"I fear your mother's life is a matter of days only," he said.



CHAPTER XIV



The Baroness went directly from the home which she had entered only
to blight, and sent her card marked "urgent" to Mrs Stuart.

"I have come to tell you an unpleasant story," she said--"a painful
and revolting story, the early chapters of which were written years
ago, but the sequel has only just been made known to me. It concerns
you and yours vitally; it also concerns me and mine. I am sure, when
you have heard the story to the end, you will say that truth is
stranger than fiction, indeed: and you will more than ever realise
the necessity of preventing your son from marrying Joy Irving--a
child who was born before her mother ever met Mr Irving; and whose
mother, I daresay, was no more the actual wife of Mr Irving in the
name of law and decency than she had been the wife of his many
predecessors."

Startled and horrified at this beginning of the story, Mrs Stuart was
in a state of excited indignation at the end. The Baroness had
magnified facts and distorted truths until she represented Berene
Dumont as a monster of depravity; a vicious being who had been for a
short time the recipient of the Baroness's mistaken charity, and who
had repaid kindness by base ingratitude, and immorality. The man
implicated in the scandal which she claimed was the cause of Berene's