Presently the house-maid put her head in at the door, giving Jewel a
violent start.
"Has the doctor come?" she asked.
"No, miss; but me and the cook thinks we had better carry Miss Flower
upstairs and put her to bed," Tibbie replied, with a compassionate look
at the silent form upon the floor.
Jewel frowned and considered a moment, then gave her assent to the plan.
Then she added:
"When you come down, you had better lock the door, as she might try
to run away. In fact, she was about to do so this evening, but mamma
prevented her. Although she has proved so bad, and disgraced the
family, we intend to keep her at home and take care of her."
The kind-hearted Tibbie murmured an approval of this kindness, and
with the cook's assistance, soon had Flower undressed and placed in
bed. Then seeing that she was still in a dazed and half-unconscious
condition, and either unable or disinclined to speak, they shaded the
lamp and withdrew, locking the door as ordered, and giving the key to
the triumphant Jewel.
In the meantime the physician arrived and pronounced Mrs. Fielding
temporarily insane.
"I will leave soothing medicine for her, and I will send two nurses
from town, for she will have violent paroxysms, and it will take at
least two people to restrain her from doing harm to herself or others,"
he said, and took leave, wondering at the coolness and self-command of
this beautiful young girl, whose bright eyes were not dimmed by a tear,
as he explained to her the terrible condition of her mother.
He would have been more surprised if he could have read the thoughts of
that vindictive heart.
"So she is really insane!" she said to herself. "I am glad of that.
There will be no one now to interfere with my plans for Flower. It is
true she would have killed her if she had been let alone, but I do not
want her to die yet. I want her to live and wither under the shame of
her birth, and under the agony of her desertion by Laurie Meredith. I
will torment her as much as I can until the child is born, then I hope
she will die, and the brat, too, so that when Laurie Meredith comes
back I can have the pleasure of telling him that they are dead, and
showing him their graves."
Her passionate, jealous love for handsome Laurie Meredith was mixed
with hate now, and she delighted in stabbing his heart as he had
stabbed hers when he turned from her dark, dazzling charms to her
sister's fair, angelic beauty.
Going to her room, she unlocked her trunk and took out some papers,
over which she gloated with fierce delight.
"Although I long for power and gold, millions could not buy these
from me, for my sweet revenge is better than gold! Ah, how cleverly
I parted them! They outwitted me when they managed to steal away and
get married, but I've kept them apart ever since, I've made them pay
dearly for their temerity!" she cried, exultantly.
The papers she held were the half-burned diary of Charley Fielding,
the marriage-certificate and card she had stolen from Flower's desk,
and the note she had intercepted on its way to Flower, together with
several letters that Laurie Meredith had written to his wife since his
departure, and which, through Jewel's clever plotting, she had failed
to receive.
She pressed them in her hands, gloating over them with more delight
than a ball-room belle would have done over the most priceless
diamonds, for they represented the power she thirsted for so
ardently--the power to torment those whom she hated.
She cared nothing for the fact, that in spite of all that had come and
gone, poor, unhappy Flower was her half-sister still. She only knew
that ever since the fatal hour when Laurie Meredith had made choice
between them she had hated the blue-eyed, golden-haired beauty with a
jealous fury that was as pitiless as death.
She thought she was a very clever girl, she had managed everything so
adroitly. In the first place, she had bribed Sam to give her Flower's
letter that night, and to take back a reply from herself. She had found
out from that letter that Flower was Laurie Meredith's wife, that she
was going away with him, and that a telegram had called him away one
day sooner, causing him to write to Flower to come at once to him, as
he must be far on his way north before the next night, which was set as
the time for them to leave.
In that sudden emergency Jewel's keen wits served her well. She
remembered that her handwriting was so similar to her sister's that few
could tell them apart, so she decided upon a bold step. She wrote to
Laurie Meredith in his wife's name, declaring that she had changed her
mind about going with him, that she could not bring herself to leave
her mother and sister, but that she would be his true and faithful
wife, and wait for him until he came back from Germany.
The young husband was most bitterly disappointed, but the telegram
that summoned him to a parent's sick-bed admitted of no delay. He went
without Flower, but he wrote to her very soon from his Northern home,
entreating her to reconsider her determination and join him there.
Jewel had a fervent admirer in the person of the post-office clerk.
By cleverly playing on his vanity she induced him to let her have
Flower's letters, and each one she answered briefly, by denying Laurie
Meredith's wish and indulging in weak regrets over the haste with which
she had wedded him, lamenting lest her mother should find out her folly
and withhold forgiveness.
So it was that not one of those loving letters, for which Flower would
have given her very life, ever reached her, and Jewel sat here gloating
over their possession, while in the very next room poor little Flower
lay upon her sleepless bed, an image of despair, wondering if it could
be true all that Jewel had told her--that she was a child of shame,
her mother a bad, wicked woman, and her father a sinful wretch who had
broken the hearts of both her mother and Jewel's.