AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
Three days later Lady Linton received a letter from her brother, giving
the particulars of his cousin’s accident. He had been riding from
Chester to Middlewich, when his horse became frightened at some object
by the roadside, and Mr. Heath, not being sufficiently on his guard, had
been thrown, suffering the fracture of two ribs, a broken arm, and, it
was feared, some internal injury besides. He was in a very critical
state at the time of Sir William’s writing, and the latter said he
should not think of returning to London until assured that his kinsman
was out of danger.
“Thank fortune!” Lady Linton breathed, most fervently. “Of course,” she
added, a guilty flush rising to her forehead as she suddenly realized
how heartless her expression sounded, “of course, I do not mean that I
am thankful to have Cousin William suffer such injuries, but I am
immeasurably relieved to have my brother called away just at this time,
and the longer he stays, the better I shall be pleased.”
She heard nothing more for a week, when there came another letter
stating that Mr. Heath was slightly improved, but still unable to be
moved, and quite a sufferer. There were some more particulars, too,
regarding the accident.
Lord Norton, an aged friend of the Duke of Falmouth—the nobleman to whom
Mr. Heath was private secretary—was very ill, and he had sent for his
grace to confide to him a historical work upon which he had been engaged
for more than two years. It was nearly completed, only a few more
chapters to be copied, and Lord Norton, feeling that he should not live
to see it published, desired his friend to take charge of it, finish it,
and secure its publication.
The duke readily consented to put the work through; but, as his eyesight
would not permit him to do very much in the way of either reading or
writing, he suggested that his secretary, Mr. Heath, who was eminently
qualified, should get it ready for press, and he himself would attend to
its publication.
Lord Norton was pleased with this proposition, and Mr. Heath consented
to take hold of the book at once, hoping to complete the copying while
his lordship’s strength endured to oversee the work and make important
suggestions for his benefit.
Of course, this necessitated numerous visits to the invalid, and it was
while returning from one of these that Mr. Heath’s horse took fright,
causing the accident and putting a stop to the project which lay so near
the old lord’s heart.
Sir William wrote that the disappointment of both the Duke of Falmouth
and Lord Norton was so great that he had himself offered to take his
cousin’s place and finish the copying of the book, while he remained at
Middlewich in attendance upon his injured relative and his family.
Lady Linton was jubilant after receiving this letter, for it was evident
that Sir William would be detained at Middlewich for quite a while;
meantime she would exert all the cunning of which she was mistress to
ruin the woman whom she both feared and hated, and thus plant an
insurmountable barrier between Rupert and his beautiful _fiancée_.
With this mad scheme in mind, she ascertained Mrs. Alexander’s address,
and boldly went one morning to face her enemy in her own domain.
But she was bitterly disappointed to learn that she was not in town. She
was away on a little trip, the landlady told her; she might be gone a
week longer; she might not return even at the end of that time. “The
rooms were paid for in advance for three months, so the woman had not
asked when they would return, nor whither they were going, but she had
heard the young lady say something about a visit to Edinburgh; possibly
they had gone there.”
So Lady Linton had to rest on her belligerent oars for a season, though
she resolved to be on the alert to act as soon as Mrs. Alexander and her
daughter should return.
A couple of weeks later she went one morning to do some shopping for
Lillian on Oxford street, and just as she was about to enter a
fashionable furnishing store the door opened, a lady came out, and—she
stood face to face once more with Mrs. Alexander.
An angry red suffused Lady Linton’s face, an ominous flash lighted her
cold, gray eyes.
“Ah! so you have returned,” she said, sharply, and planting herself
directly in the path of her foe.
She was looking very lovely—so lovely, indeed, that her ladyship
marveled at her beauty. She wore a black silk dress, simply made, but of
richest texture, an elegant mantle of black velvet heavily trimmed with
jet, a bonnet of the same material, relieved by three graceful ostrich
tips of cream-white; and the dainty affair was bewitchingly becoming;
her hands were faultlessly gloved, and a single half-blown Lamargue rose
had been drawn into one of the fastenings of her mantle, its pale yellow
petals nestling lovingly among the rich folds of velvet. There was the
daintiest bloom on her cheeks, her eyes were bright, her whole face
animated, and she was a woman to attract admiring attention wherever she
went.
