“You remember the newspaper clipping which I asked you to use as the basis for a novel, Bayard? You remember the poor working girl who was deceived into marrying a wicked wretch, and who fled from him in the very hour of the marriage? I am the unhappy girl, and this man is the one I married. You see, he did not commit suicide. He lived to tear me from you, my darling. That statement was untrue, like much of the newspaper reports, for, oh, my dear love, I--I never went astray; I only disappeared, because dear Mrs. Howard, the good angel of my life, adopted me and took me away from New York.” He was looking at her with a face of stone, turning almost rigid with horror; but she did not wait for him to speak; she went on with feverish rapidity, anxious to confess all, now that she had undertaken the task: “I will not keep anything back from you now, Bayard. I was the girl whose life you saved and whom you have told me since you loved and would have married. I loved you, too, and it was on that love that they played when they persuaded me to marry the wretch, who pretended to be your cousin. When I found out how cruelly I had been deceived, and that I would never see you again, as I had hoped, I was crazed with horror. I--oh----” She broke off with a shriek of horror, for Bayard Lorraine had drawn a long, gasping breath, closed his eyes, and now lay before her like one dead. Mrs. Howard had been listening in wrathful horror, dazed and indignant at the duplicity of the girl she had loved and trusted. At that shriek, she confronted Fair with eyes that blazed with anger, crying out bitterly: “You wicked, cruel girl, you have killed him! How dared you tell him that story in his weak condition? He will never recover from the shock. Get up and go to your room, for he will never want to look on your face again.” “Mother!” the girl cried, in a pleading voice, like one warding off a cruel blow; but Mrs. Howard was outraged in her love and pride. She pushed off the little hands Fair extended toward her, and said scornfully: “Never call me by that name again! I will have no more to do with one who, by her own confession, has been so mercenary, wicked, and deceitful.” With a moan of despair, Fair shrank away and fled from the room. Then Mrs. Howard recalled the physicians, and, leaving them with the unconscious man, went to seek the prince in the room where he was imprisoned. She wished to hear from his own lips the story of his marriage with Fair. When she had heard it, just as Bayard had read it in the newspaper slip, she decided, just as he did, that Fair had been heartless and wicked, and that, of the two, her husband deserved the most pity. “I own my fault; I won her hand by a lie. I pretended to be wealthy and that I was a cousin of Mr. Lorraine; but I thought I could win her forgiveness some time. I never gave up hope until she disappeared, and I heard that she had entered upon a bad life,” said Prince Gonzaga.