“No,” she replied, passionately; “I was never married to him.  I have made many men my dupes and slaves, but he was the one man who made a dupe of me, and I hating him all the time!”

“And Walter!” he exclaimed, “you stated that he was the son of Hugh Mainwaring.”

“He is Hugh Mainwaring’s son and mine,” she answered, with bitter emphasis; “that was another of my schemes which failed.  I found I had little hold upon Hugh Mainwaring, while he had the same power over me as in the days before I had learned to despise him.  When Walter was born, I hoped he would then fulfil his promises of marriage; but instead, he would have turned me adrift had I not threatened that I would then disclose everything which I knew concerning the will.  He sneered at me, but offered me a place as servant in his home, and support and education for his child on condition that the relationship should never be known, and that I would remain silent regarding the will.  I could do nothing then but accept his conditions, but they were galling, — too galling at last to be longer endured!”

“How is it that you and Walter bear the name of LaGrange?” he asked.

She hesitated a moment, then replied:  “I married a man by that name soon after leaving Australia.”

“Before or after the tidings of my father’s death?” he questioned, sternly.

“We heard the news of his death soon after our marriage, but he had deserted me years before, so it made little difference.  I met Captain LaGrange in Sydney, and we sailed together for Paris and were married there, but we soon grew tired of each other.  I left him in about two years and went to Vienna, and from there returned to England.  In some way, Hugh Mainwaring learned of the marriage, and when I came to Fair Oaks, he insisted on my taking that name for myself and child.”

She spoke wearily and with an air of dejection, for it was plainly evident that Harold Mainwaring was not to be deceived by misstatements, however plausible, nor were his sympathies to be aroused by simulated grief.  A few moments of silence followed, while she watched him intently, her face again falling into the pinched and haggard outlines which he had observed on entering the room.

When he at last spoke, his voice was calm, without a trace of anger or bitterness.

“Mrs. LaGrange, I have been informed that in the days before you ruined my father’s life you were an actress in a second-class London playhouse, and I see you have not yet lost some little tricks of the stage; but we are not now before the footlights, and it will be much better to lay aside everything pertaining to them.  Nothing that you have said has awakened my pity or touched my sympathies for you; in fact, what you have told me has only steeled my heart against you because of its utter falsity.  It is unnecessary to go over the ground again, but if you could not reciprocate the love and devotion