Kitabı oku: «An Oregon Girl: A Tale of American Life in the New West», sayfa 5

“I regret not being able to bring any tidings of your child. The river has been carefully dragged for a considerable distance in front of ‘Rosemont.’ I fear she is drowned and the body carried down to the Columbia.”

“My poor darling!”

“There is yet hope, however, that your child lives. An old cripple – a disreputable looking vagabond – was seen lurking about the grounds the night she was lost. He has not been seen since. Detectives are baffled in tracing him. He may have abducted your child. It’s the only hope that she is alive, though I admit, a frail one.”

“Heaven give me strength to hope it is so. But who could be so cruel as to steal away my little darling? No, no, she is drowned!”

“I have to announce a disagreeable errand,” and he paused, not quite satisfied of the propriety of the moment for so serious a declaration as he was about to make; but he at length continued hesitatingly:

“As – as your – legal adviser – .” Again he paused.

Constance looked at him timidly. A cold, creepy fear of something dreadful about to happen chilled her. Her blanched face and beseeching eyes warned him of very grave consequences.

“What is it, Judge?” she whispered with parched lips, “speak out; tell me what you have come for.”

“Are you strong enough? – I think – perhaps – I had better defer – ”

“Oh, yes, my strength is not great – but – the suspense – I cannot bear. Let me hear – what it is.” He hesitated no longer.

“As your attorney, I have been served with a notice of an application for a divorce, by John Thorpe, from his wife, Constance.”

With bowed head he laid the document on the table.

She clasped her hand to her head, clutched the back of a chair for support, for the suddenness and weight of the blow staggered her. She, however, managed to bear herself bravely up.

“And – could – he really believe this of me?” she said distractedly.

“He has, at the same time, placed at your disposal in the National Bank a sum of money for your immediate wants.” He paused. A solemn quietness pervaded the room.

At length he continued in a low, grave tone: “I am prepared to receive instructions. Shall I give notice of your intention to resist his application for divorce?”

Still leaning on the chair for support, and without lifting her bowed head, or raising her downcast eyes, she said in a voice barely articulate with the huskiness and tremor of threatened physical collapse, “Please leave me for awhile. Providence has seen fit to afflict me so sorely that I must beg a little time to try to think. But, stay!” And her voice gathered a little strength in an effort to keep from breaking down altogether:

“I desire to receive nothing from John. I shall not reply to his complaint, and you will return the money he has placed to my credit in the bank. Now, please leave me; I desire to be alone.”

During his professional experience, the “Judge” had been a witness to many painful scenes, and familiarity had calloused somewhat his sense of sympathy. But as he gazed upon the white, spiritually chaste face of this frail woman, a conviction that a great wrong was being done to her forced and crowded itself upon his brain.

“Someone must answer for it before a higher than human court,” he thought, and then with bent head he left her, feeling that he would value beyond price the power to effect a little gleam of sunshine to heal her broken heart.

“Dorothy! Dorothy!” he muttered, and he passed out from her presence with words of Tennyson on his lips:

 
“Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
The sound of a voice that is still!”
 

After he had gone, Constance remained motionless. She was strangely quiet, yet wrapt in thoughts of bitterest shame and grief, the world had little left for her to care for.

A sense of gloom enveloped her. Its shadow bore heavily upon her oppressed spirits, smothering by its weight the stifled cry of her heart’s anguish.

It was therefore with a wondrously calm voice, pregnant with tragic pathos, that she at length broke the stillness: “I am sure of the cause of John’s absence now, and the very worst has come to me. What now can compensate me for the humiliation of being thought by him so shameless and debased? Oh, how wretched I am!” and with a moan, she placed her hand on the top of her head.

“Oh, heaven spare my reason – yet – what is reason to me now? Or – life? My darling is drowned. John has left me, and with them hope and happiness are gone forever.”

It was then a strange, uncanny, desperate flash leapt into her eyes. Suddenly she withdrew her hand from the top of her head, but instantly pressed it to her brow.

In a moment her appearance underwent a great change. Under the continuous strain, the strands of grief and despair had at last snapped asunder and up rushed an exultation that instantly overwhelmed all opposition to a suddenly conceived and terrible purpose. She whispered with an earnestness intense as it was significant: “There is a way out.” Then she suddenly burst into a frenzy of pathetic joy as she thought of the phial of laudanum in the medicine chest in her room.

“A passage to my darling beyond!”

