Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapped, name blighted, life’s life lied away?
—Byron.
By the time Miss Ross arrived at Castle Adamant, Dr. Bruce had been
there fully an hour.
“You are already aware,” said Mme. Adamanti, plunging at last into those
terrible confidences which she had summoned him to hear,—“that the name
by which I am known is a fictitious one. I adopted it in the hope that
it might help me to become as hard as a fiendish desire for vengeance
made me wish to be. I find we cannot readily transform ourselves into
definitions of words. Indeed, I have designed more hard deeds than I
have performed, though often the performance lay easily within my reach.
I was named “Hope,” and a poor blighted hope I have proved myself
indeed! What fatality there is in names....Our family name was Vincent.
We had a small farm in Ohio southeast from Cleveland, and my father was
deacon of the church in the village near by the farm. From my earliest
recollection I was not happy or contented with my life there. As I grew
older, the weary monotony of existence seemed to crush my spirit; I
longed to see what the rest of the world was like, for I felt that if it
were anything like the copy before me, it must be a sorry affair. The
long sermons twice each Sunday, and at least two prayer meetings I was
obliged to attend during the week, caused me to regard religion as the
greatest curse on earth, and I early began to invent all sorts of
excuses for staying away from them. My elder sister (we were the only
children of our parents, and she was three years my senior) was
perfectly satisfied with her lot, and the minister said she was the
pattern for all the other young people to copy after. I began to dislike
her and call her a hypocrite; and by pretending sickness, or purposely
hurting myself, I would manage to stay at home, and while the others
were away I would read all the books and papers I could find. Sometimes
I could only get hold of some old almanac, a catalogue of patent
medicines, a treatise in pamphlet form on hog cholera, or the price list
of a lightning-rod factory (how vividly I recall them all now!) but I
would read every word of them several times over. I seemed to have an
insatiable craving for knowledge, and by the time I was thirteen I was
thoroughly miserable.
“That same summer I formed a resolution. A daughter of the village
doctor, who had been my playfellow, came home from Cleveland, where she
had just finished her first year in a girl’s seminary, to pass the
summer vacation. The account she gave me of her companions at school,
the library of books, and the interesting studies seemed to set my brain
on fire, and when she had gone I went to my father and asked him to let
me go to the same school. But he said it would cost more than he could
earn, and after scolding me for such foolishness, told me to go about my
knitting. He was a rough, kind-hearted man, but never seemed to like me
because of my waywardness. Unable to comprehend me he divined a latent
force which unconsciously he feared. A few days afterwards I was talking
to the doctor’s daughter and asked her if they would let me come to the
school if I would work for them. I would scrub, wash dishes, or do
anything they wished, if they would only let me come there. I had got
the notion from something she had said about poor girls working for
their education, and she said she thought they would take me. The
resolution I formed was to go to Cleveland without saying a word to
those at home, as I knew they would prevent me. It was my duty to drive
the cow to pasture in the morning, after she was milked, and I had to
take her along the very road which I had always known as the “Cleveland
Road.”
“One morning instead of coming back from the pasture I kept straight on,
and shunning everybody that came along, did not stop or turn aside until
I reached the city at about four o’clock in the afternoon. I was amazed
at the great crowded streets, as they seemed to me, and for some time I
wandered about in a dreamy state, scarcely knowing where I was, or what
I was there for; I was not tired, for I had always been used to taking
long walks; nor hungry, because I had eaten some pieces of bread and
cheese I stored in my pocket before starting for the pasture. But as it
began to get dark I felt afraid and bethought myself of the school which
I must try at once to find. I had never been more than a few miles from
home before, and had no idea how I was to find the school. As I
remembered the name, however, I soon enquired my way, and the mistress
gave me supper and lodging with some reluctance, telling me that she
would send word to my father in the morning and I must go directly home.
The next day but one my father came with his wagon and took me back.
When he got me home he flogged me with a raw-hide whip, and from that
day it seems that my doom was sealed.
