The Unbidden Guest
OR,
BETWEEN TWO PASSIONS
BY
Mrs. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER
AUTHOR OF
“What Was She to Him?” “The Man She Hated,” “All for Love,”
“The Fatal Kiss,” “Pretty Madcap Lucy,” “Let Us Kiss
and Part,” and numerous other books published
in the NEW EAGLE Series.
[Illustration]
STREET & SMITH CORPORATION
PUBLISHERS
79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York
Copyright 1900 and 1901
By Norman L. Munro
The Unbidden Guest
THE UNBIDDEN GUEST.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE GIPSY’S CURSE.
CHAPTER II. I LOVED YOU BEST OF ALL.
CHAPTER III. LELIA’S INGRATITUDE.
CHAPTER IV. JEALOUSY AS CRUEL AS THE GRAVE.
CHAPTER V. POOR, UNLOVED GIPSY, THE WAIF.
CHAPTER VI. IN DEADLY PERIL.
CHAPTER VII. A WORTHY RESOLVE.
CHAPTER VIII. A QUARTER OF TWELVE.
CHAPTER IX. SHE STARED DEATH IN THE FACE.
CHAPTER X. AN ANGEL UNAWARES.
CHAPTER XI. THE UNBIDDEN GUEST.
CHAPTER XII. “HERE IS YOUR RING.”
CHAPTER XIII. A RASH PROMISE.
CHAPTER XIV. A CRY IN THE NIGHT.
CHAPTER XV. A STRUGGLE FOR A RING.
CHAPTER XVI. A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY.
CHAPTER XVII. A LETTER FROM LAURIE.
CHAPTER XVIII. OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE.
CHAPTER XIX. HE COULD NEVER FORGET HER NOW.
CHAPTER XX. NEVER MORE HER LOVER.
CHAPTER XXI. IF IT COSTS MY HEART’S BLOOD.
CHAPTER XXII. HOUNDED TO HIS FATE.
CHAPTER XXIII. TWO RINGS.
CHAPTER XXIV. HAUNTED.
CHAPTER XXV. THE MASK OF A GUILTY SOUL.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE PALL OF DEATH.
CHAPTER XXVII. A FORGOTTEN BRIDE.
CHAPTER XXVIII. A GIPSY PROPHECY.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE HEIRESS.
CHAPTER XXX. STARTLING NEWS.
CHAPTER XXXI. THE DEAD ALIVE.
CHAPTER XXXII. GIPSY’S PARENTAGE.
CHAPTER XXXIII. YOU HAVE TRIUMPHED.
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN.
CHAPTER XXXV. AS IN A DREAM.
CHAPTER XXXVI. THE PARTING OF THE WAYS.
CHAPTER XXXVII. SHE BETRAYED HERSELF.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. WAS IT A VICTORY?
CHAPTER XXXIX. ONLY A DREAM!
CHAPTER XL. THE PROOFS OF HER GUILT.
CHAPTER XLI. IN EXILE.
CHAPTER XLII. WITH THE FLIGHT OF TIME.
CHAPTER XLIII. THE AMERICAN BEAUTY.
CHAPTER XLIV. THE NIGHTINGALE’S STORY.
CHAPTER I.
THE GIPSY’S CURSE.
“Heigh-ho! I wish I were a boy, then I would run away from The Crags
and see the beautiful world that lies hidden beyond these tall
mountains!”
It was the voice of a pretty young girl, poised on tiptoe on the very
verge of a lofty cliff, gazing down eagerly at the scene far below, the
silvery Greenbrier River, the gleaming line of serpentine railway, and
the winding road that curved around the jagged cliffs up to the heights
where stood The Crags, a picturesque old stone mansion.
Here several generations of the aristocratic Willoughbys had lived and
died, and the present owner and incumbent was Miss Cyrilla Willoughby,
a spinster of sixty years, with literary tastes, who spent her time
preparing for publication the memoirs of her distinguished race.
And the girl?
Oh, a mere nobody! A sort of protégée of Miss Willoughby.
It was quite seventeen years ago that the lady’s cousin, a stern,
domineering soldier, had stalked into her library one day, saying
abruptly:
“Cyrilla, there are some impudent, thieving gipsies camped in your
south meadow, and I have taken the liberty of driving them off. I gave
orders for them to be gone bag and baggage before dark.”
“But was that necessary, Eustis? They have camped on my lands several
times before, and never did any harm that I know of, and they amused
the young people of the neighborhood telling their fortunes,”
remonstrated the spinster mildly.
“They know no more of the future than you or I, Cyrilla!” he returned
sharply, without taking the trouble to tell her that the enraged
gipsy queen had told his fortune gratis in a string of maledictions,
prophesying unnumbered evils on his luckless head.
He had cursed her in return for an impudent jade, and strode from
the camp with a brow as black as night, shuddering, in spite of
himself at her invocations of the Evil One’s power, though he was not
superstitious enough to place any confidence in the efficacy of her
prayers.
Be that as it may, the Fates were weaving a grim web about Colonel
Ritchie’s future, and before midnight he was summoned to his city home
by a telegram announcing the death of a near and dear relative.
