NINA’S PERIL.
A Novel.
BY
MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK:
Copyright, 1886.
_G. W. Dillingham, Publisher_,
SUCCESSOR TO G. W. CARLETON & CO.
LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.
MDCCCLXXXVII
Stereotyped by
SAMUEL STODDER,
42 DEY STREET, N. Y.
DEDICATION.
TO
ALEXANDER McVEIGH MILLER,
AS A
SOUVENIR OF REGARD,
AND
IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE WARM SYMPATHY AND
WISE COUNSELS THAT HAVE AIDED AND ENCOURAGED
ME IN MY LITERARY EFFORTS.
YOUR WIFE.
_October, 1886._
CONTENTS.
Chapter Page
I. A beautiful face 7
II. Waiting and Hoping 12
III. Sketching the Past 16
IV. Coming Home 22
V. “Nothing can undo the Folly of Five years Ago.” 28
VI. “Can this really be Nina?” 39
VII. Pride 49
VIII. “I have Sworn an Oath and I shall have to keep it.” 53
IX. Jealousy 59
X. “I will never forgive her.” 66
XI. The Shadows Fall 70
XII. An Interview Declined 76
XIII. Nina’s Sacrifice 80
XIV. A Maddened Lover 89
XV. The Tragedy 95
XVI. The Flight of Nina 101
XVII. Sibyl’s Accusation 108
XVIII. Rescued 114
XIX. With Friends 118
XX. The Fieldings 122
XXI. “Mad from Life’s History.” 128
XXII. Remorse 132
XXIII. Compagnons du Voyage 138
XXIV. “She is Dead to All.” 142
XXV. Poverty 148
XXVI. I must have Money 152
XXVII. Back to Selwyn Heights 158
XXVIII. Entrapped 162
XXIX. Nina learns the truth 166
XXX. A Ghostly Laugh 174
XXXI. The Arrest of Nina 185
XXXII. Talbot’s Suspicions 193
XXXIII. Talbot’s Dreams 201
XXXIV. The Prison 205
XXXV. Nina’s Despair 214
XXXVI. The Trial 220
XXXVII. The Letter 224
XXXVIII. The Ghost again 234
XXXIX. Nina forgives Talbot 245
XL. In Egypt 253
XLI. Ferris grows desperate 259
XLII. The Naya Haye 263
XLIII. Judge Lynch 274
XLIV. Armstrong’s News 278
XLV. Talbot learns all 282
XLVI. Talbot accuses Ferris 286
XLVII. Ralph St. Alban 294
XLVIII. Flight into the desert 305
XLIX. Torn by Wolves 311
L. Journeying Homeward 320
LI. On the Scaffold 330
LII. Sibyl’s Punishment 340
LIII. Nina’s Happiness 349
LIV. The Invitation 356
LV. “It’s we two for aye.” 360
NINA’S PERIL.
CHAPTER I.
A BEAUTIFUL FACE.
“A phial of laudanum, please!”
The sleepy clerk on night duty at the drug store looked up with a
start. He had not heard any one enter, but here stood a young girl by
the counter, looking at him with large, sombre dark eyes, that shone
wierdly out of a white, white face, framed in tresses of disordered
golden hair--a face beautiful beyond all dreams of fancy but for its
strange, marble pallor, and the anguished eyes out of which gleamed a
desperate purpose, as she extended a snowy ungloved hand with a silver
coin shining in the rosy palm, and repeated in a low, eager voice:
“A phial of laudanum, please.”
It was a wild wintry night in the great city, and there were none
abroad except those whom necessity forced to be out. The air was full
of keen, fine flakes of snow, that was frozen by the piercing wind even
before it fell to the earth. The cold was intense.
“The wrathful winter hastening on apace,
With blustering blasts had all ybared the treen;
And old Saturnus with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierced the tender green.”
The hour was late, and all the shops were closed except the drug stores
that stood open by night as well as by day, always at the service of
the sick and suffering. Even these, with their great red and green
lights glowing abroad like friendly beacons to those who were drifting
on the perilous seas of sickness and disease, were mostly deserted
to-night, and in this one, where that unlooked-for customer entered,
the weary clerk dozed at his post, and her sharp, eager young voice
roused him from a disconnected dream.
He sprang to his feet and looked at her, but his sleepy eyes did not
take in at first all the misery of that beautiful young face.
“What can I do for you, miss?” he inquired, with a tone of
irrepressible admiration in his voice; and the girl reiterated her
formula impatiently:
“A phial of laudanum, please.”
Then he looked at her more closely. He saw the misery in the great,
heavy black eyes, with the purple shadows lying darkly beneath them,
saw how awfully white and anguished was the lovely face with its
perfect features, sharpened and refined by keen suffering. He hesitated
before he complied with her request.
“We do not usually sell poisons without a doctor’s prescription. Have
you one?” he inquired.
She looked at him imploringly, and clasped her delicate hands together.
“No, I have not, but for God’s sake do not refuse me,” she cried,
almost wildly. “I _must_ have the laudanum! I am suffering so much,
and it will still this terrible pain.” She pressed her clenched hands
against her pale cheek with a suppressed groan.
The dawning suspicions of the drug clerk were instantly diverted by her
expressive movement.
“Oh, if it is the toothache, all right,” he said. “Here it is, miss. A
few drops on a bit of cotton will soon relieve you; be careful not to
use too much.”
She caught it quickly from his hand with a sudden low, hysterical laugh.
“Thank you a thousand times,” she said. “Oh, yes, I will be very
careful; but it is not the toothache, it is the heartache I am going to
cure.”
She murmured the last words in an undertone and hurried toward the
door before she had done speaking. He saw her pause in the doorway an
instant, saw her pull the stopple quickly from the little phial, then
she put the deadly drug to her lips, drained the last drop, and threw
the empty vessel far from her upon the pavement. All seemed to pass in
an instant of time, and before the horrified clerk recovered from the
trance of horror with which he beheld her terrible deed, she stepped
quickly out into the street, and disappeared in the gloom and darkness
of the inclement night.
“Great heaven!” gasped the clerk, springing forward in hot pursuit.
He gained the door, sprang into the street at one bound, and looked
about him with straining eyes. The drug store stood on the corner of
two streets that intersected each other; he looked hastily up one
street and then the other, but vainly. Even in that moment of time the
girl had disappeared from his sight like a spirit. Not a person was to
be seen, and the hard, white snow freezing sleetily upon the pavements,
and shining like diamonds under the light of the flaring gaslamps, held
no impression of the light feet that had sped over them so swiftly, and
borne her beyond his ken.
My readers, let us turn back a few pages in the tragic life-history of
that unhappy creature, and read the story of those heavy sorrows that
had driven the young and beautiful girl recklessly and wickedly forward
upon the terrible shoals of self-destruction.