THE WORLD WELL LOST.
“Oh, how good you all have been to me, but I wish you had let me die
and go to heaven with dear old gran’ther! There is no place for little
Eva in all the wide, cruel world!” moaned the poor girl from among the
pillows, where she had lain for a week following her return to Weston.
She had met at least a welcome there, but she was ill and sinking with
fatigue, so she scarcely heeded anything. For a week they doubted if
she would live to take up the weary burden of her shadowed life again.
But they knew that she was cured of her mental illness--knew it well
without her pitiful remonstrances in the delirium of fever.
“Little Eva is not crazy now! Gran’ther has forgiven her, and she is
happy!”
Doctor Bertrand shrugged her shapely shoulders when the attendant told
her the tales of Eva’s violence she had heard at Stony Ledge.
“They were invented for the purpose of getting rid of her by her
heartless relations. They hated her for her beauty and sweetness!”
she said, for Doctor Rupert had confessed to her that he knew more of
little Eva than he seemed to at first.
He had visited once in that neighborhood, he said, and people had told
him how the young girl was domineered over by her selfish cousins, and
debarred from all the pleasures of youth, because they were jealous
of her beautiful face and winsome ways. He had seen her out riding
sometimes on Firefly, her pony, and she had looked to him the prettiest
thing alive. He knew that every young man in the country would have
liked to court her if he had had the chance.
“But she was never allowed to go with any of them, and as for Doctor
Ludington, who was said to be her lover, I have heard that she had
never spoken to him in her life,” he added.
“Then you have seen the young doctor? Was he handsome?” asked Doctor
Bertrand, quite as eagerly as any romantic young girl.
“Oh, men never think each other handsome!” he replied carelessly, with
an averted face that she might not notice the flush on his cheek.
Rupert Ludington had always secretly worshiped the lovely girl from her
childhood, without the slightest hope of ever dispelling the shadow
that lay between them--a gulf that had opened before he was born, and
continued to widen with the flight of years.
It had wrung his manly heart to hear the tales of how her cousins
treated her at Stony Ledge, and how barren of girlish pleasures they
made her young life. There were times when he had fairly raged over it
to himself, longing to bear her away to the love and happiness he felt
sure he could give her if she had but loved him in return.
But it was hopeless dreaming of such a thing, though for her sake he
would have been willing to renounce every relative he had on earth, and
go with her into exile forever.
It was with such thoughts that he had set about brightening the dull
monotony of Eva’s life.
“She is old enough to have a lover, but those cruel women would not
permit her to see a young man’s face if they could prevent it! Yet she
shall know that one true heart is all her own, in spite of them!” he
had vowed.
It was not very easy to carry out his plans, but he made friends with
Link in the very beginning, because no one had ever told that faithful
animal of the family vendetta. If he had been aware of it he would most
likely have devoured Doctor Ludington.
Link placated, the doctor had followed out his little schemes to make
Eva happy, finding their accomplishment simpler because his night
practice in the neighborhood often took him past Stony Ledge in the
“wee small hours,” when darkness covered his Romeo-like ascent to her
window.
Unconsciously, scarcely daring to hope for it, he had thus won
her love, and now that she was cast off by her family, a terrible
temptation beset him to win her for his own.
Not as Doctor Ludington, though, for he did not believe he could
overcome the race hatred. Besides, there was now another terrible
shadow between their hearts--the blood of her Cousin Terry on his hands!
If he won her, it must be at the price of eternal renunciation of his
family and name, but for such a prize he could count the world well
lost.