would not be fair for you to decline."
"Allow me," said Walter Earle, gently leading her to the piano.
Was it any wonder if a faint thrill of pleasure and triumph swelled the
girl's heart as her white hands fluttered lovingly over the pearl keys?
She remembered last year. How ashamed she had felt that she could not
play; how the young girls had looked at her pityingly and, she vaguely
fancied, disdainfully, because she knew so little.
They did not know how hard she had practiced since. Everyone was
surprised that she should try after Ronald Valchester.
He himself looked at her a little uneasily. Everyone expected a
failure.
Walter Earle opened the portfolio of music and held it open before her,
but she shook her head.
"No, I will play something from memory," she said.
"Now I know she will make a failure," Violet said to herself, "for my
music-teacher always told me never to play without my notes before me."
But Violet made no allowance for genius, which acknowledges no law, and
is sufficient unto itself.
Jaquelina touched a key or two softly so that the sound seemed to be
the answer to a caress, then her hands began to fly across the keys
like white-winged birds.
People looked at each other. The magic power of genius was in those
slender fingers--
"Sweeping the swift and silver chords."
In a moment she began to sing. She had chosen the pretty, familiar
ballad of Annie Laurie.
Not one in the room but knew that only a powerful and well-trained
voice could do justice to the melodious but difficult strain.
But Jaquelina's voice--clear and fresh as a nightingale's--soared
upward without the least apparent effort.
The sweet, pathetic ballad was rendered exquisitely. There was a
perfect hush throughout the room until it ended. Then they crowded
around her.
"Another," and "another," and "another," they pleaded when she would
have risen. It was Violet at last who brought it to an end by saying
carelessly:
"Let us go back to the dancing now. We can have music every day, but
dancing only now and then."
"Thank you," said a low voice over Jaquelina's shoulder as she was
passing out of the door. She looked back and saw Ronald Valchester's
face looking down at her with bright, shining eyes. "You have given me
a great deal of pleasure," he said.
"I am very glad," she replied, and the next moment, she scarcely knew
how it happened, he was walking by her side, and her hand was resting
on his arm.
They went out upon the lawn and down the laurel walk.
"Instead of dancing will you give me this half-hour?" he had said to
her. "I wish to talk to you about this beautiful treasure you have
possessed so long unknown to us all."
"What do you mean?" she asked, as they wandered along the path beneath
the whispering laurels.
"Your voice," he said. "Do you know, Miss Meredith, that it is really
marvelous? I cannot tell you how it has surprised and delighted me."
And again she said, simply as before:
"I am glad."
He looked at the lovely young face and saw that she was pleased, but
not at all surprised.
"Someone has told you this before," he said quickly. "I am not the
first to lay a laurel at your feet."
In the soft light he saw the color deepen in her cheeks and the
long-fringed lashes droop low.
"My teachers have told me that my voice was fine," she said, quietly,
"and--and I have sung in school-concerts a few times. The people
praised me, then."
"It is no wonder you were not afraid to sing after me," he said. "I was
afraid for you at first. You see I have practised for many years and
people think me a better performer than the most. But I own that my
light has paled before a brighter star."
"You must not say so," she said quickly. "I have only had a few months'
training. My voice is not at all cultivated."
"It is naturally superb," he answered; "I have heard voices in opera
that were no sweeter than yours. And yet they were _prima donnas_ whom
all the world praised. Perhaps you have heard that, too, before."
"My teacher told me I might successfully choose an operatic career,"
she answered quietly, yet with a sigh whose meaning he did not
understand.
"I hope you will not do so," he answered quickly. "I have always so
much disliked the idea of a public life for a woman."
"We talked of that at school," she replied, "but our singing master
thought quite differently. He declared that a really fine voice
actually belonged to the world."
"Shall you return to the school this winter?"
"No," with a quickly suppressed sigh.
"You have wearied of it, perhaps," he said.
"No," she said again; then, with a deepening color, "I have spent all
my money, that is the reason. Have you forgotten, Mr. Valchester, that
all the money I had was the reward I received for capturing the outlaw
chief?"
The soft eyes raised to his face saw a shadow fall over its handsome
contour.
"I--I had been trying to forget all about him," he said, constrainedly.
"What have they done with the fellow, Miss Meredith?"
"He is still confined in the county jail, I believe," she replied. "His
counsel have been using every possible means to defer the new hearing
of the case which was asked for and promised. Uncle Meredith says they
are waiting for popular indignation to abate in hope of obtaining a
more lenient verdict."
"Very likely," said Ronald Valchester, and then there was a constrained
silence.
Jaquelina broke it herself in a voice that was slightly tremulous:
"I--am afraid I did not do right that night, Mr. Valchester. I did not
think--as I have since done--that it was not a fair return for his
kindness to me--for he was kind--kinder than any one knew."
The pretty penitence in her face touched him, but he did not speak.
"I have puzzled over it often and often," she went on, slowly and
thoughtfully, "I have asked myself whether my private obligation to him
should have outweighed the good of the country at large. I have never
been able to satisfy myself. Tell me, Mr. Valchester, did I do right or
not?"
"Miss Meredith," he answered, "many persons have asked me the same
question, but I have never given my opinion to anyone."
"Then, of course, you will not tell me," she said, disappointed, yet
far too shy to insist upon it.
"No, I will not now. I may do so at some future time," evasively.
"Do you think," she said, just a trifle nervously, "it was worth while
to attach any meaning to his threat of vengeance? Sometimes I have felt
afraid."
"I should not give it a thought," he replied. "It is not probable he
will ever have the chance to harm you even if he wished it. No doubt
the best part of his life will be passed in a prison cell."
"Oh, I hope not," the girl cried out in irrepressible sorrow; "I
cannot bear to think that I have been the cause of depriving anyone of
liberty. I did not think of all these things in the fatal moment when
I saw him peering at me behind that laurel there. Now I feel as if I
had betrayed a human being to endless pain for a paltry two hundred
dollars."
Ronald Valchester looked before him silently at the weird, flickering
shadows on the graveled path, and made no reply.
"But I wanted the money so very, very much," she added, appealingly.
Valchester looked down at the slim, white hand lying on his black coat
sleeve, the taper forefinger sparkling
"With one great gem of globed dew
The moon shot crystal arrows through."
"Did you never think of parting with your diamond ring?" he said,
abruptly.
Lifting her wondering gaze to his she saw his eyes fixed on her
mother's ring. She drew her hand from his arm and held it up to the
light. A hundred shimmering rays flashed on the jewel.
"You do not mean that it is really a _diamond_?" she cried, with
sparkling eyes.
"Did you not know it?" he asked, surprised.
"I thought it was only a pretty, shining bit of glass," she answered.
"Is it really and truly a genuine diamond? and worth--how much?"
He took the warm, pretty hand in his on pretense of examining the ring.
At that touch a quick, electric thrill ran from heart to heart.
"Oh, girls, here she is," cried Violet Earle's voice at that moment, in
a tone of apparent gaiety. "What a pretty tableau! Flirting with Mr.
Valchester under the laurels."
CHAPTER XII.
Ronald Valchester looked round, slightly annoyed, as Violet Earle and a
gay group of girls came up to him.
"One should never contradict a lady," he said, "but really, Miss
Earle, your charge against Miss Meredith is misplaced. I was only
examining her ring."
"And only think, Violet, Mr. Valchester says the stone is a real
diamond. I am so surprised and delighted. I did not dream of such a
thing until just now, when he spoke of it. I thought it only a mere,
valueless bit of shining glass."
The eager voice and pleased face were too truthful to admit of doubt.
Everyone but Violet gave up the thought of a flirtation at once. The
girls crowded round to look at Jaquelina's ring.
"Where did you get it?" "Who gave it you?" were some of the questions
they asked her.
"It was my mother's ring," she said, in answer to them all. "I did not
know till Mr. Valchester told me that it was a real diamond."
"I suppose it is worth a great deal," one of the girls said to him.
"A hundred dollars, perhaps--or it may be a hundred and fifty," he
replied carelessly, while Jaquelina drew a long breath of surprise and
delight.
A hundred dollars seemed quite a little fortune in her eyes. She looked
at the pretty ring in awe and wonder, to think that she had possessed
it so long without dreaming of its value.
"We need you to make up the dance, Lina," said Violet. "The Hamiltons,
the Perrys and the Deanes have all gone home, and we have not enough
for the Lancers unless you and Mr. Valchester will come to our
assistance--will you?"
Both answered yes, and went with the girls to take their places in the
dance. Before the party was over he had said to her:
"May I come over and hear you sing to-morrow afternoon--under the
apple-trees?"
"Yes," she answered simply.
He came alone. It must have required an amount of _finesse_ and
strategy for him to get away from Walter and Violet. But he
accomplished it.
Jaquelina was waiting for him under the apple-trees. Her heart thrilled
with a strange pleasure as she saw the tall, handsome young man
coming toward her. She wore, in anticipation of his coming, a pretty,
inexpensive cambric, with a pattern of tiny rose-buds, and a delicate
lace frill fastened at her throat with a cluster of roses. He saw
that she had grown more delicately lovely since last year. The tanned
complexion had acquired a mellow, creamy fairness, the short, soft
rings of hair were longer, and clustered on her shoulders in shining
luxuriance, the crimson lips had taken a softer, tender curve, the dark
eyes had grown dreamy and thoughtful.
"You came _alone_?" she said, and there was an accent of surprise in
her voice.
"Yes, I preferred it. Are you disappointed that Walter and Violet did
not accompany me?" he inquired.
Jaquelina answered no with pretty frankness, and an utter lack of
self-consciousness that was very charming.
"I dare say they would think me very selfish if they knew I had come
over to the farm alone," he said. "I slipped away from them. I am very
selfish sometimes. I want you to sing your pretty songs to an audience
of one."
"I am quite willing," she replied, happily.
She sang several songs for him, pouring out the exquisite melodies
clearly and artlessly as a bird. Ronald said to himself that it was
wonderful what a voice the girl had, so strong and sweet and clear that
she made him think of Shelley's sky-lark--
"Pouring his full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."
He remained with her fully two hours. It did not seem to him so long.
The time went very fast looking at that fair face and listening to that
musical voice. For a wonder Mrs. Meredith did not call her to the house
for anything. Dollie had grown large enough to walk and run alone, and
did not need so much attention.
"Is it true that you are going to become a governess?" he said to her.
"Violet Earle told me so this morning."
"Yes, if I can find a situation," she replied. "Do you think I shall be
likely to find one, Mr. Valchester?"
There was a wistful anxiety in the sweet voice. He looked at the fair
young face thoughtfully.
A slanting ray of sunlight pierced the green boughs of the tree and
penciled her white brow with a finger of light that brought out its
child-like innocence more clearly.
"No, I hardly think you will be successful," he replied.
"You do not?" she said, and he saw the red lips quiver. "Why not, Mr.
Valchester? I have studied very hard and learned a great deal since I
have been away at school."
"You look too young," he replied. "No one would like to engage one who
appeared so childish. You look too inexperienced."
"Do you really think that would weigh against me?" she asked,
distressed. "I assure you my looks are very deceptive. I am eighteen."
"Quite a venerable age," he laughed. "Yet still very young for an
instructor of youth."
"You see I only expect to teach little children," she said,
apologetically.
He looked at her gravely and curiously.
"Do you think you will enjoy such a life?" he inquired.
"No," she admitted, frankly, "I do not imagine that it will be a
pleasant life, certainly. But it will be better than the farm. I shall
earn my support and not have my dependence continually thrust in my
face by a vulgar woman."
"Poor child!" he thought to himself, as the sensitive color rushed over
her brow and throat.
He left her with a thrill of deep compassion in his heart. She seemed
so slight and frail a creature to take arms against the world and win
her way alone.
"May I come again to-morrow--with Walter?" he added, fancying that he
saw her hesitate.
"Yes," she replied, readily, "and bring Violet with you if she will
come."
"Very well," he replied, "I will do so, but I shall come alone the next
day to hear you sing. Are you willing?"
"They will think I am selfish if I take you away from them, I fear."
"You will not be taking me away. I belong to no one but myself," he
replied. "Then, too, I shall return home in a few days, and I do not
know when I shall see you again."
"You may come," she replied, quickly.
The next day he came with Violet and Walter as agreed upon. But the
visit was short and unsatisfactory. Violet was fidgety and capricious.
She said she had planned a visit to another young lady, and she left
very soon, carrying Valchester in her train and telling Walter to
remain behind and amuse Jaquelina. Walter remained very willingly. He
had been thinking a great deal of what Violet had said to him about
marrying Jaquelina. In consequence he had concluded to take her advice.
But it is one thing to resolve and another to execute. Jaquelina, who
was exceedingly friendly and sociable with Walter in the company of
others was very shy when alone with him. She somehow eluded the efforts
he made to give a sentimental tone to the conversation. She sang at his
request, but it was a gay and lively air.
