THE NUN AT THE BAL MASQUE.
"Is it true that many hands
Find that rosary a chain?
True that 'neath those snowy bands
Throbs full oft a restless brain?
True that simple robe of gray
Covers oft a troubled breast?
True that pain and passion's sway
Enters even in this rest?"
--MARY LOWE DICKINSON.
Mrs. Winans hoped great things from her letter to Earle.
She believed that his love for Ladybird would solve the problem of all
difficulties that hedged the young girl's future.
Lawyer Stanley had told Senator Winans that his authority over his ward
would cease at her marriage, or on her attaining the age of twenty. In
the former clause there appeared the one possibility of escape from the
clutches of her unkind guardian.
"If she and Earle could only make up their quarrel all might end well,"
she thought, with all the complacency of a match-making mamma.
Three days after her call on the Stanleys the post brought her a letter
from Ladybird that she welcomed with delight, because she foresaw that
it would make her plans easier in every way.
Ladybird had written in a burst of tenderness and penitence:
"They will not let me come to you, nor write to you, my kind, kind
friend; but I have bribed a servant to mail this letter to you.
"You are too good and kind to me, dear Mrs. Winans, for you surely
cannot know how dreadfully I behaved to your son, or you would not
wish me to live under the same roof with him. You would despise me
as much as he does if you knew how silly I am, and that I threw his
love away just to show my power over a dozen grinning idiots that
I disliked in my heart. I was a wicked little flirt, so happy and
careless that I did not know how badly I was behaving until Earle's
scorn stung me into a realization of the truth. Now I repent, but
it is too late. I know he can never forgive me, so how could I dare
become an inmate of your home? I know that the sight of me would be
hateful to him, perhaps drive him from his home.
"I have thought it all over and decided that it is best to stay
where I am, although these people are harsh and unloving. But, after
all the past, it would not be right for me to come to you. Though I
adore you all, I am rightly punished for my faults by being forced
to remain here. So leave me to my fate, and trouble yourself no more
over the misfortunes of unhappy LADYBIRD."
Perhaps it was treason to her impulsive young correspondent, but when
Earle arrived the next day Mamma Winans lost no time in showing him the
letter.
When she saw the glow of joy in his dark eyes she knew that her boy's
love was still faithful to his willful little sweetheart, who had
suffered so much for her girl's romance.
"You will forgive her, Earle?" she cried anxiously, and his smile
answered her without word.
"Darling, I knew you would!" she cried joyously, running her slender
fingers through his crown of dark curls and bending his head back
against her arm to kiss the noble white brow. Then they talked together
over the possibility of seeing Ladybird. They agreed that it must
be done by strategy. There would be no use to write to her, for the
jealous Aura would be sure to intercept the letter.
Earle was boyishly happy and hopeful.
"So you would advise me to marry Ladybird, as her only means of escape
from her wicked guardian?" he laughed. "Very well, little mamma, we
will see what we can do to deliver the princess from prison! Leave it
all to me. I will take Lord Chester into my confidence, and between us
we will try to outwit the Stanleys in their game of revenge!"
The week succeeding Lord Chester's return passed in a whirl of
receptions, cotillions, and opera parties, and at each one he saw
Precious the center of attraction, her smiles eagerly competed for,
her words listened to as though each one was a jewel dropped from her
lovely lips. He did not wonder that they almost fought for the prize
of that fair little hand. It seemed to him, in the madness of his
hopeless, silent love, that he would have been willing to lay down his
life for the pleasure of calling her his own even one short hour. In
his heart was all the passion of the poet's plaint:
"To know for an hour you were mine completely,
Mine in body and soul, my own--
I would bear unending tortures sweetly,
With not a murmur and not a moan!"
If he had seen that Precious had a favored lover it would have been
the cruelest torture; but he was spared that agony. She was the same
to all--bright, sweet, spirited, yet without a shadow of coquetry. To
her father's old friends, the gray-haired statesmen and diplomats, she
was as cordial and courteous as to the young butterflies of fashion and
wealth that hovered around her; but in her sweet graciousness to all
Lord Chester saw no sign of that preference for one at which Ethel had
hinted in more than one letter. Bitterly, jealously, he watched for his
happy rival, and at last he reminded Ethel of her letter, and asked the
name of her sister's lover.
The warm color flamed into Ethel's olive cheeks, and she knit her dark,
slender brows in momentary perplexity.
"Why, I have forgotten," she exclaimed, then added: "Oh, yes, it was
at Narragansett Pier, was it not, Arthur? I remember it now, but I
have forgotten the young man's name, it is so long ago, and one meets
so many strangers in a summer! But the affair never came to anything
after all. Precious loved him, I know, but he was a wretched flirt and
went away without asking her to marry him. You notice how sad she looks
at times. I think she still grieves in secret over her disappointment."
