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