THE RETURNED HUSBAND.
Sadie worked on at the factory for a year after her marriage; then she
had to give up her machine and stay at home.
Heaven had sent her a bouncing boy baby, and it required the most of
her time to tend the house and the child. Waverley Osborne was in
receipt of a fair salary, too, and declared that there was no longer
any good reason for his wife to go out to work.
The precious boy was more than a year old when Waverley Osborne
came home one evening and told her that the factory had had quite a
sensation that day.
“Carl Bernicci turned up alive after everybody had been thinking he was
dead for two years,” he said. “He was looking for his wife, and he told
the girls the strangest story you ever heard, Sadie.”
“Some lie, no doubt, like all the rest of his tales,” exclaimed Sadie
Osborne indignantly, for her anger against the Italian began to revive
afresh at hearing that he was alive.
“No; I think this was actual truth,” said Waverley Osborne, and he told
his wife that the Italian was now rich and great, and had the title of
a prince in his own country.
“Well, perhaps that is true,” said Sadie, “for I remember now that
people said his father, the lazy old organ grinder, was a prince
when in Italy. But what was he looking for his wife for? Didn’t he
know”--she paused, and her kind eyes filled with tears, as they always
did when she thought of the dreadful story that she had heard about
Fair.
“He had heard that dreadful scandal, of course, and that was what made
him try to drown himself,” said Waverley Osborne. “But, Sadie, I knew
you will be glad to hear this: She never threw herself away, as people
said. He has found out all that happened after she disappeared,” and he
told in voluble language the story of Fair’s adoption by Mrs. Howard,
and her life abroad up to the hour of her interrupted marriage with
Bayard Lorraine.
“But she’s gone away now. Run away the very next day, and that was six
months ago; but the prince has not found her yet, although he has run
all over Europe after her, and now back to America,” he said.
Sadie’s tears were falling very fast now. The sunny locks of the child
in her lap were quite wet with them.
“Why are you crying?” Waverley demanded.
“For joy and sorrow both.”
“Well, I don’t think he will ever find her, but still I wonder why she
wouldn’t make up with him after he got rich?” Waverley Osborne answered
thoughtfully, and then his wife thought the time had come for an
explanation.
“Fair Fielding loved another man--that was why, and she never would
have married that wretch, only for her mother’s sake. Now Mrs. Fielding
is dead and gone, Fair has only herself to please, and she wouldn’t
live with Carl Bernicci, not if he was a king,” she said, quoting from
Fair’s journal, which she had read and wept over many times.
Prince Gonzaga did not leave New York immediately. He suspected that
his runaway wife was in hiding there, and he stayed on for several
months. The working girls at the factory kept up to some extent with
his movements, and they declared that he had a private detective in his
pay.
Fair had not been discovered when autumn came around again, making
almost a year since Bayard Lorraine had wooed her in the flowery garden
of Prince Gonzaga’s villa in sunny Italy. Her fate was a profound
mystery.
Meanwhile the prince enjoyed himself as much as was possible under
the circumstances to one of his moody, jealous temperament. He got
introduced into fashionable society, and became quite a lion. Among
these people, his story was not known, although it was so familiar
to the working classes, and there were many fair ones who vied with
each other to win his smiles. But the Fraynes came back from abroad at
last, and when they found him in New York the whole story leaked out.
Then the papers were filled with it, to the bitter chagrin of Bayard
Lorraine, who just then came back from Europe and found himself and his
sad story the theme of the newspapers and society.
His quest for Fair had failed as utterly as that of Prince Gonzaga,
and now he had crossed the ocean to pursue the search. Mrs. Howard came
with him. She was fast failing in health, and said sadly that she was
going home to die.
It looked like it, for day by day she seemed to fade more rapidly.
Bayard Lorraine came most punctually every day to see her, and one day
she said to him wistfully:
“I would give much to see one of those working girls who were Fair’s
companions when she was a sewing girl in New York. I should like to
hear something of her history in her sorrowful girlish days.”
“I have found out where she worked. I will try to bring one of her girl
friends to see you, if you wish,” he replied; and that was how it came
about that Bayard Lorraine went one day to the factory and made known
Mrs. Howard’s request.
Mrs. Jones, the sensible forewoman, was still there, and she told Mr.
Lorraine that Fair had been more intimate with Sadie Allen than any one
else. She was married now, but she could give him her address.