“I grew more miserable and dissatisfied as I grew older and my
distasteful surroundings became more loathsome to me every day. I had
some wild birds in cages and I let them all go because I thought they
must feel as I did. I will not attempt to describe the anguish I
suffered during the next three years. We seemed to get poorer all the
time, and all I heard was long prayers morning and evening, and long
blessings at each scanty meal, and fault-finding and grumbling the rest
of the day. My father called me a “lazy burden,” my mother said
resignedly that her cross was a very heavy one and I was a sharp thorn
in her side; and my sister told me religiously that there was no doubt I
was possessed of a devil, and that I might at any time be turned into a
cat or a pig if I did not give up my foolish ways and try and listen to
the Gospel. I tried several times to tell both father and mother of the
longing which enthralled my heart and brain, a longing which I could not
then, in my ignorance and innocence, define, but which I know now was
wholly and solely for knowledge, advancement. Even then I used to think,
and enraged my sister by telling her, that less time spent at prayer-
meetings and love feasts, as they called some of their inane gatherings,
and more in gaining useful knowledge, and making useful effort, might
improve our situation. But thinking this a reference to my father’s
shiftlessness, as I admit it was, she merely said that he was a good and
religious man, and everything was secondary to that. I often thought
when this remark recurred to me, that it was a pity I was not
constituted to share their holy satisfaction and self-sufficiency, and
that in the very midst of so much “saving grace” a phrase forever on
their tongues, I was slowly but inevitably to be damned!”
“My father made such threats that I was afraid to run away again, and I
eked out my existence in constant misery as if I had been an outcast
without parents, friends, or wits. As I would not go to the religious
meetings, I could have no clothes, and when I was sixteen I had but one
shabby calico dress I could wear outside the house; no beggar could have
been in a worse plight. Books were denied me, partly because of my
stubbornness, and partly because my father was of opinion that they all
contained something against religion. Even if by any stratagem I
procured one to read, it was sent back to the owner with an insulting
message, if the owner’s name happened to be in it, or if not it was
thrown into the fire. So that very soon the few friends I had were the
best possible allies of my father, and I could not get a book on any
pretext. The only newspaper I ever had a chance to see was a stupid
weekly periodical called “Church Chimes,” I think, the sentiments of
which were exactly in keeping with the readers it found in our house. It
was a mere pander to the most brutal ignorance and superstition, which,
instead of seeking to deliver its readers from their moral and
intellectual obscurity, invented the most cunning devices, as I now
remember, to perpetuate their conceited stolidity. There may be such
publications still in circulation in Christendom, but the only journal I
have seen since then which is an exact counterpart in spirit, of that
pestilential sheet, is the official organ of the Mormon Church at Salt
Lake City—”
“You have been there, then?” asked Doctor Bruce, with surprise. “You
have been to Utah?”
“Oh, yes; I have been there: I was among the first to go. But I shall
come to that presently. Can you bear with me a little longer, Doctor? I
want you to know all, that you may see I came not willingly to what I
am: that you may know a more awful phase of the “Greater Bondage,” than
you touched upon in your lecture. For if sin in its common shape is a
bondage worse than slavery, and far worse than death, what shall be said
of a system which forces this bondage upon its votaries as a religion,
and grinds their hearts to powder in the attempt to reconcile them to
its filthy and unnatural demand!” She spoke with such vehemence that the
Doctor rose from his chair and entreated her to be more calm.
