"HIS HEART WILL TURN BACK TO ME."
"Eyes that loved me once, I pray
Be not crueler than death;
Hide each sharp-edged glance away
Underneath its cruel sheath!
Make me not, sweet eyes, with scorn,
Mourn that I was ever born!"--ALICE CARY.
Through the falling twilight of the bleak March day Ethel Winans sped
away like a guilty creature, nor paused until she reached her home.
Entering by a private door she gained her own room unobserved and
hastened to bathe her face and hands and rearrange her disordered
tresses.
Then she summoned Hetty, and the maid stared in surprise at her
corpse-like pallor and heavy eyes.
"Oh, Miss Ethel, you look awful! Are you sick?"
"I am tired to death," sighed Ethel. "I have had such a long, weary
chase after Kay! Oh, Hetty, I have lost him, but you must never, never
tell, for papa would never forgive me if he knew. He ran off with some
other dogs in a park, and though I ran and ran I could not get him
back."
"You ought not to worry so about the dog, Miss Ethel. Lordy, he'll be
sure to find his way back home," declared the maid cheerfully.
Ethel looked on the verge of tears. She half sobbed:
"Do you think so? I hope he will, for Precious loved him so dearly, and
papa will be so sorry to find him gone, and he will be so angry with
me for taking him out. Please don't say anything about it to any one,
Hetty, and you may have that coral bracelet of mine."
"Thank you kindly, Miss Ethel, and of course it's not my business to
find out that Kay is missing. So now it's time to dress for dinner, if
you please. What dress will you wear, Miss Ethel? That new gold-colored
silk with the black lace draperies, or something plainer? There's no
one to dinner but the two gentlemen of the family. Your mamma is not
well enough to dine."
"Poor mamma! But, Hetty, I am too tired to dress and dine to-night. I
think I will send down excuses and retire. My head is throbbing with
pain. I believe I should like a sedative."
Hetty brought the sedative and helped her to bed, saying as she tucked
in the silken coverlet:
"Miss Miller called for you this afternoon, and I told her you had gone
to keep an engagement with her. She said there must be some mistake;
she hadn't seen you. I thought to myself that maybe you changed your
mind and went to the old clairvoyant after all."
"I didn't have time to go anywhere after I lost Kay and had that long
chase after him, so I hurried home," Ethel answered evasively. Then she
nestled her head in the pillow and closed her eyes.
"Now, Hetty, I don't need you any longer. You can go and tell mamma I
was so weary from my long walk that I retired."
Hetty dimmed the light and went out, but she thought sagely:
"Miss Ethel fibbed when she said she hadn't been anywhere. I'll bet a
dime she's been to the old fortune-teller, and she told her something
she didn't like and she's gone to bed to cry over it."
Ah, Hetty, your young mistress had more to grieve over than you
guessed, and the pillow of down might have been full of thorns for all
the rest she found that night.
For, shut her eyes as she might, there was one vision always before
them--a wan little face like a snowdrop, luminous blue eyes, golden
hair like an aureole of light; then it would fade and fall away into a
cloud of smoke and flame, only to reappear again, until Ethel writhed
in anguish and sobbed:
"It was not my fault. I could have saved her if she had not fainted.
But no one must ever know I was there. They would blame me for her
awful death."
She sat up in bed staring with gloomy eyes and writhing hands, trying
to put from her the horror of her sister's death and to think what life
would be like now when there was no pretty, willful Precious any more
to envy for her fatal power of winning hearts.
"They must learn to love me now, papa, mamma, Earle and--Lord Chester,
for his heart will turn back to me when there is no witching Precious
to distract his thoughts. They loved her too well and fate has punished
them by taking their idol away. It is my turn now," she thought with a
bitter triumph.
Ah, Ethel, could the straining gaze of those somber eyes have pierced
the shadows of the gloomy twilight they would have beheld a sight to
blast them with its surprise.
Down the ladder came Lord Chester bearing the unconscious form of
golden-haired Precious, whom Ethel had forsaken, and who never would
have been saved but for the devotion of the faithful mastiff, noble Kay.
The shouts that rose from the crowd, as Lord Chester came down with the
girl in his arms and the brave mastiff leaped from the window might
almost have reached Ethel's ears, they were so loud and ringing.
Lord Chester was so blind and dizzy from the heat and smoke that as
soon as his burden was drawn from his arms he sank exhausted to the
ground.
The next instant the roof of the building fell in, leaving only the
outer walls standing. Lord Chester had saved a life that but for his
bravery must have perished in the raging flames.
Earle Winans pressed forward to his friend's assistance with a pang of
keen remorse as he remembered how he had tried to restrain his friend
from that perilous undertaking.
"How little I dreamed that a human being was in deadly peril within the
house," he thought as he gazed curiously at the girl his friend had
rescued from such an awful fate.
His dark eyes noted the golden hair all tossed and tangled in a curly
mass, the closed eyes, the waxen fair face in its pallid beauty. Then a
loud cry burst from his lips:
"Oh, Heaven! it is my missing sister--little Precious!"
And he reeled and would have fallen but for the restraining arm of a
stranger.
Water was poured on his face and he quickly revived from his momentary
faintness.
He knelt by the silent form of the unconscious girl, crying in anguish:
"It is Precious! my little sister! Oh, do not tell me she is dead."
A physician pushed through the crowd and made a hasty examination. His
face was very grave.
"She is not dead, but her unconsciousness is very deep," he said. "If
it is a simple swoon she may revive, but if asphyxiated by the smoke
and heat, as I greatly fear, she will very likely soon expire."
