Kitabı oku: «Daisy Brooks: or, A Perilous Love», sayfa 14
CHAPTER XXIX
“I do think it is a perfect shame those horrid Glenn girls are to be invited up here to Rex’s wedding,” cried little Birdie Lyon, hobbling into the room where Mrs. Corliss sat, busily engaged in hemming some new table-linen, and throwing herself down on a low hassock at her feet, and laying down her crutch beside her–“it is perfectly awful.”
“Why,” said Mrs. Corliss, smoothing the nut-brown curls back from the child’s flushed face, “I should think you would be very pleased. They were your neighbors when you were down in Florida, were they not?”
“Yes,” replied the little girl, frowning, “but I don’t like them one bit. Bess and Gertie–that’s the two eldest ones, make me think of those stiff pictures in the gay trailing dresses in the magazines. Eve is nice, but she’s a Tom-boy.”
“A wh–at!” cried Mrs. Corliss.
“She’s a Tom-boy, mamma always said; she romps, and has no manners.”
“They will be your neighbors when you go South again–so I suppose your brother thought of that when he invited them.”
“He never dreamed of it,” cried Birdie; “it was Miss Pluma’s doings.”
“Hush, child, don’t talk so loud,” entreated the old housekeeper; “she might hear you.”
“I don’t care,” cried Birdie. “I don’t like her anyhow, and she knows it. When Rex is around she is as sweet as honey to me, and calls me ‘pretty little dear,’ but when Rex isn’t around she scarcely notices me, and I hate her–yes, I do.”
Birdie clinched her little hands together venomously, crying out the words in a shrill scream.
“Birdie,” cried Mrs. Corliss, “you must not say such hard, cruel things. I have heard you say, over and over again, you liked Mr. Hurlhurst, and you must remember Pluma is his daughter, and she is to be your brother’s wife. You must learn to speak and think kindly of her.”
“I never shall like her,” cried Birdie, defiantly, “and I am sure Mr. Hurlhurst don’t.”
“Birdie!” ejaculated the good lady in a fright, dropping her scissors and spools in consternation; “let me warn you not to talk so again; if Miss Pluma was to once hear you, you would have a sorry enough time of it all your after life. What put it into your head Mr. Hurlhurst did not like his own daughter?”
“Oh, lots of things,” answered Birdie. “When I tell him how pretty every one says she is, he groans, and says strange things about fatal beauty, which marred all his young life, and ever so many things I can’t understand, and his face grows so hard and so stern I am almost afraid of him.”
“He is thinking of Pluma’s mother,” thought Mrs. Corliss–but she made no answer.
“He likes to talk to me,” pursued the child, rolling the empty spools to and fro with her crutch, “for he pities me because I am lame.”
“Bless your dear little heart,” said Mrs. Corliss, softly stroking the little girl’s curls; “it is seldom poor old master takes to any one as he has to you.”
“Do I look anything like the little child that died?” questioned Birdie.
A low, gasping cry broke from Mrs. Corliss’s lips, and her face grew ashen white. She tried to speak, but the words died away in her throat.
“He talks to me a great deal about her,” continued Birdie, “and he weeps such bitter tears, and has such strange dreams about her. Why, only last night he dreamed a beautiful, golden-haired young girl came to him, holding out her arms, and crying softly: ‘Look at me, father; I am your child. I was never laid to rest beneath the violets, in my young mother’s tomb. Father, I am in sore distress–come to me, father, or I shall die!’ Of course it was only a dream, but it makes poor Mr. Hurlhurst cry so; and what do you think he said?”
The child did not notice the terrible agony on the old housekeeper’s face, or that no answer was vouchsafed her.
“‘My dreams haunt me night and day,’ he cried. ‘To still this wild, fierce throbbing of my heart I must have that grave opened, and gaze once more upon all that remains of my loved and long-lost bride, sweet Evalia and her little child.’ He was–”
Birdie never finished her sentence.
A terrible cry broke from the housekeeper’s livid lips.
“My God!” she cried, hoarsely, “after nearly seventeen years the sin of my silence is about to find me out at last.”
“What is the matter, Mrs. Corliss? Are you ill?” cried the startled child.
A low, despairing sob answered her, as Mrs. Corliss arose from her seat, took a step or two forward, then fell headlong to the floor in a deep and death-like swoon.
Almost any other child would have been terrified, and alarmed the household.
