They returned to the salon, and Mme. Lorraine flung down her cards and
arose.
"Messieurs, I will give you your revenge another time. Now I must give
some attention to my Northern friend. Come, Monsieur Van Zandt, let me
show you my garden by moonlight."
She slipped her hand through his arm and led him through a side-door
and out into a tropical garden bathed in a full flood of summer
moonlight. Carmontelle drew Little Nobody out by the hand. Markham and
Remond followed.
To Van Zandt's unaccustomed eyes the scene was full of weird, delicious
splendor. Fountains sparkled in the moonlight, watering the stems
of tall, graceful palm-trees and massive live-oaks, whose gigantic
branches were draped in wide, trailing banners of funereal-gray moss.
Immense green ferns bordered the basins of the fountains, white lilies
nodded on tall, leafy stems, roses vied with orange-blossoms in filling
the air with fragrance, and passion-flowers climbed tall trellies and
flung their large flowers lavishly to the breeze. Madame, with her
jeweled hand clinging to Van Zandt's arm, her jewels gleaming, walked
along the graveled paths in advance of the rest, talking to him in her
gay fashion that was odd and enchanting from its pretty mixture of
broken French and English, interlarded here and there with a Spanish
phrase. She was bent on subduing the heart of the young journalist,
his coldness and indifference having roused her to a fatal pique and
interest--fatal because her love was like the poisonous upas-tree,
blighting all that it touched.
She had brought him out here for a purpose. In the soft, delusive
moonlight she looked fair and young as a woman of twenty, and here
she could weave her Circean spells the best. She became soft and
sentimental with her light badinage. Bits of poetry flowed over the
crimson lips, the dark eyes were raised to his often, coyly and
sweetly, the jeweled hand slipped until her throbbing wrist rested
lightly on his. Every gracious, cunning art of coquetry was employed,
and the victim seemed very willing indeed to be won.
But when they bantered him next day he laughed with the rest.
"_Ad nauseam_!" he replied, boldly.
* * * * *
But he went again that night to Esplanade Street, drawn by an
indefinable power to the presence of the cruel, beautiful woman and her
fawn-like, lovely dependent.
"Madame Lorraine was engaged, but she would come to him soon," said the
sleek page who admitted him to the salon, which a quick glance showed
him was quite deserted.
He waited awhile, then grew weary of the stillness and silence, and
went out through the open side-door into the charming garden.
The quiet walks gave back no echo of his firm tread as he paused and
threw himself upon a rustic bench beside a tinkling fountain, but
presently from beyond the great live-oak with its gray moss drapery
there came to him the sound of a clear, sweet voice.
"The little ma'amselle," he thought, at first, and deemed it no harm to
listen.
"It is a bargain, then, monsieur. You take the girl, and I am a
thousand dollars richer. _Ciel_! but what a rare revenge I shall have
for yesterday;" and Mme. Lorraine's low laugh, not sweet and coquettish
now, but full of cruel venom, rang out on the evening air.
The night was warm, but Eliot Van Zandt shuddered through all his
strong, proud frame, as the voice of Remond answered:
"Revenge--ha! ha! Mine shall be gained, too. How I hate and love the
little savage in one breath, and I have sworn she shall pay for that
slipper flung in my face. It is a costly price, but to gratify love and
hate alike I will not stop at the cost."
"You are right. Once I refused when you asked for her because I prized
my pretty, innocent, ignorant toy. But yesterday the fires of hell were
kindled in my breast. She is no longer a child. When she rode Selim
there amid the plaudits of thousands, she became my rival, hated and
dreaded, and I swore she should pay for her triumph at bitter cost.
Last night did you see her with Van Zandt, her sly coquetry, her open
preference? In her sleep, as she lay coiled on her cot, she murmured
his name and smiled. It was enough. I swore I would hesitate no longer.
I would give you your will."
Rooted to his seat with horror, Van Zandt sat speechless, his blood
curdling at Remond's demoniac laugh.
"You have a _penchant_ for the quill-driver?" scoffingly said the
Frenchman.
"He is a new sensation. His indifference piques me to conquer
him"--carelessly; "but to the point. I will drug her to sleep to-night,
and you shall carry her off. Bring a carriage at midnight--all shall be
ready."
"Done! But when they ask for her--for the Jockey Club has gone wild
with admiration over the little vixen--what can you say?"
"I overheard her last night threatening to run away. She was in the
library with Carmontelle and the Yankee. What more easy than to say she
has carried out her threat?"
Their low, jubilant laughter echoed in the young journalist's ear
like the mirth of fiends. There was a promise of money that night,
injunctions of caution and secrecy; then the conspirators swept away
toward the house, and Van Zandt remained there, in the shadowy night,
unseen, unsuspected, brooding over what he had heard uttered behind the
drooping veil of long, gray moss.
Carmontelle had said, laughingly, that a visit to madame and her little
savage would furnish a spicy paragraph for his paper. He thought,
grimly, that here was the item with a vengeance.
Oh! to think of that heartless woman and man, and of the simple,
ignorant, lovely child bartered to shame for the sake of a fiendish
revenge! The blood in his veins ran hotly, as if turned to fire.
"My God! I must do something," he muttered, and then started with a
stifled cry of alarm.
From among the shrubberies close by something had started up with a
sobbing cry. It ran toward him, and fell down at his feet; it was poor
Little Nobody.
"You have heard? I saw you when you came!" she gasped, wildly.
"Yes, poor child!" he answered.
"Sold! sold, like a slave, to the man I hate!" she cried, fearfully,
her dark eyes distended in terror. "Oh, monsieur, he kissed me once,
and I hated his kiss worse than madame's blow. I flung my slipper in
his face, and he swore revenge. Once in his power, he would murder me.
Oh, you promised to be my friend"--wildly--"save me! save me now!"