SLIGHTED LOVE
OR
At Her Heart’s Expense
By MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER
Author of “They Looked and Loved,” “When We Two Parted,”
“All for Love,” etc.
[Illustration: S AND S NOVELS]
Printed in the U. S. A.
STREET & SMITH PUBLICATIONS, Inc.
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y.
SLIGHTED LOVE.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. A MOTHER’S CONFESSION.
CHAPTER II. IN NEW SURROUNDINGS.
CHAPTER III. ACCUSED OF FRAUD.
CHAPTER IV. IN A SPIDER’S WEB.
CHAPTER V. HER FATHER’S FRIEND.
CHAPTER VI. EMMETT’S PLEA.
CHAPTER VII. IN DEADLY PERIL.
CHAPTER VIII. A MOTHER’S HATE.
CHAPTER IX. ITALY VALE’S SONG.
CHAPTER X. BORNE ON THE TIDE.
CHAPTER XI. WITHOUT A HOME.
CHAPTER XII. THE BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WIDOW.
CHAPTER XIII. NAMING THE BABY.
CHAPTER XIV. PERCY SEABRIGHT’S ADVICE.
CHAPTER XV. THE LAWYER’S STORY.
CHAPTER XVI. ITALY’S RESOLUTION.
CHAPTER XVII. MRS. MURRAY’S ANGUISH.
CHAPTER XVIII. A LOYAL HEART.
CHAPTER XIX. FRANCIS MURRAY FOUND.
CHAPTER XX. MR. GARDNER PROMISES HELP.
CHAPTER XXI. FRANCIS MURRAY RECOVERS.
CHAPTER XXII. MRS. VALE SHOCKS HER DAUGHTER.
CHAPTER XXIII. A MEMORABLE SLEIGH-RIDE.
CHAPTER XXIV. PROFESSOR DOEPKIN’S HEROISM.
CHAPTER XXV. ITALY’S CLUE.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE DESERTED BRIDE.
CHAPTER XXVII. IN ITALY’S POWER.
CHAPTER XXVIII. MRS. VALE IS VINDICATED.
CHAPTER XXIX. LOVE TURNED TO HATE.
CHAPTER XXX. PERCY SEABRIGHT’S TRIAL.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE WAGES OF SIN.
CHAPTER XXXII. IN THE SUNSET’S GLOW.
CHAPTER I.
A MOTHER’S CONFESSION.
Italy Vale! When you heard her name you associated it with blue skies,
with orange-groves, and rippling streams; when you saw her face you
thought of music and poetry and flowers; of dusky pansies like her
somber eyes; of pale-pink roses like her cheeks; of scarlet geraniums
like her lips; of young palm-trees that were not more graceful than
her slender form, and of the purple bloom of the grape that seemed
to linger on her dark, waving tresses--but it was not beneath tropic
skies you found her, but on a flat, sandy, wind-swept beach of bleak
Massachusetts, at Winthrop-by-the-Sea, a brilliant, dusky-eyed,
foreign-looking girl, like some rare-plumaged, tropical bird alighted
on an alien shore.
She was young, she was maddeningly lovely, this girl, and but a few
months before she had knelt beneath the blossoming limes in an old
Italian garden, and looking up with dark, pathetic eyes into the pale,
fair face above her, had murmured anxiously:
“Mama, why do we lead so lonely a life? Why do people seem to shun us?
What have we done?”
The mother’s soft blue eyes had filled with tears as she faltered:
“So you have seen it, my darling? I can no longer hide from you our
desolation.”
“No, mama, for now I am seventeen years old, and can reason quite like
a woman. I have seen what I have told you--that we two are alone in the
world together, friendless and seemingly shunned. We rove from clime
to clime like two restless ghosts, yet everywhere some dark shadow of
destiny follows us. We seem to be known and remarked even in places
that are strange to us. As for you, I comprehend that you are bitterly
unhappy, for I have never seen a smile upon your lips. Mama, why is it
so? Why are we branded and set apart from the rest of the world?”
The blue-eyed mother sobbed bitterly:
“The moment I have dreaded so long has come at last. I must confess the
truth to my child. God grant her strength to bear the cross.”
She kissed the eager, upturned face, and her tears fell on its wondrous
beauty.
“Oh, my love, my love, how cruel Fate has been to us!” she cried. “I
might have been so happy, and you might have reigned like a little
queen, but, alas, alas! one dark moment of horror changed both our
lives--turned sunshine to darkness, happiness to despair.”
The girl’s white arms, that were a very poem of beauty, encircled the
drooping form, the red lips kissed the tears away, and the sweet voice
murmured tenderly:
“And you have not deserved that the winds of Fate should blow roughly
upon you, my dearest one.”
“God bless you for those loving words, my child. Oh, what a treasure is
your faith and love! May they not fail me when you learn of the shadow
that has darkened your life and mine,” sighed Mrs. Vale, and, after a
moment, she added falteringly:
“Italy, dear, you have been told that your father died in your early
childhood, but you have never known what I must tell you now. He--my
poor husband--was--murdered!”
“Oh, Heaven!” and Italy’s dark, silken head dropped half-fainting upon
her mother’s knee, her eyes closed upon the blue Italian landscape that
seemed blurred by a strange mist.
Mrs. Vale’s thin, blue-veined hand fell in tender caressing upon the
dark curls.
“Be brave, dear, for there is more to tell, and it is so horrible,” she
sobbed. “Oh, Italy, I, your mother, his cherished wife, was accused of
my husband’s murder, and tried for my life!”
“Oh, Heaven!” again sobbed the girl, and a convulsive shudder passed
over the kneeling form.
