Mme. Lorraine would have been chagrined indeed could she but have known
what was transpiring in the house she had quitted so precipitately upon
finding out that she was in danger of arrest upon suspicion of knowing
the whereabouts of Eliot Van Zandt.
The despised Little Nobody was installed in madame's own luxurious
chamber, with a capable elderly woman in attendance. Eliot Van Zandt
occupied another room, equally elegant, and Carmontelle and Markham
had also installed themselves temporarily in a guest-chamber. In
the kitchen a temporary cook held sway until such time as the young
journalist could be moved to his hotel. Just now he was prostrated on
a bed of sickness, having suffered a relapse from the reopening of his
wound through his exertions in hallooing and singing.
The cause of the slight wound upon his arm, which they had found
freshly bleeding, he steadily declined to explain.
"It is a mere nothing--the scratch of a pen," he said, carelessly, and
indeed it very soon healed. The wound on his breast was doing nicely,
too, and he began to talk of leaving for home very soon--as soon as he
was able to travel.
Carmontelle had written to his anxious sisters to calm their uneasy
minds, and one day--it was a week after that tragic evening when he had
rescued the prisoners--he held a very serious conversation with his
friend over the subject of Little Nobody's future.
Van Zandt had sat up in an easy-chair that day for the first time, and
Marie had come in to see him. She looked bright and well again, and the
young man shuddered as he thought how near she had been to death that
night in the underground prison.
"But for my timely thought, my terrible experiment, she must have been
dead ere rescue came," he said to himself. "But she must never know.
Perhaps she would shrink from me in horror did she but know the truth."
Carmontelle had been very quiet while she remained in the room. He had
watched both narrowly. When she had gone, he said, gravely:
"Van Zandt, let us speak together as good men and true. Have you taken
any thought for the little ma'amselle's future?"
Van Zandt started and grew a shade paler. He scarcely understood this
abruptness, this seriousness.
"Her future?" he echoed, a little blankly. "I thought--I
understood--that it was all planned out that night when we saved her.
You were to educate her--afterward to make her your wife."
Carmontelle frowned, and said, sternly:
"Yes--but of course you understand that the plan is untenable now?"
He looked straight into Van Zandt's beautiful blue-gray eyes with such
a meaning expression that in a moment there rushed over the young man's
mind a comprehension of the truth. Flushing darkly, he exclaimed:
"Say no more. I understand you now," hoarsely; "you mean that--that
noble child is--is compromised by her imprisonment with me those four
long days?"
Carmontelle, with a fierce throb of jealousy at his heart, answered:
"Yes."
Then, after a moment's blank silence on both sides, he added, sighing
heavily:
"Such is the cruel way of the world. For myself, Van Zandt, I know you
are the soul of honor, chivalrous as the men of the South; and I can
pay you no higher compliment than this. For her, I know she is pure as
an angel. But--there is the cruel, carping world ready to point the
finger of scorn always, and I--warmly as I love the girl--I could not
have a bride of whom gossip could whisper even one blighting suspicion.
The Carmontelles are very proud of their unblemished honor. I must not
be the first to smirch it. I could have passed over her birth, her
namelessness, for I could have given her my own proud name, and lifted
her to my own station; but--this shadow from her misfortune in having
shared your imprisonment is too dark for me to bear. My hopes are in
ashes. Instead of being her husband, I must now claim the place of a
father or a brother."
It was a long speech for Carmontelle, who did not ordinarily deal
in long sentences. When it was finished he wiped the great drops of
moisture from his brow and waited for Van Zandt to speak.
He did not have to wait long.
"I understand you," the young man said, with apparent quietude.
"The generous child, by her nobility in coming to seek and to save
me, sacrificed her own future. I must--marry her--to appease the
proprieties."
With a quiver of pain and regret in his voice, Carmontelle said,
gravely:
"Yes."
"I am ready to make her that poor reparation for all that she
sacrificed for me," Van Zandt answered, instantly, and for a moment
their hands met in a firm, close grip. Then the Southerner said sadly:
"My God, there is no other way, or I could not give up the sweet hopes
that for a few hours delighted my soul. But we have talked it over at
the club--my friends and hers--and have all agreed that since the whole
affair was so widely known, there could be no other way out of it in
honor for that poor child than by marriage with you. Van Zandt, you
look strange! Do you take it so hard, then? Great Heaven! can it be
that you have some prior engagement?"
"I am free--except from the claims of two young sisters, and the
trammels of poverty," Van Zandt answered, quietly.
"Poverty, yes, I had thought of that; but she shall not be a burden to
you. I am rich, very rich. I will pay the poor child's dowry. I will
make it forty thousand dollars, and when I die she shall be my heiress."
"Stop!" Eliot Van Zandt said, with the first sternness he had shown.
"You mistake me, Carmontelle; I will take no dowry with my young bride,
save her own innocence and beauty."
"But I claim the right--"
"And I refuse to admit it."
And they looked stubbornly into each other's eyes.