. . .The girl I loved was a nameless waif who for thirteen years has been imposed upon you as a daughter, and who loves you and reverences you as truly as if she were indeed your child."

"Not my daughter?" muttered the Squire; "not my daughter? It is a foul lie—a lie hatched by you, sir, to cozen and torment me—an outrageous, obvious, shallow, impudent lie!"

"Should I invent a lie which deprives my wife of any claim to your wealth? However indifferent I may be to riches, I am too much a man of the world to so wantonly sacrifice my wife's prospects."

"Upon what grounds?" cried Bosworth. "What proof?" And then suddenly gripping Irene by the arm, "Unfasten your bodice, girl. Let me see your right shoulder."

He almost tore the upper part of the bodice from the fair and dimpled shoulder in his furious impatience, and there at the top of the arm was revealed a deep cicatrice, the scar of a wound healed long ago.

"Out of my si. . . Read More