Birdie was not like other children. She saw a pitcher of ice-water on an adjacent table, which she immediately proceeded to sprinkle on the still, white, wrinkled face; but all her efforts failed to bring the fleeting breath back to the cold, pallid lips.
At last the child became fairly frightened.
“I must go and find Rex or Mr. Hurlhurst,” she cried, grasping her crutch, and limping hurriedly out of the room.
The door leading to Basil Hurlhurst’s apartments stood open–the master of Whitestone Hall sat in his easy-chair, in morning-gown and slippers, deeply immersed in the columns of his account-books.
“Oh, Mr. Hurlhurst,” cried Birdie, her little, white, scared face peering in at the door, “won’t you please come quick? Mrs. Corliss, the housekeeper, has fainted ever so long ago, and I can’t bring her to!”
Basil Hurlhurst hurriedly arose and followed the now thoroughly frightened child quickly to the room where the old housekeeper lay, her hands pressed close to her heart, the look of frozen horror deepening on her face.
Quickly summoning the servants, they raised her from the floor. It was something more than a mere fainting fit. The poor old lady had fallen face downward on the floor, and upon the sharp point of the scissors she had been using, which had entered her body in close proximity to her heart. The wound was certainly a dangerous one. The surgeon, who was quickly summoned, shook his head dubiously.
“The wound is of the most serious nature,” he said. “She can not possibly recover.”
“I regret this sad affair more than I can find words to express,” said Basil Hurlhurst, gravely. “Mrs. Corliss’s whole life almost has been spent at Whitestone Hall. You tell me, doctor, there is no hope. I can scarcely realize it.”
Every care and attention was shown her; but it was long hours before Mrs. Corliss showed signs of returning consciousness, and with her first breath she begged that Basil Hurlhurst might be sent for at once.
He could not understand why she shrunk from him, refusing his proffered hand.
“Tell them all to leave the room,” she whispered. “No one must know what I have to say to you.”
Wondering a little what she had to say to him, he humored her wishes, sending them all from the room.
“Now, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, kindly drawing his chair up close by the bedside, “what is it? You can speak out without reserve; we are all alone.”
“Is it true that I can not live?” she asked, eagerly scanning his face. “Tell me truthfully, master, is the wound a fatal one?”
“Yes,” he said, sympathetically, “I–I–am afraid it is.”
He saw she was making a violent effort to control her emotions. “Do not speak,” he said, gently; “it distresses you. You need perfect rest and quiet.”
“I shall never rest again until I make atonement for my sin,” she cried, feebly. “Oh, master, you have ever been good and kind to me, but I have sinned against you beyond all hope of pardon. When you hear what I have to say you will curse me. Oh, how can I tell it! Yet I can not sleep in my grave with this burden on my soul.”
He certainly thought she was delirious, this poor, patient, toil-worn soul, speaking so incoherently of sin; she, so tender-hearted–she could not even have hurt a sparrow.
“I can promise you my full pardon, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, soothingly; “no matter on what grounds the grievance may be.”
For a moment she looked at him incredulously.
“You do not know what you say. You do not understand,” she muttered, fixing her fast-dimming eyes strangely upon him.
“Do not give yourself any uneasiness upon that score, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, gently; “try to think of something else. Is there anything you would like to have done for you?”
“Yes,” she replied, in a voice so hoarse and changed he could scarcely recognize it was her who had spoken; “when I tell you all, promise me you will not curse me; for I have sinned against you so bitterly that you will cry out to Heaven asking why I did not die long years ago, that the terrible secret I have kept so long might have been wrung from my lips.”
“Surely her ravings were taking a strange freak,” he thought to himself; “yet he would be patient with her and humor her strange fancy.”
The quiet, gentle expression did not leave his face, and she took courage.
“Master,” she said, clasping her hands nervously together, “would it pain you to speak of the sweet, golden-haired young girl-bride who died on that terrible stormy night nearly seventeen years ago?”
She saw his care-worn face grow white, and the lines of pain deepen around his mouth.
“That is the most painful of all subjects to me,” he said, slowly. “You know how I have suffered since that terrible night,” he said shudderingly. “The double loss of my sweet young wife and her little babe has nearly driven me mad. I am a changed man, the weight of the cross I have had to bear has crushed me. I live on, but my heart is buried in the grave of my sweet, golden-haired Evalia and her little child. I repeat, it is a painful subject, still I will listen to what you have to say. I believe I owe my life to your careful nursing, when I was stricken with the brain fever that awful time.”
