"WOULD YOU DARE BE FALSE TO ME, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS?"
With her exquisite robe trailing unheeded after her, Anna Goddard
swept swiftly down the hall and rapped imperatively upon the door of
her husband's room.
There was no answer from within.
She tried the handle. The door would not yield--it was locked on the
inside.
"Gerald, are you in bed?" his wife inquired, putting her lips to the
crack and speaking low.
"What do you wish, Anna?" the man questioned.
"I wish to see you--I must speak with you, even if you have retired,"
she returned, imperatively.
There was a slight movement within the room, then the door was thrown
open, and Gerald Goddard stood before her.
But she shrank back almost immediately, a low exclamation of surprise
escaping her as she saw his face, so white, so pain-drawn, and
haggard.
"Gerald! what is the matter?" she demanded, forgetting, for the
moment, her own anger and even her errand there, in the anxiety which
she experienced for him.
"I am feeling quite well, Anna," he responded, in a mechanical tone.
"What is it you wish to say to me?"
Sweeping into the room, she closed the door after her, then confronted
him with accusing mien.
"What do I wish to say to you?" she repeated, her voice quivering with
passion, her eyes blazing with a fierce expression. "I want that paper
which you have stolen from me."
"I--I do not understand you, Anna," the man began, in a pre-occupied
manner. "What paper--what--"
"I will bear no trifling," she passionately cried, interrupting him.
"You know very well what paper I refer to--I never had but one
document in my possession in which you had any interest; the one you
have so beset me about during the last few weeks."
"That?" exclaimed the man, at last aroused from the apathy which had
hitherto seemed to possess him.
"That!" retorted his companion, mockingly imitating his tone, "as if
you did not very well know it was 'that,' and no other. Gerald
Goddard, I have come to demand it of you," she went on shrilly. "You
have no right to enter my rooms, like a thief, and steal my treasures!
I--"
"Anna, be still!" commanded her husband, sternly. "You are losing
control of yourself, and some of our guests may overhear you. I know
nothing of the document."
"You lie!" hissed the woman, almost beside herself with mingled rage
and fear. "Who, but you, could have any interest in the thing? who,
save you, even knew of its existence, or that it had ever been in my
possession? Give it back to me! I will have it! It's my only
safeguard. You knew it, and you have stolen it, to make yourself
independent of me."
"Anna, you shall not demean either yourself or me by giving expression
to such unjust suspicions," Gerald Goddard returned with cold dignity.
"I swear to you that I do not know anything about the paper. I have
not even once laid my eyes upon it since you stole it from me. If it
has been taken from the place where you have kept it concealed," he
went on, "then other hands than mine have been guilty of the theft."
There was the ring of truth in his words, and she was forced to
believe him; yet there was a mystery about the affair which was beyond
her fathoming.
"Then who could have taken it," she gasped, growing ghastly white at
the thought of there being a third party to their secret--"who on
earth has done this thing?"
Gerald Goddard was silent. He had his suspicions, suspicions that made
him quake inwardly, as he thought of what might be the outcome of them
if they should prove to be true.
"Gerald, why do you not answer me?" his companion impatiently
demanded. "Can you think of any one who would be likely to rob us in
this way?"
"Have you no suspicion, Anna?" the man asked, and looking gravely into
her eyes. "Was there no one among your guests to-night, who--"
"Who--what--!" she cried, as he faltered and stopped.
"Was there no one present who made you think of--of some one whom
you--have known in the--the past?"
"Ha! do you refer to Mrs. Stewart?" said madam. "Did you also notice
the--resemblance?"
"Could any one help it?--could any one ever mistake those eyes?
Anna--she was Isabel herself!"
"No--no!" she panted wildly, "she may be some relative. Are you losing
your mind? Isabel is--dead."
"She lives!"
"I tell you no! I--saw her dead."
"You? How could that be possible?" exclaimed Mr. Goddard, in
astonishment. "We were both in Florence at the time of that tragedy."
"Nevertheless, I saw her dead and in her coffin," persisted his
companion, with positive emphasis.
"Now you talk as if you were losing your mind," he answered, with
white lips.
"I am not. Do you not remember I told you one morning, I was going to
spend a couple of days with a friend at Fiesole?"
