"Because I tell you Laurence Thorndyke is not your husband? My child, it is true."

His tone was solemn--his face full of compassion. What a child she was, he was thinking; how she loved him. What was there about this young fellow that women should give up all that made their lives most dear, for his sake?

"I told you, Mrs. Laurence, I have been sent here on a hard and painful errand. He sent me. 'Conscience makes cowards of us all.' He is a coward as well as a villain, and he had not the courage to face you himself.

You have been watching and waiting for his return, I know. Watch and wait no longer; you will never see Laurence Thorndyke again."

A cry broke from her lips--a cry that rang in his ears his life long--a cry not loud, but exceedingly bitter.

"In Heaven's name, speak and tell me what is it you mean?"

"_This_: You are not a wife--Laurence Thorndyke never married you. He deceived and betrayed you from the first; he has deserted you forever at the last. That is the task he has set me. I am but a poor diplomat to break bad news, as they call it, to any one, so I blurt out the truth at once. After all, it is the same in the end. He never meant to marry you--he never cared for you enough. He hated Richard Gilbert--that was the beginning and end of it. He hated Gilbert, Gilbert loved you, and was about to make you his wife; to revenge himself on Gilbert, he went back to Kent Hill and carried you off. He knew you loved him, and it would not be a difficult task. It seems easy enough for all women to love Laurence Thorndyke."

The last words, spoken more to himself than to her, were full of bitterness. A great stillness had fallen upon her--her eyes were fixed on his face, her own strained and fixed.

"Go on," she said, her teeth set hard.

"He took you away--how, you know best, and in Boston that mockery of marriage was gone through. Miss Bourdon the man Maggs was an actor, not a clergyman, a besotted drunkard, whom fifty dollars at any time would buy, rotten body and a filthy soul. 'She is as green as the fields she came from'; that is what Thorndyke said to Maggs, 'as innocent as her native daisies. She'll never know the difference, but she's one of the sort that will love a fellow to desperation, and all that sort of thing, and cry like a water-spout at parting, but who won't listen to a word without her wedding ring. Let her have her wedding ring--always take a short cut on a journey if you can.' So you got your wedding ring, and without license or witnesses, and by a half-drunken actor a sham ceremony was gone through. You were married to the scoundrel, for the sake of whose handsome face you gave up home and friends, and the love and honor of such a man as Richard Gilbert--one of the best and noblest men America holds to-day!"

The hand, pressed over her heart, clutched it tighter, as if in a spasm of uncontrollable pain.

"Go on," she said again.

"There's not much to tell. He brought you here, and in a week was bored to death and sick of it all. He was only too glad of the chance to go, and--he will never come back. Here is his note--read it--here is the money he gave me, to pay your board and take you back to your home in Maine. He thinks it is the best thing you can do."

With all the color stricken out of her face--dumb, still, white, tearless, and rigid, she had been standing in her awful despair. But at these last words she came back suddenly as it were from the dead.

"He said _that_?" she asked hoarsely. "He told you to take me back there--like this?"

"He did."

"My curse upon him--my curse follow him through life!"

The man before her actually recoiled. She had uplifted one arm, and in the gathering darkness of the night, she stood before him white and terrible. So, for a second--then she came back to herself, and tore open the note. Only half a dozen brief lines--the tragedies of life are ever quickly written.

"Believe all that Liston tells you. I have been the greatest scoundrel on earth to you, my poor Norine. I don't ask you to forgive me--that would not be human, I only ask you to go and--if you can--forget."

"L. T."

No more. She looked up--out over the creeping night, on the sea, over the lonely, white sands, and stood fixed and mute. The letter she had looked for, longed for, prayed for, she had got at last!

In the dead stillness that followed, Mr. Liston felt more uncomfortable, perhaps, then he had ever felt before in the whole course of his life.

In sheer desperation he broke it.

"You are not angry with me, I hope, Mrs. Laurence; I am but his uncle's servant--when I am ordered I must obey. He was afraid to write all this; it would be a very damaging confession to put on paper, so he sent me.

You are not angry with me?"

She put her hand to her head in a lost, dazed sort of way.

"Angry with you? Oh, no--why should I be? My head feels strange--dizzy,--I don't want to hear any more to-night. I think I will go home."

She turned slowly. He stood watching her with an anxious face. What he knew would come, came. She had walked some dozen yards, then suddenly--without warning, word or sound, she fell heavily, face downward, like a stone.

CHAPTER XIII.

MR. LISTON'S STORY

Another autumnal twilight, ghostly and gray is creeping over the Chelsea shore. In her pleasant chamber in the Chelsea cottage, Norine lies on her white bed and looks out upon it. Looks out, but sees nothing. The dark, burning, brilliant eyes might be stone blind for all they see of the windy, fast drifting sky, of the strip of wet and slippery sands, of the white-capped sea beyond. She might be stone deaf for all she hears of the wintry soughing of the wind, of the dull, ceaseless boom of the sea on the shore, or the light patter of the chill rain on the glass.

She lies here as she has lain from the first--rigid--stricken soul and body.

Last evening, a little later than this, the Misses Waddle had sprung from their seats with two shrill little shrieks at the apparition of Mr.