Though he had only arrived that day with his wife and little daughter,
Lelia, for a month’s visit at The Crags, they left by the first train
for their city home, and he never returned, for his death occurred two
years later in the Indian Territory, while gallantly leading a charge
against a hostile tribe. Thus he never knew that the banished gipsies
had forgotten or deserted a lovely, dark-eyed babe in their flight. It
was found in the woods next morning by the servants of Miss Willoughby,
and carried to The Crags.
And for beauty and brightness, every one vowed that the half-naked
little waif had never had an equal. Just a few months old, it smiled
into their faces, cooing and gurgling so engagingly that it won every
heart by its infantile pleading of its own cause.
“It must be sent to the poorhouse!” announced Miss Willoughby
unconcernedly. What was a pretty gipsy brat to her, a Willoughby!
But Jane Dobbs, the new housekeeper, clasped it to her heart, begging
to keep it for her own.
“It’s just the age of the one I lost, and it’ll be sech a comfort to
me, please ’m!” she sobbed humbly.
“Keep it, then, so that it does not interfere with your work, or bother
me,” returned the spinster carelessly, and thus the little gipsy came
to belong to The Crags.
Gipsy--that was what they always called her, every one at The Crags,
and it was no matter that Jane Dobbs bestowed on her protégée a string
of high-sounding names, they were all ignored, and she soon came to
know and answer to the first one.
For her surname little Lelia Ritchie, when she visited The Crags soon
after the colonel’s death, became responsible.
“Go away, you little dark gipsy! Laurie and I don’t want to play with
you!” she cried, driving her away with a sharp little slap that sent
Gipsy, sobbing, to hide her tingling cheek in the housekeeper’s skirts.
The servants adopted the epithet, turning it into Gipsy Darke, and thus
it remained ever after.
Lelia was five years old then, and the despised waif just about three.
Laurie was eight, the only and motherless child of Miss Willoughby’s
eldest brother, the general. He was a handsome, brown-eyed boy, the
constant playmate of the radiant, blond Lelia, for their homes were
under one roof, Mrs. Ritchie having gone to live with her widowed
brother, when the colonel met his death on the field of battle.
Miss Willoughby’s haughty little niece and nephew never deigned to make
a playmate of the pretty little waif whose dark eyes, full of wistful
love and longing, followed them about their childish sports. If she
came too near them Lelia always drove her angrily away, exclaiming
spitefully:
“Papa always hated Indians and gipsies, and so do I. You need not offer
us your ugly toys and wild flowers. We don’t want them, and we hate
you!”
Laurie Willoughby never disputed Lelia’s authority, never took Gipsy’s
part, but neither did he join in his cousin’s active hostility. He was
a quiet, undemonstrative boy, and he knew that if he went contrary to
Lelia’s will she would slap his face as readily as she did the little
waif’s, with her big, wistful, dark eyes, like a frightened fawn’s
under her cloud of silky, black ringlets.
He was a little gentleman, he knew it was not manly to fight with
girls, least of all his vixenish cousin, whom he had been told by his
aunt was going to be his little wife when they got old enough to marry.
It was a pet project of the family to unite the pair’s fortunes indeed,
so they did all in their power to foster their childish love.
So all three were grown up now. Laurie, Lelia, and Gipsy, and as the
latter stood on the verge of the cliff in the golden glow of the June
morning, gazing far down the dizzy height at the express-train flashing
along over the steel rails, and heard the shrill whistle announcing
its arrival at the station, she knew that Miss Willoughby’s expected
visitors, the devoted cousins, had arrived, and would soon be at The
Crags.
Nothing else had been talked of for weeks but this visit, the first in
five long years, for Laurie and Lelia had both been abroad several
years finishing their educations--he at a German university, she at a
Parisian boarding-school.
How fine and grand they would be, and what great doings would go on
at The Crags, quite upsetting Miss Willoughby’s literary labors;
for a large house-party had been invited to meet the cousins, and
by to-morrow all would be arrived, and the staid old mansion turned
topsyturvy with fun and frolic, and dancing and coquetry.
The girl on the cliff, young, beautiful, spirited, tender, yet feeling
herself outside all this glow of happiness and excitement, “a mere
looker-on in Venice,” as it were, stood there alone in the beautiful
June morning, with her heart in her great dark eyes, “half-sunshine
and half-shade,” watching the dusty, winding road to see the carriage
coming up the hill with the happy lovers smiling into each other’s eyes.
Without a pang of envy or resentment she watched and waited as for
beautiful beings from another world--that world she longed to behold,
to which she said she would run away if she were only a boy.
And truth to tell, Gipsy actually did look boyish in her bloomer suit
of dark-blue cloth, with tan-colored leggings on her shapely nether
limbs, and her little blue cap set rakishly one side on the cloud of
flying black ringlets that framed an enchantingly lovely face, arch and
spirited and winning, with rose-red pouting lips and dimpled cheeks.
A dangerous rival to the blond Lelia, if only she had not been poor and
despised.