“I was speaking of the paper,” she resumed, “but I have yet to tell you
that it was the direct cause of my attempting to take my own life, a few
days after my sixteenth birthday. In all my sufferings, such means of
escape had never occurred to me until I read in our “religious” paper
the most sentimental account of the suicide of a young girl who had
drowned herself, as they said, in a fit of temporary insanity. But she
was a church-going girl, and the account went on to say that her mind
had been shattered by sickness, and closed with a conjecture that she
might even have fallen into the river by accident. Both my mother and
sister had told me so often that I was out of my mind, I sometimes
thought it might be true; and now on reading this account the thought of
destroying myself took a sudden hold on me and preyed upon my brain like
a fever. I disputed with myself the advisability of the step for several
days, but each day the determination grew stronger till at last the
thought of vanishing entirely from the misery which I thought had
shattered my mind, made me merry, and the chilly indifference of those
about me became even more marked at the change in my demeanor. On the
Sunday morning after my birthday (which was only remembered by the
family circle with regret), I drove the cow to the pasture as usual, and
came back to the house and put on my best clothes. As the others were
starting for church I came into the room, I was so much amused at the
solemn, church-going expression on their faces, that I laughed, and then
asked them, with half comic audacity, to kiss me good-bye before they
went. My father and mother had been quarreling for an hour, and were not
in the best of humor, so that this unheard of demand from me caused the
former to hastily cram his testament into his coat pocket and go
outside, and provoked the latter to raise her best parasol as if to
strike me. As they went away, I heard my father say to mother, that if
she had not always been a religious woman, he would feel inclined to
doubt that “Hoe” (as they always called me) was any relation to him. To
which she replied that I was a dreadful trial for them both—but that I
was not quite so bad as the burden of their poor pastor who had a son
twenty-five years old, a helpless idiot, not even able to eat his food,
or help himself in any way. This was said as they were getting into the
wagon, and as I turned away from the window where I had heard it all, I
wept bitterly, and decided at once that they should never see me alive
again. Soon after my father’s wagon was out of sight, I went across the
fields to another road leading into the village which crossed a deep and
rapid stream about half a mile from our farm, and hurried along towards
the bridge with the resolute intention of drowning myself. When I
reached the stream I could see nobody coming from either direction, and
felt my brain reeling as I staggered to the middle of the bridge and
threw myself headlong from its side near the center of the current. I
was almost unconscious when I fell, but as I struck the cold river, I
felt a sharp pain in my right side. The cold shock restored my senses so
that in an instant I fully realized my situation, and wondered why I was
not dead—why I was still there close to the bridge suffering dreadfully,
but only swung about by the seething current and not carried away to the
doom I had sought. I instantly discovered that my clothes were caught on
something below the surface of the water, and that I had scratched and
bruised myself on the same obstacle when I fell. I uttered no cry though
my head was kept above water by the snag or timber which held me. I only
thought of breaking away, but I tried in vain. Of a sudden there was a
dull roaring noise above me which startled me so that I screamed wildly
two or three times, and struggled madly to break away. I heard voices. A
wagon or carriage had stopped on the bridge, and a horseman rode to the
middle, just above me and dismounted. A moment later I saw people
looking down at me, and a young man climbing down the timbers towards
me.
“I must have fainted, for I remember nothing that happened until the
same night I awoke from my stupor and found myself in my own bed with
mother and sister sitting beside me. They told me I had been saved by
young Mr. Langley. I knew of him and his family merely as the very poor
know of the very rich. It seems that one of their servants recognized
me, and Mrs. Langley, having just returned from church in her carriage,
sent me directly home without waiting to see whether I was alive or
dead.
“Next morning the doctor, having heard of my rescue from the river, and
knowing that my father would probably not call a doctor until too late,
came in to inquire about me. He found me with a broken arm and rib, and
in a consuming fever. As he was engaged in setting the bones, my father
entered and told him in a surly manner that if he did anything for me he
need n’t send a bill, for he had scarcely enough to live on, and anyway
would not spend a cent on a hussy that tried to take her own life. The
doctor merely replied, ‘I shall send you no bill, Mr. Vincent,’ and went
on with his work, saying what he could to soothe and encourage me. I lay
ill for some time, and was a great burden to my mother and sister, but
the doctor took good care of me, and the young man who rescued me from
the river called every day, to inquire how I was.
