"FOR LOVE OF HER FAIR FACE."
"My hope was still in the shadow,
Hers lay in the sun:
I longed in vain: what _she_ asked for
It straightway was done,
Once I staked all my heart's treasure,
We played--and she won!"
--ADELAIDE PROCTER.
In the gray dawn of the wild March morning Senator Winans came home
alone, looking ten years older, the stamp of despair on his dark,
handsome face.
He went at once to his wife, and found her lying awake in a fever of
suspense and anxiety.
When she saw him enter alone she started up with a cry of keen despair:
"Precious! Oh, where is Precious?"
Her husband knelt by her side, clasped the feverish little hands, and
kissed the woeful white face, all wet with tears, like a rain-drenched
lily.
"Be brave, be patient, my dearest, for you must bear this cruel
suspense yet a little longer," he sighed.
"Oh, Paul, you have not found her yet? Then she must be dead, our
little darling!"
He had decided to tell her the truth. It would be better than the
anguish of wretched uncertainty, so he broke it to her gently, the
story of the golden-haired girl who had been carried out of the
ballroom unconscious.
"It must have been our golden-haired darling. I believe she has been
kidnaped for the sake of a ransom; so cheer up, my darling, for the
wretches will not harm our pet; they will keep her safe and well to
earn the reward they will expect to be offered in the morning papers.
And I have attended to that already, Grace, for my advisers think it
will be best to give great publicity to the affair, as in that case it
may come to the knowledge of some persons who may be able to give us an
unexpected clew. Oh, my wife; do not sob so bitterly. Our darling shall
soon be found, I swear it," and for the sake of the anguish she saw in
his eyes the poor mother fought with her sorrow, and tried to find a
glimmer of light in the Cimmerian darkness.
But it was cruel, cruel, for the horror of the present was only
augmented by the memory of the past. Her eldest born, her precious boy,
had been stolen in his babyhood, and four years elapsed before he was
recovered. It had taken all the strength of youth and hope to endure
that cross. Now she was older, frailer, and she knew she could not bear
another such agony and live.
But her husband's seeming hopefulness put a gleam of sunshine in her
heart, and for his sake, because she loved him very dearly, she would
not add to his remorseful grief by one reproachful word.
The morning papers in glaring black headlines chronicled the abduction
of the senator's favorite daughter and the princely ransom he had
offered for her restoration. Excitement ran high over the terrible
sensation, and stories of the girl's wonderful grace and beauty passed
from lip to lip. The studio of a famous artist who had but just
completed the portrait of Precious for her father was thronged with
gazers. He could not deny them, for it was hoped that familiarity with
her looks might in some way help the search for the missing girl.
Among the first of the curious visitors to the studio was handsome Lord
Chester.
The senator's earnest praises of his favorite child rang continuously
in the young man's head.
His eager curiosity drove him to the studio of the famous artist, and
when he stood at last before the full-length portrait he could not turn
his eyes away; they lingered in rapture on the pictured loveliness of
Precious Winans.
"Sweet face, swift eyes and gleaming
Sun-gifted rippling hair--
Lips like two rosebuds dreaming
In June's fruit-scented air:
Life when her spring days meet her,
Hope when her angels greet her,
Is not more calm--nor sweeter;
And love is not more fair.
"God bless your thoughts, my sweet one,
Whatever they may be!
Youth's life is but a fleet one,
Foam from an ebbing sea.
Time, tide, and fate o'erturn all,
Save one thing ever vernal,
Sweet love that lives eternal,
Life of eternity!"
To the day of his death Arthur, Lord Chester, carried this picture
in his memory and his heart--this picture of a girl standing by a
magnificent large mastiff with one tiny white hand holding his silver
collar. Beneath her fairy feet was daisied grass, and her simple white
gown and the broad straw hat she carried on her arm seemed to fit the
spring-time that was imaged in the golden lengths of rippling hair. So
she stood--"a sight to make an old man young"--Ethel's younger sister,
the senator's favorite.
