“O’er her brow a change has passed;
In the darkness of her eyes,
Deep and still a mystery lies;
In her voice there thrills a tone
Never in her girlhood known.”
For one full moment the two who had parted from each other in such
bitter wrath on that never-to-be-forgotten morning at Newport stood
once again, face to face, looking into each other’s eyes.
It was Queenie who broke the dead silence that reigned in that awful
chamber of death.
“Raymond Challoner!” she repeated, falteringly, and he could see that
she was almost on the verge of utter collapse.
“Yes, Raymond Challoner, at your service,” he responded, cynically.
“What are you doing here?” she cried, hoarsely, still wondering if she
were not laboring under some horrible nightmare.
“What to you seems now so astounding can be most easily explained,” he
answered. “I am the nephew of the man you have wedded; the one who
should have been his heir, and whom he discarded.”
That this information was astounding to Queenie he could readily see,
and because of that he readily conjectured that her husband had not
mentioned him to his bride, for which he was now truly thankful.
It took but an instant for Queenie to recover herself. The color rushed
back to her deathly white face, and the cold, harsh expression her
features had worn of late came suddenly back to them as the thought
crossed her mind that at last she was revenged upon Raymond Challoner,
for had she not every dollar of the wealth that would have been his at
that moment but for her? But in the next instant she realized that her
hour of triumph over him had not yet come, for she was in his power;
one word from his lips would send her----
She did not follow out the rest of the sentence; she dared not.
“Come,” he said, touching her on the arm, and placing her with a firm,
masterful hand into an armchair close by, “you must not give way to
your emotions. You will need all your self-control.”
In a few words he explained his presence in that room; that he had
come to call on his uncle; the bitter quarrel that ensued, ending in
apoplexy which had caused the accident; his call for a doctor, and
volunteering to remain by his uncle’s side until the return of his
wife, and of his intense amazement to learn who that wife was--his
own sweetheart of other days--and how he had retired behind the heavy
draperies of the windows for the purpose of making known his presence
to her when he should find her alone, fearing that some sort of a scene
might ensue.
“Why did you not make your presence known at once, as soon as the
servants had left the room?” she gasped.
“I was conning over in my mind whether it was really best to acquaint
you with my presence beneath your roof, or to wait until morning and
go quietly away without revealing myself to you. In the face of what
has occurred, I knew that the best thing to do was to apprise you of my
presence.”
“What do you intend to do?” she queried, hoarsely, her hands trembling
like aspen leaves as they clutched the arm of the chair for support.
“I intend to be your friend if you will allow me to be so,” he replied,
suavely.
“Impossible!” cried Queenie. “It is against nature for you to wish to
be my friend when I come between you and a fortune.”
“It is neither the time nor the place to tell you all that is in my
thoughts,” he responded, “but I may as well drop you a slight hint as
to their trend. What would be easier than for you in the near future to
reimburse me with the fortune which you are the means of taking from
me?”
“You mean for me to one day marry you?” she gasped.
“I see you have divined my thoughts most accurately, my fair Queenie,”
he answered.
She shrank from him in loathing too great for words, crying:
“Not for this whole world would I marry you, Raymond Challoner. I would
sooner die.”
“Do not decide too hastily, my fair enemy,” he returned, mockingly.
“Remember, ‘discretion is the better part of valor,’ as the old saw
goes. I shall leave you now, for it would never do for us to be found
here together. I will see you early on the morrow.”
Before she was aware of what he was about to do, he had raised her
jeweled hand to his lips, kissed and dropped it, and the door was
closing softly after him.
When the doctor arrived, and the servants ushered him into the sick
room, they found the beautiful young bride lying prone upon her face
in a dead faint by the side of the still, stark form lying in his last
sleep upon the couch.
“Dead!” exclaimed the doctor briefly, at the first glance at the old
millionaire’s rigid features. Then he turned his attention at once to
the grief-stricken woman, who had apparently swooned ere she could
summon help in her dying husband’s last moments. Neither the doctor nor
the servants would have pitied her so deeply could they have seen her
when she returned to consciousness in her own boudoir an hour or so
later.