If she had known his intention she could not have frustrated it better
than she did by her unconscious indifference.
Walter went away with his love unspoken. Two days later he returned
alone, having slipped away from his friend and sister, just as
Valchester had done once or twice before.
Jaquelina was out under the trees reading. Little Dollie was frisking
in the grass beside her. Walter thought he had never seen the girl he
loved looking so fair and happy. He pleased himself with thinking how
he would take her away from her uncongenial home and lavish upon her
all the luxuries and adornments that would suit her beauty so well. The
thought gave him courage to speak to Jaquelina. It was not long before
she was blushing and trembling at these words from his lips:
"Lina, I love you dearly. Will you be my wife?"
"Oh! Mr. Earle," she cried out, looking lovely as a dream in her dismay
and confusion. "I--I am very sorry for you. I did not dream of your
loving me. Since yesterday I have been engaged to Mr. Valchester."
CHAPTER XIII.
Walter Earle's handsome face grew pale with surprise and emotion at the
words of the beautiful girl he loved so dearly. When at last he could
speak he cried out hoarsely:
"Engaged to Valchester! Is it possible? I never dreamed of such a
thing."
"Why not, Mr. Earle? If you loved me why should not he have loved me
also?" asked Jaquelina, with gentle dignity, though her cheeks flushed
deeply.
Walter Earle stared at her a moment in silence. He began to realize
the effect of her bright and charming beauty as he had never done
before. All along it had seemed to him that other men were blind. He
had thought to put forth his hand and pluck a rose that none other had
sighed for; but another had been there before him.
"I thought Valchester was too selfishly absorbed in his books and
poetry to think of love," he responded; then he added with a bitterness
he could not repress: "You will allow me to congratulate you, Miss
Meredith, on having secured such a desirable _parti_."
"Thank you. I consider myself a very fortunate girl," Jaquelina
answered, with a movement of graceful pride.
"No doubt!" said Walter, so excited and pained by her refusal of his
suit that he was not prepared to do her justice even in his thoughts.
"Others will consider you a very fortunate person also. It is well
known that Valchester's parents are exceedingly wealthy."
Jaquelina's pretty, proud face grew pale at his words.
"I--did not know that," she said.
"Did you not, really?" asked Walter.
"No, I did not," she replied; then with a crimson blush: "Did you
think, Mr. Earle, that I accepted Mr. Valchester for mercenary
considerations?"
The pain and shame in the winning face overcame Walter's unreasonable
and unjust mood.
"Forgive me," he said, "I was tempted a moment to think so; but of
course I know better after what you have just told me. The smart of my
own pain made me unjust. Do not be angry with me, Lina, if I may call
you so this once. I shall hope still to be your friend since I cannot
claim a dearer title."
Jaquelina held out her hand to him impulsively. Walter kissed it
tenderly and regretfully.
"Valchester is a noble fellow," he said, bravely. "I hope you may be
very happy together."
When he was gone, Jaquelina wept a shower of bright tears upon the
pages of her book. She was very sorry for poor Walter's disappointment.
She cried so bitterly that little Dollie was affected to participation
in her grief, and wept in unison, whereat Jaquelina dried her tears and
laughed.
"There now, Dollie, we are done crying," she said. "We are very sorry
for Walter. He is gay and good and handsome, but Ronald is my prince."
Her spirits were very light and gay now. It was only the day before
that Ronald Valchester had wooed her to be his wife. He had told her
how beautiful and gifted she was, and how fondly he loved her. And then
Jaquelina had suddenly wakened to the truth that she had long ago given
her heart into his keeping.
"Lina, can you give your heart to me?" he had pleaded, and she had
answered frankly, yet shyly, with her sweet face turned away:
"I believe it has been yours a long--long time, Mr. Valchester, only I
did not quite know it until now."
Mr. Valchester was very demonstrative for awhile, considering that
he was usually so quiet and grave. Before he left he had made his
betrothed promise that, with her uncle's consent, the wedding should be
in three months.
"Because, darling, I am anxious to take you away from your uncongenial
home and transplant my rosebud to a sunnier sphere of life," he said,
kissing the dewy crimson lips ardently yet tenderly.
The dark eyes looked at him shyly from under the white lids and the
jetty fringe of her long curling lashes.
"So I shall not have to seek a situation after all," she said, happily.
"No, indeed," he answered with a shudder, "I could not bear to think of
you, my tender flower, out in the cold world alone. The bleak frosts of
adversity and sorrow would destroy you."
He was mistaken. The time was coming when he was to learn what a brave
heart and strong patience lay hidden beneath the fragile seeming of the
lovely girl who held his heart.
The summer breeze sighing softly over the grass and flowers, and
lifting the dark, careless locks from his broad, white brow had no
subtle voice to warn him of the long, dark shadow that was ever
widening between him and the prize that seemed almost within his grasp.
Walter Earle did not go home immediately after his rejection by
Jaquelina.
He had loved her with as much ardor as he was capable of, and he felt
the pain of his disappointment deeply.
He wandered homeward slowly through the green woods, and threw himself
down by a purling brook to rest.
It was twilight when he reached home. He looked in the parlor for
Violet, but she was not there.
His father and Ronald Valchester were discussing some political news,
his mother was placidly crocheting lace on the sofa.
He went on quietly up-stairs to Violet's own especial room, and tapped
lightly on the door.
"Come in," she said, and he turned the door-knob and entered.
Violet was at the mirror, looping back her fair curls with roses and
white jessamine.
She looked very fair and sweet in her white evening dress and pearl and
turquoise jewelry--a fact of which she was not unaware herself, for a
smile of gratified vanity curved her rosy lips as she surveyed her own
reflection in the full length mirror.
"Ah, Miss Vanity," cried Walter, trying hard to be his natural,
careless self. "How do you like yourself?"
Violet turned around and swept him a gay little courtesy.
"Very well, indeed, sir," she laughed. "How do you like me, Walter?"
Walter looked at the tall, stylish figure, and the fair, smiling face
with its large blue eyes and rosy lips, with genuine admiration.
"I do not believe any other fellow has as pretty a sister as I have,"
he replied, and Violet gave him a charming kiss in return for his
praise.
"Where have you been, Walter?" she said. "We have missed you all the
evening. Mr. Valchester was quite puzzled, but I could very nearly
guess--only I did not let him know it."
Walter had thrown himself down in a chair at the window.
The rich lace curtains were drawn aside, admitting the evening breeze,
sweet with the breath of flowers. He stared moodily out at the full
moon rising over the dark line of the distant hills.
"Where have you been, Walter?" said Violet again, seeing that he made
her no answer. "Were you with Jaquelina?"
"Yes," he replied, with cold brevity.
Violet went over and sat down by his side. She raised her fair, smiling
face to his in wonder.
She saw the brooding shadow of pain on the blonde, handsome face.
"Walter, what is it? Has--has anything happened?" she said, vaguely.
"Nothing has happened," he replied, in a moody tone.
"Was Jaquelina well?" she asked, puzzled.
"Never better," he replied, with transient bitterness.
Violet did not know what to think.
"Walter, was not Lina kind to you?" she asked, gently.
"No," he replied, briefly and bitterly.
The soft flush had faded from Violet's cheeks. A look of dread came
into her eyes, but Walter did not see it.
He had never turned his sad gaze from the distant hills gilded with
glory by the rising moon.
"Walter, do you mean," she said, with lips that quivered strangely,
"that--you have asked Lina to marry you?"
"Yes," he answered, very low.
"And she--oh, she did not refuse you!" cried Violet, indignantly.
"Yes, again," said Walter, still without looking at her.
There was a moment's pause, and then Violet cried out:
"The impertinent little jade! Why, what did she mean? I should have
thought that she would have jumped at the chance of marrying a rich,
handsome young man like you, Walter!"
Then Walter looked round at her.
"Violet, do not use such hasty words," he said, sadly. "She has a right
to make her own choice. She has set her mark higher even than your
unworthy brother."
"You do not mean," said Violet slowly, then paused, while every vestige
of color fled from her lips and cheeks as she stared at Walter.
"She is engaged to Valchester," he answered, abruptly.
The words came with the suddenness of a blow.
Violet shivered and moaned like something wounded to death; then all in
a moment she slid from her seat to the floor, and lay there, a white
and senseless heap, upon the rich velvet carpet.
Walter sprang from his seat in alarm and consternation. He had never
before suspected the secret of Violet's hidden love for Ronald
Valchester. It all rushed over him now overwhelmingly. With almost
womanly tenderness he lifted his stricken sister gently to a sofa, and
bringing _eau de cologne_ from the toilet-table laved her cold face and
hands with the refreshing water.
She opened her eyes and stared blankly at him in a moment.
"Darling, are you any better?" he asked, gently.
Then Violet threw her white arms round his neck and clung to him,
weeping wildly.
"Walter, is it indeed true?" she sobbed. "Is she to marry Ronald?"
"So she says," he answered. "Do you care, Violet?"
"I hate her!" Violet cried, drawing herself from his arms and sitting
upright, while rage and jealousy flashed from her eyes--"I hate her!
She has stolen my lover from me!"
Walter's blue eyes flashed lightning.
"Violet, is that true?" he asked. "I thought my friend was the soul
of honor; but if he has dared to trifle with your affections he shall
render me an account for his perfidy!"
Violet only wept and sobbed, without replying.
"Tell me, dear," persisted Walter, "has Valchester made love to you,
really, while he was slyly wooing Miss Meredith?"
Violet was obliged to admit that he had not.
"But if he had never seen her--if she had let him alone--I must have
won him by the strength of my own love. He could not help loving me in
time. Therefore, Lina has really stolen him from me," she persisted,
most unreasonably.
Walter could not see that it was as Violet said. He tried to argue
the case with her; but he soon found that Violet was too jealous and
miserable to listen to reason. She only reiterated again and again her
hatred of Jaquelina Meredith.
Walter took a great deal of blame to himself. He acknowledged that he
had done wrong ever to have brought Ronald Valchester to Laurel Hill.
"You see, Vi," he said, miserably, "I never looked upon Valchester as
one to be lightly won, or one to lightly win a woman's heart. He is
not usually gallant, or even attentive, to ladies. I thought him only
a book-worm, wrapped up in metaphysics and poetry. He is a splendid
fellow. I have told you that too often, Vi, for me to deny it now when
he has become my successful rival and the source of sorrow to yourself:
but I thought he was simply one of the men whom his own sex always
admire, but women seldom or never."
"I do not believe that Jaquelina admires him," cried Violet. "She is
attracted by his wealth and position."
Nothing that Walter could say could change her opinion. She adhered to
it tenaciously. Walter was deeply sorry for her. Her jealous anger and
her wild grief distressed him exceedingly.
"Violet, think no more of it," he would say. "Valchester is going away
to-morrow. I will never invite him to Laurel Hill again, and when he is
out of sight you will forget him."
"I shall never forget him," his sister replied. "I shall never forget
him, and I shall never love anyone but Ronald Valchester my life-long!
Oh, Walter, cannot you think of something to separate them and turn his
heart to me!" she added, with piteous pleading.
Walter was shocked.
"Darling, you are talking wildly," he cried; "you would not wish such a
thing. Let me call mother. She can soothe you better than I can."
She sprang up in the wildest alarm.
"Walter, promise me here and now," she cried, "that you will never
reveal my wretched secret to mamma, nor to any living one. I will never
unlock my arms from your neck until you swear to me that you will
never, never betray me."
Her arms were wreathed tightly round his neck; her anguished, white
face and wild blue eyes looked into his own imploringly.
Walter could not refuse to give her the promise she pleaded for, but he
regretted it many and many a day afterward.
He promised her, and she kissed him and thanked him.
"Now, Violet, we must really go down to the parlor," he said, anxious
to distract her attention. "Our absence will be noticed and wondered
at. Smooth your hair and dress and come with me. This is the last night
of Valchester's stay, and we must not seem discourteous."
"You may go," she said, "but I cannot to-night. Tell them I have a
headache and do not wish to be disturbed. Do not suffer mamma to come.
I feel very angry with her. It was she who insisted on patronizing that
wretched girl. But for that Ronald never would have seen her!"
Her brother went down reluctantly. Violet lay motionless on her couch
for long hours. When she roused herself at last and went to close
the window the lamp had burned low, and the mysterious stillness of
midnight brooded over everything. Violet lifted her hand and turned a
white, desperate face up to the starry sky.
"Before God," she cried, in low, passionate accents, "I swear that I
will be revenged on Jaquelina Meredith for winning Ronald Valchester
away from me. She shall never be his wife, and if mortal power can
accomplish it, I will make of her life one long agony, such as she has
made of mine."