Lady Linton congratulated herself that her brother was far from London,
for she well knew that it would need but one glance at this beautiful
picture to bring him a hopeless captive to her feet once more.
Mrs. Alexander slightly raised her brows at her ladyship’s abrupt manner
of address, bowed politely, and would have passed on, but the other laid
a detaining hand upon her arm, and drew her into a little vestibule just
inside the door.
“I want to speak to you,” she said, authoritatively.
“Certainly; I am at your service, Lady Linton,” was the quiet, lady-like
reply, and Virgie’s full, blue eyes looked calmly down upon the sallow
countenance before her, as she waited to learn why she had been so
unceremoniously detained.
“Why have you come to London?” Lady Linton inquired, brusquely.
Mrs. Alexander drew herself up a trifle, and hesitated a moment before
replying; then she said, gravely:
“Partly upon business; partly for health.”
“Health!” scornfully repeated Lady Linton, with a quick upward glance
into that beautiful, blooming face.
A musical laugh rippled over Mrs. Alexander’s lips, and she flushed an
exquisite color; for both glance and emphasis, although not so intended,
were a marked compliment to her appearance.
“You think I do not need to go anywhere in search of health,” she
observed. “That is true, just now, although I was far from well when I
left America.”
“What is your ‘business’ here?” demanded her companion, ignoring her
reply.
“Really, Lady Linton,” Mrs. Alexander returned, coldly, “I do not know
as I feel obliged to explain that to you just yet.”
“Just yet!” repeated the other, with a sudden heart-bound. “What am I to
understand by that?”
“Just what you choose, Lady Linton.”
“Is your ‘business’ connected in any way with that threat which you made
in my presence more than eight years ago?”
“Ah! then you have not forgotten what happened more than eight years
ago?”
Lady Linton colored angrily.
“I could almost wish that I had died then, rather than that you should
have saved me!” she said, passionately.
“Why?”
Gravely, almost solemnly, the brief inquiry was made.
“Because I hate you! You came between me and some of my brightest hopes.
Because you——”
“No, it is not wholly that,” Virgie interposed quietly, while her grave,
beautiful eyes searched Lady Linton’s face, with something of pity in
them: “It is because you have injured me, and one is apt to dislike and
shrink from another whom one has wronged.”
“How have I wronged you?” demanded Lady Linton, in a startled tone, and
wondering how much the woman knew.
“I do not need to tell you. Your own conscience needs no other accuser
than itself,” was the calm reply. “But it would have been far better had
your ladyship constituted yourself my friend instead of my enemy.”
“I could never be your friend. I shall be your foe to the bitter end,
and it was to warn you of this that I detained you to-day. If you have
come to London with the intention of thrusting yourself and your
daughter upon my brother, let me tell you to beware! You are a divorced
woman; you have no claim whatever upon Sir William Heath, and your child
shall never be acknowledged by his name. I have vowed this, and I mean
it. You may think it all an idle threat, but if you are in London one
month from to-day it will be at your peril. I will ruin you. I will so
shame and humiliate you that you will be glad to hide yourself from all
who know you. I will do even worse if need be. Nothing shall hinder me
from making sure work this time.”
She was actually hoarse with passion as she concluded.
“This time, Lady Linton? Then it was your work that other time. You
acknowledge it?” said Mrs. Alexander, in a calm tone, and without a
trace of excitement in either face or manner.
She was as unruffled as when Lady Linton first met her; she had not even
lost a vestige of color. All the change that was visible in her was a
half-sorrowful light in her beautiful blue eyes, a grave, pitiful
expression about her mouth.
Lady Linton saw instantly that she had made a mistake; in her anger and
hatred she had admitted more than was wise or prudent, and she grew very
pale.