The words of a poet of his own fair land leaped to his lips:
"Sovereign lady in fair field
Myself for such a face had boldly died."
Later in the day he called at the Winans mansion, and Ethel received
him alone. Her mamma was too ill and nervous to see any one.
Never had the queenly Ethel looked more charming. No shade of anxiety
dimmed the dark radiance of her eyes. She had slept long and late, and
when she awoke and heard that Precious was not yet found she laughed
and said that she was sure that her sister had eloped with some
handsome young man, and would be coming home in a few days from her
bridal tour, with her husband, to ask papa's forgiveness.
And she repeated this to Lord Chester when he expressed solicitude over
her sister's fate.
"I am not at all uneasy, my lord," she cried lightly; "I think it
very likely that Precious has eloped with one of her tutors. Papa had
several young men coming here to teach my sister music, and drawing,
and dancing. Of course her French governess was always present. But she
scarcely understood a word of English, so it was easy enough for one of
them to make love to her if he wished, and Precious was just the kind
of pretty, willful simpleton to fall in love with a nobody and marry
him."
A keen, inexplicable pain tore the young man's heart at those words,
and it seemed to him that Ethel's levity amounted to heartlessness.
He looked gravely at her with his dark-gray eyes, and it seemed to
him that there was something lacking in her beauty that he had not
missed last night, but he did not realize as yet that the change was in
himself.
He would have denied it if any one had taxed him with being in love
with a girl whom he knew only by her portrait.
Only last night he had adored charming Ethel Winans. It was only her
mother's interruption that had prevented him from laying his heart and
title at her feet. The words had trembled on his lips while he looked
at her with his heart in his eyes.
Why did he not speak to-day?
The opportunity was very favorable, for it was but seldom he could find
the brilliant belle alone.
And Ethel's languid air, just touched with the softness of love, was
very inviting. It was just the gentle mood in which a girl is likely to
accept a proposal.
But he did not propose, although he said to himself that really he
ought to, and he was afraid she expected it, after last night. But
really it might not be quite correct to speak just now when the family
was crushed with grief over the kidnaping of a beloved daughter. He
would postpone the declaration.
In truth last night's zest was lacking. Last night Ethel had
seemed to him a peerless goddess. To-day she was only an ordinary
mortal--beautiful, but--not as divine as her younger sister.
If he had dreamed of the mad passion of jealousy surging under her calm
exterior he would never have uttered his next words:
"I saw your sister's portrait at Valentine's studio to-day. Her beauty
merits all her father's praise."
She bit her scarlet lip and tore to pieces a rose in her fingers.
"The portrait is flattered. Precious is not half so beautiful," she
answered coldly, and a sudden constraint came between them. Lord
Chester, blind to the smoldering fury under the long black lashes,
thought her weary of him, and soon took leave.
Ethel, left alone in the splendid room, with the scattered rose petals
at her feet, flung out her arms with a gesture of rebellious despair,
and moaned bitterly:
"She has won my lover's heart with that fatal, luring, childish beauty!
How can I help but hate her now?"
The evening's post brought a mysterious type-written letter to Senator
Winans. It ran thus:
"You have made a mistake. I did not steal Precious for a ransom,
but for love of her fair face. Do not be uneasy. I shall not harm
your beautiful daughter. She is safe in the care of a kind, motherly
woman, but she is also my prisoner, and will remain so until she
consents to become my bride. After she is married to me you shall see
her again, but never before; so you must be patient, for she is a
little obdurate now, but in the end I shall win her consent."
The letter had no date or signature, but it was postmarked Washington.
"Didn't I say it was an elopement?" cried Ethel, in scornful triumph,
but her father turned on her a lightning glance of reproof, and cried
sternly:
"Never dare, Ethel, to repeat that false word elopement of your
innocent sister again. You have just read in this letter that it was an
abduction, not an elopement. So do not make another such mistake."