IN A VILLAIN'S POWER.
"To see her is to love her,
And love but her forever;
For nature made her what she is,
And never made another!"--BURNS.
When Senator Winans left Precious standing like a vision of beauty
under a garlanded pillar to await his return, he did not dream that the
vulture of danger hovered near his blue-eyed darling.
But burning eyes only a little distance away glared on the girl with
wolfish eagerness, and minute by minute those small keen eyes grew
fiercer with the fire of passion.
Precious, all unconscious of those burning eyes, stood quietly watching
the strangers that surrounded her, coming and going in ceaseless ebb
and flow like the waves of the sea.
Suddenly those eyes came nearer, nearer, and burned on the lovely face.
Then a voice spoke in her ear:
"Good-evening, Miss Winans."
Precious started and looked at the speaker.
She recognized her drawing-master, Lindsey Warwick, a young man she
secretly disliked because she had a vague suspicion that he was the
writer of several mysterious love-letters she had lately received.
She gave him a haughty nod, but she did not speak, only stared in
surprise at his elegant evening suit and the rose in his buttonhole,
that transformed him from the poor drawing-master to the elegant man of
fashion.
Lindsey Warwick was not at all abashed by her supercilious air. He
seemed to be wildly agitated, his face pale, his firm chin trembling
with emotion. Bending close to the girl's ear he whispered:
"Come! your father wishes me to take you to your mother."
Something about him, his awe-struck tone, his agitation frightened the
girl. She gasped inquiringly:
"Mamma?"
And Lindsey Warwick answered unhesitatingly, though his voice was
hoarse and strange:
"Yes, poor child, your mother has just dropped dead of heart-disease
over yonder. Come," and he held out his arm.
If she had uttered a cry the little scene might have attracted
attention from the vast crowd surging about, but had he thrust a sword
to the very hilt in her heart Precious could not have fallen more
silently or swiftly at his feet. She just dropped down unconscious
without moan or cry--that was all.
No one had observed anything strange, only one or two looked around
when he exclaimed, "My sister has fainted!"
His ruse had succeeded admirably. Precious lay like a dead girl at his
feet, and there was no one to interfere.
The villain lifted the slender white form in his arms and pushed
through the crowd, trying to gain the door. People made way when
they saw his burden and heard him mutter his formula, "My sister has
fainted." But no one displayed any special interest. Half a score of
women had fainted that night.
So Lindsey Warwick gained the outer air with his burden, and soon
finding a cab took her away.
It was a daring game that he had played, but he had won.
The project had flashed into his mind when he saw her alone and
unguarded in the heedless crowd, and in the desperation of a mad and
hopeless love he had carried it out. He knew that the chances were
terribly against him, but he resolved to run the risk in hope of the
prize.
The cab took him and his captive to the very suburbs of South
Washington--to an old tumble-down red brick house of two stories that
stood alone in a large neglected lot. There were but a few more houses
in the square, and those strictly of the shanty order.
Cabby held out his hand, remarking grumpily:
"Five dollars, you know, is legal fare for Inauguration night."
"I'll make it ten for good luck, and you can go on a big spree
to-morrow," laughed Lindsey Warwick, handing him a bill.
Cabby thanked the kind gentleman vociferously, but he did not wait till
the next day, but went on his orgies at once, and wound up early next
morning in the police court, where he was sent to jail for ten days in
default of payment of his fine. He never saw the papers, never knew of
the sensation that had followed the simple fact of his driving a young
lady and gentleman home from the Inauguration Ball. He did not dream
that he had been concerned in an abduction, or that Senator Winans
would have made him rich for life if he had given to him the clew he
possessed to his lost daughter.
Precious, the petted daughter of wealth and luxury all her life,
recovered her consciousness in the smallest, shabbiest, most
common-looking bedroom she had ever beheld.
A coarse woman of about fifty years was leaning over her. She looked
and smelled like a laundress.
"Who are you, and where am I?" quavered Precious.
A man came forward then, and at sight of him everything came back to
her memory. She lifted her head from the coarse pillow with a shriek.
"Mamma! oh, darling mamma!"
"Be quiet. Your mother is all right, my dear," said Warwick. "The story
of her death was only a ruse to make you faint, so that I could get
you into my power. I love you, so I brought you away to make you my
prisoner until you would consent to be my bride."
Precious sprang to her feet, her blue eyes blazing with anger and scorn.
"You must be crazy! Why, my papa will kill you for this!" she panted
indignantly.
Lindsey Warwick laughed mockingly.
"Oh, no, my dear; he will not get the chance. He will never know where
you are until you marry me!"
She stamped her little foot with the pride of a queen.
"Senator Winans' daughter marry you--a drawing-master!" she cried, with
increased indignation.
"Certainly, my dear. Pride can stoop sometimes. Your mother was only a
governess when she became the senator's bride!"
She looked at him in amazement at his knowledge of their family
history, and answered proudly:
"My mother belonged to one of the proudest families in the South. It
was only the reverse of fortune that placed her for a short time in a
dependent position."
With a laugh he answered:
"Granted, but she was only a governess, and the senator's daughter may
stoop like her father to wed her tutor."
"I hate you! I would not marry you if you were the last man on earth!
Release me at once, and let me go home!" she cried imperiously.
"I will not. I love you to madness, and I have sworn that I will make
you my bride. I will keep you imprisoned here until you consent."
"I will kill myself first."
"I am not afraid of that."
She looked at the coarse, frowzy-haired woman whose greasy clothes
smelled of soapsuds.
"Are you in this plot?" she asked disdainfully.
"He is my son, and has put you in my charge, and I have promised to
keep you safe; that is all," was the careless answer.
"But my father will search everywhere for me, and he will punish you
both when he finds me."
"He will not find you, for there will not be the slightest clew for him
to follow. This house is an old ruin, and my mother lives here alone. I
board in one of the best neighborhoods in Washington, and I will never
come here to see you only late at night."
He made a motion to the old woman, and she immediately retired from the
room.
Then the dark, sneering face of the young man softened with love and
longing. He knelt at her feet, and cried passionately:
"Forgive me, for I love you wildly, and I knew I could never win you
except by force. I have loved you madly for months. I sent you the
tenderest love-letters man ever penned, but you did not reply to them.
I looked at you often with my heart in my eyes, but you averted your
face. Why were you so cold to me?"
"I despised you," answered Precious. "Only yesterday I resolved to tell
mamma that you were presuming on your position to try to make love
to me. I wish now that I had told her. Then she would have had some
suspicion of the truth."
"She will think now that you have eloped with some low-born lover!"
he sneered, rising to his feet, for she had drawn back from him in
disdain. "But I will leave you to rest now, my beautiful love, and my
mother will come and help you to retire. Fear nothing. You will be
kindly treated here, but you will never be restored to your home until
you consent to marry me--ay, until the knot is tied. So think well of
my proposal, for I will make you a good husband. Good-night," and he
bowed and withdrew.
If the thought of her captivity had not been so dreadful, Precious
could have laughed at the man's presumption.
To think that she, the daughter of an illustrious statesman, should
have such a lover as this--a drawing-master, the son of a laundress!
Well, papa would come to find her very, very soon, and then he would
punish the bold villain for his presumption.