Did you ever observe the devilish glare in the eyes of a caged
hyena, the fiendish, cat-like grin upon his repulsive mouth when he
knows he is denied the prey he covets? There is no other animal in
captivity or out that has the same expression of countenance, the same
half-cringing, diabolical treachery both in face and the sidelong
movement of his body.
Just such an expression Jessica wore when Leith threw open the door
which separated him from her. There was no other egress from the room
than through that door or he would not have found her there; but she
came forward after a moment of profoundest silence throwing up her head
defiantly, the hateful grin receiving sound in a discordant laughter.
"Well," she exclaimed, lightly, approaching the mantel-shelf carelessly
and taking up the gloves she had thrown there, "I have played--and
lost. Others have done so before, better players than I, too, perhaps.
You think you will escape the crime you have committed? Ha! ha! A
forged telegram to a minion of the law is not a difficult thing, and
I shall know how to discover the forgery. My hand is not quite played
out, you see. Because Miss de Barryos loved the murderer of her former
lover is no reason why he should escape the punishment of his crime.
She has evidently been as anxious to pay out her money to have him
escape as she once was to secure his conviction, but even forged
telegrams are traceable, and I shall know where to find him when I want
him."
"You will not have far to look," said Leith quietly.
"If it were to the ends of the earth, I should find you and your
half-breed wife, your--"
"Silence!" exclaimed Leith, the first gleam of anger coming to his
eyes. "Not a word of disrespect to her. As for myself, I do not care.
You are so powerless as to be almost pitiable. I understand perfectly
the detestable part you have played--the false friend, endeavoring to
poison the mind of innocence, the serpent creeping through the grass at
nightfall in your effort to work harm and ruin. I have known all along
that you were striving to harm Miss de Barryos, from the very first day
that I met her under your disreputable roof."
Jessica laughed aloud--a laugh that would have slain had the power been
given her.
"You were not loath to visit it, in spite of its being disreputable!"
she exclaimed, sneeringly. "You never neglected an invitation. Where
was the first place you went upon your return from India? In whose box
did you linger longest at the opera? At whose side were you content to
sit from morning until night, until she came with her cursed Indian
beauty? Your vaunted virtue is of very recent birth! Do you forget
that I know the story of Lena Moore?"
"How dare you mention that name--here!" thundered Leith, the passion
of his tone frightening her. Then, remembering himself, he continued,
more quietly: "As you said but now, my dear Jessica, you have played
and lost. Why not retire gracefully from the table? You have done all
the harm you can. Even the shameless story you would have repeated but
now would not shake the faith of my promised wife--would not kill the
love she bears me. But I do not propose that you shall pollute her pure
ears with the story of a folly long since dead--the folly of a mere
boy in the hands of a designing woman--but one which ended before harm
was done. And now, go! Say to your mother that her ward is under the
protection of her betrothed husband, and safe. I should be inclined to
pity you but for the wrong done to this sweet and inoffensive child."
Jessica's lips curled scornfully.
"Pity me!" she repeated. "Why? Because you think I love you? Upon my
word, your vanity blinds you, indeed! It was only your money that I
craved--only the wealth with which you could surround me--only the
position in which you could have placed me. After all, it is not so
flattering to a man's vanity that it need incite his pity."
"And you would have married a murderer--gone into voluntary exile--for
wealth and position?"
It was rather a mean thing for him to say, when he knew so well that it
was only the excuse of a baffled woman; but it was very human, and he
was only that. There was a half-amused, half-disgusted smile upon his
lips that angered her more than a volume of words could have done. She
bit her lips to prevent the flow of demoniacal fury that possessed her,
then calmly drew on her gloves.
"Good-evening!" she exclaimed, carelessly. "When you have convinced
Carlita of the truth of your statement regarding Lena Moore, and have
succeeded in convincing the world that the forged telegram from Mexico
was genuine, then, perhaps, I may congratulate you; but until then I
shall reserve my good wishes for your future. It will not strengthen
the story you wish to palm upon the public that my mother's ward left
her roof for the shelter of yours before she became your wife, and that
privilege my mother will contest, as you may remember Carlita is not
yet of age."
Without so much as a glance toward Carlita, but with a stately bow in
Leith's direction, she opened the door from behind and stepped out
closing it upon herself.
Then she went downstairs swiftly, not waiting for the elevator, and
into the street, her eyes blinded, her brain in a seething whirl of
torturing madness.
Her turn had come at last!
She hailed a carriage and gave the address to the coachman
incoherently, then sprang in and closed the door upon herself, eager to
shut out the very sight of the world.
"Balked!" she muttered, fiercely. "Baffled just when success seemed
within my grasp! Curse them--curse them both! I have plotted and
planned for nothing. I have betrayed my unhappy mother into the power
of that wretch Meriaz, and what have I gained? Nothing! Nothing except
that he loves her more than ever. I have proven to him the very depth
and power of her love while striving to demonstrate mine. I have placed
her upon the very pinnacle I would have given my soul to occupy. And
what have I gained? His hatred--his contempt--his bitter loathing! I
have shut myself out from his presence eternally! And I loved him so!
My God! I loved him so!"
She covered her face with her hands, and a wild storm of weeping burst
from her, so overpowering that she did not know when the carriage had
stopped, did not know when the coachman climbed down from his box and
spoke to her, did not hear until he touched her lightly upon the arm.
She scarcely remembered afterward how it was she got into the house;
but she found her mother standing in the hall upon her entrance,
looking like a wraith, in her white gown, with her still whiter face
gleaming above it.