So, under the starry arch of Heaven, Violet's vow of vengeance was
registered beside that of Gerald Huntington. Poor Jaquelina, sleeping
softly on her little white couch and dreaming of her handsome, gifted
lover, did no swift, subtle warning tell her of the false friend and
the outraged prisoner whose hands were outstretched to dash the cup of
happiness from her beautiful lips?
CHAPTER XIV.
One golden evening in September, Mr. Meredith came in from his weekly
trip to town considerably excited.
"There's news, Lina," he said to his niece, who was laying the cloth on
the table, and deftly arranging the tea-things.
Jaquelina looked at him with a start and a blush. She fancied he had
brought her a letter from her lover.
"Well, Uncle Charlie?" she said, expectantly.
"Yes," said Farmer Meredith, "there's wonderful news for you. The
horse-thief, Gerald Huntington, attempted to escape night before last.
He knocked down two keepers, and got almost a mile away before he was
caught and taken back. They say he fought like a lion for his freedom."
Jaquelina started and grew deadly pale at his words.
"I have brought the newspaper with me," went on the farmer. "It's all
written there. Stop clattering the dishes a minute, Lina, and I'll read
it out for you."
His niece stood still with her hand resting on the table, and listened
while he turned the paper and read out, slowly:
"Attempted escape of Gerald Huntington, the chief of the outlaw gang
that had infested the mountains so long, and who was so summarily
captured little more than a year ago by a brave young girl."
Having read this much, which was printed in flaring head lines and
capitals, Mr. Meredith cleared his throat, and proceeded to attack the
smaller type:
"It is well known to the most of our readers that the long-pending
case against Gerald Huntington was decided in the court on Monday by a
sentence of ten years' confinement in the penitentiary. The prisoner
was remanded to the county jail to remain until Friday, when he was
to be removed to the penitentiary. Tuesday evening, at dusk, he was
visited in his cell by a veiled lady who remained with him half an
hour engaged in deep and private conversation. It is supposed that
this mysterious stranger conveyed to him a club which was skillfully
concealed beneath her voluminous draperies. At nightfall the prisoner,
armed with this enormous and heavy implement, assaulted the keeper
who brought him his supper, and succeeded in escaping into the hall,
where he knocked down the door-keeper and made a desperate run for
liberty. He was pursued by several persons, who captured and bound him
after a terrible struggle. He is now heavily ironed and chained down
to the floor of his cell. Public curiosity is highly excited over the
mysterious veiled visitant who furnished him the club, but the prisoner
preserves a dogged and obstinate silence regarding her, and nothing is
known of her in the town."
"Oh, poor fellow!" cried Jaquelina, quite involuntarily, as he paused.
"Chained to the floor of his cell! How dreadful!"
"You are not sorry for the wretch--are you, Lina?" said her uncle,
looking at her in surprise.
"Yes--very sorry," she said, shuddering at the thought of the gloomy
prison cell, and the clanking chains that held Gerald Huntington down
from the free, wild woodland life he loved.
"Well, you hadn't ought to be sorry," said Mrs. Meredith, who had
come in from the spring-house with the fresh butter and milk for tea,
with Dollie trotting behind her, a great, red apple in either chubby
fist; "his capture made you two hundred dollars the richer--if you
hadn't spent every dollar of it so foolishly," she added, as an
after-thought, and in an injured tone, for she had been deeply offended
at the way in which Jaquelina had spent her money. "She had ought
to have given it to her uncle to pay for her keep," was her frankly
expressed opinion.
Jaquelina made no answer to Mrs. Meredith's taunt. She was looking at
her uncle wistfully.
"Uncle Charles, did you stop at the post-office?" she asked, shyly.
"Why, certainly. How did I come by the newspaper, else?" inquired the
farmer, with a sly twinkle of his gray eyes.
"Were--were there any letters for me?" said the girl, coloring under
his laughing glance.
"Two," said Mr. Meredith, "and only the day before yesterday there
were two. It seems as if Mr. Valchester has nothing to do but write
love-letters."
He fished the mail out of his coat pocket as he spoke, and gave her the
two letters.
She caught them eagerly from his hand and hurried from the room.
"Two of the love-sickest ninnies ever I saw," sniffed Mrs. Meredith,
disdainfully. "Everlastingly writing back and forth to each other. I
should think they'd run out of news."
"Tut, tut, wife," said the farmer, gaily, "don't be hard on the young
folks. Don't you remember when you and I were sparking at singing
school that winter, how many little notes we kept passing to each
other? And no news in any of them, either--nothing but love, love,
love."
Mrs. Meredith turned her back at this juncture, but the homely
reminiscence must have had its effect on her. Her sharp tongue was
silenced for awhile. She busied herself in setting the appetizing
supper on the small table, then went out to the door and called
Jaquelina in to the meal.
Jaquelina, sitting under a maple tree that was beginning to turn
crimson under the kisses of September, returned an answer to the effect
that she was not hungry, and did not desire any supper.
"Always the way," said Mrs. Meredith, returning to the table and
supplying Dollie with her portion of mush and milk. "After she gets one
of them letters from that solemn-looking, long-legged beau of hers, she
is that excited she can't swallow a bite to eat. Say what you will,
Charlie Meredith, you can't prove that ever I lost my appetite while
you courted me."
Mr. Meredith only laughed as he drew up his chair to the table, and
Lina was left unmolested to read and re-read the closely written letter
in which her lover poured out his affection clothed in the beautiful
imagery of a poetic heart.
"My darling," wrote Ronald Valchester, "as our bridal day is now only
two weeks off, I have one request to make of you. As our wedding is
to be such a simple and quiet one in the little country church, will
you not wear, just to please me, the pretty white robe you wore on the
night I saw you first? Never mind what others say. It is a beautiful
dress, and you will be beautiful in it. I have a fancy for you to wear
it in the moment when you give yourself to me--the happiest moment of
my life. Afterwards you shall have silks and satins, laces and jewels,
if you care for these things. I shall be with you the day before the
wedding. My mother will accompany me. I will tell you in confidence,
darling, she is a very proud and stately old lady. But you must not
be afraid of her. I know she cannot help but love you, as I know you
cannot help but love her. I have had a kind letter recently, from
Walter Earle, and a charming note from Violet, in which she tells me
you have asked her to be your bridesmaid and she has consented. Violet
is a very sweet and lovely girl. I am glad you are such friends with
her."
This and a great deal more Ronald Valchester wrote to his betrothed.
She pored over it fondly, and blushingly kissed the page where the dear
white hand had rested while it traced the loving words.
Mrs. Meredith had spoken truly when she said that Jaquelina could never
eat when she received one of those letters from Ronald. They filled her
heart and soul so fully that mere material food seemed unnecessary.
The young heart which had gone hungering for love so long, and suffered
isolation through all its dreary years of orphanage, was steeped to its
depths in the golden glamour of first love's bewildering dream.
She rose at last and wandered down to the little brook and sat down to
watch its dimpling flow with dreamy dark eyes.
Mrs. Meredith forbore to call her to help with the milking or tend
Dollie as she had been wont to do.
Since Jaquelina had returned home with the added polish of her
boarding-school upon her, and more especially since she had become the
affianced of the proud Ronald Valchester, the coarse woman had stood
somewhat in awe of her husband's graceful and refined niece. A newly
awakened and resentful sense of vague inferiority made her feel ill at
ease in her company.
The sun was setting goldenly and warmly as it does under Virginia's
skies in the golden month of September. The soft sounds of early autumn
filled the balmy air. Slowly the gold and purple and crimson of sunset
faded from the sky, and gave place to dusky twilight.
Jaquelina scarcely noticed it. She did not feel the soft dew falling on
her face and hands. She was lost in a sweet and dreamy revery.
Yet suddenly, with an inexplicable start and shiver, she lifted her
eyes.
In the silence that seemed only more audible by the low, melodious
murmur of the streamlet, she had caught a strange sound--not a voice,
not a footstep--only the cold, heavy clank of an iron chain.
When she looked up she saw a man standing on the opposite side of the
brook, and looking across at her with steadfast, gleaming eyes.
He was a tall man, dressed in ragged clothing like a common tramp. His
face was blackened to the hue of a negro's by soot or charcoal, but the
finely molded features were those of a white man. In the waning light
Jaquelina could see that his wrists were manacled, and heavy irons were
fastened about his ankles, from which depended chains that had been
severed in two.
CHAPTER XV.
At that sudden and terrible-looking apparition, Jaquelina remained for
a moment perfectly motionless.
Surprise and terror had rendered her for the time perfectly incapable
of speech or motion.
Meanwhile the gleaming black eyes of the man, looking inordinately
large and fierce in his blackened face, were riveted upon her
beautiful, pallid features.
"Miss Meredith, do you not know me?" he asked, breaking the silence at
last, in a low, deep, angry voice.
Jaquelina shivered and started at that intense voice. His name fell
from her lips in a gasp:
"Gerald Huntington!"
"Yes," he said, bitterly. "Gerald Huntington! I see you have not
forgotten me. My tattered garb, my blackened face are not sufficient to
hide your victim from your keen eyes."
He held up his hands, that were blackened also, and she shivered as
she saw the heavy handcuffs that were still clasped about his wrists,
though the strong chain that had bound them together was filed in half.
"I have escaped from the prison to which you betrayed me," he said to
her in a tone of fierce triumph and joy.
In all the terror of that moment Jaquelina felt as though a heavy
weight had been lifted off her heart.
"Before God, I am glad!" she broke out fervently, clasping her small
hands together while her dark eyes sparkled with joy.
But a scowl of withering scorn and unbelief broke over the dark
features of the outlaw, transforming them to the semblance of a demon's.
Jaquelina was reminded irresistibly of the vivid words in which Byron
had described the Corsair.
"There was a laughing devil in his sneer
That raised emotions of both love and fear,
And where his scowl of hatred darkly fell,
Hope, withering, fled--and mercy sighed farewell."
"Do not lie to me, Miss Meredith," exclaimed Gerald Huntington, with
that terrible sneer still curling his closely-shaven lips. "Do not
lie to me in hope of turning aside the shaft of my deadly revenge. I
have sworn to punish you, and I shall keep my vow. You pretend to a
penitence you do not feel; I have not the least doubt that you would be
glad to deliver me up to justice this minute."
"No, I would not," replied Jaquelina earnestly. She was getting over
the first shock of her surprise and terror, and her young face looked
brave and almost fearless as she lifted it in the dim light. "I would
not for worlds betray you to your foes again. See how quietly I sit
here without raising my voice, or trying to alarm anyone."
"That is because you are afraid of me," he said, mockingly, as he put
his hand in his bosom that she might hear the click of his threatening
weapon. "I am a desperate man, and you know it, Miss Meredith. If you
tried to raise an alarm I should immediately shoot you."
They looked at each other a moment silently across the narrow strip of
singing water.
A braver heart than little Jaquelina's might have quailed at his
aspect, the murderous gleam in his eyes might have daunted a heart less
true and pure than hers, but he did not see her tremble as she answered
earnestly:
"I do not intend to raise an alarm, Mr. Huntington. On the contrary,
I am willing, and even anxious, to do you a kindness if it lies in my
power. Is there aught I can do for you? Are you thirsty or hungry? If
so, let me bring you food and drink."
He stared at her with a muttered curse.
"So you are laying a trap to ensnare me," he said, roughly. "No, thank
you, fair lady, I am not ready to fall into your power so easily.
Perhaps, now, you would lend me a horse to carry me a few miles
to-night out of danger's reach, since you are so kindly disposed toward
me," sneeringly.
The young moon rising over the hills threw a beam upon Jaquelina's
face, showing it white and troubled and earnest.
"I--have no horse of my own," she said, hesitatingly. "If I should lend
you one of my uncle's, might I dare hope that you would turn it loose
after a few miles, and let it come back?"
"No, you might not dare to hope," he said, mockingly. "I ask no favors
at your hands. It would spoil the sweet flavor of my revenge. I am not
friendless as you suppose. I have a purse of gold in my breast and a
swift horse waiting for me not a mile away from here. I but turned
aside from my way for one look at the fair flower-face that beguiled me
to my ruin. And now that I have seen you, lovely Jaquelina, I am loath
to part from you again; I am tempted to take you away with me, and make
you an outlaw's cherished and fondly worshiped bride."
With a low cry of sudden fear and alarm, Jaquelina sprang up and turned
to flee.
But her enemy was too swift for her. At a single bound he cleared the
brook, and before she had run a dozen rods he caught her arm in a grasp
of steel.
She turned toward him with a white imploring face and frightened eyes.
"Let me go," she panted, with failing breath. "I cannot go with you, I
cannot be your wife!"
He laughed scornfully.
"You shall go free," he said. "Do not be frightened--the time for my
revenge is not yet. I shall only dash the cup of joy from your lips
when it is so full that a rose-leaf will cause it to overflow. I am
going now; but remember this truth, my fair enemy, I am not powerless.
