Face to face with her half-sister at last, with all pretenses laid aside, Jewel had never spent a more uncomfortable hour in her life.

She had sent a note requesting a private interview the day after the meeting at the opera, and Azalia Brooke had granted it on the condition that her maid should be present at the interview, stationed in an anteroom with doors open between, so that she could see if not hear all that passed.

Jewel had to consent to the humiliating condition; and when she made her appearance was not surprised to find her runaway Maria seated complacently in the anteroom with a malicious grin upon her pretty face.

"She knows so many of our secrets already that I thought it would not matter having her here as a precautionary measure for my own safety," Miss Brooke proclaimed, frankly; and as Jewel frowned darkly upon her, she added, coolly: "Yes, I am Flower, as you charged in your note; but I would not own it to you, only that I know you are as anxious to keep my secret as I could be myself."

"You do wish to keep it, then?" Jewel sneered, vindictively.

"Yes, I wish to keep it," the other answered, and a passionate despair thrilled in her low, sweet voice. "Lord Ivon is very proud, and it is hard for him to bear the stain upon my birth. I think it would kill him if he knew that other dark story of man's deceit and betrayed love."

"Tell me how and where you met Lord Ivon, and why he adopted you," her half-sister said, curiously; and in as few words as possible Azalia Brooke related the story.

"So you really are related to that distinguished family?" her half-sister exclaimed, in palpable chagrin.

"Yes; and I have a horror of their ever knowing the whole of my sad story, so I have deceived them, but it is for their own good."

Jewel could not repress a sneer, as she said:

"I thought you too goody-goody to deceive them so, although I remember now that you kept your intimacy with Laurie Meredith hid to the last from your mother, as you then believed her to be. But do you really intend to carry your brazenness so far as to marry Lord Clive without confessing the truth?"

"Oh, Jewel, I can never marry Lord Clive! I never meant to do it, but I promised it to pique Laurie, to force him to a self-betrayal, if possible. He was sitting near by. Lord Clive did not know it, but I did. I thought if Laurie loved me still, that if I were really his wife, he would claim me at once. And so—Heaven forgive me—I toyed with a man's heart just as mine had been treated. I promised to marry Lord Clive, and when I found that Laurie did not care, I almost died of chagrin and repentance. Of course, I can never marry Lord Clive—I, with my soiled fame and broken heart, but day by day I put off the telling—because—because—he loves me so, and it is so hard to wound him—him, and those good people who have taken me to their heart, forgiving the dark stain upon my birth."

"You are a fool, Flower Fielding, as I've often told you before. Why, there's nothing to prevent your marrying the man. I will keep your secret if you will go back to England and marry him."

"I can not do it," Flower answered, sorrowfully. "Even if there was nothing else, it would be a sin to marry him, with my heart full of love for another."

"Another man!"

"Yes, Jewel," and the girl suddenly fell down upon her knees before the frowning, dark-faced beauty. "Oh, my sister," she wailed, "have you not guessed my bitter secret? I love Laurie still, in spite of my wrongs, in spite of my pride! Oh, tell me, is it really true that I was never his wife, or have you deceived me? Have you both deceived me, because he grew weary of me so soon? How did you win him from me after all his vows?"

Jewel gazed into the tear-wet, suppliant face, with anger and consternation. It was worse than she thought. Her sister actually dared to love Laurie Meredith still! Why, she was courting her doom by that candid avowal!

And, as if to incense her still further, the unhappy girl continued, wildly:

"I know I ought to hate him, but I can not do it, no matter how hard I try; and I think it is because I can never seem to comprehend him as he really is. My love seems to glorify him and make him better than other men, while in reality he is worse. But I have loved him so—and he was the father of my child, you know, Jewel, and it was such a lovely little baby! Oh, Jewel, could you but have seen my little Douglas, with his own papa's lovely brown eyes, you must have loved him, and been kinder to me. It was not my fault Laurie loved me first."

"Hush! Get up!" Jewel hissed, with such murderous fury in her face and glance that her half-sister started up in terror of her life, and retreated toward the anteroom. "Come back, you coward!" Jewel exclaimed, harshly, "I am not going to kill you, unless you talk to me in such a strain again. But if you did, and there were a hundred present, I believe I should fly at you."

Flower shivered through all her slender frame at those cruel words, and sunk down sobbing bitterly into a chair.

Jewel glared at her in fierce displeasure, a few moments, then said, in low, cutting accents:

"You had as well go back to England and marry your grand lover, for Laurie Meredith is as dead to you as if the grass was indeed growing on his grave. Do you think he did not recognize you? He laughed with me about it, and said that he had half a mind to give Lord Clive a hint of your character. I persuaded him not to do so, telling him it was unfair after the way he had treated you."

"He could say that? Oh, my God! he could menace me like that?" Flower whispered, with a strange gleam in her dilated eyes.

"Yes, he could do so. That is nothing. It is the way of men," Jewel replied, indifferently.