Doctor Jay listened with breathless attention, and so did Roma.

Pale as a breathing statue, her great eyes dilated with dismay and horror, her heart beating heavily and slow, Roma crouched in her chair and listened to the awful words that told her who and what she was, the base-born child of Cora Jenks, and granddaughter of old granny, whose very name was a synonym for contempt in Stonecliff.

She, Roma, who despised poor people, who treated them no better than the dust beneath her well-shod feet, belonged to the common herd, and was usurping the place of beautiful Liane, whom she had despised for her lowly estate and hated for her beauty, but who had become first her rival in love and now in fortune.

To the day of her death beautiful, wicked Roma never forgot that bleak November night, that blasted all her pride and flung her down into the dust of humiliation and despair, her towering[Pg 210] pride crushed, all the worst passions of her evil nature aroused into pernicious activity.

Stiller than chiseled marble, the stricken girl crouched there, listening, fearing to lose even a single word, though each one quivered like a dagger in her heart.

Her greatest enemy could not have wished her a keener punishment than this knowledge of her position in the Clarke household—an adopted daughter, secretly despised and only tolerated for the mother\'s sake, holding her place only until the real heiress should be discovered.

No words could paint her rage, her humiliation, her terrors of the future, that held a sword that might at any moment fall.

Oh, how she hated the world, and every one in it, and most of all Liane Lester, her guiltless rival.

While she listened, she wished the girl dead a hundred times, and all at once a throbbing memory came to her of the fierce words Granny Jenks had spoken in her rage against Liane.

"I would beat her; yes, I would kill her, before she should steal your grand lover from you darling!"

Roma could understand now the old hag\'s devotion[Pg 211] to herself. It was the tie of their kinship asserting itself. She shuddered with disgust as she recalled the old woman\'s fulsome admiration and adoration, and how she had been willing to sell her very soul for one kiss from those fresh, rosy lips.

How eagerly she had said:

"I will scold Liane, and whip her, too. I will do anything to please you, beautiful lady!"

No wonder!

Roma was bitterly sorry now that she had not let granny kill Liane when she had been so anxious to do it. She felt that she had made a great mistake, for her position at Cliffdene would never be assured until Liane was dead.

Edmund Clarke was certain now that Liane was his own child, and he swore to Doctor Jay that he would find her soon, if it took the last dollar of his fortune.

The old doctor replied:

"I do not blame you, my friend, for it does, indeed, appear plausible that this Liane Lester must be your own lost child, and I can conceive how galling it must be to your pride to call Nurse Jenks\' grandchild your daughter, while, as for your noble wife, it is cruel to think of the imposition[Pg 212] practiced on her motherly love all these years. But it is certain that she must have died but for the terrible deception we had to practice."

Edmund Clarke knew that it was true. He remembered how she had been drifting from him out on the waves of the shoreless sea, and how the piping cry of the little infant had called her back to life and hope.

"Yes, it was a terrible necessity," he groaned, adding:

"And only think, dear doctor, how sad it is that Roma, with a devilish cunning, that must be a keen instinct, has always hated sweet Liane, and has succeeded in poisoning my wife\'s mind against her, arousing a mean jealousy in my uncomprehended interest in the girl! Think of such a sweet mother being set against her own sweet daughter!"

"It is horrible," assented Doctor Jay, and he continued:

"But this excitement is telling on your nerves, dear friend, weakened by your recent severe illness. Let me persuade you to retire to bed, with a sedative now, and to-morrow we will further discuss your plan of employing a detective to trace Liane and the fiendish Nurse Jenks."

[Pg 213]

"I believe I will take your advice," Roma heard Edmund Clarke respond wearily, and Doctor Jay insisted on preparing a sedative, which he said should be mixed in a glass of water, half the dose to be taken on retiring, and the remainder in two hours, if the ............