A BITTER CONFESSION.
They looked at her with astonishment. What did she have to tell?
Nothing, surely. Her brain was turned by the horror of what had
happened, that was all.
But, with a strong effort, she controlled herself, and, looking at him
with sorrowful eyes, dim with despair, she said:
“You do not understand me, and you think I am insane, do you not? Alas,
it is a wonder that I am not! Oh, Bayard, I am the most wretched woman!
I am the victim of circumstances the most tragic that ever darkened a
woman’s life.”
Mrs. Howard and Bayard Lorraine began to believe that there was some
method in her madness. There was an intensity of passion in her clasped
hands and upraised eyes that foreboded ill. They gazed at her with new
interest and attention.
“Alas,” she said mournfully, “I have a bitter confession to make: and
remember, Bayard, that though it may prove a deep disappointment to
you, it has all the bitterness of death to me. Oh, how I have struggled
to throw off this burden of fate, but it is too heavy. I am crushed
beneath it, and my mother’s dying words have all come true. There is
nothing but misery and despair in store for her poor child.”
They made no answer to the wild ravings she uttered, because they could
not understand them, and she continued despairingly:
“I cannot marry you, my own, my only love, because I am not free. A
terrible obstacle has arisen between us.”
Mrs. Howard gave a violent start. The words of the maniac prince, as
she deemed him, then came to her mind:
“I am an outraged husband who has taken vengeance into his own hands.
This woman is my wife!”
With her passionate, loving soul quivering in her mournful voice, the
girl went on:
“Bayard, you must not judge me too hardly when you know all. I was so
young, so ignorant, and my training had helped to lead me into that
fatal error.”
Suddenly he spoke, in a faint voice:
“Fair, you are driving me mad. What horrible thing is it that you are
going to tell me?”
“It was my life, not yours, that man sought to-night,” she said.
“I know that, child,” impatiently; “but why, unless he was a lunatic,
did he attempt your life?”
“He believed that he had bitter cause to hate me,” she answered, and
the pallor of her face was for a moment superseded by a fiery blush of
shame.
Bayard Lorraine could only ask again, in wonder:
“But why?”
The crimson on her face grew deeper, and she bowed her head very low as
she answered, with a sudden calmness born of great despair:
“You remember the newspaper clipping which I asked you to use as the
basis for a novel, Bayard? You remember the poor working girl who was
deceived into marrying a wicked wretch, and who fled from him in the
very hour of the marriage? I am the unhappy girl, and this man is the
one I married. You see, he did not commit suicide. He lived to tear
me from you, my darling. That statement was untrue, like much of the
newspaper reports, for, oh, my dear love, I--I never went astray; I
only disappeared, because dear Mrs. Howard, the good angel of my life,
adopted me and took me away from New York.”
He was looking at her with a face of stone, turning almost rigid
with horror; but she did not wait for him to speak; she went on with
feverish rapidity, anxious to confess all, now that she had undertaken
the task:
“I will not keep anything back from you now, Bayard. I was the girl
whose life you saved and whom you have told me since you loved and
would have married. I loved you, too, and it was on that love that they
played when they persuaded me to marry the wretch, who pretended to be
your cousin. When I found out how cruelly I had been deceived, and that
I would never see you again, as I had hoped, I was crazed with horror.
I--oh----”
She broke off with a shriek of horror, for Bayard Lorraine had drawn a
long, gasping breath, closed his eyes, and now lay before her like one
dead.
Mrs. Howard had been listening in wrathful horror, dazed and indignant
at the duplicity of the girl she had loved and trusted. At that shriek,
she confronted Fair with eyes that blazed with anger, crying out
bitterly:
“You wicked, cruel girl, you have killed him! How dared you tell him
that story in his weak condition? He will never recover from the shock.
Get up and go to your room, for he will never want to look on your face
again.”
“Mother!” the girl cried, in a pleading voice, like one warding off
a cruel blow; but Mrs. Howard was outraged in her love and pride.
She pushed off the little hands Fair extended toward her, and said
scornfully:
“Never call me by that name again! I will have no more to do with
one who, by her own confession, has been so mercenary, wicked, and
deceitful.”
With a moan of despair, Fair shrank away and fled from the room.
Then Mrs. Howard recalled the physicians, and, leaving them with the
unconscious man, went to seek the prince in the room where he was
imprisoned.
She wished to hear from his own lips the story of his marriage with
Fair.
When she had heard it, just as Bayard had read it in the newspaper
slip, she decided, just as he did, that Fair had been heartless and
wicked, and that, of the two, her husband deserved the most pity.
“I own my fault; I won her hand by a lie. I pretended to be wealthy
and that I was a cousin of Mr. Lorraine; but I thought I could win her
forgiveness some time. I never gave up hope until she disappeared, and
I heard that she had entered upon a bad life,” said Prince Gonzaga.
“That, at least, was a mistake,” said Mrs. Howard, and she told him the
circumstances of her taking Fair under her protection.
“I am glad my shot missed her heart, then, for I can forgive her and
love her still, and since I am now rich and titled she can have no
objection to being my wife,” he said, with mingled joy and sarcasm.
Mrs. Howard agreed with him. She thought Fair would have a better fate
than she deserved, that her husband could not be such a very bad man,
after all, since he was willing to forgive her and take her back.
She hinted that she would like to hear how it was that he had
committed suicide, as rumored, and then reappeared; and the prince, who
had suddenly got in a very good humor, was perfectly willing to gratify
her curiosity.
“I did jump off the wharf into the East River, with the intention of
drowning myself, but I was saved by an outward-bound sailing vessel,”
he said. “The crew were bound for a port where pirates were said to
have buried a great store of golden treasure. I went with them, and we
were fortunate enough to find the booty. I took my share and came to
Italy, where I assumed the title of my dead father, who was really a
prince, although poverty caused him to resign the honor with disgust
when he had to work for his daily bread.”
She was silent from sheer wonder at his romantic story, and she thought
that Fair was very fortunate in having her undesirable husband turn out
so well.
“I have heard that Lorraine is going to live,” he said to her. “I am
glad of that. I did not wish to kill him. It was only my rage at Fair,
when I thought that she had gone wrong, that put murder into my heart.
Mrs. Howard, will you help me to win my wife? I love her madly still,
and I would see her dead at my feet before Lorraine, or any one else,
should have her. You may think of getting a divorce for her, but I tell
you with the frankness of a desperate man that the only safety my wife
can have will be by returning to me.”