Liston entering hastily with Mrs. Laurence lying dead in his arms. Dead to all outward semblance, at first, but when they had placed her in bed, and applied the usual restoratives, the eyelids quivered, the dusk eyes opened, and with a strange, shuddering sob, she came back to life. For one instant she gazed up into the kindly, anxious faces of the spinster sisters; then memory came back with a rush. She was not Laurence's wife; he had betrayed and cast her off; she would never look upon his face again in this world. With a low moan of agony the sisters never forgot, she turned her face to the wall and lay still. So she had lain since.

A night and a day had passed. She had neither slept nor eaten--she had scarcely moved--she lay like a stone. All night long the light had burned, all night long the sisters stole softly in and out, always to find the small, rigid figure, as they had left it; the white face gleaming like marble in the dusk; the sleepless black eyes, wild and wide. They spoke to her in fear and trembling. She did not heed, it is doubtful if she heard. In a dull, dumb trance she lay, curiously conscious of the figures flitting to and fro; of whispered words and frightened faces; of the beat of the rain on the glass; of the black night lying on the black sea, her heart like a stone in her bosom. She was not Laurence's wife--Laurence had left her for ever. These two thoughts kept beating, beating, in heart, and brain, and soul, like the ceaseless torment of the lost.

The new day came and went. With it came Mr. Liston--pale, quiet, anxious. The Misses Waddle, angry and curious, at once plied him with questions. What was it all about? What had he said to Mrs. Laurence?

Where was Mr. Laurence? Was it ill news of him? And little Mr. Liston, with a face of real pain and distress, had made answer "Yes, it was ill news of Mr. Laurence. Would they please not ask him questions? He couldn't really tell. For Heaven's sake let them try and bring that poor suffering child round. He would pay every cent due them, and take her away the moment she was able to travel."

He sits in the little parlor now, his head on his hand, gazing out at the gloomy evening prospect, with a very downcast and gloomy face. He is alone, a bit of fire flickers and falls in the grate. Miss Waddle the elder is not yet at home from her Chelsea school. Miss Waddle the younger, in a glow of inky inspiration, is skurrying through a thrilling chapter of "The Mystery of the Double Tooth," and within that inner room, at which he gazes with such troubled eyes, "one more unfortunate"

lies battling with woman's utter despair.

"Poor soul," Mr. Liston says inwardly. "Will she perish as Lucy West perished, while he lives and marries, is rich, courted, and happy? No, I will tell her the truth sooner, that she is his wife, that the marriage was legal, though he does not suspect it, and when Helen Holmes is his wife she shall come forward and convict him of bigamy, and my lordly Mr.

Laurence, how will it be with you then!"

"Mr. Liston."

He had literally leaped to his feet with a nervous cry. He had heard no sound, but the chamber door had opened and she had come forth. Her soft French accented voice spoke his name, in the shadowy gloaming she stood before him, her face white and still, and awfully death-like. As she came forward in her white dressing gown, her loose black hair falling, her great black eyes shining she was so unearthly, so like a spirit, that involuntarily he recoiled.

"I have startled you," she said. "I beg your pardon. I did not know you were here, but I am glad you are. To-morrow I will leave this house--to-night I should like to say a few words to you."

She was very quiet, ominously quiet. She sat down as she spoke, close to the fire; her hands folded in her lap, her weird looking eyes fixed on his face. Nervously Mr. Liston got up and looked around for a bell.

"Shall I ring, I mean call, for lights. I am very glad to see you up, Miss Bour--I mean Mrs. Laurence."

"Thank you" she answered gently "and no, please--don't ask for a lamp.

Such a wretch as I am naturally prefers the dark. Mr. Liston," with strange, swift abruptness, "I have lain in there, and within the last few hours I have been able to think. I believe all that you have told me. I know what I am--as utterly lost and forlorn a sinner as the wide earth holds. I know what _he_ is--a greater villain than if, on the night I saw him first, he had stabbed me to the heart. All this I know.

Mr. Liston, will you tell me something more. Are you Laurence Thorndyke's friend or enemy?"

In the course of his forty years of life, Mr. Liston had come across a good many incomprehensible women, but perhaps, he had never been quite so completely taken aback before. She spoke the name of her betrayer, of the man she had loved so passionately, and in one moment had lost for ever, without one tremor or falter. The sombre eyes were looking at him full. He drew nearer to her--a great exultation in his soul. This girl was made of sterner stuff than Lucy West. Laurence Thorndyke's hour had come.

"Am I Laurence Thorndyke's friend or enemy? His enemy, Miss Bourdon--his bitterest enemy on earth for the last five years."

"I thought so. I don't know why, but I thought so. Mr. Liston, what has he done to you?"

"Blighted and darkened my life, as he has blighted and darkened yours.

He was hardly one-and-twenty then, but the devil was uppermost in him from his cradle. _Her_ name was Lucy West, I had known her from babyhood, was almost double her age, but when I asked her to marry me she consented. I loved her well, she knew that I could take her to the city to live, that was the desire of her heart. I know now she never cared for me, but they were poor and pinched at home, and she was vain of her rose-and-milk skin, of her bright eyes and sparkling teeth.