“When I was convalescent I was sitting one afternoon in a rocking chair
under a large apple tree in front of the house. Young Langley rode up to
the gate, and seeing me there, dismounted and came in. We were alone for
some time, and he gave me to understand that he had taken a great fancy
to me. Before he left he asked me to go for a drive with him next day,
which I was refusing to do as I did not like his manner, when my mother
came up and told him, ‘yes, I should certainly go.’ She and sister made
me a new dress of some light material so that I looked neat, and was
secretly proud of my sudden distinction though far from being
comfortable in the enjoyment of it. That drive proved but the beginning
of a series in which I was drawn deeper and deeper into the toils by his
adroit flattery and dissimulation. He knew that I was at his mercy: my
ignorance, commonly called innocence, fashioned me for his purpose, and
the blind and criminal neglect of my people left me to my fate. The
tragedy of the foolish maiden fascinated and betrayed, was at length
enacted when he had led me to think that we were to be married in a few
days. He kept up the deception for a time, and then told me flatly that
he had never intended to marry me. He tore a ring from my finger which
he had placed there as a part of his trick, and left me, as he hoped, no
doubt, forever.
“It was soon after reported that he had been converted to Mormonism by
some missionaries who had been quietly working in the neighborhood, and
that he had gone to their City of Nauvoo on the Mississippi. Who shall
tell the forlorn agony of spirit which then beset me! I should have made
another attempt to destroy myself, had I not been held back by the
existence of my child, which I could no longer conceal.
“When my father became aware of my situation he drove me out of the
house and warned me never to show myself there again. But this seemed to
me only a just punishment, though of all that then concerned me I only
fully realized that I had been betrayed. My poor mother begged him to
have pity on me, and my sister added her entreaties, but he would not
listen, and I wandered slowly away scarce knowing what I was about. The
instinct of self-preservation seemed at last to arouse me, and I made my
way to Cleveland where I found employment as a domestic servant. The
woman with whom I lived was very kind to me in my desolation. She was
bearing the cross of a faithless husband and entered into my sorrow. I
told her my story, and after my child came she advised me to write to
its father. He was then at Nauvoo, and in reply to my letter said I
might come to him if I came alone. My employer helped me to devise a
plan for the temporary abandonment of my baby, leading me to hope that I
might recover it whenever I was ready. At last I adopted her plan as the
only escape from my miseries short of suicide. What bitter anguish it
caused me to leave my child! But I mustered up my resolution, and the
tragedy of my life went on. Early one morning I left the little dainty
creature near the house of a good old minister,—the same Dr. Taine who
died recently at Cleveland from a shock caused by the flight of his
daughter with the rebel spy, Lamont.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“That was my daughter—the foundling, Hagar!”
For a time she could not speak.
“All these years,” she continued, at length, “I had supposed her dead,
and now she is here, under this roof, brought and delivered to me by my
friend, her betrayer!”
Her form quivered with emotion, and for a time it seemed that she would
not be able to continue. But by a desperate effort she controled her
emotion, and went on.
“Hoping to secure kind treatment for the child, I left a note with her
intimating that I had drowned myself in a pond near by; and after I had
seen a workman pick up my baby and carry her to the house, I went back
to the city and joined a party of Mormon emigrants who were starting
that day for Nauvoo. I took my place in one of their wagons. They were
all heavily laden with house-furniture, agricultural implements and
provisions. By seven o’clock we were moving slowly out of the city to
begin that gloomy pilgrimage. By what seemed to me a fatality, we
traveled the same road I had already been that morning, and were soon
passing the very house where I was leaving my soul. It was only by the
most determined effort that I could restrain myself from leaping from
the wagon and going to claim my deserted baby. The workmen, the
minister, and some women and children were about the pond searching for
the poor desperate wretch who had deceived them so shamefully, and when
I thought of what I was doing my face burned with remorse till I almost
relented. My companions thought I wept for the friends I was leaving
behind, and paid very little attention to me; and as we rumbled along
the hard roads, the scene was constantly shifting, so that by an effort
I at last became more cheerful.