She did not see Virginia standing in the doorway, nor did she pause as some do to take a last farewell look at earth and sky. Her mind was set upon the swift accomplishment of an object.

Upon reaching her room, she took up the phial of laudanum and then, as she fell on her knees, locked her hands together, and her voice softened into tenderness – softened in inexpressibly sweet and plaintive tones, as she cried out in a whisper of her soul’s anguish:

“Rock of Ages, cleft for me!”

She was standing in the shadow of the valley of death.

Strangely coincident, the inspiring notes of the “Star Spangled Banner” softly broke upon the air from a piano in the music room below. As the grand strains swelled upward, they were met with a break in the clouds through which the sun poured down a flood of dazzling glory.

At that moment Dorothy’s pet canary began to sing. The delicate little feathered thing, that had nestled its bill under its wing in the raw cold of the morning, felt the warm influence of the sunshine that fell upon it, and looked up, twittered, lifted its voice in surprised gladness, and then in response to the soft strains that were pealing forth from the music room, broke into song.

Higher and higher it swelled, cleaving the air with its exultant melody.

Oh! the wild soaring flight of that joyous song!

Through the partly closed window it burst and flooded the room with its gladness and cheer. Death stayed his hand.

The little silken feathered throat of her darling’s pet had turned aside the “Grim Sickle.”

She heard it. Out over the entrancing beauty of Autumn-dyed vegetation, her sad eyes wandered – wandered wistfully over nature bathed in the splendor of the sun’s radiance. She heeded the call, and then, appalled at her contemplated sin, she cowered – bowed down – lower, lower. In tones of resignation – tones tremulous with awe of the Omnipotent, she said: “Have pity upon me, Merciful Heaven!”

And then very softly Virginia knelt beside her, gently encircling her waist with her arm, and looked into her spiritual face with eyes overflowing with tears. In a broken voice, scarcely articulate through a great sob, she said: “Oh, Constance! Constance, dear, I am punished enough already!”

After Hazel had completed her attire for a visit to Mrs. Harris, she descended the stairs with the same feeling of gloom and depression upon her.

Slow and hesitating as was her action – as though undecided as to the propriety of leaving Constance, and while drawing on her gloves, she aimlessly wandered into the music room and listlessly sat on the piano stool. Then, with her head turned looking out of the window, she let her fingers ramble over the keys of the instrument. Then she saw Virginia pass up the walk and enter the house, but after the lapse of a few moments and her cousin not appearing, Hazel entered the drawing room to greet her – but too late. Through the open door she heard a step on the main stairs above. Hazel followed. On passing the table the divorce bill caught her eye. For a moment she paused and picked it up; then laid it down, her breath coming in gasps, for she instantly realized a crisis of a very grave moment had appeared. She ran upstairs, surmising that Virginia was connected with the “divorce bill,” for she had not seen Mr. Williams.

And then she heard Virginia’s voice. Softly she stole to the door and looked in. There, kneeling on the floor, were Constance and Virginia, looking into each other’s eyes, Constance drawn back in timid alarm, and Virginia blinded with tears, clasping the hand that held the laudanum phial, her free arm thrown lovingly around Constance’s waist.

Hazel silently drew back, an overpowering emotion suffusing her eyes with tears. “Poor Constance! Her trouble thickens fast. What will the end be?”

CHAPTER IV

Rutley had found time during the frantic appearance of Constance at the “fete,” to threaten Virginia with public exposure if she failed to keep their secret. It was that threat that induced her to pause in a momentary conceived intention to demand an explanation from her brother. The passionate earnestness – the uncontrollable fury she discovered in her brother – produced an awe, and aroused her to a sense of some terrible mistake, and of the far-reaching effect her conspiracy with Rutley was likely to have. Each moment, instead of exultation, increased her sorrow at the course she had pursued.

Between fear of publicity of the part she had played, coupled with her hatred of Corway, and consequent satisfaction in her triumph at his discomfiture – at the same time alarmed at her brother’s imminent danger in a probably tragic affair – all contributed to indecision, and she realized to her dismay that she had placed herself in the power of a man who had proved himself a master “Iago.”

Her intuition caused her to shrink from him. He comprehended and pressed closer. Despite her powerful will and keen perception, and possession of those womanly attributes of sympathy and kindness to suffering humanity, she felt herself incapable, just then, of defying him.

The cry of Constance that Dorothy was in the water scattered the quarreling party, which rushed to the river’s edge.

