FOR HER MOTHER’S SAKE.
So Sadie Allen was at last face to face with Bayard Lorraine, the hero
of her friend’s sad love story.
“And no wonder she worshiped him, for he looks much more like a prince
than that wicked Carl Bernicci,” she said to herself, as she handed
Bayard the best chair in her little front room, the while she made up
her mind to tell him Fair’s sad story as it really was, and as no one
knew it but herself.
He found himself almost moved to tears before she finished her eloquent
recital. All the faults of the weak, ambitious mother were dragged to
the light.
“It was all her fault. She would not have let her daughter refuse
that man if she had wished, for she had brought her up from the very
beginning to marry rich if she could,” she said, and at last he began
to see light upon Fair’s dark past.
But it was only when she gave him the journal, the confidant of Fair’s
girlish thoughts and hopes and fears, that he fully realized everything.
It did not seem to him that he was doing wrong to read it. He who had
loved her so well was longing to know her better, and to exonerate her,
if possible, from all the fault that lay at her door. Who could tell
him half so much as the book on whose pages her tortured girlish heart
was laid bare?
So while Sadie stooped to caress the toddling boy at her knee, he
opened the pages at random, and here and there read words that went to
his heart.
Prince or king, it would matter nothing, I should hate him still,
for I know now too well that it was not for his own sake, nor
even for his boasted gold I accepted him, but only that through
him I might meet again my hero, Bayard Lorraine. It was wrong
for me to marry him with such thoughts in my heart, and Heaven
has punished me for my sin, but I was young and ignorant. They
dazzled me by their promises, and I thought I could tolerate
George Lorraine for the sake of what he could bestow on me!
He looked up at Sadie caressing her little child, and she saw that his
eyes were wet.
“You will let me take this with me, Mrs. Osborne?”
“Certainly, sir. I expect you have more right to it than I have, for it
all seems to be about you,” she answered.
“And you will come with me to see Mrs. Howard?”
She hesitated a moment, then said that she would leave little Charley
with a neighbor and get ready to go at once.
It seemed strange to our simple Sadie to be riding in a motor car by
the side of Bayard Lorraine, and it seemed stranger yet to be going
into that grand Fifth Avenue mansion; but Mrs. Howard speedily made her
feel at home, for, grasping her hand warmly, she exclaimed at once:
“You were my poor girl’s friend, and I bid you welcome with all my
heart.”
Then Sadie had to go over the whole story again.
“Although her journal, which I gave to Mr. Lorraine, will tell you more
than I can,” she said.
Mrs. Howard wept when she heard the story of Fair’s injudicious
training by her weak-minded, ambitious mother.
“Poor little one, poor little one! She never said one word. She was
most loyal to her mother, and took all the blame herself, while I was
so hard upon her and believed her utterly base!” she exclaimed, with
poignant remorse, and she felt that she would have given the whole
world, had it been hers, to find the missing girl.
Fair was thoroughly vindicated, her trials and temptations all
understood, and she herself loved more than ever. But where was she?