CHAPTER XIX.
He had not expected to find any one in the room except his father and mother, but the first person his eyes encountered was a stranger—a tall, handsome woman with abundant hair of the color of dead-gold, and eyes that matched the hair in hue with just a little more of brightness caught from a yellowish gleam in the dilated orbs. Brows and lashes of the same peculiar color as her hair went with a clear-white complexion brightened with a tint of rouge upon the cheeks. Her tall, symmetrical figure was draped in rich black silk and jet and a bonnet of the same crowned her small head, the dark costume intensifying her peculiar beauty.
Cecil Laurens’ gaze took in this stranger for just an instant before he saw behind her a tall, gaunt figure in gray silk that took him back with a rush to Ferndale. It was old Mrs. Barry herself, grimmer and grayer than ever, and with a stern aspect that was enough to daunt the bravest soul.
Cecil laid his unconscious wife hurriedly down upon a sofa and exclaimed:
“Dear Mrs. Barry, this is very sudden and pleasant—but see, my wife has fainted. Mother!”
Stately, aristocratic Mrs. Laurens trailed her silken robes slowly across the room, her husband following, until both stood in front of the sofa where Molly lay in her unconscious beauty like one dead.
“She fainted in the carriage,” Cecil said, anxiously.“What must I do for her? Shall I summon a physician?”
“No!” said a sharp, sibilant voice before Mrs. Laurens could speak, and old Mrs. Barry crossed the room stiffly and stood before Cecil.
In her feeble, cracked voice, sharpened by anger, and with features distorted by fury, she exclaimed:
“Call nobody, do nothing, Cecil Laurens! Let the impostor who tricked an old woman and fooled a young man lie there and die! It is the best thing that could happen to you both!”
“Mrs. Barry, you are certainly out of your mind!” exclaimed the young man, indignantly. He had already fallen down on his knees and was chafing Molly’s cold, limp hands in both his own.
“Louise, Louise!” he called, anxiously, and the lady in black silk rustled forward.
“That ismyname, sir,” she said, coolly. “I am Louise Barry, and that girl there,” contemptuously, “is only Molly Trueheart, my step-sister, who became your wife by one of the most stupendous frauds ever perpetrated on a confiding man!”
He stared at her as he had done at Mrs. Barry, and answered, angrily:
“You must be mad, woman! How dare you make such an assertion?”
Mrs. Laurens burst into bitter tears and laid her hand on his head.
“Oh, my son, it is the fatal truth!” she sighed. “That girl there, your wife, whom we loved and respected as one of the Barrys, is only the daughter of the actress that Philip Barry married, and this lady is indeed Miss Louise Barry.”
“Mother, how can you say such false things? Father, can you stand there silent and let them traduce my pure and honorable wife?”
Mr. Laurens, who had a good, kind face, and looked distressed beyond measure, replied, sadly:
“My poor Cecil, I fear it is the bitter truth. Mrs. Barry has every proof that she was imposed on by that poor girl there, who took advantage of her credulity to make herself your wife.”
“I will not believe it!” thundered Cecil Laurens, fiercely. He caught his mother’s vinaigrette from the chain that secured it to her belt, and held it to Molly’s nostrils. “My darling, my darling!” he cried, frantically: “arise and face your accusers!”
But Molly never stirred from her death-like swoon, and the golden-haired stranger cried out, imploringly:
“Oh, sir, listen to me, and I will convince you of my truth! Aunt Thalia, after long years of estrangement because of my father’s second marriage, wrote to me that she had relented, and would make me her heiress if I were still unmarried, but would have nothing to do with me in case I were. She also invited me to make her a visit, that we might become acquainted with each other, as we had not met since my early childhood.”
“Yes, yes; that was what I wrote to Louise,” muttered old Mrs. Barry, nodding her head till her cap-strings fluttered as if in a breeze; and still Molly lay there unconscious.
The new claimant resumed:
“That letter fell into the hands of my madcap step-sister, Molly, instead of mine, and she instantlyformed a clever plan of personating me, and becoming my aunt’s heiress. She was a wild girl, and fond of what she called ‘larks,’ and I suppose she thought this would be a capital one. So she hid the letter and ran away to Ferndale, arranging everything so cleverly that we thought she had run away to marry an objectionable lover whom she favored, one John Keith.”
At that name a stifled groan escaped Cecil Laurens, and Louise Barry said, quickly:
“Ah! you have heard of him, perhaps?”
“Yes,” he muttered; and the scene of his wedding night rushed freshly over Cecil, and a red-hot shaft of jealous doubt tore through his heart.
“Then,” said Louise Barry, significantly. “I shall say no more about John Keith assheis yourwife. What is the use,” pointedly, “of making bad matters worse?”
“Hush!” he said, sternly, pointing to Molly, whose breast began to heave with signs of returning life.
“She will have to know it all, so as well hear it now as any other time,” said Louise Barry, and she went on relentlessly, “About a month ago by an accident I became possessed of the letter Aunt Thalia had written to me, and I instantly suspected that I had been deceived. My aunt, Mrs. Everett, wrote to Mrs. Barry asking for information, and received all the details of the impostor’s career up to the time of her marriage with you. Then we went to Ferndale and Aunt Thalia insisted that we should cross the ocean and free you from the toils of an adventuress!”
“I will not believe this horrible story of my dearyoung wife. It is you who are the impostor, the adventuress!” muttered Cecil, angrily.
“Aunt Thalia, will you show him the proofs?” asked Louise Barry calmly, and with a cold, triumphant gleam in her golden colored eyes.
Mrs. Barry eagerly produced them, and in the midst of the heated argument Molly’s dark eyes opened suddenly upon the scene with an incredulous stare, falling first on Mrs. Barry’s ugly, angry face.
“Aunt Thalia—or, do I dream?” she exclaimed weakly, and the old lady answered tartly:
“You’re waking up now from a very fine dream that you’ve been dreaming almost a year, Molly Trueheart!”
Molly gave a gasp of terror. Her eyes had taken in everything. Cecil’s stern white face, Louise Barry’s triumphant one, and these coupled with Mrs. Barry’s words, assured her that all was discovered, that her dream of happiness was ended, her life with Cecil over and done.