Virginia and Mrs. Harris remained with Constance, but Rutley made it his business to keep his eyes on her and under pretense of searching the grounds, remained near by, in order to restrain her from approaching her brother.

Her opportunity to undo all, which under a more prompt determination would have succeeded – was lost, simply because it had taken her some time to care for Constance, and also to arrive at a fixed conclusion, irrespective of the threats or cajoling of Rutley – and then John Thorpe disappeared. Two days she diligently searched for him, surmising that he was searching for Dorothy, but all her efforts to locate him were fruitless. She had just returned from a stubborn search of the hotels, when she heard the frenzied cry of, “A passage to my darling beyond.” She recognized the voice and stole through the doorway, just in time to see Constance pass upstairs.

As Virginia entered the room, she passed the table on which lay the divorce paper. The printed word attracted her attention, and at once arrested her onward course. She picked it up. “John Thorpe, from his wife, Constance.” Horror and dismay swept across her face with lightning rapidity. Here, then, was the key to Rutley’s horrible revenge. Now she knew that Constance was made to stand for Hazel.

The document dropped from her nerveless hand, and with wildly beating heart she flew up the stairs after Constance. Noiselessly she opened the door. Before her – on her knees, with bowed head, the phial of laudanum between her clasped hands, was the woman who had received the terrible blow intended for Corway.

Virginia’s heart seemed to still its beating. Her blood seemed to be congealing to ice as she stood incapable of motion, and listened to the piteous appeal from that pure, broken heart.

In a moment she understood it all – the intent – the arresting hand of fate – the startled submission of a meek and contrite spirit to the Divine will, and below – the divorce paper.

Satisfied that Constance would not again attempt an act of self-destruction, and unequal, in her present frame of mind, to the task of ministering comfort to the woman whose grief must be partially laid to her door – for it must be remembered that Virginia had not in any manner contributed to the abduction of Dorothy, and was as much at a loss to account for the child’s disappearance as her mother – she withdrew, her mission unfilled – her atonement inconceivably harder to accomplish. She seemed overcome with a suffocating sensation. She must have air. Out of the house she mechanically passed. Down the steps and around the grounds – under the silent falling vine and russet and golden-colored leaves she hurried, neither looking to the right nor to the left.

Born on her father’s Willamette Valley farm, yet this city home, of her childhood and of her womanhood, now so enchantingly beautiful in its Autumn glory, its fragrant coying whisper had no charm to impede her onward flight, no power to lift her bowed head.

She was thinking of the one within. “And it is all my fault. I feel sure of that, for it would have been impossible for Rutley to have angered John so much with any other name. I must have been mad ever to have confided in him that it was Constance’s ring.

“Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? God forgive me!” she moaned, as she sought solace under a maple. But there was no rest for her. She returned to the house. Mechanically she opened the door and with one longing heartsore purpose – to seek the seclusion of her apartment – to throw herself on the couch and bury her face in her hands in a vain hope to get relief in tears. But there, just inside the door, on the hall table, she saw through moist-swollen eyes, something white.

She picked it up. It was a letter addressed to her, in a coarse scrawl. She fled to her room, there she sat on a chair near the window and opened the letter. The characters were bold, but slovenly written, and almost illegible, and then somehow the light did not appear strong or bright as it should be. She bent over close to the window – no better, save that she could make out the word “Virginia.”

Becoming more interested, she turned on the electric light, and even then her eyes seemed weak, and the letters so run together as to appear blurred. She took up a magnifying glass that lay on the table, and by its aid was at last able to decipher the note.

Virginia, ther party as sends er this kin tell yer somethink about er party yer wud lie ter knows, perwiden yer meets me nere the top of the long steps at or eleven ternight – alone, mind yer – alone in ther city park. Yerl be safe if alone.

She was at once convinced that the note had a deep significance. She turned it over and over and read and re-read it again and again.

It was clearly meant for a clandestine meeting – with whom? Ha!

The handwriting was evidently disguised, for it was quite different from that on the envelop, and the illiteracy plainly intended to deceive. Nevertheless the information might be of inestimable value – perhaps John, maybe of Dorothy.

Her mind was almost in a state of frenzy at her impotent efforts to undo the mischief she had wrought, and even this “straw” gave a certain measure of relief, by offering work for solution.

“I will go!” she said aloud. Having made up her mind to take the risk, her spirits lightened perceptibly.