“I acknowledge nothing; I only warn you,” she said, almost fiercely.
“Lady Linton,” her companion answered composedly, “your threats do not
move me; they cannot hurt me, and I fear they will but recoil upon your
own head. Believe me, I would much rather be upon friendly terms with
you. I feel more like forgiving the injuries of the past than cherishing
hostile feelings. I could even at this moment take your hand—the hand
that wrote such cruel things of me so many years ago—and say, ‘Let us be
at peace;’ but you will not, and I must go my way and leave you to go
yours, hoping that before it is too late for repentance to avail you
anything, a better spirit may possess you.”
“You defy me then?” said Lady Linton, through tightly closed teeth.
“Oh, no; I do not defy you,” was the pleasant rejoinder. “You are very
angry, Lady Linton, because I will not allow myself to be frightened and
browbeaten by you, but you will feel differently by and by when you come
to consider matters in another light. I would rather do you a kindness
than harm, and, by the way, I have a package belonging to you which I
mean to return to you very soon.”
“A package belonging to me! Where did you get it?”
“It is one that I have had many years, but I have only recently
discovered that it is yours.”
“It is impossible that you can have anything of mine,” returned Lady
Linton, coldly.
Her companion smiled slightly, then said:
“An uncle of mine was returning from the far East some twelve or
thirteen years ago, and, on his way from London to Edinburgh, rode in
the same railway carriage with a lady who got out at one of the way
stations. He never knew which station it was, for he had fallen asleep
shortly after leaving London, and when he awoke she was gone. He found a
package, however, which she had dropped and which he could not return,
because there was no name upon it, therefore he was forced to take it
home to America with him. He confided it to me on his death-bed with the
injunction to return it to the owner if I should ever be so fortunate as
to meet her. I discovered on the evening of our meeting at Lady
Dunforth’s that you were the owner.”
“I assure you that you are mistaken. I never lost a package in a railway
carriage,” returned Lady Linton, haughtily.
“No, but a friend to whom you confided it, lost it.”
“What—who?” demanded her ladyship, with a start.
“The way I learned that it belonged to you,” Mrs. Alexander resumed,
“was by observing upon the panel of your carriage door, as I left Lady
Dunforth’s that evening, the Linton coat of arms. The seal upon the
package of which I speak is stamped with a shield bearing a patriarchal
cross and the motto ‘_Droit et Loyal_,’ and there is also written upon
the wrapper this sentence, ‘To be destroyed unopened in the event of my
death.’”
Lady Linton had shrunk back appalled during this description, and now
stood leaning against the wall, white, trembling while great beads of
perspiration stood about her mouth and on her forehead.
“Great heavens! have you got that?” at last burst from her quivering
lips, in a tone or horror.
“Yes! it is a singular coincidence, is it not?” inquired her companion,
serenely. “However, I will return it to you very soon. And now,
good-morning, Lady Linton. This will be a very busy day for me, and I
must not tarry longer.”
With these words, Virginia Alexander swept by the stricken woman with a
courteous inclination of her head, and went on her way, apparently
unruffled by anything that had occurred during the spirited interview
with her sworn enemy, Sir William Heath’s sister.
Lady Linton stood for a moment or two utterly motionless, almost
paralyzed by the startling revelations which her brother’s former wife
had just made to her, and then she, too, tottered from the place,
murmuring:
“To think that she, of all persons, should have had that during these
years! What a fool I have been! But,” she continued, with an ominous
glitter in her steely eyes, “the die is cast—it will now take desperate
measures indeed to secure my own safety and accomplish her defeat.”
She returned directly home, for she had neither the strength nor the
heart to purchase fashionable gewgaws for Lillian; at least until she
had recovered somewhat from the shock she had just received.
Upon her arrival she found still another letter from Sir William
awaiting her, and one which filled her with astonishment and put an
entirely different aspect upon the future, while a portion, at least, of
its contents was calculated to electrify his whole household as well as
society at large.