“Let us go to your aunt now, Cora,” repeated Frank impatiently, and
though her anger blazed at his coldness, she dared not give rein to it
lest she lose him forever.
With a deep, quivering sigh she slipped her arm through his, and led
him upstairs to the elegant suite of apartments where her aunt lay
dying.
In an exquisite apartment furnished with Oriental magnificence, and
sweet with the breath of roses in golden jardinières, while a soft,
pearly light was diffused over everything by burning wax lights, Mrs.
Dalrymple lay faintly breathing on a low, white couch, wrapped in a
rich, white cashmere gown, girdled at the waist by a golden cord, her
long, luxuriant tresses floating loose in ebon blackness over the
pillow.
When Cora entered the room she led Frank Laurier straight to the couch,
saying gently:
“Are you asleep, Aunt Verna? Here is Frank come to see you.”
At these words her eyes opened with a transient gleam of interest, and
her white hand fluttered toward him while she murmured:
“I am glad to see you, Frank. You were always one of my favorites.”
He pressed her hand warmly, uttering words of deep sympathy as he sank
into the chair the maid placed for him, then a slight pause ensued.
Mrs. Dalrymple’s eyes rested on the pair sitting side by side, and she
said, with gentle interest:
“You have been gone a long time, Frank. Have you had many adventures?”
“None but the burning of my ship in mid-ocean while returning,” he
replied, causing Cora to exclaim:
“Good heavens!”
Then he remembered that his betrothed had told him the doctors said
that something to take Mrs. Dalrymple’s thought from brooding on
herself might prove most beneficial, so he continued:
“You would find it quite a thrilling story if you were not too ill to
listen to the telling.”
She sighed softly. “I am a dying woman, Frank. The blight of weariness,
of ennui, of heart loneliness, has fallen on my life, and I am fading
from earth, yet I have still a little human interest left, and it will
not tire me to listen to your story.”
She had brightened perceptibly, this strange woman who lay there
sinking into death, not of any vital trouble, but merely of morbid
grief and despair that she could not quell.
So Frank plunged into the story of the _Atlanta’s_ burning, and, seeing
that her eyes rested on him with gentle interest, he told it in most
eloquent fashion, dwelling at length on the beautiful girl he had
rescued.
The invalid’s eyes brightened with interest, while a faint pink crept
into her waxen cheek, but presently Cora’s jealousy broke bounds, and
she exclaimed sharply.
“Pray tell us the name of this paragon of beauty--this bewitching
combination of dark eyes, dimples, rosy cheeks, and golden hair!”
A moment’s hesitation, and he answered frankly:
“Miss Jessie Lyndon!”
“Ah-h!”
The stifled cry came from Mrs. Dalrymple’s suddenly blanched lips, and
her dark eyes closed as if in death.
“You have killed her!” Cora cried to him angrily, but the maid came
and knelt by her mistress, chafing her cold hands till her eyes opened
again.
“I beg your pardon,” Frank began contritely, but she smiled faintly,
saying:
“That name gave me a shock, but I am better now, and I find your story
strangely interesting. Go on--tell me more of Jessie Lyndon.”
“There is no more to tell, except that I fear her father must, indeed,
have perished in the cruel sea, leaving the poor girl an orphan,” he
replied, wondering at the change that began to come over her, the quick
flush of color to cheeks and lips, the renewed luster of the fading,
eyes. She did not look like a dying woman, now, as she cried feverishly:
“Tell me all you know of Jessie Lyndon’s father!”
“Dear Aunt Verna, I fear this excitement must be very bad for you. Let
me take Frank away!” interposed Cora jealously.
“No, no, I am better--I--I--am interested. Let him stay and tell me
more of this interesting father and daughter,” her aunt faltered, and
with a smoldering flash in her dark eyes, Cora sank back into her
chair, while Frank answered:
“I know but little more to tell! Leon Lyndon, as he was called, was
a very reticent man, making no friends among the passengers, keeping
coldly aloof with a moody air like a man with a tragic past.”
“A tragic past! Well, and his looks? Was he dark or fair?”
“He was fair, with wavy, golden hair, slightly streaked with
gray--dark-blue eyes, and a fair mustache. In his youth he must have
been rarely handsome, but he could not be less than forty now.”
She cried out tremblingly:
“The very description of my divorced husband--the man that stole
Darling from me, and broke my heart. And the girl, was she like him,
tell me!”
Frank Laurier answered excitedly:
“She was the living picture of the dead Jessie Lyndon--the girl you
buried as your daughter.”
“Nonsense, Frank----” began Cora rebukingly, but at that moment a maid
appeared at the door, beckoning her away, and saying:
“There’s a young lady downstairs insisting on seeing Mrs. Dalrymple,
and I told her I would call you.”
“I will come,” Cora answered quickly, then, looking back at Frank,
“Please do not tell Aunt Verna any more startling stories while I am
gone.”
She vanished, and Frank looked back at the invalid in whom a startling
improvement had certainly taken place.
Motioning to the maid for some cordial that stood on the table, she
swallowed it eagerly, then said:
“Suzanne, you may go into the dressing room within call if I need you.”
