“It is true!” she replied, faintly, and shrinking from the fierce anger that leaped into those blue eyes as she acknowledged the truth. “And you,” he exclaimed, in a low, deep voice of angry bitterness and scorn, “you are the daughter of the actress--you are Molly Trueheart!” The ineffable scorn with which he named that name fired her soul as it always did with sharp resentment, and her eyes flashed with proud fire as she exclaimed: “I am no longer Molly Trueheart, I am your wife, Mrs. Laurens.” Louise Barry’s voice, sharp and clear and cruel, broke in maliciously: “You are mistaken. Your marriage with Mr. Laurens being contracted under a false name and personality was illegal. You are therefore still Molly Trueheart, and he--is free--free as air!” Cecil Laurens gave a quick start, and looked at Molly. Her face was white and wild with agony as she sprang from the sofa and fell down at his feet. “It is not--it is _not true_!” she gasped, in an agonized voice. “Cecil, Cecil, I _am_ your wife, you _are_ my husband! Speak, tell her she speaks falsely!” He was blindly, madly angry at the deception that had been practiced on him. In his bitter wrath and outraged pride he caught quickly at Louise Barry’s cue. “Get up, Molly Trueheart, do not kneel at my feet, for she speaks the truth!” he exclaimed, hoarsely. “Such a marriage would not stand in law. I am therefore free of you, as Miss Barry has just told you.” A shriek of mortal agony rang through the house; as Molly sprang upward and stood before the handsome, angry man she loved, with an awful corpse-like anguish on her girlish face. Her dark eyes clung to his face despairingly, and she trembled like a wind-blown leaf. No one spoke or moved, so intensely was the interest of all concentrated on those two central figures--the outraged husband and the agonized young wife. Ere her cry of anguish had ceased to re-echo through the room, she wailed out, sharply, supplicatingly: “You will forgive me, Cecil, you will make me your wife, in truth, as I--thought I was. Oh, I can not bear this shame! I sinned through my love of you, and my remorse has been so great that I have never known one happy hour. But you loved me, Cecil, and you can not unlearn your love so soon. You will make me your wife?” Such tears as fell from her eyes were hot enough to blister the fair face, such pain as racked her heart was enough to atone for her sin, but the outraged husband was wild with wrath, and he answered in that voice of smoldering fury and indignant pride: “Why, you are John Keith’s divorced wife. You were bound to him when you went through that farce of a marriage with me. Ah, I see through it all now, but I can not understand how you duped him, so as to get away with me, and then secure your divorce from him. I--”