“We were on the road almost a month, and on our arrival at Nauvoo,
Langley gave me a very luke-warm reception, and instead of taking me to
his own house, placed me in the prophet Smith’s family where my position
was that of a servant. The prophet himself undertook my conversion to
the new faith, and I was soon satisfied with the whole Mormon pretense,
the golden-plates, the revelations, the miracles, and all else they
taught me.
“I had learned with great facility, because the prophet had said that I
could not become Brother Langley’s wife for time and eternity under the
‘new and everlasting covenant,’ until I entered heartily into the
religion that had saved him. I was willing to do anything to attain the
end that brought me to the edge of the wilderness, and acquiesced in it
all without half understanding what was meant. They appealed to my
sympathies also with great effect, telling me of the dreadful
persecutions they had suffered in Ohio and Missouri, and I only heard at
Nauvoo what the gentiles did against the saints, and never a word about
the aggression and misconduct of the latter. The prophet’s wife and one
or two of his concubines coached me sedulously for some secret and
mysterious ceremony that I must pass through in the Temple to become the
celestial wife of Brother Langley, as they said; and by that time I had
imbibed so much of their prejudice against the world in general that I
regarded them almost at their own estimation.
“I had been in Nauvoo a year when I was finally told I was to be married
to Bishop Langley. In the interval I had received letters regularly from
Mrs. Benjamin my employer in Cleveland until the last two months, during
which I had three or four brief notes dictated by her and written by
another hand. These informed me that Mrs. Benjamin was prostrated by a
severe illness. My letters were always brought to me opened by Langley,
who took my replies to the post-office. I was never allowed money enough
even to pay postage on a letter. The last one I ever received was
apparently in the same hand as the others, and stated that the baby I
had abandoned had died of croup, and that Mrs. Benjamin was not expected
to live more than a few days. That letter was a forgery which Langley
had procured to deceive me. The information he had received was to the
effect that Mrs. Benjamin had died suddenly, and he believed that all
clue to the child perished with her. In the crushing grief which seized
me at the news of my baby’s death, Langley made some weak efforts to
cheer me, and so desolate was my life that I tried to fancy, though
painfully conscious of his lack of proper feeling, that his attentions
were all that my heart craved. The ‘celestial’ ceremony was deferred for
a short time in consequence of my sorrow, which they called ‘sickness.’
At length the fatal day arrived, and I was made a ‘celestial’ wife to
Langley, given a name by which I was to be known to the saints in
heaven, and overcome by the avalanche of mystery and mummery which the
new priesthood had at its command; the borrowed rubbish of all systems
supplemented by inventions of its own.
“I had not quite understood the covert reference I had heard made in the
prophet’s family as to the meaning of ‘celestial’ marriage, and was
horrified on my arrival at Langley’s house to be introduced to another
woman as his wife, whom I was commanded to honor and obey as himself.
The sophistries of that woman, who was related to the prophet and had
been a pupil of his visionary and ignorant mother, gradually caused me
to accept the situation, though my nature continually revolted against
what I felt to be an ignominious and contemptible relation. In spite of
the ‘celestial’ poems of one of the prophet’s concubines; the most
polygamous passages from Scripture; the prophet’s undoubted inspiration
from on high, and the quiet but insinuating canvass of the doctrine that
was then being made, I could not help thinking myself wronged; could not
silence the still, small voice that nature had established in my soul,
and that cried out against this sanctified outrage.
“But a crisis was approaching, and in the midst of alarms more or less
real; I gradually became so indifferent that I could not tell myself
from the fanatics about me. In the winter of 1845, Langley was among the
most influential of those who stood by Brigham Young, and favored the
project of moving in a body to the far West, there to establish an
empire of their own. Their prophet and his brother had been killed some
time before, by a mob in Carthage Jail, where they were confined on
charges the Mormons considered to be false, and the people were now
obliged to fly before the dangers that threatened, unless they were
willing to live like other citizens according to the customary laws of
order and decency.”
