene pushed off the clinging hands, cruelly.