Raymond Challoner lost no time in acting upon Queenie’s advice. The
very next afternoon he presented himself at her home, and Queenie
herself went to fetch Jess at once.
“How shall I ever go down to the drawing-room to see him!” cried Jess,
distractedly, as she clung to her false friend with death-cold hands;
“if he speaks to me of love, or marriage, I am sure I shall fall in a
swoon at his feet.”
“That is not being brave,” retorted Queenie, impatiently, “you promised
me faithfully that you would put the past from you, and try to believe
that it was but a dream; this is not carrying out your word.”
Jess straightened herself up with apparent difficulty, the awful pallor
still upon her face. How she made her way down the stairway, she never
afterward quite remembered, so strong was the feeling within her that
she would swoon with each step.
Raymond Challoner advanced to greet her in his jaunty, inimitable,
graceful manner.
“Little Jess!” he cried, holding out both hands in greeting, “words
fail to express to you how glad I am to see you.”
Her white lips parted, and her large, dark, startled eyes looked away
from the eager blue ones in much trepidation. She murmured some faint
words which he could not quite catch.
“Why, how changed you are, little Jess!” he cried, holding her off
at arm’s length and looking in puzzled wonder down at her fair,
marvelously beautiful face. “New York and the society of our mutual
friend Queenie seem to have metamorphosed you completely. You left me
a romp of a girl, I find you a woman; there is something in your eyes,
in your face, that I have never seen there before, and I am puzzled to
know what it is.”
He saw her flush and then turn deadly pale under his keen, searching
scrutiny.
“You are a thousand times more beautiful, and therefore more lovable
than when we last met,” he cried, enthusiastically. “I regretted from
the bottom of my heart that they had let you slip off to New York
without my knowledge, or approval, but I am obliged to confess that it
has done wonders for you, my Jess--wonders.”
“How could you leave me in that reckless fashion?” he went on,
reproachfully. “You struck a cruel blow at my heart by doing so, and a
still more cruel blow when you wrote me that you intended to break our
engagement. Why, little girl, I was sick for weeks from the effects of
it, praying to die, I fought bitterly against allowing them to cure me;
that will show you how completely I was wrapped up in your sweet self.
“The bitterest drop in my cup of woe was that they would not tell me
where you had gone, in accordance with some foolish promise given. It
seemed like a stroke of fate that I should come to New York, and in
coming to visit an old friend stumble directly into the house where you
were visiting. Do you not agree with me that it was indeed fate? If it
had not been intended that we should be reunited, I would not have been
able to discover where my pearl had hidden herself.
“But, dear me, come and sit down in this sunshiny bay window, my little
Jess, that I may have a better look at my newly recovered treasure; you
are now so royally, regally beautiful, that I can scarcely believe you
are one and the same little Jess whom I met in the wilds of Louisiana
that eventful September morning, which seems long months ago, though it
is in reality not so very long ago.”
During the call, which seemed long and tedious to Jess, who was
wondering if he would never, never go, her companion did all the
talking, the girl barely answering in monosyllables, but he attributed
this to bashfulness, though that was a trait in her character that he
had not discovered during his brief sojourn at Blackheath Hall.
“With your permission, Jess,” he said at length, “I should like to talk
about our wedding; when shall it take place, my own love?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” cried the girl, distractedly, “do not mention it
to me--until the very last moment--and let it be as far off as you
possibly can.”
His brow darkened.
“That is not a very kind speech, Jess,” he remarked, with considerable
pique, “and does not speak very well for the depths of love you shall
bear the man to whom you have plighted your troth.”
She looked up at him appealingly. It seemed to her if he uttered
another word on the subject she would go mad. How could she listen to
words of love or marriage from another’s lips when her heart lay buried
in the grave of the man she had loved so passionately, with all the
strength of her nature?
But she knew if she made the sacrifice which Queenie had impressed upon
her was her solemn duty, she must make no outcry, utter no word of
protestation against the marriage, or when it was to take place.
“I know that you spoke in jest, my sweetheart,” Ray Challoner went on,
smoothly, “to think otherwise would be to drive me mad, my heart is so
entirely yours.”
“Forgive me,” answered Jess, bravely, choking down a great sob that
threatened to break forth and betray the state of her feelings.
She listened like one in a far-off troubled dream while he talked to
her of his plans for the future, and ended by praying her to name the
day when he should claim her as his own.
“I--do not know,” murmured the girl, wearily; “I--I will leave
everything to you, Mr. Dinsmore,” and if he had not been so jubilant
over the victory and the fortune so near his grasp, he would have
noticed the suspicion of tears in her lovely, dark, mournful,
despairing eyes.
“Then I say, let it take place at once, my own,” he declared, “the
sooner the better, say a week from to-day!”
Jess shuddered, as with a sudden chill, but she kept control of her
nerves by a great effort. He must not see how obnoxious the very
thought of marriage with him was to her.
She wondered vaguely how she was to pass the rest of her life with him
when she found a few hours so intolerable as to almost drive her mad.
“Your silence gives sweet consent, my own charming little bride to be,”
he cried, exultantly, and it was with difficulty that he restrained
himself from embracing her then and there.
He took his leave soon after with that matter settled completely to his
satisfaction, the ceremony was to be performed just a week from that
day. He would have named the morrow, but that he was sure Jess would be
suspicious that there was something wrong in his intense eagerness to
claim her. Of all things he must avoid raising her suspicions.
He was anxious to get away from her, and celebrate his victory over the
outcome of his desperate and daring plan for a fortune, by indulging in
as much champagne as he could stand, for once in his life; for there
would soon be an end to reckless indulgence, at least for a time.
Until the Dinsmore fortune was within his grasp, and he had turned it
into cash, he would be obliged to play the part of a model husband.
“She is a thousand times more beautiful than ever,” he muttered, as he
walked briskly down the avenue, “but her every action shows me that
she abhors me, simply that and nothing else. And because of that, I
feel the demon that is in me rising to the surface. I hate her for her
coldness toward me and her pride, which will ever be an insurmountable
barrier between us. I will marry you, my proud, haughty Jess, and after
the knot is tied which makes me your lord and master, I will set my
heel upon your white neck, crush that heart of yours, without mercy,
and make life itself a torture to you. I will take a glorious revenge
upon you for all the indignities you have heaped upon me, I promise you
that.”
Finding himself opposite a fashionable café he entered it, and soon
finished the bottle of champagne they brought him, another bottle was
as quickly dispatched; and in the best of humor with himself and the
world, he began to look about him, as to who made up the fashionable
throng filing into the place, in hopes that he might discover some boon
companion of other days, who would share with him another bottle of the
shining, sparkling beverage which had already gone to his brain.
He was getting jovial, and that was the danger signal which should have
warned Raymond Challoner to desist then and there from indulging in any
more of his dearest foe--sparkling champagne. Already he had begun to
see two waiters filling his glass instead of one.
“Not a soul I know in the entire room,” he muttered, staring around
disconsolately, “now that is annoying; I would like some one to keep me
company.”
Suddenly his attention was drawn to a gentleman who, with two
companions, was watching him furtively from a convenient point across
the room.
“Wonder where I have seen that face!” muttered Challoner, “can’t think
to save my neck.”
His memory refused to aid him.
The gentleman was--John Dinsmore.