"Yes."
"Well, I had read of that tragedy that very day, and then hid the
paper, but I did not go to Fiesole at all. I took the first train for
Rome."
"Anna!"
"I wanted to be sure," she cried, excitedly. "I was jealous of her,
I--hated her; and I knew that if the report was true I should be at
rest. I went to the place where they had taken her. Some one had cared
for her very tenderly--she lay as if asleep, and looked like a
beautiful piece of sculpture in her white robe; one could hardly
believe that she was--dead. But they told me they were going to--to
bury her that afternoon unless some one came to claim her. They asked
me if I had known her--if she was a friend of mine. I told them
no--she was nothing to me; I had simply come out of curiosity, having
seen the story of her tragic end in a paper. Then I took the next
train back to Florence."
"Why have you never told me this before, Anna?" Gerald Goddard
inquired, with lips that were perfectly colorless, while he laid his
hand upon the back of a chair for support.
"Why?" she flashed out jealously at him. "Why should I talk of her to
you? She was dead--she could never come between us, and I wished to
put her entirely out of my mind, since I had satisfied myself of the
fact."
"Did--did you hear anything of--of--"
"Of the child? No; all I ever knew was what you yourself read in the
paper--that both mother and child had disappeared from their home and
both were supposed to have suffered the same fate, although the body
of the child was not found."
"Oh!" groaned Gerald Goddard, wiping the clammy moisture from his
brow. "I never realized the horror of it as I do at this moment, and I
never have forgiven myself for not going to Rome to institute a search
for myself; but--"
"But I wouldn't let you, I suppose you were about to add," said madam,
bitterly. "What was the use?" she went on, angrily. "Everything was
all over before you knew anything about it--"
"I could at least have erected a tablet to mark her resting-place,"
the man interposed.
"Ha! ha! it strikes me it was rather late then to manifest much
sentiment; that would have become you better before you broke her
heart and killed her by your neglect and desertion," sneered madam,
who was driven to the verge of despair by this late exhibition of
regard for a woman whom she had hated.
"Don't, Anna!" he cried, sharply. Then suddenly straightening himself,
he said, as if just awaking from some horrible nightmare: "But she did
not die. I have not that on my conscience, after all."
"She did--I tell you she did!" hoarsely retorted the excited woman.
"But I have seen and talked with her to-night, and she told me that
she was--Isabel!" he persisted.
Anna Goddard struck her palms together with a gesture bordering upon
despair.
"I do not believe it--I will not believe it!" she panted.
"He began to pity her, for he also was beginning to realize that, if
Isabel Stewart were really the woman whom he had wronged more than
twenty years previous, her situation was indeed deplorable.
"Anna," he said, gravely, and speaking with more calmness and
gentleness than at any time during the interview, "this is a stern
fact, and--we must look it in the face."
His tone and manner carried conviction to her heart.
She sank crouching at his feet, bowing her face upon her hands.
"Gerald! Gerald! it must not be so!" she wailed. "It is only some
cunning story invented to cheat us and avenge her. That woman shall
never separate us--I will never yield to her. Oh, Heaven! why did I
not destroy that paper when I had it? Gerald, give it to me now, if
you have it; it is not too late to burn it even now, and no one can
prove the truth--we can defy her to the last."
The man stooped to raise her from her humiliating position.
"Get up, Anna," he said, kindly. "Come, sit in this chair and let us
talk the matter over calmly. It is a stern fact that Isabel is alive
and well, and it is useless either to ignore it or deplore it."
With shivering sobs bursting from her with every breath, the wretched
woman allowed herself to be helped to the chair, into which she sank
with an air of abject despair.
Anna Goddard's was not a nature likely to readily yield to humiliation
or defeat, and after a few moments of silent battle with herself, she
raised her head and turned her proud face and searching eyes upon her
companion.
"You say that it is a 'stern fact' that Isabel lives," she remarked,
with compressed lips.
"I am sure--there can be no mistake," the man replied. Then he told
her of the interview which had occurred in the hall, where he had
found the woman standing before the picture which he had painted in
Rome so many years ago.
"She recognized it at once," he said; "she located the very spot from
which I had painted the scene."
