Turning suddenly in an opposite direction from that which he had at first taken, he found himself confronted by Harold Mainwaring and his party as they descended the court-house steps to the carriages in waiting.

Instantly the young men clasped hands, and the frank, blue eyes gazed into the piercing dark ones, with a friendliness of whose sincerity there could be no doubt.

"Egad, old fellow!" he exclaimed, in low tones, "I'm glad to see you, though you have taken us rather by surprise. I'll not take back a word of the promise I made you, nor of what I've said about you, either."

"I did not think you would, Hugh," Harold replied, grasping the proffered hand heartily; "I had a great deal of faith in you and in your word. I only regretted that I could not explain matters at the time; it seemed like taking advantage of you and your friendship, though I warned you that the future might make some unexpected revelations."

"Well, I don't regret anything. I always said you had good blood in you, don't you know," Hugh continued, with a boyish laugh, then added, a little huskily, "I'll say this much, and I mean it. I would rather give up what I supposed was mine to you than to anybody else that know of."

"Thank you, Hugh; I appreciate that, I a.s.sure you. Come around to the Waldorf, I would like to have a talk with you."

"Indeed I will. Of course, I suppose it would be of no use to ask you up to the house; I couldn't expect you to come, but I'll see you as soon as I can," and with another handclasp the young men parted.

On arriving at the Waldorf, a note was handed to Harold Mainwaring, with the information that the bearer had been waiting nearly an hour, as there was an answer expected. He well knew the writing; it was the same as that of the little missive given him on the first day of the inquest, and with darkening face he opened it and read the following lines:

"I must see you at once, and I beg of you to come to my apartments this afternoon at five o'clock, without fail. In the name of mercy, do not deny me this one favor. I can tell you something important for you to know, of which you little dream.

"ELEANOR HOUGHTON MAINWARING."

After brief consultation with his attorneys, an answer was sent to the effect that he would call in compliance with the request, and a little later he started upon his strange errand.

With what wildly conflicting emotions Mrs. LaGrange in her apartments awaited his coming may perhaps be more easily imagined than portrayed. She had not recovered from the morning's shock, but was nerving herself for the coming ordeal; preparing to make her final, desperate throw in the game of life. Success now, in this last venture, would mean everything to her, while failure would leave her nothing, only blank despair. Pride, the dominant pa.s.sion of her life, struggled with a newly awakened love; doubt and dread and fear battled with hope, but even in the unequal contest, hope would not be vanquished.

Shortly before the hour appointed, Richard Hobson's card was handed her with the information that he must see her without delay. She understood the nature of his errand; she knew his coming was inevitable; her only desire was to postpone the meeting with him until after the interview with Harold Mainwaring, but on no account would she have him know of her appointment with the latter. She tore the bit of pasteboard in two.

"Tell him to call to-morrow," she said to the messenger; but he soon returned, with another card on which was written,--

"Important! must see you to-day."

It was nearly five. Quickly, with fingers trembling from her anxiety lest he delay too long, she wrote,--

"Call at eight o'clock this evening; I can see no one earlier."

As she gave the card to the messenger, she glanced again at the little French clock on the mantel.

"Three hours," she murmured; "three hours in which to decide my fate!

If I succeed, I can bid defiance to that craven when he shall come to-night; if not--" she shuddered and walked over to the window, where she watched eagerly till she saw the cringing figure going hastily down the street.

He had but just disappeared around the corner of the block when a closed carriage was driven rapidly to the hotel, and a moment later Harold Scott Mainwaring was announced.

Her heart throbbed wildly as she turned to meet him, then suddenly stopped, seeming a dead weight in her breast, as her eyes met his.

For a moment neither spoke; once her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Before that face, hard and impa.s.sive as granite, and as cold, the impulse which she had felt to throw herself at his feet and plead for mercy and for love died within her; her tongue seemed paralyzed, powerless to utter a word, and the words she would have spoken fled from her brain.

With swift observation he noted the terrible change which the last weeks, and especially the last few hours, had wrought in the wretched woman before him, and the suffering, evidenced by her deathly pallor, her trembling agitation, and the look of dumb, almost hopeless pleading in her eyes, appealed to him far more than any words could have done.

He was the first to speak, and though there was no softening of the stern features, yet his tones were gentle, almost pitying, as he said,--

"I have come as you requested. Why did you send for me? What have you to say?"

At the sound of his voice she seemed somewhat rea.s.sured, and advancing a few steps towards him, she repeated his words,--

"Why did I send for you? Why should I not send for you? Think you a mother would have no desire to see her own son after long years of cruel separation from him?"

"There is no need to call up the past," he said, more coldly; "the separation to which you refer was, under existing circ.u.mstances, the best for all concerned. It undoubtedly caused suffering, but you were not the sufferer; there could be no great depth of maternal love where there was neither love nor loyalty as a wife."

Her dark eyes grew tender and luminous as she fixed them upon his face, while she beckoned him to a seat and seated herself near and facing him.

"You forget," she replied, in the low, rich tones he had so often heard at Fair Oaks; "you forget that a mother's love is instinctive, born within her with the birth of her child, while a wife's love must be won. I must recall the past to you, and you must listen; 'twas for this I sent for you, that you, knowing the past, might know that, however deeply I may have sinned, I have been far more deeply sinned against."

"Not as regards my father," he interposed, quickly, as she paused to note the effect of her words; "he sacrificed fortune, home, friends, everything for you, and you rewarded his love and devotion only with the basest infidelity."

"That your father loved me, I admit," she continued, in the same low, musical tones, scarcely heeding his words; "but, as I said a moment ago, a wife's love must be won, and he failed to win my love."

