uitania_ as Mrs. Guy Brandreth. It was the only way I
could think of, so that I could be near my husband and watch him without
his having the slightest suspicion of what was going on. Mary-Rose owed
me a lot of money which I couldn't really afford to do without. It was
when she was still in England, before she came to America, that I let
her have it. My mother was dreadfully ill, and Mary-Rose adored her. She
wanted to call in great specialists, and begged me to help her. At first
I thought I couldn't. Guy and I are not rich! But he was flirting with a
woman--a cat of a woman: you saw her last night. I was nearly desperate.
Suddenly an idea came to me. I sold a rope of pearls I had, first
getting it copied, and making my sister promise she would do whatever I
asked if I sent her the thousand pounds she wanted. You look shocked--I
suppose because I bargained over my mother's health. But my husband was
more to me than my mother or any one else. Besides, Mother hadn't wished
me to marry Guy. She didn't want me to jilt Ralston Murray. I couldn't
forgive her for the way she behaved, and I never saw her after my
runaway wedding."

"So it was you, and not your sister, who was engaged to Ralston Murray
eight years ago!" I couldn't resist.

"Yes. It happened abroad--as you know, perhaps. Mary-Rose was away at a
boarding school, and they never met. The whole affair was so short, so
quickly over, I doubt if I ever even told Ralston that my sister and I
were twins. But he gave me a lot of lovely presents, and refused to take
them back--wrote that he'd burn them, pearls and all, if I sent them to
him. Yes, the pearls I sold were a gift from him when we were engaged.
And there were photographs of Ralston that Mary-Rose wouldn't let me
destroy. She kept them herself. She was sorry for Ralston--hearing the
story, and seeing some of his letters. She was a romantic girl, and
thought him the ideal man. She was half in love, without having seen him
in the flesh."

"That is why she couldn't resist, on the _Aquitania_," I murmured. "When
Ralston asked her to marry him, she fell in love with the reality, I
suppose. Poor girl, what she must have gone through, unable to tell him
the truth, because she'd pledged herself to keep your secret, whatever
happened! I begin to see the whole thing now! When your mother died in
spite of the specialists, you made the girl come over to this side,
without your husband or any one knowing. You hid her in Ne