As the envelop bore no postmark, she at once plied the housemaid with questions. Who delivered the letter? How had it come on the hall table? The questions were put in a quiet, indifferent manner, so as not to excite curiosity.

At the usual time the maid had taken it from the private mail box, which was of iron and old-fashioned, and fastened to the porch buttress, and she guessed that the mail carrier had brought it with the other mail. Virginia spoke kindly to the girl, and after casually commenting on the beautiful sunshine, returned to her room and prepared for the adventure. She utterly disregarded in her mind that the mail carrier had brought the letter. Since it was not postmarked, it could not have passed through the postoffice.

Some one had sneaked in some time during the night or early in the morning and placed it in the box. That was her decision.

CHAPTER V

That night, heavily veiled, she entered the park, alone. She was familiar with the contour and walks and knew the location of the long steps, but in her agitation, she thoughtlessly took to the walk on the left of the main entrance.

The darkness was not deep. Above could be seen stray fleecy clouds, flitting athwart the vast realms of space, while the atmosphere near the earth’s surface was laden with a thin vapor. Down low on the horizon, above the line of hills, swung the half-moon, aglow with soft pale light, while the nearby electric arcs were scarcely affected by the haze that enveloped them. Every element seemed to have conspired to make the night a fit one in its baneful purpose.

As she proceeded, endeavoring to control her fears, though her heart beat wildly with misgivings, the stillness of the night was broken only by the sound of her own footfalls on the cement pavement, and ever and anon were mingled with the distant attenuated sounds of belated cosmopolitan life. At times her walk would be rapid, then slow and hesitating, almost a halt, as she approached some indefinite object, and as the clouds sped hurriedly across the face of the moon, grotesque shadows loomed up suddenly, shying her into moments of terror until discovered to be fantastic bushes or other odd-shaped growths.

Her sustained, keen, alert watchfulness preyed severely upon her tense nerves. At length she arrived at the place she thought designated in the note. She stepped off the walk onto the grass, and stood under the deeper darkness of a cedar. The stillness was profound; so much so that she fancied she could hear the throb of her own tumultuous heart.

And to add to the unseasonable moment, the weird, uncanny howl of a jackal, confined in the park menagerie, pierced the night air and caused cold shivers to race up and down her frame.

“It’s a lonely spot,” she whispered to herself. “And this is the top of the long walk. Now the time – yet! I can see no one. I do not feel safe.”

Just then a man moved slowly from the shadows near the fountain. He leisurely walked toward the reservoir. She watched him for a moment, until the pale moonlight again faded away, and darkness shut him from view. Then, as if by inspiration, she suddenly remembered that the note directed her to the top of the “long steps.” In her excitement, she had taken the wrong direction, and was then at the top of the long walk.

Cautiously as possible, she crept down the bank, crossed the bridge, that spanned the park’s main artery, and though confusing in the darkness, she at last found her way to the appointed place without meeting or seeing anyone, but with nerves almost snapping asunder, and so fatigued that her limbs trembled.

She sat on a bench near a clump of small firs to get a little rest, and while peering through the darkness, which at that point was faintly illumined by the mass of distant lights spread over the city before and beneath her, she made out the figure of a man walking leisurely on the drive below where she was sitting.

She arose to her feet, and silently stepped in the deep shadow of a clump of trees, and watched him. She took him to be the same man she had seen a little while before near the fountain. As she watched him, another man, who had been concealed in the grove of trees, recently trimmed out to make way for the traditional group of Indians in bronze, “The Coming of the White Man,” and which now graces the spot – stole up with cat-like tread behind her, and then, quite close, halted, and silently stood regarding her.

Virginia was watching the stranger on the road, almost directly below her, with such intense eagerness as to be quite unconscious of the dark shadow behind her.

“Perhaps I am being watched,” she thought. “I will go down the steps.” She turned about, and was terrified to discover a roughly-clad man at her elbow. Her heart seemed to stop its beat.

“What do you mean? Who are you?” she gasped.

The man lifted his hat, bowed and softly said: “Bees a-note a da fraid, Signora de Virginia. Eesa nota-a do you-a da harm. I come to da meet-a you.”

His easy, respectful manner reassured her. Relieved, she said: “Then it was you who sent me the note this morning?”

“He, he, he, he,” he chuckled low, but exultantly. “Eesa tole-a da self a-da letta would-a da fetch a-you.”

“What do you want – what am I – who are you?”