“It would have been better if I had let you die then, rather than live to inflict the blow which my words will give you. Oh, master!” she implored, “I did not know then what I did was a sin. I feared to tell you lest the shock might cost you your life. As time wore on, I grew so deadly frightened I dared not undo the mischief my silence had wrought. Remember, master, when you looked upon me in your bitterest, fiercest moments of agony, what I did was for your sake; to save your bleeding heart one more pang. I have been a good and faithful woman all my life, faithful to your interests.”
“You have indeed,” he responded, greatly puzzled as to what she could possibly mean.
She tried to raise herself on her elbows, but her strength failed her, and she sunk back exhausted on the pillow.
“Listen, Basil Hurlhurst,” she said, fixing her strangely bright eyes upon his noble, care-worn face; “this is the secret I have carried in this bosom for nearly seventeen years: ‘Your golden-haired young wife died on that terrible stormy night you brought her to Whitestone Hall;’ but listen, Basil, ‘the child did not!’ It was stolen from our midst on the night the fair young mother died.”
CHAPTER XXX
“My God!” cried Basil Hurlhurst, starting to his feet, pale as death, his eyes fairly burning, and the veins standing out on his forehead like cords, “you do not know what you say, woman! My little child–Evalia’s child and mine–not dead, but stolen on the night its mother died! My God! it can not be; surely you are mad!” he shrieked.
“It is true, master,” she moaned, “true as Heaven.”
“You knew my child, for whom I grieved for seventeen long years, was stolen–not dead–and dared to keep the knowledge from me?” he cried, passionately, beside himself with rage, agony and fear. “Tell me quickly, then, where I shall find my child!” he cried, breathlessly.
“I do not know, master,” she moaned.
For a few moments Basil Hurlhurst strode up and down the room like a man bereft of reason.
“You will not curse me,” wailed the tremulous voice from the bed; “I have your promise.”
“I can not understand how Heaven could let your lips remain silenced all these long, agonizing years, if your story be true. Why, yourself told me my wife and child had both died on that never-to-be-forgotten night, and were buried in one grave. How could you dare steep your lips with a lie so foul and black? Heaven could have struck you dead while the false words were yet warm on your lips!”
“I dared not tell you, master,” moaned the feeble voice, “lest the shock would kill you; then, after you recovered, I grew afraid of the secret I had dared to keep, and dared not tell you.”
“And yet you knew that somewhere in this cruel world my little child was living–my tender, little fair-haired child–while I, her father, was wearing my life out with the grief of that terrible double loss. Oh, woman, woman, may God forgive you, for I never can, if your words be true.”
“I feared such anger as this; that is why I dared not tell you,” she whispered, faintly. “I appeal to your respect for me in the past to hear me, to your promise of forgiveness to shield me, to your love for the little child to listen calmly while I have strength to speak.”
He saw she was right. His head seemed on fire, and his heart seemed bursting with the acute intensity of his great excitement.
He must listen while she had strength to tell him of his child.
“Go on–go on!” he cried, hoarsely, burying his face in the bed-clothes; “tell me of my child!”
“You remember the terrible storm, master, how the tree moaned, and without against the western wing–where your beautiful young wife lay dead, with the pretty, smiling, blue-eyed babe upon her breast?”
“Yes, yes–go on–you are driving me mad!” he groaned.
“You remember how you fell down senseless by her bedside when we told you the terrible news–the young child-bride was dead?”
She knew, by the quivering of his form, he heard her.
“As they carried you from the room, master, I thought I saw a woman’s form gliding stealthily on before, through the dark corridors. A blaze of lightning illumined the hall for one brief instant, and I can swear I saw a woman’s face–a white, mocking, gloriously beautiful face–strangely like the face of your first wife, master, Pluma’s mother. I knew it could not be her, for she was lying beneath the sea-waves. It was not a good omen, and I felt sorely afraid and greatly troubled. When I returned to the room from which they had carried you–there lay your fair young wife with a smile on her lips–but the tiny babe that had slumbered on her breast was gone.”
“Oh, God! if you had only told me this years ago,” cried the unhappy father. “Have you any idea who could have taken the child? It could not have been for gain, or I should have heard of it long ago. I did not know I had an enemy in the wide world. You say you saw a woman’s face?” he asked, thoughtfully.
“It was the ghost of your first wife,” asserted the old housekeeper, astutely. “I never saw her face but once; but there was something about it one could not easily forget.”