Very thrilling was her narrative of the journey of the pioneer Mormon
train, of which she was a member, in the spring and summer of 1847, from
the Missouri River to the Great Salt Lake. The region had only been
explored a short time before by General Fremont, and that entire country
extending two thousand miles from East to West and over a thousand from
North to South was a trackless wilderness. The memory of the fatigues
and dangers of that dreadful pilgrimage came back like a nightmare to
the poor invalid, and she hastened on to the later scenes.
“As the colony at Salt Lake grew in numbers, and agriculture was the
only productive industry then possible, mere necessaries of life were
produced in quantities far exceeding the needs of the community; and
Edwin Langley was the first, having some good teams and wagons at his
disposal, to turn a cargo of such commodities into gold, among the rich
placers that had riveted the attention of the world on California. The
first adventure of the kind having succeeded far beyond his hopes, he
repeated it again and again with such results that he was recognized as
the richest and most enterprising saint in Zion. He gave his support to
all schemes set on foot by Brigham Young for the general welfare of the
‘Saints,’ and was soon only second to the new prophet himself, in his
wealth of lands, flocks and herds, and wives and children.
“After several years of untold humiliation, during which I had struggled
in vain against my unquenchable aversion to the system, I resolved if
possible to escape to California. The fact that I bore no children was
made a subject of ugly comment about me, both by my saintly lord and his
more fortunate concubines, two of whom were vulgar factory hands from
Coventry, who found the saintly life entirely satisfactory and laughed
at me for my crazy notions. At length my opportunity arrived. A handsome
young man with whom Langley had become acquainted in California, stopped
at Salt Lake on his way to the States, and was invited by Langley to
visit at his house, which was one of the few good ones in the Mormon
Capital. I often met him, and he sought me constantly, uttering words of
sympathy, and finally obtaining not only a complete confession of my
miserable lot, but an influence over me which was irresistible. We were
aware of the danger of our secret conferences, and as the stranger had
already overstayed his time, were conscious that something desperate
must be done, and that parting from each other was not to be one of the
alternatives. He was a cool and deliberate man. He successfully planned
our flight, and we went together to New Orleans, arriving in the gay
season of the Carnival.
“I had noticed on the steamboat that my husband, as I called him, sat up
late every night to gamble, and that he inevitably won. My life became a
kind of delirium, the dazzle and whirl of which increased immensely
after our arrival at the Crescent City, where we were surrounded by
sporting men and the beauties of the town who were old and familiar
friends of my lover. I soon became intoxicated by the life of this gay
society, so strangely in contrast with the rest of my experience, and
went on and on in the maddening round of pleasure until it became as
indispensable to me as to the rest.
“We had only been in New Orleans a few months when my lover was shot
dead at a gambling table. I was again left to battle with life. All the
world outside the constellation where Fate had cast me was closed
against me forever, but I did not realize this fact until I had proved
it by bitter experience. It then became clear to me that I must remain
where I was and make the best or the worst of my lot. Possessed of a
certain shrewdness and tact I sold the costly lace and diamonds my lover
had given me, and with the proceeds, added to some timely loans from his
friends, opened a sumptuous palace, which soon eclipsed in splendor and
patronage everything of the kind that had been known in the Paris of the
Southern States, I speculated on the Exchange, and in the slave market,
was lucky, and found I was rapidly amassing a fortune. Finally, about
four years ago I came to Cincinnati with several ambitious designs; but
my chief object was health: I could not longer endure the climate of New
Orleans.
“Now, Dr. Bruce, you have heard my story. My money and my poor child are
here—can you undertake my commission?” She spoke with strong emotion,
and for the first time during the narration, wept bitterly.
“Yes, madam,” said the Doctor “if I can serve you and the young girl of
whom you speak, I will do so. What do you require from me?”
