The white hands slipped from his arm, and she fell on her knees before him, lifting up her woful white face pleadingly. "Oh, St. Leon, pity and forgive me," she moaned, appealingly. "It is true, and I have bitterly deceived you. I am not Beatrix Gordon!" CHAPTER XL. A silence like death fell for a moment on the group that closed around that pathetic kneeling figure with its white uplifted face and streaming golden hair. St. Leon's voice broke it first--hoarse and terribly stern: "If you are not Beatrix Gordon, for God's sake tell us _who_ you are?" And she answered in a voice shaken by blended triumph and despair: "I am your wife, St. Leon. Do not forget that." Mrs. Gordon, springing forward, shook her wildly by the arm. "Look at me, girl," she cried. "What have you done with my daughter, my blue-eyed Beatrix? Why are you here in her place?" The great dark eyes, heavy with despair, turned slowly on her face. "You are her mother?" she said. "Yes, I am her mother," Mrs. Gordon answered, impatiently. "Tell me, girl, what have you done with my darling?" And Laurel answered in a tone of the most pathetic wonder and reproach: "You are her mother, and yet you did not love her enough to make her happy. You forget that 'love is lord of all.' Oh, why did not you let her be happy in her own fashion? Then all this need not have happened!" "You drive me mad with your strange answers," wailed Mrs. Gordon. "Will no one make her speak and tell me my child's fate?" She looked around helplessly into their wondering faces. St. Leon stood white and moveless as a marble statue, his arms folded tightly over his broad breast, his pale brow beaded with chilly drops of sweat, his eyes never turning from that kneeling figure. Mrs. Le Roy, overcome with agitation, had sunk upon her sofa gasping for breath. Maud Merivale gazed on the scene with a face of evil joy, and Mr. Gordon looked dazed, like one staggering under a horrible burden, but at his wife's piteous appeal he went slowly forward, and touched the arm of the convicted impostor. "You hear," he said, "you are driving us mad with your evasions! Where is my daughter? Is she dead?" A shudder ran through them all at that ominous word, but Laurel sprung to her feet suddenly, and faced him with an almost defiant gleam in her eyes. A dull red glow flared into her cheeks, and she drew her graceful figure haughtily erect as she extended one slender hand at the agitated speaker. "Do you think that I have murdered her that you look at me so fiercely?" she cried. "Do you think I would harm one hair of her lovely golden head--she who was so kind to me in my desolation and despair? No, no, she is not dead, your daughter whom you tried to separate from her own true lover. She is well and happy. She is married to Cyril Wentworth, and gone abroad with him!" "Married!" almost shrieked Mrs. Gordon, and her husband echoed, blankly, "Married!"