Basil Hurlhurst was not a superstitious man, yet he felt a strange, unaccountable dread stealing over him at the bare mention of such a thing. It was more than he could endure to hear the name of the wife he had loved, and the wife who slept beneath the wild sea-waves, coupled in one breath–the fair young wife he had idolized, and the dark, sparkling face of the wife who had brought upon him such wretched folly in his youth!
“Have you not some clew to give me?” he cried out in agony–“some way by which I can trace her and learn her fate?”
She shook her head.
“This is unbearable!” he cried, pacing up and down the room like one who had received an unexpected death-blow. “I am bewildered! Merciful Heaven! which way shall I turn? This accounts for my restlessness all these years, when I thought of my child–my restless longing and fanciful dreams! I thought her quietly sleeping on Evalia’s breast. God only knows what my tender little darling has suffered, or in what part of the world she lives, or if she lives at all!”
It had been just one hour since Basil Hurlhurst had entered that room, a placid-faced, gray-haired man. When he left it his hair was white as snow from the terrible ordeal through which he had just passed.
He scarcely dared hope that he should yet find her–where or how he should find her, if ever.
In the corridor he passed groups of maidens, but he neither saw nor heard them. He was thinking of the child that had been stolen from him in her infancy–the sweet little babe with the large blue eyes and shining rings of golden hair.
He saw Pluma and Rex greeting some new arrivals out on the flower-bordered terrace, but he did not stop until he had reached his own apartments.
He did not send for Pluma, to divulge the wonderful discovery he had made. There was little sympathy or confidence between the father and daughter.
“I can never sleep again until I have some clew to my child!” he cried, frantically wringing his hands.
Hastily he touched the bell-rope.
“Mason,” he said to the servant who answered the summons, “pack my valise at once. I am going to take the first train to Baltimore. You have no time to lose.”
He did not hear the man’s ejaculation of surprise as his eyes fell on the face of the master who stood before him with hair white as snow–so utterly changed in one short hour.
“You couldn’t possibly make the next train, sir; it leaves in a few moments.”
“I tell you you must make it!” cried Basil Hurlhurst. “Go and do as I bid you at once! Don’t stand there staring at me; you are losing golden moments. Fly at once, I tell you!”
Poor old Mason was literally astounded. What had come over his kind, courteous master?
“I have nothing that could aid them in the search,” he said to himself, pacing restlessly up and down the room. “Ah! stay!–there is Evalia’s portrait! The little one must look like her mother if she is living yet!”
He went to his writing-desk and drew from a private drawer a little package tied with a faded ribbon, which he carefully untied with trembling fingers.
It was a portrait on ivory of a beautiful, girlish, dimpled face, with shy, upraised blue eyes, a smiling rosebud mouth, soft pink cheeks, and a wealth of rippling, sunny-golden hair.
“She must look like this,” he whispered. “God grant that I may find her!”
“Mr. Rex Lyon says, please may he see you a few moments, sir,” said Mason, popping his black head in at the door.
“No; I do not wish to see any one, and I will not see any one. Have you that satchel packed, I say?”
“Yes, sir; it will be ready directly, sir,” said the man, obediently.
“Don’t come to me with any more messages–lock everybody out. Do you hear me, Mason? I will be obeyed!”
“Yes, sir, I hear. No one shall disturb you.”
Again Basil Hurlhurst turned to the portrait, paying little attention to what was transpiring around him. “I shall put it at once in the hands of the cleverest detectives,” he mused; “surely they will be able to find some trace of my lost darling.”
Seventeen years! Ah, what might have happened her in that time? The master of Whitestone Hall always kept a file of the Baltimore papers; he rapidly ran his eye down the different columns.
“Ah, here is what I want,” he exclaimed, stopping short. “Messrs. Tudor, Peck & Co., Experienced Detectives, – Street, Baltimore. They are noted for their skill. I will give the case into their hands. If they restore my darling child alive and well into my hands I will make them wealthy men–if she is dead, the blow will surely kill me.”
He heard voices debating in the corridor without.
“Did you tell him I wished particularly to see him?” asked Rex, rather discomfited at the refusal.
“Yes, sir,” said Mason, dubiously.
“Miss Pluma, his daughter, wishes me to speak with him on a very important matter. I am surprised that he so persistently refuses to see me,” said Rex, proudly, wondering if Pluma’s father had heard that gossip–among the guests–that he did not love his daughter. “I do not know that I have offended the old gentleman in any way,” he told himself. “If it comes to that,” he thought, “I can do no more than confess the truth to him–the whole truth about poor little Daisy–no matter what the consequences may be.”
