MAYBELLE’S HEART!
“Oh, my darling, a whole life-time of devotion shall teach you the
strength of my love. Your life with me, my bonny bride, shall be a
dream of bliss.”
Floy’s big, starry-blue eyes glowed like blue jewels in the dusk as she
read aloud the tender words of her lover’s letter.
Then she pressed her rosy lips to the page as fondly as though it had
been the handsome face of her absent love.
“How he loves me, my noble, splendid, beautiful, dark-eyed lover! He
has chosen me, simple little Floy, poor and obscure, out of a whole
world of rich and beautiful girls, any one of whom must have loved him
if he had so chosen,” she cried in an ecstasy of adoring love.
She was alone in a large, gloomy bedroom of Suicide Place, for, as Otho
had suspected, on hearing Maybelle’s story to-day, she was here in
hiding from her foes.
She had been most indiscreet in her adventure last night, but the
longing to possess the letters Beresford had written to her overpowered
every other impulse; so, trusting that Maybelle might take _her_ for a
ghost, the brave little beauty made a determined onslaught and secured
her own property, escaping undetected through the open window that
looked upon an upper veranda wreathed in fragrant vines.
“What a wretch she was to obtain my letters in that fashion! I am glad
I thought of going to see the good carrier and finding out the truth,
or I never should have had these sweet words to read!” cried Floy,
kissing them again, as she had done dozens of times already to-day.
In the falling twilight she sat at the upper window behind the lace
curtain that screened her from view outside, and read and reread the
precious trophies in artless delight, her heart throbbing fast with joy
at each tender word.
“What a fortunate girl I am to have won such a splendid lover!” she
thought, with innocent pride and exultation, for her tender young heart
yearned for love and care, she was so lonely.
Floy did not realize all her great charms of mind and person, and in
her lack of vanity she was always wondering how the splendid Beresford
had chosen her so quickly for his heart’s queen out of a whole world
full lovely girls.
“I seek you--you alone I seek;
All other women fair
Or wise or good may go their way,
Without my thought or care.
“But you I follow day by day,
And night by night I keep
My heart’s chaste mansion lighted, where
Your image lies asleep.
“Asleep! If e’er to wake, He knows
Who Eve to Adam brought,
As you to me, the embodiment
Of boyhood’s dear, sweet thought.
“And youth’s fond dream, and manhood’s hope,
That still half hopeless shone,
Till every rootless, vain ideal
Commingled into one--
“_You_, who are so diverse from me,
And yet as much my own
As this my soul, which formed a part,
Dwells in its bodily throne.
“I swear no oaths, I tell no lies,
Nor boast I never knew
A love dream--we all dream in youth--
But, _waking_, I found _you_--
“The real woman, whose first touch
Aroused to highest life
My real manhood. Crown it, then,
Good angel, friend, love, wife!”
“Oh, what lovely words and thoughts!” cried Floy, reading them again
for the twentieth time; and she added, half in pity for cruel, jealous
Maybelle: “How it must have stabbed her heart to read these tender
words addressed to me! It must have been punishment enough for all her
sin.”
She was right; for what could be more cruel pain to a jealous, envious
heart than to read those words of love to another?
“He loves, but ’tis not me he loves,
Not me on whom he ponders,
When in some dream of tenderness
His truant fancy wanders.”
The purple gloaming deepened, the shadows grew darker in the gloomy
room, until even the eyes of love could not distinguish the written
words; so Floy laid her letters upon the little table before her, and
fell to dreaming over them in tender wise:
“_Seven_ letters! and such beautiful _long_ ones, too! Oh, how good he
was to write me such charming love letters! Can such love ever grow
cold, I wonder? Can he ever look back and regret? Ah, no, no, no! I
will not remember the stories of false love I have read and heard. He,
my own dark-eyed lover, is not one of those fickle wretches flying from
one love to another, like a butterfly from flower to flower. He will be
true.”
A happy sigh escaped her lips, and she continued:
“It is terrible being shut up here like a prisoner, with nothing to eat
but half-ripe fruit picked from the orchard by night! I wish I dared
reveal myself to Auntie Banks and beg her to come here and share my
solitude. But she wouldn’t consent, I know; and those wretches would
contrive some new peril for me, if they found out I was alive. Oh, dear
Heaven, give me patience to bear this life till my lover returns! It is
only a few days more now, for he said he should not stay longer than
a month. He will think it strange I did not answer his letters, as he
told me to do in each loving postscript; but I can easily explain all
to him when I see him, and he will not blame me for not writing when he
knows I did not get his letters for so long.”
Poor Floy, counting the days and hours before her lover’s return,
how little she dreamed that far across the sea he lay ill unto death,
stricken down by the false and cruel story that she was dead.
The hours waned, and the moon rose in the purple sky, while she
lingered there, poor child, so lonely in her exile, so beautiful, so
unfortunate.
She rose presently, drew the shutters close, then lighted a little lamp
on the table, not caring much if the light was seen by passers-by, for
she knew no one would venture in. She had heard stories often of lights
being seen in the house by night, but they were all attributed to
ghostly visitants.
Floy knew the ghastly secret of Suicide Place now, and nothing but her
terror of Otho Maury would have tempted her to enter the house again.
But when she had recovered consciousness at Bellevue Hospital the
evening of her accident, and found herself uninjured, an awful fear of
Otho Maury’s persecutions entered her mind.
“Oh, if I could hide myself away from him somewhere until St. George’s
return,” she moaned.
She had a subtle presentiment that Otho’s persecutions would ruin her
life if his nefarious plans were not balked.
“Oh, I must hide myself from that black-hearted wretch!” she sobbed,
sitting up on the couch, and gazing wildly around.
She saw that she was quite alone, the attendant having gone to hasten
the physician whose duty it was to attend to her case.
The thought of Suicide Place came to her like an inspiration, and she
sighed to herself that all its horrors were not equal to Otho Maury’s
relentless pursuit.
She staggered to her feet and found herself unhurt. The long swoon had
been the result of the shock of fear.
Pursued by fear and unrest, Floy fled wildly from the hospital, and as
she had on her person the five dollars given her by Mrs. Banks, she
made use of it to return to Mount Vernon.
That night she rested in the haunted house, that, with its evil repute,
seemed to offer her a refuge from despair.
Here, during the two weeks while the search for her went on, Floy
rested safe from pursuit.
But her adventurous spirit drove her forth at last to inquire of
the letter-carrier about the mail she had expected to receive from
Beresford. Without acquainting him with her hiding-place, she pledged
him to secrecy over her visit, and obtained from him the information
that Miss Maury had intercepted her letters.
She made several futile trips to the Maury residence before she
succeeded in getting possession of the precious letters.
Having purposely made herself look as phantom-like as possible, she was
seen by several persons, and the report that her spirit walked became
noised about.
Having obtained the letters, she resolved not to venture forth again,
lest she should be followed and her identity discovered.
But, as we have seen, by Maybelle’s story, her discretion came too
late, and she was fated to a severe ordeal--the result of last night’s
adventure.
Through the fragrant gloom of the summer night Otho Maury was gliding
toward the house, wriggling his lean body through the shadows like
a hungry panther about to spring upon its prey, and as his stealthy
step pressed the threshold, he kept muttering, darkly, with horrible
exultation:
“She can not escape me now!”