He turned his head aside, and muttered to himself. “She doesn’t recognize me as the old cripple,” and evaded a direct answer by asking her: “Donna you da know-a me?”

“Your voice sounds like” – and she thought of the old cripple who intruded on Mr. Harris’ grounds a few nights since. “Yes – what” – And she halted, unable to frame her thoughts into words.

He laughed low and gutturally. “He, he, he, he, eesa be a da fine-a artiste. Make-a da boss actor – like-a Salvina – bime by, eh?”

“You – you – you kidnapped little Dorothy,” she almost shrieked, forgetting her fear, and searching him with glittering eyes.

Jack Shore, for it was he, chuckled gleefully.

“You make-a da wild-a guessa, Signora, Eesa not-a da old-a cripple.”

“You were in disguise, a beggar. I gave you money. What have you done with the child?”

“What-a da child-a?” he asked, gruffly.

“Dorothy Thorpe!”

“He, he, he, he,” he again chuckled, and sharply turned on her: “Who tole-a you, Eesa gott-a da kid?”

“What did you want to meet me here for? Was it not to tell me where Dorothy is?”

“Oh, he, he, he, he,” he laughed. “Eesa jessa da thought-a youda like-a see me – alone – at night, Signora.” And he watched her from the corners of his eyes, as, with bent head, he muttered:

“Turnoppsis, carrotsis, ca-babbages, black-a da boots, steal-a da chil. Anyting dees-a gett-a da mon. Go back a da sunny Italy!”

“What was your motive for kidnapping the child?” she asked, without heeding his significant answer.

“Da mon!” he promptly replied. Up to that moment he had equivocated.

“You are frank,” she rejoined, and then asked: “Is Dorothy safe?”

“Youse-a da bet she’s a da safe,” he proudly replied.

“Ah!” It was a sigh of glad relief that she uttered, for she believed the man’s statement to be true, and with the information her spirits rose.

“How many of you are there in this?” she quietly asked.

“Eesa not-a da beeze, jess-a da myself.”

“You told me you sent the note requesting this meeting. Who wrote it? It was not you!” she demanded.

Jack was not expecting so pointed a question and was thrown somewhat off his guard by her abrupt eagerness. He answered thoughtlessly – or, it may have been, indifference to the importance.

“Eesa my good-a da friend.”

“So there are at least two of you in this ‘over the road’ business?”

Chagrined, he thought how easily he had been trapped. “Hang it! I didn’t mean to make a break like that.” And then he exclaimed, between his teeth, for he realized too late the slip of his tongue.

“See-a da here. Da mon. Eesa want. How much-a you-a da give to gett-a back-a da kid? Speak a da quick.”

Virginia perceived he was getting angry and restless.

It was about that time that Sam, who was lying on his stomach in a slight depression, peered over the rise in the ground a short distance from the two. He was a little too far away to hear distinctly, except occasional words, as their voices were pitched in a low key.

“How much will I give?” replied Virginia, surprised, and then her voice lowered again.

“You are a poor man, no doubt, but you have your liberty, which is priceless, and I warn you of the severe penalty for the offense you are committing. It is most dangerous business.”

“Liberty, wid out-a da mon! Eesa be damn! Say, Signora, yous-a come-a down wid a da handsome da mon – Eesa take de kid – wid da longa golda hair so nicey da shiney, and da bigg-a da brown eyes.”

“Dorothy, I am sure!” she thought.

“Well, what do you call the handsome mon?”

“Eesa note-a bees-a da hard. Eesa cheap at-a da twenty thous.”

“Twenty thous – what!”

“Bigg-a da round flat dollairs!”

“Twenty thousand dollars!” angrily exclaimed Virginia, for the moment forgetting herself, and then again her voice fell almost to a whisper.

“You dare ask that from me! Knowing that I have but to call and the police would hound you to prison.”

Jack swiftly wheeled about and rolled his eyes in alarm. The word police startled him, and for the moment he verily believed they were within call, a circumstance he at once set down to his lax watchfulness, but he soon felt reassured, and, turning upon her said, sarcastically:

“Oh, that-a beesa a lettle a da game-a. He, he, he, he,” he laughed low and gleefully, in strange contrast to the white of his eyeballs, which shone with sinister effect as he leered at her.

“Two play-a dees-a da trick, Signora! Wouldn’t yous-a look-a da well bees-a compan-e-on ove-a mine, in a da pen, eh, Signora. He, he, he, he,” he again laughed.