"Oh, I cannot make it seem possible, for I tell you I saw her lying
dead in her casket," moaned madam, who, even in the face of all
proofs, could not bring herself to believe that her old rival was
living and had it in her power to ruin her life.
"She must have been in a trance--she must have been resuscitated by
those people who found her. As sure as you and I both live, she is
living also," Mr. Goddard solemnly responded.
"Oh, how could such a thing be?"
"I do not know--she did not tell me; she was very cold and proud."
"What was she doing here? How dared she enter this house?" cried
madam, her anger blazing up again.
"I cannot tell you. It was a question I was asking myself just as you
came to the door," said Mr. Goddard, with a sigh. "I have no doubt she
had some deep-laid purpose, however."
"Do you imagine her purpose was to get possession of that document?"
questioned madam.
"I had thought of that--I have felt almost sure of it since you told
me it had disappeared."
"But how could she have known that such a paper was in our possession?
You did not receive it until long after--"
"Yes, I know," interposed Mr. Goddard, with a shiver; "nevertheless I
am impressed that it is now in her possession, even though I did not
suppose that any one, save you and I and Will Forsyth, ever knew of
its existence."
There ensued an interval of silence, during which both appeared to be
absorbed in deep thought.
"If she has it, what will she do with it?" madam suddenly questioned,
lifting her heavy eyes to her companion.
"I am sure I cannot tell, Anna," he coldly returned.
His tone was like a match applied to powder.
"Well, then, what will you do, Gerald Goddard, in view of the fact, as
you believe, that she is alive and has learned the truth?" she
imperiously demanded.
"I--I do not think it will be wise for us to discuss that point just
at present," he faltered.
"Coward! Is that your answer to me after twenty years of adoration and
devotion?" cried the enraged woman, springing excitedly to her feet,
the look of a slumbering demon in her dusky eyes.
"After twenty years of jealousy, bickering, and turmoil, you should
have said, Anna," was the bitter response.
"Beware! Beware, Gerald! I have hot blood in my veins, as you very
well know," was the menacing retort.
"I have long had a proof of that," he returned, with quiet irony.
"Oh!" she cried, putting up her hand as if to ward off a blow, "you
are cruel to me." Then, with sudden passion, she added: "Perhaps,
after all, that document is in your possession--or at least that you
know something about it."
"I only wish your surmise were correct, Anna; for, in that case, I
should have no cause to fear her," said Mr. Goddard, gravely.
"Ha! Even you do 'fear' her?" cried madam, eagerly. "In what way?"
"Can you not see? If she has gained possession of the paper, she has
it in her power to do both of us irreparable harm," the gentleman
explained.
Anna Goddard shivered.
"Yes, yes," she moaned, "she could make society ring with our
names--she could ruin us, socially; but"--shooting a stealthy glance
at her companion, who sat with bowed head and clouded brow--"I could
better bear that than that she should assert a claim upon you--that
she should use her power to--to separate us. She shall not, Gerald!"
she went on, passionately; "there are other countries where you and I
can go and be happy, utterly indifferent to what she may do here."
The man made no reply to these words--he was apparently absorbed in
his own thoughts.
"Gerald! have you nothing to say to me?" madam sharply cried, after
watching him for a full minute.
"What can I say, Anna? There is nothing that either of us can do but
await further developments," the man returned, but careful to keep to
himself the fact that he had an appointment with the woman whom she so
feared and hated.
"Would you dare to be false to me, after all these years?" his
companion demanded, in repressed tones, and leaning toward him with
flaming eyes.
"Pshaw, Anna! what a senseless question," he replied, with a forced
laugh.
"But you admire--you think her very beautiful?" she questioned,
eagerly.
"Why, that is a self-evident fact--every one must admit that she is a
fine-looking woman," was the somewhat evasive response.
Anna Goddard sprang to her feet, her face scarlet.
"You will be very careful what you do, Gerald," she hissed. "I have
never had overmuch confidence in you, in spite of my love for you; but
there is one thing that I will not bear, at this late day, and that
is, that you should turn traitor to me; so be warned in time."
She did not wait to see what effect her words would have upon him,
but, turning abruptly, swept from the room, leaving him to his own
reflections.