“Yes—what does it all mean?” exclaimed Mrs. Jones curiously. “Why, I heard that Mr. Lorraine was rich, and that we were invited to his wedding reception at a Fifth Avenue mansion,” and she glanced contemptuously around the mean apartment, and then looked, with a little feminine triumph, at Mrs. Fielding, the woman whom she cordially despised for her aristocratic airs.

[Pg 65]

[Pg 65]

Sadie Allen came forward to the silent, half-dazed bridegroom, and said curtly:

“Come, Mr. Lorraine, we want you to explain the meaning of this. You have pretended to be rich all this time, and if you have fooled Fair Fielding, why, I say you are no gentleman—that’s all.”

He looked up at her helplessly, and, with an appealing glance in his dark eyes, muttered incoherently:

“I couldn’t help it! She made me do it. I was in her power. She threatened——”

“She? Who is she? Not Fair? Not Mrs. Fielding?” exclaimed Sadie, and before he could answer Belva Platt come up to them, and, dropping a mocking curtsy, interposed defiantly:

“I am she! I planned it all. I made him marry Fairfax Fielding!”

[Pg 66]

[Pg 66]

CHAPTER VIII. AN ORGAN GRINDER.

AN ORGAN GRINDER.

Every eye in the room turned on the bold, defiant speaker, whose tall form seemed to grow taller and to expand with the pride she felt in her own cleverness.

As she caught the low, stifled cry that came from the blanched lips of the deceived bride, her blue eyes blazed maliciously, and she continued audaciously, and as if regardless of any one’s good opinion:

“I owed that girl a bitter grudge, and this is the way I have paid it. I introduced him to her, and pretended that he was rich, because I knew that she and her foolish mother were on the lookout for a rich husband. They fell into the trap, 

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