"
She clutched convulsively at the arms of her chair.
"He told me!" she said in a very low voice.
Then, looking up pitifully:
"Do you know?" she asked in her quaint way. "It was a mock marriage. He
had done it and thought no shame, because it was so with my mother.
Oh!"
Her beautiful eyes flashed, and for the first time since I had met
Ysola Camber I saw the real Spanish spirit of the woman leap to life.
"He did not know me. Perhaps I did not know myself. That night, with no
money, without a ring, a piece of lace, a peseta, anything that had
belonged to him, I went with Ah Tsong. We made our way to a half-sister
of my father's who lived in Puerto Principe, and at first--she would
not have me. I was talked about, she said, in all the islands. She told
me of my poor father. She told me I had dragged the name of de Valera
in the dirt. At last I made her understand--that what everyone else
had known, I had never even dreamed of."
She looked up wistfully, as if thinking that we might doubt her.
"Do you know?" she whispered.
"I know--oh! I know!" said Val Beverley. I loved her for the sympathy
in her voice and in her eyes.
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