Whenever a jealous woman is looking for something with which to feed the
green-eyed monster, she usually finds it, or imagines she does, which
amounts to the same thing. It was so with Nadine.
No one mentioned to Nadine the fact that Jessie was betrothed to Jack
Garner. Even had she heard it, she would not have believed it. She would
have imagined that it was a falsehood made up for her benefit.
She could not endure the kindly looks he gave Jessie, nor endure to see
him bend over her, raise her from her pillow, and, while one strong arm
supported her, coax her to take her medicine.
Such sights as these were more terrible for Nadine to endure than the
pangs of death; and for hours afterward she would feel an almost
uncontrollable desire to strangle the sick girl.
In Nadine's heart there rose a mad wish that Jessie would die before
Harry Kendal became too fond of her.
While Jessie slept and she was not buried in the depths of a newspaper
to kill time, she would be brooding over this subject: If Jessie Staples
would only die!
One day, while in this morbid mood, her eyes fell upon a fatal paragraph
that riveted her attention with breathless interest.
It spoke of the death of a once noted court beauty who had been in her
time the toast of all Europe. Men had fought duels for her sake, and
courtiers thought it a great honor to risk life and limb to do her
bidding, being repaid by only a smile or one glance from her wine-dark
eyes.
It happened that while riding about in her pony-cart she had, by chance,
one day encountered a poor tradesman's son who had stopped by a brook at
which her own horse was slaking his thirst, to give his steed a drink.
One glance at the fair, handsome Saxon face, and the girl who had
laughed to scorn full many a lover, felt her heart going from her
keeping to this bonny stranger.
Although he was poor--only a tradesman's son--and she had wealth untold,
yet the beauty was not fair in his eyes.
He passed her by with only a gracious bow, as any courtier might, for he
was in a hurry to reach the side of his beloved Gretchen. She was only a
peasant maid, but in his eyes she was more beautiful than a queen.
He loved the pretty Gretchen with all his heart.
When my lady came to inquire about him, and learned he had a pretty
little sweetheart, she grew very wroth, but she said never a word.
On that day she sent for Gretchen, and employed her as her maid. But
from that hour there was a change in Gretchen's life.
Slowly but surely she faded, although her distracted lover did
everything in his power to prolong the life of the maid he loved.
In the early spring-time, while robins sang and the trees put forth
their blossoms, he gazed his last on all that was mortal of poor
Gretchen.
The great lady tried her best to comfort Gretchen's lover, but he would
not be comforted.
His hopes were buried in Gretchen's grave, and she could not turn his
thoughts to herself, and ere the first moon waned, they laid him, too,
beside his Gretchen, in his last home.
The great lady never smiled again, and soon after the doors of the
convent closed upon one of the most beautiful women of her time.
On her death-bed she called one and all of those about her to listen to
her tragic story.
She cried out that they must not touch her hand, for it was stained with
human blood; and it was then that her horrible story was brought to
light.
And in an awful whisper, while the long shadows deepened, she made this
terrible revelation: that years, before she had murdered her maid,
Gretchen, because the girl was loved by him whom she would have won.
By night and by day she pondered upon how it should be done, then
suddenly the way and means occurred to her.
There was a powerful drug of which she had heard that gave women the
most marvelous of complexions, but which sooner or later caused death.
Gretchen should take it; it could be placed in the basin of water in
which she was wont to bathe her face each morning, and it would enter
the body through the pores of the skin. In this way the doctors would be
completely baffled, for they would not be able to trace the poison.
She put this dastardly plot into execution, and her cruel heart did not
upbraid her, though she saw the girl droop and fade daily before her
eyes.
When she looked out of her window and saw Gretchen and her lover pacing
up and down the primrose path in the moonlight, a horrible laugh would
break from the great lady's ripe, red lips.
"There will be but a few more of these meetings, tender partings and
kisses under the larch-tree boughs."
She had never dreamed, this false, cruel beauty, that a man's heart
could be constant to a dead love and spurn a living one.
All these years she had lived to rue it; but neither prayers, nor
suffering, nor pangs of conscience could atone for the terrible crime
committed.
During all the years that had passed since Gretchen had been lying in
that lonely grave, she had never known one moment's peace of mind, until
this hour when she lay dying and had confessed all.
Slowly, twice, thrice, Nadine Holt read the story through, and as she
read, a terrible thought came into her own mind.
Why could not she procure this same drug and administer it in the same
way to Jessie Staples?
She took the paper up to her room and hid it very carefully in her
satchel.
True, Jessie had taken her in this time without saying one word of the
past unpleasantness, treating her as though that quarrel had never been.
But Nadine was different. She was one of the kind that "never forgets,
never forgives" while life lasts.
When the household was wrapped in deep sleep that night, Nadine stole
out upon her terrible mission.
Several careful druggists refused to fill her order; but this did not
daunt her. She knew that among the lot she would soon come across a
catch-penny, and in this supposition she was quite right.
She soon found a place, and secured the deadly drug which she called
for, and she stole into the house again without any one being the wiser
for her midnight trip.
The light was burning low in the sick-room as she entered it, and Mrs.
Brown sat half dozing in her chair by the bedside.
She started up as Nadine crossed the threshold.
"You needn't mind staying any longer," she remarked, brusquely; "I will
take charge of the patient now."
"No," said the other, quietly but firmly. "It is between twelve and one
that the most important medicine must be administered."
"Don't you suppose I am capable of giving it?" retorted Nadine angrily
enough. "You don't seem to realize what is the business of a paid
nurse!"
The other made no remark, but still she lingered. Had she a suspicion
that there was anything amiss?
She was a strange creature, anyhow, with that old-looking face, the
great mass of thick black hair studded with gray, and the thick blue
glasses.
Where had she seen some one of whom this creature reminded her so
strangely and so strongly?
Even the tone of her voice, although it sounded hoarse and unnatural,
was somehow familiar to her.
The very way in which Mrs. Brown crested her head she had seen somewhere
before, and it had made quite an impression upon her at the time.
"I can not help thinking that she is always spying upon every movement
of mine, and she listens--I am sure she does--to every word the doctor
and I say; and these people who watch others so much always need
watching themselves."
Seeing that Nadine Holt was determined to banish her from the sick-room,
Dorothy quitted the apartment with a very heavy heart, though she could
not have told why.