I am only biding my time. In the moment that is the happiest of your
whole life I shall take my revenge!"
He threw her wrathfully from him, and in a moment had disappeared
from sight and hearing. Jaquelina lay half-stunned a moment in the
long, dewy grass where she had fallen, her heart thrilling with a dumb,
prescient fear and dread.
"In the moment that is the happiest of your whole life I will take my
revenge," Gerald Huntington had said, and those words had strangely
recalled the words of her lover's letter.
"In the moment when you give yourself to me--the happiest moment of my
life!" Ronald Valchester had written; and Jaquelina shivered with a
nameless dread and terror, for she knew that that moment would be the
happiest one of her whole life also.
CHAPTER XVI.
"Oh, Ronald--Ronald!"
"Lina, my little darling!" and Ronald Valchester drew his betrothed
into his arms, and pressed a score of fond kisses on the dewy, crimson
lips.
It was the day before the wedding, and though Jaquelina had been
expecting him all the morning, he had taken her by surprise at last.
After dinner she had gone out into the orchard and sat down beneath her
favorite tree, feeling certain that Ronald would seek her there first.
But after watching for him vainly for awhile, she fell into a dreamy
revery in which he came unseen and unheard at last.
He sat down beside her, letting his arm remain about the slender waist,
and with the beauty and silence of nature all about them, they talked
of their happiness in meeting again, and of the coming morrow, when
they should be united to part no more.
"It seems too blissful to be true," Jaquelina murmured wistfully,
looking up in her lover's happy face. "Oh, Ronald, if anything should
happen?"
"What could happen, Lina?" said Ronald Valchester, laughing at her
fears. "I hope you are not growing nervous and fanciful, little one."
Then he suddenly saw that the bright rose-flush that had come into
her face when she met him was dying out, and leaving her pale and
wistful-looking.
"Lina, you do not look quite so well as usual," he said, anxiously.
"You are paler than I ever saw you, and your eyes have a startled
expression now and then. It seems to me that you are slightly nervous.
Are you not well?"
"I am perfectly well," she replied, quickly; but his attention once
awakened, he could not help seeing that there was a slight and subtle
change in her.
She would start and look around at the rustle of the falling leaves
that began to strew the orchard with a carpeting of scarlet and russet
and gold. Every time the great mellow globes of winter apples would
fall into the grass, she would look up quickly, with something like
fear in her eyes. It was plain to be seen, as Ronald Valchester had
said, that she was nervous.
As his gaze dwelt on her, full of tender solicitude, she was tempted
to tell him of that night, two weeks ago, when she had been so startled
and frightened by the sudden appearance and menacing words of Gerald
Huntington. A haunting dread and terror had possessed her ever since.
She waked at night from startling dreams, in which the lowering gaze
and the clanking irons of the escaped prisoner were so terribly real
that she could scarcely persuade herself that it had only been a vision
of her slumber.
Her nights were restless, her days were filled with dread. She was
afraid to dwell too much on her love and her happiness. She remembered
that the outlaw had said he would take his revenge in the moment that
was the happiest of her life.
Yet she shrank from telling Ronald Valchester the truth. She had
noticed that he seemed to dislike the mention of Gerald Huntington. He
had never praised her as others did for capturing the outlaw. He had
never even told her whether he thought she had acted right or wrong
in the matter. She decided that she would not tell him. She had never
told anyone of her adventure that night, though the whole country
was excited over the second, and this time successful, escape of the
prisoner.
"My mother came with me," he said, after a little. "She was fatigued
with travel, and did not feel like calling on you to-day, but to-morrow
I shall bring her to see you. She claims the privilege of dressing the
bride."
The lovely color came surging up into Jaquelina's pale cheeks at her
lover's words.
"Oh! you do not know how I dread the ordeal of to-morrow night," she
whispered to him. "All the country people will be crowded into the
little church, and--only think--I must walk up the aisle before them
all to be--married!"
Ronald Valchester laughed at her pretty bashfulness.
"To-morrow night will be a slight ordeal to what you will have to
encounter in the way of people when I take you home to Richmond," he
replied. "I have never told you yet, my darling, that we are very
wealthy. I was pleased to think that you loved me for myself alone. But
the truth is, Lina, my father is a millionaire, and you will enter the
highest rank of society when you become my bride. After we have been
married awhile, and you have learned something of the world, I shall
take you with me on a tour to Europe. Shall you like that, my dearest?"
"Very much," Lina replied, delightedly.
He did not tell her that his father, the proud General Valchester, was
both grieved and disappointed that his handsome son, whom half the
_belles_ of Richmond were sighing for, had chosen to marry an obscure
and simple little country girl.
His gentle mother, too, was distressed over it, but she had allowed
her darling son to persuade her that his betrothed was the fairest
and most lovable girl on earth, and she had come with Ronald to the
wedding, determined, for the sake of her son, to make the most of her
daughter-in-law.
She was staying with the Earles by express invitation and Violet was
especially charming and affectionate to Ronald Valchester's mother--so
much so, indeed, that stately old Mrs. Valchester unbent from her quiet
dignity enough to say, frankly:
"It is a wonder to me, Miss Earle, that my Ronald could have strayed
any further than Laurel Hill to make his choice. If Miss Meredith is
any more charming and lovely than you she must be a wonderful girl."
A peculiar expression came over Violet's pale, fair face. She turned
her head away and looked out of the window silently a moment, but when
she looked back her face wore a careless smile.
"Many thanks for your compliment, Mrs. Valchester," she replied. "Lina
is very pretty, I assure you. She has a gipsyish kind of beauty."
"Is she dark?" asked Mrs. Valchester, and Violet replied:
"She has a brown skin and dark eyes, and her hair is a kind of
chestnut, but rather sunburned, I think. You see she is always out in
the wind and sun."
"I am rather sorry she is a brunette," said Mrs. Valchester, looking at
Violet's lily-white beauty. "I always admired blondes the most. But,"
hopefully, "my son tells me she is a beautiful singer."
"Yes, she has a good voice," admitted Violet. "It is loud and clear,
yet almost totally uncultivated. She has had only a few months'
tuition, you know. But, of course, after she--is--married, Mr.
Valchester will secure a teacher for her in all those branches in which
she is deficient."
"Of course," said Ronald Valchester's mother, but in her heart she
winced at the idea of a daughter-in-law who would require teachers
after she was married. What would her fashionable and exclusive set say
to such a wife for her only son of whom she was so proud?
"Ronald told me that Miss Meredith is quite fresh from
boarding-school," she said faintly, after a moment.
"Oh! yes, she had _one_ year at Staunton," said Violet, carelessly, yet
enjoying to the utmost the anxiety she had awakened in the mind of the
proud old lady. "Of course you know, dear Mrs. Valchester, that _one_
year would not be sufficient to give the polish requisite for such
society as your son's wife will mingle in. You will have to give Lina
the benefit of your own knowledge, of course. I am quite sure she will
do her best to appear to an advantage. She has always made the very
most of her few opportunities."
Violet talked so kindly and patronizingly that Mrs. Valchester did not
suspect the hidden malice that lurked in her words, yet she began to
feel vaguely uncomfortable. Her placid conviction that her gifted son
could not have made a bad choice began to give place to anxiety.
"I am very anxious to see Miss Meredith," she said. "I wish I had felt
well enough to drive over to Meredith farm with Ronald to-day. Tell me,
Miss Earle, do you think my son has chosen a wife who is likely to do
credit to his judgment?"
"I really should not like to express an opinion," replied the girl,
with an appearance of the greatest frankness. "It is always very
difficult to decide such a question. Lina Meredith is certainly
unformed and a little rustic at present. But these are defects which
time and the mingling in good society will certainly amend, you know."
"Do you believe that she is in love with my son?" asked the old lady,
anxiously, and feeling to herself that a genuine affection felt for
Ronald by the girl of his choice would condone a multitude of faults.
"I could not tell you," replied Violet. "I have never heard her express
an opinion concerning him. Of course his wealth would be a great
temptation to a girl in her position, but no one has a right to judge
that she accepted him for that. It must be that she loved him, Mrs.
Valchester. One reared so rudely and plainly as poor Lina has been,
could not really form an idea of the great advantages wealth would
bring her."
Every innocent seeming word had a barbed point for the heart of the
proud mother. Violet talked to her some time about Jaquelina.
She appeared very frank and open, but she made Mrs. Valchester
understand very plainly by skillful innuendoes that she was by no
means on terms of intimate association with her son's betrothed, and
that their acquaintance had simply consisted of a series of kindly,
patronizing acts on her part.
CHAPTER XVII.
Ronald Valchester, whiling away the sunny afternoon by the side of
his betrothed, little dreamed with what subtle art Violet Earle was
implanting a prejudice in his mother's mind against his darling.
He was fastidious, and harder to please than most men, but even his
exacting taste could find few things in Jaquelina that he would have
cared to change.
She was naturally refined, graceful and polished, and her beauty was so
remarkable that even in her simple print dress and white ruffled apron,
Ronald thought her lovelier than any satin and jewel-bedecked _belle_
he had ever met in society.
"Lina, sing to me," he said, when the sunset glow began to crimson the
west. "I have longed to hear you sing so often while I was away from
you."
She smiled, and turned her face to watch the setting sun as she began
to sing.
Ronald thought there was nothing on earth so fair as that face, with
the parted crimson lips, and the wonderful light that always came upon
it when she sang.
"'When dawn awakes the eastern skies,
And wooing zephyrs kiss the sea,
In vain I sigh for those dark eyes
That should have ope'd in love to me.
But they have looked on me their last,
Time's darkling wave they cheer no more,
Which now in sadness rushes past
To break upon an unknown shore.'"
"Lina, hush," he said, impulsively, when she had sung that first
verse. "That is too sad a song. Choose something gayer and more suited
to our bridal eve."
"I do not know any gay songs, Ronald," she replied, with some of the
sadness of the song yet lingering on her face.
"That is strange," he said. "Did you learn nothing bright and lively at
school, Lina?"
"No, I do not believe I did," she answered, musingly. "It seems to me
that I always chose songs with a touch of sadness in them. Somehow I
liked them best."
But after a minute's thought she sang lightly:
"'Here, take my heart--'twill be safe in thy keeping
While I go wand'ring o'er land and o'er sea:
Smiling or sorrowing, waking or weeping,
What need I care, so my heart is with thee?
"'If, in the race we are destined to run, love,
They who have light hearts the happiest be,
Then happier still must be they who have none, love,
And that will be my case when mine is with thee.'"
"Do you like that one any better, Ronald?" she said, with a smile, when
she had finished.
"It is a pretty song," he said, "but, do you know, Lina, you keep
selecting songs that hint of separation and sorrow; I do not like to
hear you. Darling, do you begin to realize that after to-morrow we
shall be separated no more 'until death us do part?'"
He took both her small hands in his as he asked the question.
She lifted her eyes to his, and he saw that they were full of bright,
unshed tears.
"No, Ronald," she said, in a faint, fluttering voice. "I do not quite
realize my happiness. It seems too bright to be real."
She shivered slightly as she spoke, and gave a swift, nervous look
around her.
The soft sigh of the evening breeze, the rustling leaves seemed to
whisper threateningly:
"In the moment that is the happiest of your whole life I shall take my
revenge!"
"Lina, I do not believe you are well," cried Ronald Valchester,
anxiously. "I saw you shivering that moment."
"The twilight is coming on, and these September evenings are chilly,"
she answered, rising. "Let us go to the house and sit on the porch.
Uncle Charlie will be very glad to see you."
When they had crossed the purling brook and gone into the little
vine-wreathed porch, Jaquelina felt easier. She was nervous out in the
orchard among the whispering grasses.
She fancied a dark, demoniacal face peering at her behind the trees.
When she crossed the brook it seemed to be singing loudly:
"In the moment that is the happiest of your whole life I shall take my
revenge."
The shadow of Gerald Huntington's vengeance was already upon her.
But on Ronald Valchester's love and happiness there fell no cloud from
the near future.
To his ardent and poetic imagination life lay before him fair and
lovely like a dream of summer.
Mr. Meredith came out and welcomed his niece's lover cordially, and
after a brief conversation prudently retired into the house to the
companionship of his wife and Dollie.
Mrs. Meredith, persuaded into amiability for once in her life by her
husband, spread a dainty and neat-looking supper upon the table.
The lovers went through the form of eating, and then returned to
the porch again where the air was spicy and sweet with the breath
of late-blooming roses, and the new moon rose over the misty hills,
smiling on these two lovers who were all the world to each other.
"This time to-morrow night you will be my bride," Ronald said to her
fondly. "Then we will immediately take the train for Richmond. Oh!
Lina, how often I have dreamed of that home-going. Often and often when
I think of taking you with me, I recall the beautiful words in which
Longfellow describes the home going of Hiawatha and his bride. Do you
remember, Lina?"