Mrs. Vale shuddered, too, and after a moment added brokenly:
“Tried and acquitted.”
Italy half-raised her head, a sob of joy quivering over her lips, but
again Mrs. Vale spoke:
“The circumstantial evidence was not strong enough to convict, so the
jury acquitted me--but--public opinion adjudged me guilty. The judge
and jury that acquitted me were hissed in the crowded court-room. I,
too, was hissed as I left it, and ever since that day a malicious
clamor has hounded my friendless footsteps through the world.”
She paused, and the low winds sighing through the blossoming limes
seemed to echo the despair of her voice.
The dark, silken head lay still upon her knee. Italy was past moving or
speaking for the moment, like one tranced in a terrible dream.
The low, sad voice went on:
“I should not have said that I was utterly friendless. My lawyer
believed in me, was kind to me. After the trial I stayed for years in
Boston, trying to live down the odium of my trial, but all in vain;
then this kind friend advised me to come abroad.”
“Mama, then you are an American?” cried the daughter, in surprise.
“Yes, darling, I was born on New England soil, and your father was
murdered at our seaside home at Winthrop, near Boston. It is there that
his heir lives now.”
“His heir, mama?”
“Yes, Italy; your father was very rich, but his wealth had come to him
through English ancestry, and was strictly entailed on the male issue
of the family. You were a girl, so the money went to a very distant
cousin, a young man. To me, the hapless widow, and to you, the orphaned
daughter, remained only my own small private fortune. With no relatives
to turn to, deserted by my former friends, abhorred by the world, I
soon became the restless wanderer I am now, but pursued ever by some
malignant, unknown foe, who constantly blazons my sad story to the
carping world.”
“My dearest one!” cried the girl caressingly, and her tender voice was
full of love and sympathy.
The pale, statuesque face of Mrs. Vale quivered with emotion, and she
strained the girl to her breast, sobbing convulsively:
“My child, you can never know what I have suffered! Oh, it has been a
living death, this life of mine! I loved my husband so dearly that his
loss was enough to break my heart; and to think of being accused of his
death, to think of living under a ban, acquitted by the law, and judged
guilty by popular verdict. Oh, it is enough to drive one mad!” and her
slight form shook with heavy sobs as she clung to the beloved child,
whose love was all that had saved her from utter misery.
“Mama, who did it? Who killed my father?” cried the girl.
“God alone knows, Italy. There was never any clue to any one, save some
weak evidence that threw suspicion on me. Darling, I have kept all the
papers in the case and everything relating to it--kept them for you
when you should grow to womanhood. You shall read them to-morrow, you
shall know the whole tragic story, so that you may judge the mother you
love.”
“My dearest one!” again cried the girl, and they wept together in each
other’s arms.
* * * * *
That was long months ago, and now the girl who had knelt weeping in the
old Italian garden walked alone on the beach at Winthrop, her dark,
eager eyes fixed on a splendid old stone mansion fronting the sea--The
Lodge, where her father had been murdered and where his heir now lived.
She went toward the grand villa, her eyes bright and thoughtful, her
mind going back to that golden day in Italy when she had heard her
mother sob despairingly:
“How could they say I killed him? I loved him so, I loved him so, and
all my life is blighted by his loss!”
Her lips were trembling with the sadness of that memory as she went up
the broad stone steps to the grand portico dotted with inviting easy
chairs, while the broad double doors in front stood hospitably open,
giving a view of a magnificent hall paved with cool blue and white
tiles, and adorned with gleaming white statues between immense potted
plants of tropical beauty. The warm breeze of August, tempered by the
cool sea-air, stirred the lance-leaved palms and bright-hued caladiums.
“This would have been my home had my father lived,” she murmured, and
then she saw a tall man-servant approach her from the interior of the
hall. She roused herself from a fanciful retrospection, and asked for
Francis Murray, the master of the house.
“He is in his study. I will be pleased to take your card to him, miss.”
“I have no card. Simply tell him a stranger on important business,”
Italy answered, with a strange, defiant uplifting of her slender ebon
brows, and she sat down in one of the portico chairs to wait.
In another moment two beautiful young girls and a very stylish young
man, all in natty yachting-suits, came sauntering up the broad steps.
When they saw Italy sitting there in her simple gray traveling-dress,
quiet and yet elegant, they stared in surprise, then nodded
courteously, and also took seats at a distance, regarding her with
veiled curiosity and admiration, all unconscious that this lovely,
foreign-looking girl had brought into the quiet Lodge an element of
intense tragedy.
“Ah, Alexie, that was a glorious sail,” cried the young man gaily.
“Alys did not think so,” and the young girl nodded at the other one,
whose rosy lips were puckered in an angry pout.
“It was hateful, and I wish you would not tease me, Ralph Allen!”
exclaimed the pretty blonde petulantly, just as the servant came back
and said:
“Mr. Murray will see you, miss.”
Italy followed him through the wide hall, and the other three gazed
after the graceful form in subdued wonder.
“Whew! Alys, how do you like that?” laughed Ralph Allen.
“She is burning with jealousy of the beautiful unknown,” twittered the
girl called Alexie, and the hum of their merry badinage followed Italy
as she went with an almost tragic face toward the man she wished to
see--her distant kinsman.
She found him in a beautiful library, with most exquisite appointments,
the large open windows fronting the sea, whose salty breath blew
deliciously into the room and mixed with the fine aroma of a cigar that
Francis Murray flung away as he rose to meet his stranger guest, the
girl with the tropic face and soul, who was bringing at this moment
new, strange elements of emotion into his calm, prosperous existence.