The maid retired, and she turned a piteous gaze on Frank Laurier’s
sympathetic face.
“Oh, Frank, you have roused me to life again!” she moaned. “This story,
it actually thrills me with hope! Yet--yet--how foolish I am! How could
she be my daughter whose dead face I kissed in the coffin, whom I left
in the old family vault among the dead-and-gone Van Dorns? But, oh, if
I could only see her face! Do you think you can find her and bring her
to me to-morrow?”
“I will try,” he replied, but he knew it would be no easy task. It
seemed to him that Jessie Lyndon meant to hide herself from him.
She closed her eyes and lay still for a few moments, her bosom heaving
with excited gasps, the color coming and going on her wasted cheeks.
Then she clutched his hand with her cold, damp fingers, crying:
“I cannot die till I have seen this girl who has a face like my dead
child’s, Frank. Frank, I have a feverish fancy--perhaps a dying fancy!
But will you try to gratify it?”
“Indeed I will,” he replied heartily.
“Bend closer, let me whisper it--for I shouldn’t like Cora or Suzanne
to hear, and you will not betray me, will you?”
“Never, I promise you!”
“It is this: Go early to-morrow to the old family vault at Greenwood,
make the sexton open it, and look in that white casket and see if
Darling is still there, or--if her father has stolen her away and
brought her to life again.”
It was the strangest fancy he had ever heard, and it made him shudder
to think of that gruesome visit to the old Van Dorn vault, but we can
refuse nothing to the dying.
“I will do what you wish,” he answered, just in time, for Cora entered
at that moment, visibly nervous, but trying hard to conceal the signs
of a terrible agitation.
She glanced suspiciously from one to the other, crying:
“Aunt Verna, how excited you look. I fear you are much worse!”
“No, Cora, I feel strangely better, as if Frank’s visit had done me
much good.”
“It has done me much good, too--made me glad and happy! Oh, aunt, I
hope you will get well in time for our wedding next week,” cried Cora,
leaning a trembling hand on her betrothed’s shoulder.
“Next week!” he cried, with a start of dismay that Cora affected to
misunderstand.
“Yes, I have arranged to have it next week, for what is the use of
any further delay? We have waited long enough, you and I, for our
happiness, have we not, dear? So everything is ready for our wedding
and flitting next week. And because Aunt Verna is sick it shall be the
quietest sort of a ceremony--no wedding breakfast, nor excitement--just
a few friends for witnesses, and the marriage in my traveling
gown--then the bridal tour. I have even planned that. We will go to
California. Shall you not like that, dear?”
It made her furious that he grew so deadly pale, that he stammered,
when he tried to answer. She guessed with a sick heart that he would
get out of it all if he could.
“All for the sake of that hateful girl--that Jessie Lyndon, number two,
who has again come between me and happiness!” she thought bitterly.
She linked her hands in his arm and drew him away.
“Aunt Verna is tired now. Come away, and I will let you see her again
to-morrow,” she said coaxingly.
They went back to the drawing-room, and she sat down by his side on a
velvet fauteuil, still keeping her hands clasped in his arm.
But he sat by her pale and distrait, no pulse in his being answering to
her blandishments.
He was thinking, miserably:
“Next week! Next week! How under heaven can I get out of this
entanglement with honor to myself, and without scandal to Cora?”
He cried hoarsely, displeasedly, in his uncontrollable misery:
“Cora, why are you in such a hurry for the wedding?”
He felt the quick start she gave as she leaned against him, heard the
catch in her breath as she sobbed:
“Oh, you are cruel! Think how often it has been postponed, and--and--I
thought that you would be as impatient as I am! It--it--was Aunt Verna
who advised it. She said: ‘Do not keep the poor fellow waiting long,
Cora. No matter if I am sick, the marriage must not be postponed again!
You can be married very quietly and go away, and no one will think hard
of you, for you have suffered much and waited long!’ Oh, Frank, you
seem so cold, so indifferent? Do not tell me you love me no more. If
you tore that hope from me I should die here at your feet of my shame
and my despair!”
No man ever had a tenderer heart than Laurier.
When he heard those passionate words from Cora’s lips, when he saw the
burning tears in her dark eyes, he felt ashamed and remorseful that he
had let his heart wander from her and fixed it on another.
“Poor girl, she loves me well, and dare I risk the breaking of my troth
to her? She might be driven to suicide, and her death would lie at my
door,” he thought, in painful indecision that she clearly read with her
keen, feminine intuition.
She drooped sorrowfully before him, her hands clasped in a mute abandon
of despair, as she continued pathetically:
“If, indeed, you think I am hurrying up the wedding too much, I can
postpone it again, though it would indeed be evil-omened, a third
postponement. But I wish above all things to please you, my dearest. So
tell me what you wish. Shall it be two weeks hence, or a month?”
Frank felt like a contemptible wretch and villain, but he also knew she
was weaving a web for him from which he could not escape, in honor.
“Don’t fret any more, Cora! You need not postpone it a day longer than
you choose. I’m ready any time you are!”
“Then it shall be next week, as I had planned it, dearest. Must you go
so soon?” as he rose. “Good night”--lifting her face for his careless
kiss.