Looking at his grave, agitated face, she started and uttered a cry of comprehension. "You come from Elaine Brooke---- she lives!" she cried. He started in his turn. "What do you know?" he cried. "No matter---- I must hear your story first," she said. "And you have not answered my leading question yet." "I will tell you my story, and then you may be able to answer it for yourself," he said. They sought a beautiful, secluded spot where they were not likely to be interrupted or overheard, and Guy Kenmore confided to her sympathizing ears the story of that fatal tenth of June, when old Ronald Brooke had met his death and Irene Brooke had become his wife. The lady listened with eager, breathless interest, with parted lips and shining eyes, and color that varied from white to red and red to white. When he had finished he looked at her with something like a smile in his dark-brown eyes. "Mrs. Leslie, I have given you my confidence now. Perhaps you can answer your own question." She laughed, merrily. "I can put two and two together as cleverly as any woman, I think," she replied. "And you have made this case quite clear. My pretty Irene is your wife." "Yes," he replied. "And she is the daughter of Clarence Stuart." "That is quite true," she answered. "I have suspected it before, now I am assured of the fact. No one will rejoice more over it than will Clarence Stuart, himself." "I do not understand you," he replied, in a puzzled tone. Mrs. Leslie found that she had a confidence to make too. She told him Mr. Stuart's sorrowful story, and he in turn related the conversation he had heard the night before. Many things were made clear to both by the confidence thus reposed in each other. "It is as I supposed," Guy Kenmore said. "Clarence Stuart and his wife were foully deceived and separated by the machinations of old Mr. Stuart." "And the whole secret of it lies in the possession of Julius Revington, and the proud usurper of Elaine Brooke's name and rights," added Mrs. Leslie. "More than that," said he, with a shudder, "the death of old Ronald Brooke lies between those two." She was silent a few moments, gravely reviewing the case. It was a baffling one, she confessed to herself, with a sigh. "What shall we do?" she asked him, at last. "Shall we take Mr. Stuart and Irene into our confidence?" "Not yet," he replied, thoughtfully. "Let us deal with Julius Revington first. We must study out a plan to bring that villain to confession." CHAPTER XL. Irene sat still where her angry lover had left her, lost in a trance-like maze of troubled thought. With her small, white hands folded in her lap, and her dreamy blue eyes fixed on vacancy, she remained there, statue-like and unheeding, and time, albeit its wings were clogged with sorrow, flew past unnoted, until the noon-day sun rode high in the heavens. A step, a voice, startled her from her dreamy revery.