She dismissed the maid who was watching over her; then sprang from the
couch and paced the floor up and down like a veritable demon in woman’s
form.
“Was it for that that I dared and accomplished so terrible a crime?”
she whispered, clutching her hands tightly over her heart. “No, a
thousand times no, for I hate Raymond Challoner with all the strength
of my heart and soul. I only wanted to be free from the shackles of
iron which bound me, that I might recall the only man I have ever
loved--John Dinsmore. And now, when success dawns for me, another
cloud, more formidable than the one which has just been dissipated,
gathers over me.
“I shall never marry Raymond Challoner, that he may share the wealth
which will be mine, while we both know in our secret hearts that we
detest each other. Let come what will, I will defy him to do his worst,
and in the meantime I will recall him whom I sent from me.” And through
her brain rang the fateful words:
“And when your love has conquered pride and anger,
I know that you will call me back again.”
Her riotous reverie was suddenly cut short by the entrance of her
mother.
“Oh, my darling, my precious Queenie! We have just heard through one of
the servants, who came hurrying to us with the awful intelligence, of
his death, and I could scarcely credit the news until I came and saw
for myself.”
The mother and daughter looked steadily at each other, each reading the
other’s thoughts.
“You are now a wealthy widow, my dear child,” murmured Mrs. Trevalyn,
dropping her voice to a low whisper, and adding in the same breath,
“you want your mourning made up in the most becoming manner, for there
are no women so attractive as young and beautiful widows. The first
six months you will want all black crape; at the end of the second six
months you can introduce a little white or lavender here and there,
and----”
“For Heaven’s sake, hush, mamma,” cried Queenie. “I cannot endure it. I
am thinking of something else, I assure you.”
“Dear me!” cried Mrs. Trevalyn, in a very injured tone of voice. “One
would think that you had just lost a very dear and loving husband, of
whom you were foolishly fond, instead of an old man whom, you and
I both know, you wedded for his money, and whom we cordially hated
personally. Isn’t his death what you have been longing for ever since
you turned away from the altar with him, I should like to know?”
“Of course,” whispered Queenie; “but--well, to tell you the truth, I
was thinking of John Dinsmore, and wondering how he would take the
news when he heard that I am free again. He did not fancy widows. You
remember how many there were at Newport, and all setting their caps for
him.”
“An old love who has become a widow is quite another matter,” declared
Mrs. Trevalyn, energetically. “As soon as he hears of your bereavement,
he will make that an excellent excuse to call upon you or write you,
offering his condolence; that will pave the way for other sympathetic
calls, and in a year from now, if you play your cards well, you can
land the man you have always wanted, John Dinsmore.”
“And whose wife I would have been to-day, had you not kept dinning
continually into my ears that I must marry for wealth, and that love
was not to be considered.”
“My dear child, I thought you were sensible on such matters; do not
grow sentimental at this late date. When you jilted handsome Mr.
Dinsmore, he was not worth a penny, so consequently he was not to be
considered in a matrimonial light; but now that his fortunes have
changed and he is wealthy, why that puts a different face upon his
prospects of winning a very lovely and brilliant girl like yourself.”
For answer Queenie burst into a paroxysm of tears, crying, wildly:
“But it can never be now, mamma--never, never! the Fates forbid!--and
my future will be horrible to contemplate.”
“Do not talk wildly and unreasonably, my child. Why should fate forbid
your marrying John Dinsmore, should he come wooing a second time, which
he is sure to do, he was so much in love with you?”
For a moment Queenie was tempted to tell her mother all of her awful
story, but on second thoughts she concluded that it would be safer to
keep the horrible truth locked carefully in her own breast. An idea had
come to her--perhaps she could buy Ray Challoner off by dividing the
millions with him which she was sure to inherit as his uncle’s widow.