“To become executor and administrator of my estate, to which she is the
only heir. I should prefer that you sell all real-estate and turn it
into ready money. Nothing that I shall leave for her is the fruit of my
vicious life; I made it all on the Stock Exchange by a series of lucky
speculations. Whatever I realized otherwise I shall leave to those like
myself who are now in possession, and as a fund to help young women who
are in peril because of their poverty and ignorance.”
An ominous tremor shook her frame and for some time she remained silent.
Then she said feebly:
“Would it be possible, Doctor Bruce, to have the papers made out now
this evening? I feel that I must not delay.”
“Yes, it could be done to-night but, perhaps, if you were patient until
to-morrow——?”
“There will be no to-morrow for me, Doctor. I beg you do it now.”
She raised herself quickly to a sitting posture and, glancing about with
a wild apprehensive gaze, brushed the back of her hand across her eyes
as if to wipe away a mist that suddenly came before her.
“Quick! Doctor, quick! Don’t let me die till this is done!”
The Doctor was holding her hand and supporting her.
“Feel no alarm;—it shall be done at once. Lie down and be patient. I
have a legal friend who lives near by. I can bring him in a moment, and
everything shall be done as you wish.”
His words calmed her, and she sank back upon the pillow with a faint
smile and a pathetic look of gratitude.
As the Doctor passed through the hall he said to Miss Ross and Ida who
came to him for news of the patient:
“Keep her very quiet until I return. One of you should stay by her and
give the medicine as her doctor directed. It is a powerful stimulant and
she will require it.”
He had just gone out the front door when Mme. Adamanti’s bell was heard
and Miss Ross hastened to her.
A kindly smile lit up her grief-marked face when Belle approached and
asked in a voice of genuine feeling how she was.
“I am better now, and will soon be well.”
Her voice sounded strange, and made Belle feel uneasy. She continued:—
“I wanted to see you, Belle, to tell you that I am going to make my
will. My promise to you, Ida, and the others is not forgotten. But the
rest of my estate I shall leave to this girl, ‘Kitty,’ who is my own and
only child. I want you to tell her, at once, that a gentleman has been
here who has her fortune in trust, and that he is coming back presently
to show her the papers. At a signal from me you will bring her here, and
after I have embraced her she will go with Dr. Bruce,—ignorant of what
or who I am.”
Miss Ross kept her counsel about the girl’s flight, hoping there still
might be a turn to her own advantage. As Mme. Adamanti continued to talk
about her child with a strange, embittered curiosity, Doctor Bruce came
in with the lawyer, and Belle retired.
The will was soon prepared, but Mme. Adamanti experienced great
difficulty in signing her name. When all was ready she summoned Miss
Ross to bring ‘Kitty.’
“She must know you as her benefactor, Dr. Bruce, without a hint that the
bounty comes from me.—Well where is Kitty?” she demanded when Miss Ross
entered alone.
Bell was half abashed, half defiant.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simply that the girl is not in the house. She has run away.”
Again Lady Clare raised herself to a sitting posture and glared wildly
about, wringing her hands.
“Gone? Gone! You have fooled me, then? Begone yourself and never let me
see your face again. But you will find her, Dr. Bruce? Go now and look
for her—go at once;—find her if you hope for mercy! Oh, devils! vipers!
to betray the innocent. Find her or the curse of God shall pursue——”
She gasped and sank back. At that moment her doctor entered. Surprised
by the unwonted scene he hurried to the bedside and involuntarily seized
the wrist of his patient. A gesture from Doctor Bruce reassured him and
the silence was only broken by the death-moan of the sufferer.
Suddenly the watchers were startled by a ring at the front door bell.
Jerry knew that his mistress was dying and opened the door noiselessly.
“I have a warrant to search this house for one Hagar Taine, and to
arrest the keeper, Clare Adamanti.”
It was a Captain of the Military police who spoke, and a squad of armed
men were with him.
“Hush!” said Jerry softly and bursting into tears. “She is dying.”
“And the girl?”
“Has fled.”