“The eagle suffers little birds to sing,
And is not careful what they mean thereby,
Knowing that with the shadow of his wing
He can at pleasure stint their melody.”
Queenie Trevalyn did not go into hysterics over her father’s letter, as
her mother had done. Instead, she was very angry.
“How dare a man, who has a family on his hands dependent upon him for
support, to risk his fortune in speculation?” she stormed. “The man who
is mad enough to do it should be sent to an insane asylum, and confined
there for the rest of his natural life!”
“But what are we to do, my dear?” queried the weeping mother, in a
sobbing, querulous voice. “I have always lived in elegance; how am I
to enter a New York boarding house? I--I should fall down dead on the
threshold! I ask you, what are we to do, Queenie!”
And off the poor lady went into another violent spasm of hysterics.
“The genteel poor; how I have always pitied them!” went on the sobbing
lady, her tears falling afresh. “Poor people who carry about them
traces of former greatness. How our set will comment on our downfall,
Queenie, and turn their heads the other way as they pass us by on the
street; they riding in their carriages, and we tramping through the
dust afoot. Oh, I can never endure it, Queenie! I will take to my bed
and remain there until the day I die. I have read of poverty in novels,
and always pitied the poor heroine. I never imagined that I should one
day be in a similar position myself. Oh, dear, if I could have only
died ere this dark dawn fell upon us!”
“If you will only dry your tears long enough to listen to what I have
to say, and talk the matter over with me, I may be able to suggest a
path out of the labyrinth. You have given me no opportunity to tell
you a piece of news that may, in your estimation, offset this dreadful
calamity.”
Mrs. Trevalyn looked up at her beautiful daughter through her tears.
“Go on, my dear,” she said. “I will listen patiently to anything you
may have to say; but I think I can tell, by the way in which you have
received the distressing news concerning your father’s failure, just
what it is. Mr. Dinsmore has asked you to be his wife.”
“He has, and I have refused him,” replied the daughter, laconically.
“Refused him?” echoed Mrs. Trevalyn, looking at the beauty with dilated
eyes. “Refused him--while every one is sure that he must be worth
barrels of money?”
“Every one is wrong in this instance, as usual. Mr. Dinsmore is only an
author; his expectations are in the vapory shape of possible royalties
on some future great book which he purposes to astonish the world
with. His present income is what little he can earn from writing for
magazines and papers; feeling as rich as a lord with twenty-five
dollars in his pocket to-day, and to-morrow a beggar, or nearly so.”
“Can it be possible?” gasped Mrs. Trevalyn, wondering if she had heard
aright. “How did you find it out?”
“From his own lips,” replied Queenie; adding impatiently: “But it is
not of him I wish to speak; though right here and now, mamma, I frankly
admit that I did admire John Dinsmore more than I care to own, and to
find out that he was a poor man was a decided shock to me; but I am my
mother’s daughter, and having a horror of poverty, I threw him over,
stifling my regrets with an iron will.”
“You are very brave, Queenie darling,” murmured Mrs. Trevalyn.
“I had very little time to grieve over having to refuse him,” continued
Queenie, “for another lover arose instantly upon the horizon of my
future, as though to console me. In less than half an hour after I had
refused John Dinsmore, I was the affianced bride to be of Mr. Raymond
Challoner, heir prospective to all the Challoner millions. I like him
in his way amazingly; I think he will make a far more fitting mate for
a frivolous girl like me than grave John Dinsmore, had he been worth
the same amount of shining gold.”
“You have saved us, my dear!” cried Mrs. Trevalyn, dramatically. “You
have saved the time-honored name of the Trevalyns. I can hold up my
head again and breathe freely once more.”
“Mr. Challoner pressed me hard for an immediate marriage, mamma,” the
daughter went on complacently; “although I told him that it could not
possibly be, and that I intended to have a wedding that should astonish
all New York society by its elaborateness. Marry like a country maid
eloping; ah, no, Queenie Trevalyn must have a magnificent wedding, as
befits the station in which she moves.
“After some little demurrer on his part, he yielded gracefully to my
wishes. I will see him early to-morrow morning, mamma, and tell him
that I have changed my mind as to the date of our marriage; it is a
lady’s privilege, you know. I will tell him that I am willing that the
ceremony shall take place at once, and I will tell him why.”
“Have you lost your reason, Queenie?” gasped Mrs. Trevalyn. “If you
tell him that, you may lose him, child!”
