HE RAISED HIS CLINCHED HAND, AND THE BLOW FELL HEAVILY UPON THE
BEAUTIFUL UPTURNED FACE.
With returning consciousness, Faynie's violet eyes opened slowly--taking
in, by the flickering light of the candle, the strange room in which she
found herself; then, as they opened wider, in amazement too great for
words, she beheld the figure of a man, half hidden among the shadows,
standing but a few feet away from the couch, his eyes fastened upon her;
she could even hear his nervous breathing.
With a gasp of terror Faynie sprang from the couch with a single bound;
but the cry she would have uttered was strangled upon her lips by the
heavy hand that fell suddenly over them, pressing so tightly against
them as to almost take her breath away.
"Don't attempt to scream or make any fuss," cried a hissing voice in her
ear--"submit to the inevitable--you are my wife--there is nothing out of
the way in your being here with me. Come, now, take matters
philosophically and we shall get along all right."
He attempted to draw the girl into his encircling arms, her wonderful
beauty suddenly dawning upon him; but she shrank from his embrace, and
from the approach of his brandy-reeking lips, as though he had been a
scorpion.
With a suddenness that took him greatly aback, and for an instant at a
disadvantage, she freed herself from his grasp, and stood facing him
like a young tragedy queen in all her furious anger and outraged pride.
"Do not utter another word, Lester Armstrong!" she panted, "you only add
insult to injury--why it seems to me some horrible trick of the
senses--some nightmare--to imagine even that I could ever have cared for
you--to have believed you noble, honorable and--a gentleman. Why, you
almost seem to be a different person in his guise--you are so changed in
tone and manner from him to whom I gave my heart. The affection that I
thought I had for you died a violent death."
She did not notice that the man before her started violently at these
words--but the look of fear in his eyes gave place the next instant to
braggadocio.
He would have answered her, but she held up her little white hand with a
gesture commanding silence, saying, slowly, with quivering lips:
"I repeat, the affection that I believed filled my heart for you died
suddenly when I told you that I had changed my mind about eloping, and
instead of studying my desires you insisted that the arrangement must be
carried out."
"My--my--love for you prompted it, Faynie," he exclaimed, in a maudlin
voice. He knew he had the name wrong, but could not think what it was to
save his life. "Come, now, let's kiss and make up, and love each other
in the same old way, as the song goes."
"What! love a man who thrusts me into a coach despite my entreaties,
takes me to a church, and with a revolver pressed close to my
heart--beneath my cloak--forces me to become his wife! No. No! I loathe,
abhor you--open that door and let me go!"
With an unsteady spring he placed himself between her and the door,
crying angrily as he ground out a fierce imprecation from between his
white teeth. "Come, now, none of that, my beauty. You're my wife all
right, no matter how much of a fuss you make over it. I want to be
agreeable, but you persist in raising the devil in me, and though you
may not know it, I've a deuce of a temper when I'm thoroughly roused to
anger--at least that's what the folks who know me say.
"Sit right down here now, and let's talk the matter over--if you want to
go home to the old gent, why I'm sure I have no objection, providing he
agrees to take your hubby along with you. There'll be a scene of
course--we may expect that--but when you tell him how you love me, and
couldn't live without me and all that--and mind, you put it on heavy--it
will end by his saying: 'Youth is youth, and love goes where it is sent.
I forgive you, my children; come right back to the paternal
roof--consider it yours in fact.' And when the occasion is ripe, you
could suggest that the old gent start your hubby in business. Your wish
would be law; he might demur a trifle at first, but if you stuck well
to your point he'd soon cave in and ask what figure I'd take to--"
"Stop!--stop right where you are, you mercenary wretch!" cried Faynie in
a ringing voice. "I see it all now--as clear as day. You--you--have
married me because you have believed me my father's heiress, and--"
"You couldn't help but be, my dear," he hiccoughed. "An only child--no
one else on earth to come in for his gold--couldn't help but be his
heiress, you know--couldn't disinherit you if he wanted to. You've got
the old chap foul enough there, ha, ha, ha!"
"You seem to have suddenly lost sight of the fact that there is some one
beside myself--my stepmother and her daughter Claire."
He fell back a step and looked at her with dilated eyes--despite the
brandy he had imbibed he still understood thoroughly every word she was
saying.
"A stepmother--and--another daughter!" he cried, in astonishment--almost
incoherently.
"You seem to forget that you always used to say to me--that you hoped
they were well," said Faynie with deepening scorn in her clear, young
voice.
"Oh--ah--yes," he muttered, "but you see I was not thinking of
them---only of you," and deep in his heart he was cursing the hapless
cousin--whom he believed dead by this time--for not mentioning that the
girl had a stepmother and sister.
"Had you taken the time to listen to something else that I had to tell
you, you might have reconsidered the advisability of eloping with me in
such haste," went on the girl in her clear, ringing tones, "for it has
become apparent to me--with even as little knowledge of the world as I
possess--that you are a fortune hunter--that most despicable of all
creatures--but in this instance your dastardly scheme has entangled your
own feet. Your well-aimed arrow has missed the mark. You have wedded
this night a penniless girl. An hour before you met me at the arched
gate my father disinherited me, and when he has once made up his mind
upon any course of action--nothing human, nothing on earth or in heaven
would have power enough to induce him to change it."
The effect of her words were magical upon him. With a bound he was at
her side grasping her slender wrists with so tight a hold that they
nearly snapped asunder.
Intense as the pain was, Faynie would not cry aloud. He should not see
that he had power to hurt her, even though she dropped dead at his feet
at last from the excruciating torture of it.
"What is it you say--the old rascal has--disinherited you?" he cried,
scarcely crediting the evidence of his own ears.
"That is just what I said--my father has disinherited me," she replied
slowly and distinctly, adding: "His money was his own--to do with as he
pleased--he gave me the choice of--of--marrying to suit him or being cut
off entirely. I--I--refused to accept the man he had selected for me.
That ended the matter. 'Then from this hour know that you shall not
inherit one penny of my wealth,' he cried. 'I will cut you off with but
the small amount required by law. There is nothing more to be said. You
are a Fairfax. You have taken your choice, and as a Fairfax you must
abide by your decision!' You will remember I told you I had something to
tell you the moment you came up to me at the arched gate, but you would
not listen. Now the consequence is upon your own head."
"I have married a beggar, when I thought I was marrying an--heiress!" he
cried in a rage so horrible that Faynie, brave as she was, recoiled from
him in terror and, dismay.
"You have married a penniless young girl," she corrected, half
inaudibly.
He raised his clinched hand with a terrible volley of oaths, before
which she quailed, despite her bravery.
"When the old man cast you off you thought you would tie yourself on to
me," he cried. "You women are cunning--oh, yes, you are, don't tell me
you're not; and you are the shrewdest one I've come across yet. You lie
when you say you meant to tell me what had happened beforehand, and you
know it. But you'll find out at your cost what it means to bind me to a
millstone for a wife. But you shan't be a millstone. You'll do your
share toward the support. Yes, by George, you shall. I'll put you on the
stage--and you--"
"Never!" cried the girl with a bitter sob. "I'd die first."
"Don't set up your authority against mine," he cried, and as he uttered
the words--half crazed by the brandy he had drunk so copiously--his
clinched fist came down with a heavy blow upon the girl's beautiful,
upturned face, and she fell like one dead at his feet.