“Eesa don-a da know some-a da ting about eesa da Duc, eh! Eesa don-a da hear a da game between ee mand a da Signora da Virginia, eh! Sacremento!” He fairly ground out the last word between his teeth.

Virginia shuddered and then involuntarily exclaimed: “Villain!”

Jack turned upon her swiftly, ceremoniously bowed, and again leered at her. Then, with a most offensive smirk playing about his mouth, said: “Tank-a da Signora, my a da pard.”

Her face burned with the red that flushed up. She felt that even the darkness could not conceal her flaming cheeks. She bent her head in humiliation and shame at the all too well merited rebuke.

For a moment there followed intense stillness. She thought of what he had possibly heard at the Harris reception. “His disclosure would incriminate me with Rutley. Still, it matters not. My duty to my God, my home and Constance is to make reparation for the wrong I have done.”

She broke the silence in an assumed, haughty tone. “Well, as you are poor and in need, I will give you five hundred dollars upon return of the child; but if you do not comply by noon tomorrow I shall inform the police.”

“Eesa bett-a note!” he replied, with an unmistakable menace in his voice. “Eef yourse da squeal on a da ma, Signora – look-a da out!” And so saying, he slowly drew his finger across his throat.

The action was most significant. “Eesa bett-a da keep a da mum! Understand-a! Youse-a geeve a me a da twenty da thouse-a dollair, youse-a take a da kid – but youse-a da squeal!” and he drew close and hissed at her – “Bett-a da look a for her eesa mong a da weeds in a da Willamette.”

His attitude was so threatening, and his speech uttered with such savage earnestness, that it drove all courage from her heart. Again she felt, as once before, at the Harris reception, how puny a thing she was in the presence of a strong, masculine rascal.

She, however, quickly mastered the momentary sickening alarm that had seized her, and assuming a bold, threatening manner, in which she astonished herself, for she felt anything but defiant just then, said in a voice low and determined:

“Scoundrel! If you harm that child, I, myself, will weave the rope to hang you!”

Jack leered at her. “So Signora” – laughed, laughed low and derisively. “Ha, ha, ha, Signora lak-a da job, eh? Eesa mak-a da boss a hang-a man, eh?”

Jack could not repress a smile of admiration at her courage, and his lips quivered to exclaim: “God, she is game!”

“An-a deesea lettle white-a da hands-a,” he sneered. “Stain ’em all a da red, eh?” and he chuckled low, as though amused. “Oh, ha, ha, ha.” Suddenly he changed his tone and again continued threateningly. “Now look-a da ere. Eef-a youse-a da want a kid, gett-a da mon a da quick – twenty da thous, for eesa tink a da move-a da way. May bees gett-a da organ en-a da monk, go down South Amereek. Eef youse-a danna da squeal, da kid bees-a da safe; but effe youse-a da tell a po-lis, eesa mak-a da me a devil,” and he again drew close to her and hissed out between his teeth.

“When eesa be lik-a dat, Eesa does a da murda,” and so saying, he thrust his hand inside his double-breasted short coat, and partially drew out a glittering knife. “Eesa you da see?” – and he leaned over to her, a sinister glint shooting from the corner of his eye – “Eesa slit more’s a da one-a windpipe.” As he replaced the knife, a low whistle sounded off toward the right. It startled him, for he muttered as if alarmed. “Ha, some one is watching me.” And without another word or moment of delay, glided off southward, and disappeared in the darkness.

Sam having seen the glitter of a knife against the dim city lights, unconsciously gave a low whistle of warning, and sprang to his feet. He believed Virginia was in imminent peril.

For a moment he stood irresolute, unwilling to uncover his identity to her or to in any wise have her think he had been shadowing her. Then feeling satisfied she was not hurt, he sped away on the track of the Italian.

Virginia was alone. She, also, had seen the figure of a man suddenly loom up on the right and then hasten after the supposed Italian.

The terror that now had seized her, the strain that gave artificial courage, so worked upon her nerves as to produce a trembling of her limbs, and to avoid a threatened collapse she sank down on the grass.

Her strength gradually returned, her agitation quieted and she began to think with lucidity. She had been followed by whom? Most likely a detective in the pay of her brother.

“Thank God!” His unknown presence at a perilous moment had been sweetly welcome. “Dorothy is not dead,” she thought. “Thank Heaven for that, too; but she is in the hands of a murderous scoundrel, who would not hesitate to shed innocent blood were his own safety jeoparded.”