"Meriaz has come for his answer," she groaned, speaking the words
almost before the door had been closed upon her daughter--"Meriaz has
come for his answer! For the love of Heaven, tell me what I am to say?"
"Tell him," cried Jessica, bending forward, and curiously speaking
the words through her set teeth--"tell him that he lied! That Leith
Pierrepont is not guilty of murder! Tell him that news has come from
the South, and Leith is free! Tell him that which he knows but too
well, that it was his own daughter who was the murderess!"
No cry from the lips of woman ever equaled in mortal anguish that which
fell from Mrs. Chalmers. She staggered back against the wall, her eyes
wild in their insane rolling.
"His daughter!" she gasped. "Muriel Meriaz!"
"If that is her name," returned Jessica, sullenly. "You appear to
know her better than I. Yes, she is the murderess. But what is that
to you, or me, that you should turn the hue of death itself? What is
that to you, or me, that you should gasp and moan as if you yourself
were facing the gallows? We have lost our game; but I don't see why you
should agonize over the daughter of a scoundrel like that--a creature
whom you never saw; a--"
She was looking so intently at her mother that she did not see a man's
form come into the hall, did not know of his presence there until his
hard, iron fingers closed upon her arm; then she turned and looked
into the scowling face of Manuel Meriaz.
"Shut up!" he commanded, brutally. "You don't know what you are talking
about, my fine lady. I'll teach you some day to call your own father a
scoundrel. I'll teach you--"
"What are you saying?"
"That which is true. You never heard the story, did you? You thought
only that I was familiar with a small slice of the past history of
your family, but it never occurred to you that the Mexican whom you
detested, in spite of all your expressions to the contrary, was in
reality your own father. And this girl whom you have called a murderess
is your sister! Do you hear that, my girl?"
"You are mad--mad!" panted Jessica.
Meriaz laughed aloud.
"Look in your mother's face and see if I am mad. Look in her face and
ask her if I have lied. Look in her face and bid her tell you that I
am not your father. Aha! you dare not, because you know I have spoken
the truth. You are my daughter, and as such I propose that you shall be
regarded in the future. You understand?"
But Jessica did not reply. She stood there for a moment, looking
straight at him in a stunned, stupid silence; then, with never a word,
she walked by him and up the stairs without a glance in her mother's
direction, without a word of sympathy, without a thought for any one
save herself, and up to her own room.
She closed the door behind her, and stood with her back against it for
some time, then with a defiant gesture threw up her head and walked
swiftly to her writing desk. She sat down and wrote hurriedly:
"MY DEAR DUDLEY,--A week ago you asked me to be your wife--swore you
could not live without me. If it was the truth you spoke, if you
meant the vows you swore that day, answer this note in person. I
must see you at once.
"Ever faithfully,
"JESSICA."
She sealed it, the smile half triumphant, half defiant still lingering
upon her lips, called a messenger, and dispatched it at once to Dudley
Maltby.
"Tomorrow morning," she muttered, "the papers shall contain the
announcement of my marriage to the scion of one of the noblest houses
in all America. Leith Pierrepont shall see that his power to hurt me
was not so great as he thought, and I shall be saved from that beast,
Meriaz."
She did not consider what was to befall her mother, did not think
of her future at all, never even remembered her, but consumed the
time of the messenger's absence in planning what she should say to
Dudley Maltby, her lips curling with scorn as she imagined his joy at
receiving her message.
She smiled grimly as she saw the messenger returning with a note in his
hand, and received it with the calmest indifference, dismissing the boy
with a haughtily murmured:
"That will do!"
Then, when he had gone, she tore the envelope from the missive, pausing
to light a cigarette nonchalantly before she read it. She looked at it
quite calmly, but the expression of her face changed curiously as she
read:
"MY DEAR JESSICA,--You were wiser that day than I. I allowed my
passion to carry me away, never pausing to think of the future,
after the manner of all hot-headed lovers; but with your usual
clear-sightedness and brilliancy of intellect you foresaw what the
future would hold for us with barely ten thousand a year to drag us
through a monotonous existence, and you laughed at my earnestness.
You were quite right. Don't think for a moment that I am upbraiding
you. On the contrary, I realize that you have done us both a great
service, that the proposition I made would have been sheerest
madness. Of course I understand that pity for me prompted your kind
note, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart, but it is much
better that I should not see you just at present. Thanking you for
many happy hours in the past, believe me,
"Very cordially yours,
"DUDLEY MALTBY."
She tore it up without any show of indignation whatever, and threw it
into the waste basket, then rang for her maid.
"Is Manuel Meriaz still here?" she asked.
"No, ma'am," her maid replied. "He left half an hour ago, and--and--"
"Well?"
"He was arrested as he went down the stoop."
"Umph! I am going to my mother. She is in her room?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You may pack my clothing for a rather long absence, and tell Mathilde
to do the same for my mother. We leave on Wednesday for Paris."
Her maid's exclamation of surprise was lost upon her. She was looking
mechanically through the window.
"At least one fortunate thing has happened," she was musing. "But for
the arrest of Meriaz we might have had difficulty in getting away. Now
it will be quite easy. I shall require my mother's services, and so
silence concerning the past is best, I suppose. I shall only tell her
of the death of--of--this girl. If Dudley Maltby, my last hope, had not
failed me, I need never have seen her again, but now--"
A shrug of the shoulders, intended to convince herself of her
indifference, but failing signally, completed the sentence.