She repeated a few lines softly:
"Pleasant was the journey homeward,
All the birds sang loud and sweetly
Songs of happiness and heart's-ease;
Sang the blue-bird, the Owaissa:
'Happy are you; Hiawatha,
Having such a wife to love you!'
Sang the robin, the Opechee:
'Happy are you, Minnehaha,
Having such a noble husband!'"
Then Lina's small hand stole softly into her lover's. She raised her
dark, passionate eyes to his face, and he read in their starry depths
the deathless love that filled her heart.
"Lina, you do love me very much--do you not?" he said, lovingly.
"Ah, I could not tell you how much," she murmured. "If I were a poet
like you, Ronald, I might put my tenderness into glowing words. But it
is locked deep within my heart. I think if anything happens to part us
I should die."
"Nothing _can_ happen to part us, Love," he answered. "To-morrow night
at this hour you will belong to me wholly, and then your life shall be
all _couleur de rose_. Nothing can come between us after that magic
ring is on your finger. We shall belong to each other, then, in the
solemn, beautiful words of the marriage service, 'until death us do
part.'"
His happy mood and his loving confidence were infectious.
The girl forgot for awhile the hovering shadow of evil.
She was gay and blithe and happy, looking forward to the morrow with
timid, tremulous joy.
"I shall come for you in a carriage to-morrow evening, myself," he
said. "Walter Earle has promised to come for mother in his phaeton.
Violet will meet us at the church."
He kissed her good-night, saying that he would bring his mother
to-morrow.
"My last good-night," he said, as he held her small hands tightly a
moment, loth to leave her, and smiling at the warm blushes that surged
into her cheeks.
She watched him walking away through the white radiance of the
moonlight, a tall and graceful figure, on which her heart and her eyes
dwelt fondly. She murmured his words with trembling pleasure, "our last
good-night."
CHAPTER XVIII.
"My dear, I have brought you my own bridal veil to wear. I fancied I
would like Ronald's bride to wear it. I asked him about it, and he
seemed very pleased with the idea."
Mrs. Valchester carefully unwrapped the little package of fine tissue
paper, and shook out a web of costly Brussels lace. Jaquelina uttered a
low cry of delight.
"It is beautiful," she said, "and you are very kind, Mrs. Valchester."
Ronald's handsome, stately old mother looked pleased.
"So you like it," she said, throwing it over Jaquelina's head, and
thinking to herself how beautifully the dark eyes gleamed through its
silvery mist. "Now, my dear, if we only had a few natural white flowers
to arrange in your hair we should do splendidly. Have you any in your
flower garden?"
Jaquelina, with her graceful head on one side, studied intently.
"I am afraid we have none that would do," she said, scornfully.
"You see, Mrs. Valchester, it is so late in the season that most of
the flowers are gone. In the spring and summer we have white lilacs
and syringas, and roses and jessamines, but now we have only some
small white chrysanthemums--yes, and a bed of lovely white pansies.
Mrs. Earle gave me the plants last year. Would they do at all, Mrs.
Valchester?"
"The very things," said the old lady; "are there many of them in bloom?"
"Lots of them," said Jaquelina, enthusiastically, "and, ah, so lovely,
Mrs. Valchester. They look like white velvet, and they are so streaked
and veined with the loveliest tints I ever saw."
Mrs. Valchester smiled indulgently at her girlish enthusiasm.
"Very well, Lina," she said, kindly. "You may bring me a quantity of
the darlings. We will need some for your wreath, and some for your
breast, and a knot to fasten in your belt."
Lina, who was already dressed in the quaint, pretty India muslin, and
the gold chain and locket, went down from the little chamber in haste
to execute the commission.
Mrs. Meredith, who was donning her Sunday best to attend the wedding,
looked out from her chamber as the girl passed by.
"Lina, stop in my room as you go back," she said. "I've something for
you."
"Very well, Aunt Meredith, I will," she said, hurrying on, full of
happy excitement.
In the softly falling twilight she glided down the path to the
old-fashioned garden that lay silent and odorous under the pale light
of the moon that hung like a silver crescent in the dark blue sky just
above the line of the distant hills.
Lina knelt down with a smile on her lips and gathered a lapful of the
great, velvety pansies, on which the dewdrops of evening shone like
glittering diamonds.
Her white hands trembled with pleasure; her young heart beat high
with love and rapture. She had thrown off the incubus of dread since
Ronald's reassuring words last night; yet a sudden, swift memory caused
her, as she rose, to glance quickly around her, and then to gather up
her flowers and fly along the path back to the house.
As she hurried up to her own room she suddenly remembered Mrs.
Meredith's injunction, and ran back to her door, where she tapped
lightly.
It was opened by her aunt, who held a small package in her hand, and
spoke thickly, with her mouth full of hairpins.
"A black man brought this here, and said it was a bridal-present for
you," Lina understood her to say.
She took the package and went on to Mrs. Valchester.
She emptied her lapful of flowers on the toilet-table and held up the
package with a smile.
"Some one has sent me a bridal-gift," she laughed.
"Don't stop to examine it now, my dear," said Mrs. Valchester. "We have
no time to lose. Sit down here by me, and let us tie the pansies into
pretty little bunches."
Jaquelina sat down obediently, and Mrs. Valchester said:
"I will tell you a secret, Lina. Ronald went to New York last week
and purchased an exquisite set of jewelry--diamonds and large, pale
pearls--for your bridal-gift. Do you like jewels?"
"Very much," said Lina; "but I have never possessed any except mamma's
few trinkets and the engagement-ring that Ronald gave me."
"Ronald does not mean to give you the jewels till after the wedding,"
said Ronald's adoring mother. "He has a poetic fancy for you to wear
just the same things you wore when he first met you. Of course, that
would never do in a fashionable place, but here in the country it does
not matter so much to give him his way. Ronald is very fanciful and
poetic. He is about to publish a volume of poems. I am sure they must
succeed. Some of them are quite Byronic."
So Ronald's fond mother rambled on to his bride-elect, while with her
own white, jeweled fingers she adjusted the beautiful veil on the
girl's graceful head; confining it with knots of velvety white pansies.
When she said, quite proudly: "You are finished, and you make a really
beautiful bride, my dear," Lina's heart gave a throb of rapture at the
praise of her betrothed's mother.
"I may open the package now?" she said, timidly, to the stately old
lady in her silver-gray silk and real laces and soft puffs of gray hair.
"Yes," replied Mrs. Valchester, "for I suppose you are impatient to see
what token of kindness one of your friends has sent to you."
Jaquelina removed the wrappings and found a small painting, exquisitely
framed in ebony and silver. The painting represented a serpent crushing
a dove. Beneath it was written, in a fine, clear, feminine hand the one
word:
"Vendetta."
Mrs. Valchester looked over Lina's shoulder at the strange bridal-gift.
"Lina," she said, gravely, "it is not a friend who has sent you this;
it is an enemy."
"Oh, how cruel!" said the girl.
Her fair cheeks grew pale, and a frightened look came into her dark
eyes.
"Who could have done it?" said Mrs. Valchester. "_Have_ you an enemy,
my child--a female enemy? This is the writing of a woman."
"I do not know a woman on earth who dislikes me," Lina replied.
"It was very unkind and cruel," said Mrs. Valchester, warmly. "I should
not have thought anyone could be so cruel as to try and frighten you
thus in the happiest moment of your life. It is very strange that you
should have an unknown enemy who should take this method of declaring
war against you. We must tell Ronald about it, and see if he can have
any idea as to the perpetrator."
Then she paused, and Lina laid the threatening bridal-gift upon the
small toilet-table, for the rumble of wheels was heard below. Ronald
Valchester had come for his bride.
"They are come. Do not be frightened Lina," said Mrs. Valchester,
smiling, as the sensitive white-and-red began to come and go in the
cheeks of the dark-eyed girl.
CHAPTER XIX.
The small congregation of the pretty little country chapel where
Jaquelina was to be married was in a flutter of excitement equal to
that of a fashionable city church.
High and low, rich and poor, had gathered in the aisles to witness
the wedding of the farmer's pretty, simple niece to the wealthy and
aristocratic Ronald Valchester.
There was the usual amount of gossip and small talk while they waited
for the bridal party to appear, but the chat was mostly good-natured.
Jaquelina Meredith had always been an object of pity and sympathy to
the neighbors for the hard life she had lived at her uncle's. All were
glad that she had made what is termed a good match.
Kind and friendly hands had decorated the house of God with flowers for
the bridal. Gentle Mrs. Earle had sent white flowers, beneath which
the contracting parties were to stand while they pledged the solemn
vows.
The path from the gateway to the churchdoor was literally strewn with
roses. Kind hearts and kind wishes waited on the coming of the gentle
young bride.
They came at last. The whisper ran from lip to lip. The joyous notes of
the wedding march pealed from the small organ; the gray-haired minister
arose and stood waiting with his open book.
The immediate relatives of the bride and groom, the Merediths and Mrs.
Valchester, entered first with Mr. and Mrs. Earle.
They proceeded to the seats reserved for them near the altar, amid a
great deal of subdued whispering over their appearance, especially the
elegant dresses of Mrs. Earle and the groom's mother.
Then: "Oh, how beautiful!" was whispered from lip to lip as Violet
Earle came slowly up the aisle on the arm of her handsome brother.
Violet was attired in an exquisite costume of white lace, festooned
with delicate pink geraniums. She wore gleaming white pearls on her
neck and wrists, and carried a small basket of delicate pink geraniums
on her arm that exhaled a delicate perfume as she passed.
"Violet, I never saw you looking so pretty as you do to-night," Walter
whispered to her, and it was true.
A slight air of restless and anxious expectancy lent color to her
cheeks and fire to her eyes.
Walter himself looked handsome, but very pale and grave. He had not
conquered his own heart yet, and he walked over a path of thorns when
he accompanied his friend to the altar.
It was a strange sight to see this brother and sister acting as
bridesmaid and groomsman to this pair.
Walter was in love with the bride, Violet with the groom. Yet they had
been chosen for this office and accepted it calmly as they were now
fulfilling it.
They walked to the front of the altar and stepped apart.
Ronald Valchester, tall, handsome and stately, passed between them with
his bride upon his arm, and stood expectantly before the clergyman.
Those who stood around said that there never had been a finer-looking
bridegroom or a lovelier bride.
Valchester's calm, grave face was very pale, but it was touched with a
beautiful, tender seriousness that impressed all who saw it with his
deep consciousness of the sanctity of the moment.
The beautiful face of the girl-bride, as seen through the mist of the
splendid Brussels veil, glowed with shy blushes, and the thick, curling
fringe of her black lashes drooped low upon her softly-rounded cheek.
A moment--the rustle and whisper in the congregation suddenly grew
still. The clergyman began to read the solemnly beautiful words of the
marriage service. Everyone was looking at the bride. No one noticed
that Violet Earle, as she stood at the left of the bride, looked
behind her with an anxious, fugitive, eager gaze.
But the next moment all was darkness and confusion. A man sprang up
with the swiftness of lightning, and with a daring hand extinguished
the pretty chandelier that lighted the chapel.
Cries of alarm and indignation arose. In an instant all was hurry,
noise and confusion.
In the instant that the light was extinguished, Jaquelina heard a low
cry of pain from her lover's lips, felt him falling to the floor in
the darkness. Then she was caught in a pair of strong arms and borne
rapidly from the chapel. Struggling and screaming, she was lifted to
the back of a horse and borne fleetly away in the arms of her captor.
In the hour that was the happiest of her life, Gerald Huntington had
taken his terrible revenge.
"They're away, they're away, over bank, bush and scaur,
'They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar."
CHAPTER XX.
Gradually the first frantic struggle of Jaquelina relaxed in violence.
The grief and horror of her situation overcame her nerves. She fainted,
and hung limp and nerveless in the strong arms of the outlaw.
"It is better thus," said Gerald Huntington, grimly. "Her struggles
sadly impeded my flight. Now I will put my horse to its highest speed."
He crushed the beautiful, senseless white burden fiercely against his
breast, and struck the spurs into the sides of his gallant horse,
urging him madly forward, for he could hear, in the distance, the
ringing hoofs of the animals that bore hot pursuers upon his track.
But his horse, one of the swiftest racers in the country, and the
first-rate start he had had, precluded the possibility of being
overtaken. Gradually as he flew over the long, white, moon-lighted
road, he lost the echo of the pursuing hoofs. They might follow still,
but he had left them too far behind to fear them. When he had fully
realized this, he struck into the woods. An hour's hard riding brought
him to the entrance of the cave, where Jaquelina had first had the
ill-fortune to meet him.
He dismounted, and, taking the still senseless girl in his arms, blew a
shrill, low whistle that brought a man to care for his horse.