“I think not,” returned Miss Queenie Trevalyn, surveying her rare,
lovely face in the mirror. “I should say that he is far too much in
love with me for that; in fact, I shall make it a test of his love for
me.”
“I pray it may come out right,” sighed the mother, earnestly; “but if
you would listen to me, and be guided by what I think----”
“Leave this affair to me, mamma,” cried the imperious young beauty.
“What better test can I have of his love than to tell him of our loss
of fortune--that in a single day we have been swept by the hand of
cruel fate from affluence to pover----”
“Do not utter the word, Queenie. I cannot bear it!” cut in her mother,
quickly. “It makes me faint!”
Queenie was headstrong, like all beautiful girls are apt to be, and her
mother knew that there was little use attempting to reason with her.
She would have her own way when once she had made up her mind upon a
course of action, let it cost what it might.
“I only hope you may not rue the telling of it, my dear,” she sighed.
“My advice is, never to tell your lover anything concerning family
affairs which are of a detrimental nature to you or yours; they will
find out enough after you marry.
“I thought you were wiser in the ways of the world than most girls,
Queenie; but I see you are not when I hear you talking about
love-tests, and so on. You can take the plunge, if you cannot be
persuaded to hold your silence until after the knot is securely tied;
but mind, I, who am for your good, warn you that I do not think it at
all wise.”
“I am determined to test, as I have said, the strength and depth of
Raymond Challoner’s love for me, mamma,” she declared. “He is so
desperately infatuated that I can guarantee that he will sign me over
half of his princely fortune on the spot.”
“I wish I could be as sanguine concerning the matter as you are, my
dear!” sighed Mrs. Trevalyn. “You have made up your mind, and I suppose
I shall have to let it rest at that. I say in conclusion, what a man
does not know concerning your finances will not hurt, nor worry him.
Think twice before you divulge to Mr. Challoner your father’s mad move,
which has plunged us into beggary.”
“I may think twice concerning it, but I shall arrive at the same
conclusion, I assure you,” replied Queenie.
For an hour after she sought her own apartment, she stood at the window
looking afar over the white stretch of beach lying cold and white in
the bright moonlight, to the glittering expanse of water beyond.
“Yes, it was really too bad that John Dinsmore turned out to be poor!”
she sighed. “He had such a noble bearing, and the head of a king,
with a heart as generous, chivalrous and kind as a woman; just such a
man as the heroes were in all the books I have read. I hardly think
that he is the sort of man to do anything rash, because of my refusal
of him--commit suicide, or anything as terrible as that. I could not
say the same thing concerning Ray Challoner. Had I said him nay, I am
confident that he would have kept his word--that they would have found
his body on the sands when the morrow should break, with a bullet wound
in his brain; mutely telling the story of his sad taking off.”
And the thought of handsome, dashing, debonair Raymond Challoner lying
white and lifeless on the beach, and all for love of her, was a gloomy
picture which she did not care to dwell upon.
Aside from his enormously reported wealth and splendid appearance, the
fact that every marriageable girl at Newport had been head over heels
in love with him, and would gladly have been his for the asking, had
made him a very desirable _parti_ in Queenie Trevalyn’s covetous eyes.
In fact, she had been quite live with him until the dark, gloomy,
mysterious stranger, whom Newport had known only as Mr. Dinsmore, came
upon the scene.
The next morning Queenie heard that Mr. Dinsmore had left the hotel
the night before; none seemed to know whence he had gone; he had
disappeared as suddenly as he had come.
The fact was, the affair of honor had been kept so profound a secret
that even the hotel people had not learned of it, and would certainly
have kept it to themselves if they had, being too wise to bruit the
sensational story about.
Raymond Challoner appeared at the breakfast table as bright, smiling
and gay as usual. He had not seen the doctor as yet, to ascertain the
extent of his adversary’s injuries; or, indeed, whether or not his aim
had proven fatal; nor did he allow the little affair to trouble him in
the least. He did not give it a single thought; it had not cost him an
anxious moment, or one hour’s loss of sleep.
At his plate he found a dainty note from his _fiancée_ awaiting him.
Would he join her on the east veranda at ten, that morning, she asked.
She had something very particular to tell him.
At ten promptly Raymond Challoner appeared at the place of rendezvous,
smiling and debonair, with a white rose in his buttonhole.
Queenie Trevalyn was waiting for him at the other end of the veranda,
quite as lovely a picture of girlhood as man’s eyes had ever rested
upon.