Looking up suddenly, with dark, anguished eyes, he caught her wondering, troubled look. "Mrs. Leslie, you think me mad," he said, mournfully. "No, no," she answered, reassuringly. "I must beg your pardon for my ill-advised words," she continued, regretfully. "I fear that I have touched the spring of some secret sorrow." "You have," he answered, sadly. "But do not reproach yourself. You could not have known. You probed an aching wound by chance." "I am so sorry. I did not dream," she said, incoherently, full of sorrow for her unconscious fault. "And she looks like me, you think?" he said, thoughtfully. "Marvellously," she exclaimed. "Have you ever seen the woman's face in the locket she wears about her throat?" he asked. "I am ashamed to confess that my womanly curiosity has made me guilty of peeping into it on one or two occasions," she replied. "It is the loveliest face I ever beheld." "Fairest and falsest," he replied. "Mrs. Leslie, what will you think when I tell you that that woman was once bound to me by the dearest tie upon earth? She was my wife." "I do not know what to think," she replied, and in truth she was half dazed by his words. She could not understand him. "You look incredulous," he said, sadly. "But, Mrs. Leslie, you have known me for long years. Let your mind go back to the years before I married Miss Lessington. Did no faint rumor ever reach you of a boyish entanglement, hushed up by my father for fear it should reach the ears of the heiress selected for me?" "Yes," she answered, with a start, "I recall it now--the merest whisper of a boyish fancy that your father would not tolerate. It was true, then?" "It was true," he answered, sadly. "Mrs. Leslie, may I tell you my story? They say that a woman's wit is very keen. Perhaps you can help me to solve the problem of Irene's identity." "You may tell me, and I will gladly help you if I can," she replied, with gentle, womanly sympathy. In her heart she had always been sorry for Clarence Stuart. She believed him to be one of nature's noblemen, and she knew that he was mated with a cold, hard, jealous woman who was proud of her wealth, her birth, her station, and whose hard heart held neither pity nor sympathy for those whom she proudly held as inferiors. She intuitively felt that he had never loved the haughty heiress his proud father had selected for him. "I must go back more than seventeen years to the romance of my life," he said. "I was barely twenty-one, then, an eager, impetuous, romantic boy, chafing at the rein my father tried to hold over me, and disgusted with the idea of the _mariage de convenance_ he had arranged for me." He sighed, and resumed: "Nellie Ford, my cousin, who was away at a fashionable boarding-school, sent me an invitation to a musical _soiree_. I went, carelessly enough, and at that entertainment I met my fate--a blue-eyed girl looking much as Irene does now.