"Have you brought the priest?" he said, abruptly, to this man.
"Yes, captain, he's in waiting," was the respectful reply.
Gerald Huntington waited for no more. He strode into the pitchy
darkness of the cave, winding in and out through its tortuous recesses,
and emerged, at last, in the luxurious apartment which was specially
his own, and which no one dared to enter without his permission. All
the while the beautiful, stolen bride lay white and senseless, like a
broken lily in his strong arms.
Now he laid her down on a silken sofa, and drawing a flask of wine
from his pocket poured a few drops between her pale, parted lips, and
chafed her cold brow and hands. Almost before he knew it, the dark eyes
opened dreamily, and stared up at his masked face in bewilderment. Then
Gerald Huntington again repeated his peculiar whistle.
The thick, velvet hanging parted noiselessly, and three men appeared
in the opening. They manifested no surprise at the unusual sight of
the girl lying helplessly on the sofa. They evidently knew what had
transpired.
"Has Bowles arrived safely from the chapel?" inquired Captain
Huntington.
"Yes, captain--just this moment," was the reply.
"Very well. Tell him to come in with the priest. You three guard the
different approaches until you receive the signal to take away the
priest."
The men bowed and went away. Jaquelina, suddenly regaining her strength
and a half-dazed consciousness, sprang wildly to her feet.
"Oh, my God!" she cried out, as her gaze roved wildly around the
luxurious cavern apartment, "is it indeed true? You have dared to bring
me here! You have torn me from----"
She stopped with a moan of uncontrollable anguish.
"I have torn you from your lover's very arms--yes," echoed Gerald
Huntington, with a scornful laugh. "Did I not warn you I would take my
revenge in your happiest hour?"
"Cruel, implacable wretch!" Jaquelina cried out, indignantly, her dark
eyes flashing fiery scorn on her triumphant enemy. "Oh, how I hate your
very sight!"
"Hush, hush, my bonny bride," said Gerald Huntington, with mocking
tenderness. "Ere long I will teach you to love me."
She looked at him with parted lips and dark eyes, but her angry beauty
did not move him. His wrath was roused to its highest pitch against
her. Passionate love and passionate hate struggled together in his
breast.
The heavy curtains parted softly again, and Bowles entered, ushering
in a small, frightened-looking priest. Gerald Huntington caught
Jaquelina's hand forcibly in his and drew her forward.
"Come, priest, we are waiting," he said, with haughty impatience. "Make
us man and wife as soon as you can."
"Oh, never--never!" cried his captive with a shriek of fear and terror,
as she broke loose from his hold and fled swiftly toward the heavy
hangings in a wild effort at escape.
But as she pushed aside the thick curtains, a dark form barred
her farther progress. Gerald Huntington came toward her, laughing
carelessly at her cry of disappointment.
"Not so fast, my pretty bird," he said. "You are caged tight and fast.
There is no escape for you. I have determined to make you my bride
whether you consent or not."
"You cannot," she broke out in passionate, breathless defiance. "You
_dare_ not!"
"I dare do anything!" Gerald Huntington replied proudly, and he proved
the truth of his words by seizing her firmly by one arm, while Bowles,
at a signal from his chief, took her by the other. It was a strange
sight. The frightened, trembling little priest standing irresolute
in the center of the large apartment, and the lovely young girl
struggling desperately with the two masked outlaws; her face pale and
convulsed with terror, her dark hair streaming in dishevelled ringlets,
the silvery mist of her bridal veil rent and torn, the broken, white
pansies falling from her hair and her breast, and strewing the crimson
carpet--over all, the flickering glare of the lamplight, and the dark,
sinister faces of the outlaws peering through the velvet hangings at
the striking scene.
The little priest who had been decoyed to the cave by a clever story of
a death-bed in the country, though frightened at the sound of his own
voice in that terrible place, felt moved to utter a feeble protest.
"If the young lady is not willing," he ventured, "it is not right to
marry her against her will."
Gerald Huntington turned on him sternly.
"Reverend sir," he said, haughtily, "we have not asked for your
opinion. You are here to perform the ceremony of marriage. Proceed with
it. To refuse, or even to hesitate, will be at your deadly peril!"
His white hand went into his breast, and the priest heard the click of
a weapon. With a throbbing heart and faltering voice he began to mumble
forth the words of the marriage service. Bowles and his master held
Jaquelina firmly between them. Gerald Huntington made every response
in a loud, clear, triumphant voice; but Jaquelina's head drooped on
her breast, while her whole slight frame was benumbed by a sick and
shuddering horror. A terrible hopeless despair was stamped upon her
white and haggard features.
"I pronounce you man and wife, and whom God hath joined together let no
man put asunder," said the priest's feeble, quivering voice at last,
and the new-made bride drooped forward and fell like one dead at the
feet of her lawful master.
CHAPTER XXI.
Gerald Huntington lifted his unconscious bride and laid her again
on the sofa. Bowles hurried the not unwilling priest from the room.
The outlaw chief was alone with the beautiful, senseless form of the
hapless girl whom he had torn from the side of her lover before the
very altar, and forced away to share the terrible life of a criminal
who was in hiding from the stern arm of justice.
He knelt down by her side, and took her small white hand in both his
own.
"She fell before I could place the wedding-ring on her finger," he
said: "I will do so now."
But in lifting her hand he saw a diamond ring sparkling on one slender
finger. He tore it off quickly, and a spasm of jealous rage convulsed
the handsome features from which he had cast aside the disfiguring mask.
"Valchester's gift, doubtless," he said, holding it scornfully on the
tip of his finger. "Let us see what dainty motto the poet chose for his
darling!"
He held the sparkling circlet up to the light and read the fine lines
cut deeply within it:
"_Sans peur et sans reproche!_"
Then a groan forced itself through his lips that had grown suddenly
cold and pallid.
"Ah, my God! the _Ardelle_ motto! How comes it on the hand of this
child?"
But the pale, silent lips of the wronged girl made him no answer. She
lay still, with the dark fringe of her lashes lying low upon her white
cheek. His eye caught the gleam of a golden locket lying on her breast.
"Ah!" he cried, jealously tearing it open, "my rival's dreamy face,
perhaps."
A woman's curl, soft and dark, fell from the locket into his hand, and
seemed to twine about his fingers as if in tenderness. He shut it into
his hand, and looked for the expected picture of the hated rival.
Two faces smiled out upon him. One was a man's--gentle, tender, dreamy,
handsome--the other a face, dark and lovely, with a luring charm about
its vivid beauty. The fury, the passion, the jealous rage died out of
the outlaw's face as he gazed. His fierce, dark eyes grew soft, then
startled, and the whiteness of death overspread his face. He opened his
hand, and looked fixedly at the long, curling tress.
"My God!" he uttered, and his eyes roved from the fair face in the
picture to that of the still unconscious girl. Something in the strange
likeness of the two affected him terribly.
"Can it be?" he said, aloud; and as if he had asked her a question, the
white lids of Jaquelina fluttered upward, and she fixed her dark eyes
upon him.
Then she saw that he held her treasured locket open in his hand, and a
gleam of anger flashed from her eyes.
"How dare you?" she cried, trying to wrench it from him.
But the outlaw caught the weak little hands and held them tightly.
"Girl," he said, hoarsely, "tell me whose faces are these you wear upon
your breast?"
Something in his strong, repressed agitation forced a reply from
Jaquelina's pale lips.
"They are those of my father and mother," she replied, wonderingly.
"Your mother's maiden name?" he asked, fixing his dark, magnetic eyes
upon her face.
And again some power that seemed beyond her own volition, held her
passionate anger in abeyance, and forced her to reply, quietly:
"_Jaqueline Ardelle._"
The man started--a groan of agony forced itself between his bloodless,
pain-drawn lips.
"For God's sake, I ask you, for God's sake, tell me all you know of
your mother," he exclaimed, in low, tense accents, while his black eyes
seemed to burn with inward fire.
"I know very little to tell you," she said, with increasing wonder at
his fearful agitation, for great drops of dew beaded his high, white
brow. "I have told you her name was Jaqueline Ardelle. My father
married her in the south of France. He was an artist, and fell in love
with her beauty. He brought her home with him, and when I was born she
died."
"And this was her hair--her ring--her locket?" he said, as she paused,
and then Jaquelina saw for the first time that he had taken her
mother's ring from her finger. She reached out her hand for it as she
said, sadly:
"Yes, that was her ring and her locket, and that was a curl they cut
off for papa after she was dead. And this dress I have on now was my
mother's wedding-dress."
There was a pause. The dark eyes of the outlaw were fixed on the
curl in his hand. Its silken tendrils seemed to twine about his hand
caressingly.
"Give me the curl. I will put it back in the locket," said the girl,
rising abruptly to a sitting posture.
"No--no," the outlaw murmured, dreamily, like one talking in his sleep.
"Give it to me," Jaquelina repeated, half angrily. "It is mine--mine."
Then Gerald Huntington sprang to his feet, and towered above her in his
princely hight and satanic beauty.
His face was livid, his eyes flashed fire. He threw the silken curl
into her lap with a muttered curse.
"Take it," he cried, madly, "take it, and with my curse! I am baffled!
baffled! In the moment of my revenge the golden wine of happiness has
turned to poison on my lips! I have loved you madly, and made you my
bride, but you can never, _never_ be _wife_ of mine! These arms may
never hold you, these lips never press your own! Go, girl; go out of my
sight forever! Go, before in the madness of my love and despair, I lay
you dead at my feet!"
Jaquelina needed no second bidding.
The outlaw chief had turned away with his dark face hidden in his hands.
She slipped from her seat, and gliding softly across the carpeted
floor, passed between the heavy velvet hangings and disappeared in the
perilous gloom and darkness of the cave beyond, leaving the outlaw
chief solitary and alone, stricken by some mysterious, blighting secret.
CHAPTER XXII.
When the chandelier was relighted in the chapel they found Ronald
Valchester lying like one dead upon the floor before the altar.
The abductor of his bride had given him a murderous thrust from a knife
in the dark, and his snowy vest was dyed with the crimson current that
poured from his side.
He was in a deep and death-like swoon, and when he opened his dim eyes
again, he found himself supported on the white arm of Violet Earle,
while a flood of tears rained from her dark blue eyes.
The doctors came and examined him. They found that the wound was not so
bad as was at first supposed.
It was a flesh-wound in the left lung, and, though dangerous, not
necessarily fatal.
They thought the assassin had aimed for the heart, but had missed it in
the darkness.
They carried him to Laurel Hill, and Walter Earle and every other man
in the neighborhood set out on a hot pursuit of the daring abductor of
the beautiful girl-bride.
Public indignation was thoroughly aroused, and public opinion pointed
unerringly to the perpetrator of the terrible outrage.
All remembered that Gerald Huntington had sworn an oath of vengeance
against Jaquelina Meredith the night on which she had effected his
capture.
Meanwhile Ronald Valchester, lying in a cool, white chamber at Laurel
Hill, and lovingly tended by careful hands, was racked by the pain of
his wound and the still greater anguish of his mental suffering.
He had lost her, his bonny, dark-eyed bride. She had been torn from his
side in the very moment when she was about to be made his own forever.
One ever-recurring question fevered and tormented his harassed mind. To
what terrible fate had his darling been devoted by her ruthless foe?
He moaned and tossed in restless delirium all night. They could not
soothe him. Opiates failed utterly of effect.
The doctors said it was very bad for his wound. If a fever set in
they could not answer for the consequences. But the terribly bereaved
bridegroom heeded nothing they said.
He lay all night with his eager, restless eyes fixed upon the door.
Whenever anyone entered he would ask them if they had heard
anything--if Walter had returned, and a dozen other anxious questions
that were always answered in the negative.
But in the golden dawn of the new day Walter Earle rode into the
stable-yard.
His horse was panting and flecked with foam. His master looked weary
and jaded, but there was a light of eager joy in his face.
He threw the reins to a servant, and hurried away to the wounded
bridegroom's room.
Valchester's heavy eyes, still fixed yearningly on the door, grew
bright with joy at his friend's entrance.
"Walter, you bring me news," he cried, eagerly.
And Walter answered with a quiver of joy in his voice:
"Yes, Val, we have found her!"
"Found her!" Mrs. Valchester echoed from her place beside the bed where
she was fanning her son.
"Found her!" Mrs. Earle cried joyfully from the washstand where she was
preparing iced cloths for Ronald's heated brow.
But Ronald was stricken dumb by that joyful answer. He lay still,
pressing Walter's hand tightly in perfect silence, his whole eloquent
face expressing his exceeding joy and thankfulness. It was Mrs. Earle
who asked after a moment:
"Walter, where did you find the poor child?"
"In the woods, mother, where she had dragged herself until she could go
no further. She was very weak and exhausted."
"Is it possible she had escaped from her captor?" exclaimed Mrs.