Fate was playing at cross-purposes with handsome Rex, but no subtle warning came to him.
CHAPTER XXXI
The preparations for the wedding went steadily on. It was to be a magnificent affair. Inside and outside of Whitestone Hall fairly glowed with brilliancy and bloom.
Rex’s deportment toward his promised bride was exemplary; he did his best to show her every possible attention and kindness in lieu of the love which should have been hers.
There seemed to be no cloud in Pluma Hurlhurst’s heaven.
She had no warning of the relentless storm-cloud that was gathering above her head and was so soon to burst upon her in all its fury.
She walked among her guests with a joyous, happy smile and the air of a queen. Why should she not? On the morrow she would gain the prize she coveted most on earth–she would be Rex’s wife.
Her father had gone unexpectedly to Baltimore, and the good old housekeeper had been laid to rest, but in the excitement and bustle attending the great coming event these two incidents created little comment.
Mirth and gayety reigned supreme, and the grim old halls resounded with laughter and song and gay young voices from morning until night.
Pluma, the spoiled, petted, willful heiress, was fond of excitement and gay throngs.
“Our marriage must be an event worthy of remembrance, Rex,” she said, as they walked together through the grounds the morning before the wedding. “We must have something new and novel. I am tired of brilliant parlors and gas-light. I propose we shall have a beautiful platform built, covered with moss and roses, beneath the blossoming trees, with the birds singing in their boughs, upon which we shall be united. What do you think of my idea–is it not a pretty one?”
“Your ideas are always poetical and fanciful,” said Rex, glancing down into the beautiful brilliant face beside him. “My thoughts are so dull and prosy compared with yours, are you not afraid you will have a very monotonous life-companion?”
“I am going to try my best to win you from that cold reserve. There must not be one shadow between us; do you know, Rex, I have been thinking, if anything should ever happen to take your love from me I should surely die. I–I am jealous of your very thoughts. I know I ought not to admit it, but I can not help it.”
Rex flushed nervously; it was really embarrassing to him, the tender way in which she looked up to him–her black eyelids coyly drooping over her dark, slumbrous eyes, inviting a caress. He was certainly wooed against his will, but there was no help for it; he was forced to take up his part and act it out gracefully.
“You need not be jealous of my thoughts, Pluma,” he replied, “for they were all of you.”
“I wonder if they were pleasant thoughts?” she asked, toying with the crimson flower-bells she holds in her white hands. “I have heard you sigh so much of late. Are you quite happy, Rex?” she inquired, hesitatingly.
The abruptness of the question staggered him: he recovered his composure instantly, however.
“How can you ask me such a question, Pluma?” he asked, evasively; “any man ought to be proud of winning so peerless a treasure as you are. I shall be envied by scores of disappointed lovers, who have worshiped at your shrine. I am not as demonstrative as some might be under similar circumstances, but my appreciation is none the less keen.”
She noticed he carefully avoided the word–love.
In after years Rex liked to remember that, yielding to a kindly impulse, he bent down and kissed her forehead.
It was the first time he had caressed her voluntarily; it was not love which prompted the action–only kindness.
“Perhaps you will love me some day with your whole heart, Rex?” she asked.
“You seem quite sure that I do not do that now?” he remarked.
“Yes,” she said, clasping his arm more closely, “I often fear you do not, but as time passes you will give me all your affection. Love must win love.”
Other young girls could not have made such an open declaration without rosy blushes suffusing their cheeks; they would have been frightened at their free-spoken words, even though the morrow was their wedding-day.
She stood before him in her tall, slim loveliness, as fair a picture as any man’s eyes could rest on. She wore a most becoming dress, and a spring blossom was in her hair. Almost any other man’s heart would have warmed toward her as she raised her dark eyes to his and the white fingers trembled on his arm.
Rex was young, impulsive, and mortal; tender words from such lovely lips would have intoxicated any man. Yet from that faithful heart of his the words did not take one thought that belonged to Daisy; he did his utmost to forget that sunny, golden memory.
To Pluma, handsome, courtly Rex was an enigma. In her own mind she liked him all the better because he had not fallen down and worshiped her at once. Most men did that.
For several moments they walked along in utter silence–until they had reached the brink of the dark pool, which lay quite at the further end of the inclosure.
