n 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.

When he at last spoke, his voice was calm, without a trace of anger
or bitterness.

"Mrs. LaGrange, I have been informed that in the days before you
ruined my father's life you were an actress in a second-class London
playhouse, and I see you have not yet lost some little tricks of the
stage; but we are not now before the footlights, and it will be much
better to lay aside everything pertaining to them. Nothing that you
have said has awakened my pity or touched my sympathies for you; in
fact, what you have told me has only steeled my heart against you
because of its utter falsity. It is unnecessary to go over the
ground again, but if you could not reciprocate the love and devotion
bestowed upon you by my father, you should never have accepted it;
but accepting it as you did, you were bound by every considerat