"Was his treacherous brother so much more successful then in that direction than he?" Harold questioned, sternly. "Within six months after your marriage to my father, you admitted that you married him only that you might have Hugh Mainwaring for your lover."

She neither flushed nor quailed under the burning indignation of his gaze, but her eyes were fastened upon him intently as the eyes of the charmer upon his victim.

"Half truths are ever harder to refute than falsehood," she replied, softly. "I said that once under great provocation, but if I sought to make Hugh Mainwaring my lover, it was not that I loved him, but through revenge for his having trifled with me only to deceive and desert me. Before I married your father, both he and his brother were among my most ardent admirers. The younger brother seemed to me far more congenial, and had he possessed one-half the chivalry and devotion which the elder brother afterwards manifested, he would have completely won my love. The rivalry between the two brothers led to bitter estrangement, which soon became known to their father, who lost no time in ascertaining its cause. His anger on learning the facts in the case was extreme; he wrote me an insulting letter, and threatened to disown either or both of his sons unless they discontinued their attentions to a 'disreputable adventuress,' as he chose to style me. Hugh Mainwaring at once deserted me, without even a word of explanation or of farewell, and, as if that were not enough, on more than one occasion he openly insulted me in the presence of his father, on the streets of London.

I realized then for the first time that I cared for him, coward that he was, though I did not love him as he thought,--had I loved him, I would have killed him, then and there. Mad with chagrin and rage, I married your father, partly for the position he could give me--for I did not believe that he, the elder son and his father's favorite, would be disowned--and partly to show his brother and their father that I still held, as I supposed, the winning hand.

On my wedding-day I vowed that I would yet bring Hugh Mainwaring to my feet as my lover, and when, shortly afterwards, your father was disinherited in his favor, my desire for revenge was only intensified. I redoubled my efforts to win him, and I found it no difficult task; he was even more willing to play the lover to his brother's wife than to the penniless girl whom he had known, with no possessions but her beauty and wit. At first, our meetings were clandestine; but we soon grew reckless, and in one or two instances I openly boasted of my conquest, hoping thereby to arouse his father's displeasure against him also. But in that I reckoned wrong. He disinherited and disowned his son for having honorably married a woman whom he considered below him in station, but for an open affaire d'amour with that son's wife, he had not even a word of censure.

"Your father discovered the situation and decided upon a life in Australia. If he had then shown me some consideration, the future might have been vastly different; but he grew morose and taciturn, and I, accustomed to gay society and the admiration of crowds, was left to mope alone in a strange country, with no companionship whatever. What wonder that I hungered for the old life, or that a casual admiring glance, or a few words even of flattery, were like cold water to one perishing with thirst! Then new hope came into my lonely life, and I spent months in dreamy, happy antic.i.p.ations of the future love and companionship of my child. But even that boon was denied me. It was hard enough, believing, as I did, that my child had died, but to find that I was robbed of that which would have been not only my joy and happiness, but my salvation from the life which followed!" She paused, apparently unable to proceed, and buried her eyes in a dainty handkerchief, while Harold Mainwaring watched her, the hard lines deepening about his mouth.

"After that," she resumed, in trembling tones, "all hope was gone.

Your father deserted me soon afterwards, leaving me nearly penniless, and a flew years later I returned to England."

"To find Hugh Mainwaring?" he queried.

"Not at the first," she answered, but her eyes fell before the cynicism of his glance. "I had no thought of him then, but I learned through Richard Hobson, whom I met in London at that time, of the will which had been made in my husband's favor, but which he told me had been destroyed by Hugh Mainwaring. He said nothing of the clause forbidding that any of the property should pa.s.s to me, and I immediately sailed for America in search of Hugh Mainwaring, believing that, with my knowledge of the will, I, as his brother's widow, could get some hold upon him by which I could compel him either to share the property with me or to marry me."

"Then you were not married to Hugh Mainwaring in England, as you testified at the inquest?"

"No," she replied, pa.s.sionately; "I was never married to him. I have made many men my dupes and slaves, but he was the one man who made a dupe of me, and I hating him all the time!"

"And Walter!" he exclaimed, "you stated that he was the son of Hugh Mainwaring."

"He is Hugh Mainwaring's son and mine," she answered, with bitter emphasis; "that was another of my schemes which failed. I found I had little hold upon Hugh Mainwaring, while he had the same power over me as in the days before I had learned to despise him. When Walter was born, I hoped he would then fulfil his promises of marriage; but instead, he would have turned me adrift had I not threatened that I would then disclose everything which I knew concerning the will. He sneered at me, but offered me a place as servant in his home, and support and education for his child on condition that the relationship should never be known, and that I would remain silent regarding the will. I could do nothing then but accept his conditions, but they were galling,--too galling at last to be longer endured!"

"How is it that you and Walter bear the name of LaGrange?" he asked.

She hesitated a moment, then replied: "I married a man by that name soon after leaving Australia."

"Before or after the tidings of my father's death?" he questioned, sternly.

"We heard the news of his death soon after our marriage, but he had deserted me years before, so it made little difference. I met Captain LaGrange in Sydney, and we sailed together for Paris and were married there, but we soon grew tired of each other. I left him in about two years and went to Vienna, and from there returned to England. In some way, Hugh Mainwaring learned of the marriage, and when I came to Fair Oaks, he insisted on my taking that name for myself and child."

She spoke wearily and with an air of dejection, for it was plainly evident that Harold Mainwaring was not to be deceived by misstatements, however plausible, nor were his sympathies to be aroused by simulated grief. A few moments of silence followed, while she watched him intently, her face again falling into the pinched and haggard outlines which he had observed on entering the room.