Pluma gave a little shuddering scream:
“I did not mean to bring you here,” she cried. “I always avoid this path; the waters of the pool have always had a great dread for me.”
“It should be filled up,” said Rex, “or fenced around; it is certainly a dangerous locality.”
“It can not be filled up,” she returned, laughingly; “it is said to be bottomless. I do not like to think of it; come away, Rex.”
The magnificent bridal costume, ordered expressly from Paris, had arrived–perfect even to the last detail. The bride-maids’ costumes were all ready; and to everything in and about the Hall the last finishing touches had been given.
All the young girls hovered constantly around Pluma, in girl-fashion admiring the costume, the veil, the wreath, and above all the radiantly beautiful girl who was to wear them. Even the Glenn girls and Grace Alden were forced to admit the willful young heiress would make the most peerless bride they had ever beheld.
Little Birdie alone held aloof, much to Rex’s amusement and Pluma’s intense mortification.
“Little children often take such strange freaks,” she would say to Rex, sweetly. “I really believe your little sister intends never to like me; I can not win one smile from her.”
“She is not like other children,” he replied, with a strange twinkle in his eye. “She forms likes and dislikes to people from simply hearing their name. Of course I agree with you it is not right to do so, but Birdie has been humored more or less all her life. I think she will grow to love you in time.”
Pluma’s lips quivered like the lips of a grieving child.
“I shall try so hard to make her love me, because she is your sister, Rex.”
He clasped the little jeweled hands that lay so confidingly within his own still closer, saying he knew she could not help but succeed.
The whole country-side was ringing with the coming marriage. No one could be more popular than handsome Rex Lyon, no one admired more than the young heiress of Whitestone Hall. The county papers were in ecstasies; they discussed the magnificent preparations at the Hall, the number of bride-maids, the superb wedding-presents, the arrangements for the marriage, and the ball to be given in the evening.
The minister from Baltimore who was to perform the ceremony was expected to arrive that day. That all preparations might be completed for the coming morrow, Rex had gone down to meet the train, and Pluma strolled into the conservatory, to be alone for a few moments with her own happy thoughts.
Out on the green lawns happy maidens were tripping here and there, their gay laughter floating up to her where she stood.
Every one seemed to be making the most of the happy occasion. Lawn-tennis parties here and croquet-parties there, and lovers strolling under the blossoming trees or reclining on the rustic benches–it was indeed a happy scene.
Pluma leaned her dark head against the fragrant roses. The breeze, the perfume of the flowers, all told one story to the impassioned girl–the story of her triumph and her mad, reckless love.
She gathered a spray of the fairest flowers, and fastened them in the bodice of her dress.
“To-morrow I shall have won the one great prize I covet,” she murmured, half aloud. “After to-morrow I can defy Lester Stanwick to bring one charge against me. I shall be Rex’s wife–it will avail him nothing.”
“Speaking of angels, you often hear ‘the rustle of their wings.’ I believe there is an old adage of that sort, or something similar,” said a deep voice beside her, and turning around with a low cry she saw Lester Stanwick himself standing before her.
For one moment her lips opened as though to utter a piercing cry, but even the very breath seemed to die upon them, they were so fixed and still.
The flowers she held in her hand fell into the fountain against which she leaned, but she did not heed them.
Like one fascinated, her eyes met the gaze of the bold, flashing dark ones bent so steadily upon her.
“You thought you would escape me,” he said. “How foolish and blind you are, my clever plotter. Did you think I did not see through your clever maneuverings? There shall be a wedding to-morrow, but you shall marry me, instead of handsome, debonair Rex. You can not fly from your fate.”
She set her lips firmly together. She had made a valiant struggle. She would defy him to the bitter end. She was no coward, this beautiful, imperious girl. She would die hard. Alas! she had been too sanguine, hoping Lester Stanwick would not return before the ceremony was performed.
The last hope died out of that proud, passionate heart–as well hope to divert a tiger from its helpless prey as expect Lester Stanwick to relinquish any plans he had once formed.
“I have fought my fight,” she said to herself, “and have failed on the very threshold of victory, still, I know how to bear defeat. What do you propose to do?” she said, huskily. “If there is any way I can buy your silence, name your price, keeping back the truth will avail me little now. I love Rex, and no power on earth shall prevent me from becoming his wife.”
Lester Stanwick smiled superciliously–drawing from his pocket a package of letters.