Valchester.
"So it seems," said Walter, "but she was too weary and exhausted to
give us any information, scarcely. We have taken her home, and when she
is rested and somewhat recovered, she will tell us all."
"When did you find her?" Ronald asked, faintly.
"A little past midnight, lying like a little white heap under a tree,"
Walter replied.
"She was quite unconscious, and only rallied after we reached the farm
with her. She could only answer a few questions, and we would not weary
her. She was very nervous, and seemed disinclined for speech."
"Oh! that I were well enough to go to her," groaned Ronald.
Walter Earle looked at the pale, eager face compassionately.
"Valchester, do not worry yourself," he said, kindly. "It is not good
for you. Lina will come to you the moment she is able. She said she
would, and her uncle said that he would bring her. Try and be patient a
few hours."
"If he would only sleep," said Mrs. Valchester, eagerly. "The doctor
said he must be very quiet and sleep a good deal, but he has never even
closed his eyes, and he's watching the door constantly, and asking wild
questions of everyone."
Walter looked at the pale, worn face of the wounded man. He knew in his
heart what the anguish of that night had been to him.
"Poor old Val," he said, gently, "how could he help it? It was hard to
bear--the misery, and the terrible suspense. But now that Lina is safe,
he will compose himself and go to sleep as you wish him--will you not,
Ronald?" he inquired in a soothing tone.
"I will try," he answered, and closed his eyes obediently; but every
now and then when they thought him asleep, a nervous start or a
twitching of the eye-lids would betray the wakefulness and excitement
which he was patiently striving to overcome.
But happiness is a potent medicine.
They knew that ere long his relieved mind would succumb to its own
weariness, so they darkened the room and kept very still, waiting
anxiously for the moment when "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy
sleep," should fold her pinions over his weary pillow.
Then Walter himself, weary and worn with a night's hard riding, stole
from the room to seek rest and comfort on his own downy couch.
Outside the door he encountered his sister restlessly hovering in the
hall, her fair face strangely pallid, a frightened gleam in her large,
blue eyes.
"Walter," she whispered fearfully, "is it true what I heard you saying
just now--that Lina Meredith is really found?"
"Yes, it is true," he answered. "Are you not glad, Violet?"
A strange expression that Walter could not understand, came over the
pallid face of the girl.
"_Found_--I can scarcely credit it!" she cried out, in astonishment.
"Come, Walter, I will go with you to your room, and you shall tell me
all about it."
She went with him to his quiet room, but she could gain no more from
him than she had already heard him telling Ronald Valchester. A look of
disappointment came over her lovely, blonde face. She left Walter and
went away to her own room, where she threw herself down upon her snowy
couch and wept the bitterest tears that had ever fallen from those
lovely eyes.
"Gerald Huntington has played me false," she told herself. "He has let
her go after all the risks I ran for him. Oh! how could he be so base,
so cruel? What shall I do now? Oh, what shall I do?"
Weeping and sighing, Violet wrung her hands, and hid her anguished face
in the lace-trimmed pillow. She had dared and risked so much to remove
her hated rival from her path, and all had failed.
* * * * *
In the afternoon Ronald Valchester fell into a long, refreshing sleep.
When he awakened, feeling wonderfully calmed and refreshed, his first
question was for his little Lina.
"My dear, I do not think she has come yet," said the gentle mother,
patiently watching by his bedside. "Be patient. She will come
bye-and-bye."
"Mother, will you just step down and see if they have heard any more
from her?"
Mrs. Valchester moved quietly away. The invalid lay still, with
half-closed eyes, watching the last flickering beams of sunshine as
they lay in golden bars upon the floor.
Then, although he had heard no footsteps, he saw the shadow of a woman
lying across the sunbeams on the floor. He looked up quickly and saw a
small, white figure in the doorway, with a wan, white face and great,
dark eyes that looked at him sorrowfully yet eagerly.
"Lina, Lina, my darling!" he cried out, extending his eager arms toward
her.
CHAPTER XXIII.
At that loving call Jaquelina staggered across the floor to Ronald's
bedside. She laid her wan, white face upon his own, and kissed him
through a rain of bitter tears.
"Oh! my poor, poor murdered love," she sobbed wildly. "If you should
die your poor Lina must die too."
Ronald's arm stole around the slender form lovingly.
"It is not so bad as that, dear," he said. "I shall get well, please
God, and we shall be married soon. Nay, why should we not have the holy
man come and unite us at this very hour? Would it not be the best,
Lina, darling? Then you would belong to me, and be my own patient,
loving little nurse. Believe me, I should get well all the faster."
But Jaquelina had drawn back from his caress with a sudden cry of pain.
He put out his hand with a smile to draw her back, and then he saw that
her small, white hands were cut and bruised, and that a linen bandage
was swathed about her right arm.
"Oh! my poor little Lina!" he cried, "your hands are cruelly bruised
and torn! Who has done this wicked, brutal deed?"
Her lips quivered as he took her hands gently and pressed them to his
lips; the large tears gathered in her eyes and brimmed over on her pale
cheeks.
"No one has done it, Ronald," she said, falteringly. "I crawled on my
hands and knees through a long, dark, perilous cave, and the sharp
rocks bruised and wounded me. But I did not care for _that_; I was so
glad to get away that I did not feel the pain. Look at this," she said,
turning back a corner of the bandage on her arm.
Ronald looked and shivered. There was a terrible, jagged wound on the
fair, round arm, and the flesh around it was fearfully bruised and
discolored.
"There were horses tethered in the cave," she whispered. "It was pitch
black: I could see nothing. I must have crawled beneath their very
feet, and one struck his hoof out in the darkness and kicked this arm.
Then, by a merciful providence, I was enabled to turn aside out of the
range of their hoofs. Oh, I cannot tell you, Ronald, how terrible it
was, creeping through that fearful place."
"You were in the very den of the outlaws," he exclaimed.
"Yes," she answered, with a shudder.
"And you escaped from them, my brave little girl!" he cried. "Oh, thank
God, you were saved from the vindictive power of that man! Lina, I
cannot rest easy one moment now until I have the right to watch over
every moment of your life. I must take you far away from here."
She trembled at the passionate dread in his voice, then rallied bravely.
"Do not fear for me," she said. "He will not molest me again, Ronald."
But Ronald shook his head.
"I shall never know one moment's peace until you are my own," he said.
"Lina, I shall send for the minister to-night, and you shall be my wife
without one moment's delay. You are willing, are you not, my little
love?"
The girl clasped her small, bruised hands together, and her pale face
grew paler still with anguish.
"Oh, pitiful Heaven!" she wailed, "how can I tell you the truth, my own
Ronald?"
He looked at her in wonder.
"Lina, what is it?" he asked. "You will not refuse to marry me here and
now--you cannot be so cruel. Think, love, you would have been my wife
last night if all had gone well, and you cannot now refuse my prayer
to make you mine in the moment of my suffering and sorrow. Think what
a comfort it would be to me to have my own little wife for my patient,
loving nurse--or perhaps that would be too great a burden for you,
Lina?"
"No, no; it would be too great a pleasure," she replied eagerly. "How
could I think any task performed for you would be a burden, Ronald?"
"Then you will marry me to-night, Lina, will you not, my darling?"
She looked at the pale, handsome face, with its anxious eyes and
winning smile, and her heart gave a great, suffocating throb of
terrible pain.
"Ronald, I cannot--to-night," she said, falteringly.
"To-morrow, then?" he said.
"That is too soon," she answered, looking away from him that he might
not see the pain in her face. "We must defer it. Let us wait until you
get well."
An expression of the keenest disappointment came over the handsome face.
"Lina, I thought you loved me better than that," he said,
reproachfully. "What reason can there be for waiting so long?"
"There is a very important reason," she replied, tremblingly.
"Tell me what it is," said Ronald, half-laughing.
He thought it was only some small feminine scruple he could easily
overcome.
She looked at him, hesitating strangely.
She had moved a little way from him, and stood with her hand resting
easily on the back of a chair, while her long lashes drooped and a
crimson flush tinted her face.
"Tell me what it is," he said again. "Is it that the pretty
wedding-dress is ruined. Lina? Never mind that. The one you are wearing
will do perfectly well."
"It is a greater obstacle than that," she faltered; "but it may be
overcome after awhile. Uncle says so, and Walter Earle--I have told
him, too--says that it will all come right."
"Lina, come here to my side and put both your hands in mine," said
Ronald Valchester.
She obeyed him, though she trembled like a leaf.
"Now look straight into my eyes and let me see if you are quite sane,"
he said.
She lifted her long lashes obediently and looked at him.
He started as those dark eyes met his own. They were dim and heavy with
almost intolerable anguish.
"Oh, Heaven, my darling, what mystery is this?" he cried out,
fearfully. "Lina, what has happened to part us?"
She shivered, as though the very words hurt her.
"It is only for a little while," she said, in a low and faltering tone.
"Uncle Charlie has promised to do all he can for us. It is bitter to
bear, Ronald, but it will all come right."
"Lina, you drive me mad," he cried, hoarsely; and she saw that his face
was pallid as death, and his eyes wild and frightened. "Go, my child,
send Walter Earle to me. Perhaps he will tell me the truth."
A look of resolute endurance came into the pathetic young face.
"No," she said, "I will tell you myself. They said I could break it to
you more gently. Perhaps I may help you to bear it. Oh, my darling, do
not look at me so hard! I would have died rather than this should have
happened."
The sight of her anguish almost maddened Ronald Valchester.
"Lina, I cannot bear this suspense any longer," he cried. "Tell me why
you will not marry me?"
She came nearer; she took both his hands and held them in her own; she
looked at him with brave, patient eyes.
"Oh, Ronald, my best beloved," she said, trying to speak calmly and
bravely, "you must remember while I am telling you that it will not be
for long. The obstacle shall be removed--Uncle Charlie has promised
me _that_. But I cannot be your wife now, because--oh, Ronald,
because--against my own will--I am already--married to another."
A terrible pause! The blue-gray eyes, looking up into the tear-wet
black ones, grew dark with intense emotion; the handsome face grew
corpse-like in its awful pallor.
"Lina!" he gasped, then words failed him.
"Yes, Ronald," she said, "last night that man had a priest in his
awful cave. He read the ceremony of marriage over Gerald Huntington
and myself; he pronounced us man and wife. But, Ronald, Uncle Charlie
will get a divorce for me, and I will marry you as soon as I am free.
Ronald----"
She stopped in terror. He had turned suddenly upon his side, and after
a low, gasping sound in his throat, and one quiver of the limbs, lay
still, with the bluish pallor of death on his face.
She laid her hand on his heart, but there was no movement.
"Ronald is dead!" she cried, and her wail of anguish re-echoed through
the house.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Jaquelina's wail of anguish penetrated to every ear in the house. Those
who had sent her alone to break the terrible news to Ronald, came
hurrying in now, and found her weeping and wringing her hands, and
wildly calling on Ronald to speak to her once more.
"Ronald is dead!" she cried to them. "I tried to tell him gently, but
he could not bear it. It has killed him--oh, my darling, my darling!"
Walter Earle hurried to the bedside, while the shrieks of the women
filled the room. He pushed Jaquelina gently aside, and bent over the
still form of his friend. He laid his hand on the quiet heart.
"Do not tell me that he is dead--my only child, my precious Ronald!"
cried the frightened mother.
Walter was silent. He felt the cold hands, the still heart over and
over again. At last he turned to his mother, who stood weeping by his
side.
"I cannot believe he is dead," he said. "I can feel no pulse, and no
beat of the heart. Yet it is possible that he is only prostrated by the
suddenness of the shock. He may possibly revive. Send for the doctor
immediately."
Then he saw that Mrs. Valchester had fainted, and that Jaquelina
chafing her cold hands and bathing them with her tears. He lifted the
form of the insensible woman and bore her into the next room.
"Lina, you must come in here--and you, too, Violet," he said. "You must
do what you can for Mrs. Valchester. I do not believe that Ronald is
dead. I will try every means to revive him."
He left them and went back to Ronald, who still lay like one dead on
his pillow. With all that Lina and Violet could do, it was a long time
before they could rouse Mrs. Valchester from her deep swoon. In the
meantime they could hear the hurrying footsteps coming and going in
Ronald's room. The doctor had been sent for and arrived, but it was an
hour before Mrs. Earle came softly into the room and said, with gentle
joy on her sweet face:
"Walter was right--Ronald is living!"
"Living!" they echoed, and then the three women wept for joy--the
mother who had borne him, the girl who was to have been his wife, and
Violet who loved him secretly and vainly.
He was living, but life hung on the merest thread. No one could be
admitted into the room that night but the doctor and Walter Earle and
his mother. He was unable to bear even the joyful excitement his own
mother could not have suppressed on seeing him.