Lord Chester, recovering from his momentary exhaustion, heard their
words and looked with a bitter heart-pang at the face of Precious.
Never before had he gazed at that face, yet there came a swift despair
at thought of her death--a swift despair that blotted out all memory of
Ethel's sparkling beauty that such a little while ago had charmed him
so.
"We must have a carriage and take her home," cried Earle huskily, then
wrung his friend's hand and thanked him for the rescue of his sister.
"From this hour you are dear to me as a brother," he cried with deep
emotion.
So it happened that while Ethel sat up in bed staring with wild
eyes into a possible future that held no lovely sister for a rival,
a carriage was pausing at the door that held Earle Winans, his
unconscious sister, and a physician, and presently there came ringing
to Ethel's ear the long cry of anguish wrung from a mother's heart
while bending over her dead.
Ethel started and listened in terror. What did it mean, that long, low
cry of grief in her mother's voice?
Then Hetty Wilkins rushed in, pale and tearful, crying out:
"Oh, Miss Ethel, such dreadful news! They have bought Miss Precious
home dead."
But from behind her came Earle Winans, and he exclaimed angrily:
"Hetty, you are a cruel girl to frighten Ethel so. You had no business
to come to her with such news. My mother sent me to break it to her
gently. Ethel, dear, do not sob so bitterly. We have brought Precious
home, but a little life lingers still and we hope she may not die."
Ethel had dropped her face in her hands. When her brother lifted it he
was startled at its expression, the ghastly face, the eyes wide and
dark with horror.
He scolded Hetty roundly for her rashness in blurting out the news to
his sister, and the girl stood aside sulkily at his reproof.
"Never mind Hetty; she meant no harm, Earle; but tell me all about it.
Where did you find Precious?" gasped Ethel, clinging to him in wild
excitement.
And holding her head against his arm and smoothing the dark waves of
her hair with a loving hand Earle told the story as far as he knew
it--the story of his young sister's rescue by Arthur, Lord Chester.
Kay, the splendid mastiff, came in for a share of praise too, and
Hetty, the maid, listened intently to it all and nodded excitedly when
Earle said:
"The greatest wonder of all is how Kay came to be there; but of course
if Precious revives she can explain all that."
He felt Ethel shuddering against his arm, and Hetty saw how she
trembled, and said to herself:
"I think Miss Ethel could explain it too, if she would, and if she
don't speak I shall begin to think she has some strange secret worth
more than the gift of a bracelet."
"I must go back to my mother now, for our father is too wretched
himself to comfort her. Ethel, try to come down if you can," he said,
as he left the room.
Ethel dragged herself out of bed, moaning:
"You must dress me, Hetty, and let me go to my poor sister."
Hetty brought her slippers and a pretty wrapper, and while she was
putting them on she exclaimed:
"What a brave young man Lord Chester must be!"
Ethel's heart gave a fierce throb of mingled pride and pain.
"And," pursued the loquacious maid, "he is the rich lord that they all
say you are going to marry, isn't he, Miss Ethel?"
"Yes," answered Ethel carelessly, then added:
"But I don't think I shall accept him."
She turned away from the maid as she spoke and went from her own
apartments toward those of Precious, nearer to her mother.
She opened the door very softly and glided in.
They were all there, her father, mother, brother, and the physician.
Precious lay on her bed, white as a lily, but breathing faintly. She
had revived from her swoon, but she had not yet spoken. Her half-open
blue eyes seemed to know that they were all there, but she was too
exhausted to utter a word.
Ethel bent down and pressed her lips on the wasted little hand, and
when she met the gaze of the half-conscious blue eyes she whispered,
too low for any one to hear:
"Please don't tell any one I was there with you, Precious, until you
get well enough for me to explain."
The little hand she was holding gave hers a weak pressure that showed
her that Precious understood and would not speak.
The others, looking on at the little by-play, thought that Ethel was
only whispering to Precious of her joy at her return.
A week passed and the sick girl slowly gained strength enough to tell
the story of her persecutions at the hands of Lindsey Warwick and his
mother, but the pair of plotters had made good their escape and were
now beyond the senator's vengeance.
There was one thing that always seemed strange to them, and that was
how Kay had found the way to his mistress. The girl always explained it
in an embarrassed, halting fashion.
"The old woman just unlocked the door, pushed Kay in, and went away
again," she said. "And just a little later the flames burst through the
side of the wall. I--I--looked out of the window and saw that I could
not escape, then I fainted."
"Lindsey Warwick probably stole Kay and took him there, thinking to
please you," said the senator, and his black eyes flashed as he thought
of the vengeance he would take on the kidnaper if he ever found him.
They did not dream of the dark secret that lay behind the reluctance of
Precious to talk of the mastiff's presence in her prison. They could
not guess of the twilight hour when Ethel, sitting alone by her sister
for a little while, had knelt down by Precious and begged her not to
tell of her presence the day of the fire.
"When I saw you fall back in the smoke, Precious, I thought you were
dead, and I ran away in a frenzy of despair and came home, afraid to
tell mamma because I believed the awful news would kill her. I thought
a merciful silence would be best, so I kept the awful secret. And if
you told them now, dear, perhaps they would blame me. They would say I
ought to have sent you down the rope first, but you know how that was,
dear. I wanted to be at the bottom to catch you if you should fall."
"Yes, I know, dear sister, and I don't think they would blame you if we
told them," sighed Precious; but because Ethel insisted on it she gave
the promise of silence.