THE VENGEANCE OF HEAVEN.
If any one had told Lelia a month ago that to-day she would be kneeling
to the girl she then despised, imploring her pity and her mercy, she
would have been too angry for words, she would simply have laughed it
to scorn.
Yet she was here on her knees, with clasped hands and burning tears,
imploring Rosalind Whitney, the beautiful heiress, to keep her terrible
secret so that she might hold her husband’s love.
No one but Lelia could have had the effrontery to expect or hope for
pardon from one so deeply wronged.
From her early childhood until now she had wronged and persecuted the
lonely waif until her hatred grew to murderous intensity.
Now the tables were turned upon the heartless Lelia.
Gipsy Darke, the waif, had passed into history. In her place behold
Rosalind Whitney, heiress, with the balance of power in her hands.
Yet there was neither pride nor happiness on the pale, lovely face with
its dark, brilliant eyes, that rested so searchingly on the suppliant’s
face.
“Speak, I pray you, Gipsy, for my happiness is in your hands. Mine and
Laurie’s, too, for it would break his heart to know the lengths to
which jealous anger drove me that fatal night. See, see, they come!”
and drawing aside the curtain before the door, she showed her General
Willoughby and his son advancing with the gipsy.
But a moment remained in which to grant the grace that Lelia craved.
The dark and the blue eyes looked fixedly into each other, and Lelia
entreated:
“You have taken the fortune, robbed me of all but Laurie’s love! Leave
me that, I implore you!”
“Are you so sure of his love?” demanded the heiress hoarsely.
“As sure as I am of my own existence!”
Lelia felt, somehow, that everything depended on this answer, so she
did not hesitate at the falsehood.
She waited with wild impatience for the answer, as a criminal condemned
to die waits for a pardon or even a reprieve.
The footsteps were almost at the door. She longed to catch hold of the
girl and shake the answer from her mute lips.
Another moment and it would be too late!
But the pale lips moved slowly, uttering words so low that Lelia had to
bend her ear to catch them:
“I will keep your hideous secret for his sake, because he loves you!”
With a cry of joy Lelia sprang to her feet just as Magdala’s hand
thrust aside the curtain, ushering her two companions into the tent.
Oh, how glad she was that she had told Gipsy that falsehood. It was all
that had saved the girl from betraying her guilty secret.
She saw now, too, that Gipsy loved Laurie also--loved him so dearly
that to save his heart the cruel pang of knowing his beloved unworthy
she had consented to keep inviolate one of the most hideous secrets in
the world.
Like the consummate actress she was, Lelia threw back her head and
laughed as they entered the tent.
“You see I am here before you!” she cried gaily. “I was determined to
be the first to congratulate our dear girl on her transformation from
Gipsy, the waif, to Miss Whitney, the heiress. So I jumped on my wheel
and arrived here before you.”
Gipsy, as we cannot help calling her still, sat up on her couch,
straightening her white gown about her, and blushing and paling by
turns at their entrance.
General Willoughby took her hand, and said kindly:
“Magdala has told us all about you, and I find that I knew your
grandfather intimately. We were at college together. I wish I had
known who you were sooner. It would have made quite a difference in
your life, I assure you. But all’s well that ends well. I have to
congratulate you on being my sister’s heiress.”
“I thank you, sir, for your kind words, and I am grateful to the dead
for her generosity; but I would rather have her back again in life than
to possess a million!” the girl murmured, with irrepressible tears.
“Bosh! All put on for effect!” Lelia thought impatiently, then started
with jealous anger, seeing her husband approach and take Gipsy’s hand.
He said tremulously:
“I agree with you that there are losses all the wealth of the world
could not pay for, Miss Whitney. Your loss was one of them, my dear
aunt’s another. Your supposed death broke her heart, and left a
heavy shadow upon mine. I congratulate myself as well as you on your
restoration to life.”
“I thank you,” she faltered, her eyes drooping before the ardent glow
of his, while Lelia thought bitterly:
“Humph, very strong words indeed for a married man, I think! But I
shall teach him better soon! I will have no flirting with any one, and
with her least of all, for she loves the ground he walks on already. If
he held out his little finger she would very likely consent to elope
with him, leaving me here, a deserted bride! Look at the old general,
too, playing the agreeable to the heiress. What a difference money
makes, to be sure.”
General Willoughby, indeed, had approached Rosalind again, saying:
“If you are well enough to be taken in a carriage to The Crags, we
will send for one at once to convey you to your home, where we are at
present your guests.”
“Do not speak so! It is more yours than mine, and I hope you will be
pleased to remain there a long time!” she answered graciously, through
her embarrassment.
Magdala approached, saying bluntly:
“So all of you agree in identifying Gipsy Darke?”
“Most certainly!” cried the general.
“Yes, yes!” answered Laurie.
Lelia would have demurred, but she knew it would be no use, so she
added graciously:
“I am entirely convinced.”
Thereupon Magdala claimed and received the generous reward Laurie had
offered.
She was profuse in her thanks, and started with surprise when he said
in an undertone:
“Send your son to me privately this evening. He shall not go unrewarded
for his opportune service in taking Miss Whitney out of the well.”
Magdala threw him a strange glance that made him think of the fortune
she had told him that moonlight night on the way to Lewisburg.
“You will be married twice,” she had said, “and your first and second
choice will differ from each other as daylight and darkness. These two
women will bring a tragedy into your life, but the clouds will roll by,
and you will be happy at last.”
Happiness seemed very far away now, married to one woman and in love
with another one, and his heart sank like a stone in his breast as he
thought that the only way for him was to get away as soon as he could
from both.
He was recalled to the present by hearing Miss Whitney assent to the
proposition to go back in a carriage to The Crags with the party.
Magdala sent a messenger for the carriage, and then the general, who
had all the eager, impatient curiosity of old age, exclaimed:
“If you are not too tired, my dear Miss Whitney, we will be glad to
hear the story of that night when you were attacked by some fiend
in your room, and apparently killed. It will help us, perhaps, to
apprehend the wretch!”
She grew deadly pale at the memory of that awful night.
“I--I cannot speak of it! Oh, no, do not ask me!” falteringly.
“But surely you wish the wretch punished?”
“I--I will leave it to the vengeance of Heaven!” sighed Gipsy, and
Lelia shuddered with dread. Would Heaven be less merciful than this
girl she hated? Would it, indeed, punish her sin?
No matter how much they wondered at her silence, and urged her to
speak, the beautiful young heiress refused to tell the story of that
awful night. She said simply that she had been robbed of the beautiful
ring Mr. Willoughby gave her, but she would leave the vengeance to
Heaven.