In his heart he doubted Ethel's story. There was no man on earth who
would have flung away the jewel of Precious' love if he could have had
it for his own. He believed that Ethel, in her jealousy of her sweet
sister, had uttered an untruth.
And he quailed at the thought of spending all his life with one who
could stoop to so cruel a falsehood.
He was the soul of white-handed honor, this handsome young scion of a
noble house, and he held with the poet:
NOBLESSE OBLIGE.
"I hold it the duty of one who is gifted,
And specially dowered in all men's sight,
To know no rest till his life is lifted
Fully up to his gift's great height.
"He must mold the man into rare completeness,
For gems are set only in gold refined;
He must fashion his thoughts into perfect sweetness
And cast out folly and pride from his mind."
It gave Ethel a cruel pleasure to wound Lord Chester by such stories of
her sister. When she saw his handsome face blanch and his proud eyes
darken with pain, she felt that she was taking a fair revenge for his
heart's perfidy to her who should have reigned in it supreme.
And at times like this the old, jealous pain and envy of the innocent
young sister who had come so fatally between her and happiness ached
in her heart almost to frenzy, although she had learned cunning in
its expression. Many a time she shut her crimson lips tight over the
burning words of passion, but the close-kept fire only smoldered more
hotly in her heart, waiting for the slightest breath to stir it into
destructive flame.
And suddenly the day and the hour came when, maddened by jealous love,
she was ready to palter with temptation as terrible as that which had
once before breathed its poison breath upon her soul.
It was at a masquerade ball given by the wife of a cabinet official
that Ethel's hovering fate found her out.
A strange freak of fancy had made the beautiful brunette choose the
garb of a nun for the gay pageant of the night.
Precious had chosen quite a different costume, but she had concealed
from all but her mother and Ethel the character she chose to personate.
She had all the _debutante's_ curiosity to find if any one would detect
her identity behind her mask.
Within an hour after they reached the ball Ethel saw Lord Chester in
his character of King Arthur of Ye Table Round in close converse with
a masked princess whom she knew as Precious. The pair were sitting
a little apart from the crowd in a secluded flowery alcove, and the
thought instantly rushed over Ethel that her sister had played her
false, and confided to her lover the secret of her mask. "It is a
cunning trick to enjoy each other's society," she muttered angrily, and
her heart leaped to suffocation under the plain gray serge gown with
its long, straight folds, and the rosary hanging down by her side.
She was standing alone for a moment in the conservatory door, and the
low, muttered words reached the ears of a knight just behind her who
had hovered unobserved for some time in her vicinity. At her angry
heart-cry and the heavy sigh that breathed over her lips, the knight's
eyes flashed beneath his mask, while his lips curled in a diabolical
smile. Moving close to her ear he whispered gallantly:
"Clouds often hide the stars, but the white cap of the nun cannot
obscure the brilliancy of Miss Winans, the star of Lord Chester's
heart."
Was there a sneer in the low voice? Ethel looked around with a start,
and there was the knight at her elbow, with a form and voice that
seemed entirely strange. Yet he had recognized her instantly, so he
must be one of her friends.
But before she could speak he continued:
"Yet your choice of a costume surprises me. Miss Winans is not one to
wear a penitential mood or garb. She is of the earth earthy, and must
feel her heart thrill with jealous rage beneath even the sacred garb of
the nun."
"Who are you that can know Miss Winans so well?" she asked, with
blended anger and surprise, and his low-breathed answer was startling:
"I am one on whose fiat hangs the future of Miss Winans for good or
ill!"
Ethel felt a strange thrill of repulsion run over her frame, and
cresting her head with a haughty movement unbefitting her convent garb
she exclaimed sternly:
"Your jest is ill-timed, sir!"
A low laugh answered her--low and menacing. Somehow the blood ran
coldly through her veins at the sound. Shuddering, she was turning away
when his hand fell lightly on her arm, staying her steps.
"Let me speak to you a moment in the conservatory, Miss Winans. I come
to you from Hetty Wilkins," he said coolly.
She dared not hesitate. Trembling with fear she followed him to a quiet
place, where there could not possibly be any listeners. They sat down
side by side, and he whispered:
"When Hetty Wilkins came to you for a thousand dollars, I sent her. I
hold the secret of your presence in the burning house, and the secret
of your cruel abandonment of your sister to a terrible fate."
"It is not true. It was an accident," she muttered hoarsely; then with
a searching glance: "Perhaps you are Lindsey Warwick."
"No matter what my name is, I am one who will betray your guilty secret
unless you pay my price for keeping it. You have paid Hetty, now you
must pay me. I do not believe you will shrink from the price of your
safety, for it is only that you will betray into my hands to-morrow the
beautiful sister that you hate!"