He was nervous and restless. The doctor stayed with him all night. He
slept for a few hours under the influence of a strong opiate. Then
vivid consciousness and memory returned. He pleaded with the physician
for a boon which was firmly refused.
* * * * *
But in the glimmering dawn of the new day, which had come in rainy and
damp and sunless, the physician stood in the doorway of the next room,
where the sleepless watchers waited for the hourly bulletins that came
from the sufferer.
"He wishes to see Miss Meredith," he said, gravely.
"And not me!" Mrs. Valchester cried.
"Yes, if I would permit it," said the doctor. "But I am afraid of the
excitement. I can admit but one at the time, and Miss Meredith must go
first. He has asked for her so often I can no longer refuse his prayer."
Jaquelina rose from her crouching attitude in which she had remained
cramped on the hearth-rug all night, shivering and wretched.
"You must go to him alone," said the kindly physician. "He wishes it so
earnestly. Try to be very calm, my child. Agree to everything he says.
If he becomes excited, call me into the room."
Jaquelina went very quietly, though her dark eyes shone like stars.
She did not know with what a baleful gaze Violet watched her as she
went into that room where the idol of both their hearts waited for her
coming.
They listened, fearful of some excited cry, but no sound came from
the next room save a murmur of low, hushed voices. In a very little
while--ten or fifteen minutes at the most--the door opened and
Jaquelina came out again.
"My dear," the old physician cried out in alarm, and he went up to
her involuntarily. The strange pallor on her beautiful young face
frightened him.
She lifted her heavy, dark eyes that seemed to have no light or beauty
left in them any more, and looked up at him.
"Doctor Leslie," she said, "will you let his mother go to him now? He
is not excited. I think he is quite calm, but perhaps his mother may
comfort him."
She went out into the hall the next moment. No one thought of stopping
her. Her strange appearance had almost frightened them. Doctor Leslie
led Mrs. Valchester quietly into her son's room. Jaquelina went softly
down-stairs and took her shawl and hat from the rack in the hall. She
put them on mechanically and stole quietly out of the house into the
chilly, rainy world that lay outside.
She walked quietly along the wet and sodden path across the lawn,
little dreaming that Walter Earle had observed her from an upper window
and was hastening after her. She turned with a start at his light touch
upon her arm.
"Lina, what does this mean?" he cried.
"I am going home," she said, with hard, dry lips.
"Not in the rain," said Walter, "the walk is too far. I will drive you
over in the phaeton after breakfast."
"I must go now," she said, pushing on resolutely through the chilling
autumn drizzle. "I do not mind the walk."
"I do not understand you, Lina," he said, gravely. "Why did you not
wait and see Valchester? He will be very disappointed at your going."
"I have seen him," she replied, still walking on. "Doctor Leslie
allowed me to go in a few minutes."
Walter could not understand her strange gravity and quietude. It seemed
as if years had suddenly fallen on the bright young head and made of
her a mature and thoughtful woman.
"You will come back and see Ronald again?" he said, interrogatively.
She lifted her heavy eyes and gave him one swift look whose hopeless
despair never passed from his memory.
"I shall never see Mr. Valchester again," she said, mournfully.
"Never--why not, Lina?" he cried, surprised.
"He has given me up," she said.
"Why?" Walter queried again in bewilderment. "It will be all right
after your Uncle Charles obtains a divorce for you--will it not?"
She looked at him again with those heavy, hopeless eyes.
"No, never again," she said. "Mr. Valchester has told me that he does
not believe that human law can repeal a union cemented by a priest of
God. He does not believe in divorces. As long as Gerald Huntington
lives, he believes I am bound to him."
"Valchester is mad--delirious," Walter muttered, indignantly. "For
myself, I hold that it was no marriage at all!"
They were nearing the lawn gates, and in a moment she looked up at him.
"Mr. Earle," she said, "we are almost at the lawn gates. Will you
excuse me if I go on alone from here? You are very kind, but--it seems
to me I cannot bear the sight of a human face."
Walter bowed and turned back silently, leaving her to pursue her walk
alone.
CHAPTER XXV.
When Walter Earle parted from Jaquelina at the lawn gates, he went back
to the house with two distinct thoughts in his mind. One was a feeling
of indignation and surprise against Ronald Valchester. He was amazed
at learning that his friend was an unbeliever in divorces. He firmly
resolved to give Ronald a lecture on the subject, when he should be
sufficiently recovered to argue the case. His second thought, which he
could not help entertaining, was, that since affairs had taken this
peculiar turn, there was some hope still for himself.
"After the divorce is granted, I will do my utmost to re-unite them,"
he said, still loyal to Ronald and Lina in spite of his love for her;
"and then if I fail of converting Ronald, I will woo little Lina for
myself. Ronald could not accuse me of disloyalty to him in that case."
He could not help feeling that Ronald Valchester's defection must place
his own suit in a better light before Jaquelina's eyes. The divorce
from the outlaw was only a question of time, Walter thought. They
could not fail to grant it. Indeed, it seemed to Walter that it could
scarcely be viewed as a marriage at all. Jaquelina once freed from its
fetters, she could not help feeling a little indignant at Valchester's
view of the case, and, once over the smart of her pain, it seemed to
Walter that his own loyal love could not fail to find favor in her eyes.
"And then--who knows?" mused Walter. "Jaquelina once out of his reach,
and by his own decision, too, the heart of Valchester may, in time,
turn to Violet. Poor little Violet! She has borne her pain bravely, but
I am certain that she has not got over it yet."
In spite of his sympathy for the sadly and strangely parted lovers,
Walter could not repress a glow of satisfaction at the thought that,
after all, his own happiness and that of his sister might be secured
by the strange events that had seemed so deplorable at first. Yet he
resolved that he would first do all he could to change Valchester's
opinion of divorces.
He went back to the sick-room and found his friend very ill and weak.
The doctor warned him there must be no talking--his patient could not
bear to be excited. He lay back upon the pillow, his handsome face
pale as marble, the long, dark lashes lying motionless on his cheek,
yet they knew that he was not asleep, only spent and exhausted by the
tempest of emotion that had passed over him. His mother sat quietly
by the bed-side, looking pale and sad, and heart-broken in the gray
morning light. She had telegraphed for General Valchester, and looked
anxiously for his arrival at any hour of the day.
As the day wore on, the wound developed a dangerous phase. Fever and
delirium set in; Ronald's pale face grew scarlet, his dim eyes bright
with fever fires. He tossed restlessly on his pillows, and babbled
ceaselessly of his loved Lina, interspersing his flighty murmurs with
poetical quotations. "Hiawatha's Wooing" seemed to linger in his mind
like a pleasant dream. He would murmur over and over:
"Pleasant was the journey homeward:
All the birds sang loud and sweetly."
And again:
"Over wide and rushing rivers
In his arms he bore the maiden."
At noon General Valchester arrived. He had a brief, private interview
with Dr. Leslie; then they telegraphed for a celebrated Richmond
physician.
The brooding shadows of the death-angel's wing hung dark and heavy over
Laurel Hill.
In the rainy, dreary sunset Charlie Meredith drove over in his buggy.
"I would have come sooner," he said, "but I have been to town to
consult a lawyer for my niece. So when I got home and wife told me Lina
had never got back, I thought I'd drive over and inquire after Mr.
Valchester, and fetch her home if she'd a mind to go."
Mr. Earle, to whom he was talking, looked at him with a start of
surprise.
"I am sorry to say that Mr. Valchester is in a very critical
condition," he replied. "After his father came up at noon to-day he
immediately telegraphed for a physician from Richmond."
"I am sorry to hear that," said Mr. Meredith. "Perhaps, then, my niece
will not be ready to go home yet?"
And again Mr. Earle looked surprised.
"Miss Meredith went home at daylight this morning," he answered.
"Eh--what? I don't think I understand you," said Charlie Meredith.
"Your niece went home at daylight this morning," Mr. Earle repeated.
The farmer's healthy brown skin turned pale. He looked dazed.
"Mr. Earle, you must be mistaken," he said. "Lina has never been home
to-day. She walked over here yesterday afternoon, and she has not been
at home since."
"She certainly left Laurel Hill early this morning," Mr. Earle said,
perplexed. "Walter walked with her to the lawn gates. He wished to
drive her over in the phaeton, but she declined, so he told me, and
insisted on going home alone. I sincerely trust that no harm has
befallen little Lina."
Mr. Meredith looked grave and a good deal troubled.
"Is it not strange she should have started home so soon in the morning?
I cannot understand it."
Walter came out just then. He grew pale when they told him that
Jaquelina had never come home that day. He remembered what a hopeless
despair had looked at him from the dark eyes and the fair young face
when they parted.
"And yet I never dreamed of anything wrong," he said to himself, with
a pang of pain at his heart. "Oh, why did I let her go alone? I should
have known better from the look on her face."
He said aloud, more cheerfully than he felt:
"Perhaps she grew weary and stopped in at some of the neighbors to
rest. I will go with you to inquire, Mr. Meredith."
"I shall be glad of your company," said the farmer. "I think it is very
likely you have hit on the truth, Walter. She must have grown tired and
stopped in at some of the neighbors."
"And you may, perhaps, find her already at home when you reach there,"
said Mr. Earle, who thought that his son's idea was the correct one.
But Walter was not so sanguine. He got into the buggy and drove away
with Mr. Meredith, but he was not surprised when one neighbor after
another declared that Jaquelina had not been seen by any one of them
that day.
All inquiry and all search failed to unravel the mystery of her
disappearance. No one had seen her since she turned away from Walter
Earle at the lawn gates that morning, and when he remembered the look
upon her face that moment he shuddered and thought of the river.
He told Mr. Meredith of his fears.
The next day the river was dragged, but to no avail. Jaquelina had
vanished as utterly as if the solid earth had opened beneath her feet
and received her into its bosom.
Many believed that Gerald Huntington had carried her off again, and a
party was organized to explore the woods in the hope of discovering the
cave which Jaquelina had described to them as the rendezvous of the
outlaws.
CHAPTER XXVI.
It was decided that Ronald Valchester should not hear of Jaquelina's
strange disappearance. Already he lay at death's door, and the
physicians declared that another shock of any kind would utterly
destroy his frail hold on life.
As consciousness returned to him they avoided all mention of that once
familiar name in the sick-room; yet they knew many a time, by the look
in the beautiful, dark-gray eyes, that he was thinking of the girl he
had loved so well and lost so sadly.
Sometimes they wondered why he never spoke of her. They did not know
how Ronald and Lina had parted--how sorrowfully he had said to her,
even as he held the small hands tightly in his own, and looked at her
with a soul's despair stamped on his death white face:
"Lina, this is the last time I must hold your hands, or even look into
your face while Gerald Huntington lives. You are legally his, and I
have never believed in divorce. If the law were to free you, I should
still hold you bound to him by a higher power than man's law. So you
understand, dear, it is best we should separate wholly, never, perhaps,
to look on each other's faces again. I pray God that I may die, and
so pass from this life that but a little while ago was so fair and
tempting in my eyes, and that is now but an empty desert. For you, my
sweet, lost love, may God bless you, and give us both the strength to
bear the heavy cross of sorrow!"
And Jaquelina, remembering Doctor Leslie's words that he must not be
excited or contradicted in any way, had bowed her head, and answered
meekly:
"It must be so if you will it thus, Ronald. God give us both the
patience to bear it."
And with those words, and one last, lingering look at the beloved face,
Jaquelina had kissed his hands, and gone away, but she had not let
him see that look on her face that the others had seen--that hopeless
despair and pain that it frightened Walter Earle to remember.
So they kept the story away from Ronald, even while the unspoken
language of his eyes said plainer than words:
"I am longing to hear something of my poor lost love. Even to hear her
name spoken aloud would be a relief, since it is ever ringing itself in
my brain."
But no one spoke of her, no one seemed to remember her existence. It
seemed to Ronald that they were cruel to be so forgetful. He had placed
a seal upon his own lips, but he would have trembled with pleasure if
anyone else had even named her name.
Day by day there began to be some slight change in Ronald, faint at
first, but growing more and more noticeable. The doctors began to have
hopes of him.
They thought it more than likely he would pull through safely now. Yet
they owned that there would long be a weakness in that wounded lung,
and they strenuously recommended a sea voyage to him when he should be
sufficiently recovered to undertake it.
"A sea voyage--a winter in Italy," said Doctor Sanborn, "would build up
your constitution--make a new man of you."
"And lend new wings to your soaring fancy," laughed Doctor Leslie, who
had found out that Ronald was a poet. "I should say that beautiful,
dreamy Italy, is the true home of the poetic muse."
Ronald fell in with the plan at once, the more eagerly that he felt it
would be best to put the whole width of the world between himself and
Jaquelina. It seemed to him that if he were farther away that he must
cease to be tormented by that passionate yearning for the lost one that
haunted him now forever.