TWO FACES IN THE GLASS.
When Elsie entered her boudoir, flushed with laughter and breathless
with running, she threw herself on the azure couch, and gathering her
ringlets in a mass between her hand and the warm cheek under which it
was thrust, fell into a deeper train of thought than was usual to her.
"It's done, and I don't care. He loves me, and I must be loved. He's
rich, generous, devoted, worships me and always will, that's one
comfort. There'll be no one to halve his devotion or his money with me,
no one to look glum if I want to be a little bit extravagant. Grant
never refused me anything in his life, but I'm always afraid to ask half
that I want. But with Tom everything will be my own. He won't ask a
question. Such laces as I will have! As for cashmere shawls and silks,
he shall get them for me by the dozens. Elizabeth won't say that such
things are out of place then. I shall be a married woman, free of her
and this old house too, free of everything, but--but----"
Elsie started up, breaking this selfish train of thought with the
action.
"I wish she'd stop talking to me; I don't want to hear about it. Why
won't she bear her trouble alone, if she will make trouble about what
isn't to be helped? I'll have no more confidences with her, that's
certain. It is like breaking one's heart up in little pieces. I don't
want to keep secrets, but forget them; and I will, too, in spite of her.
She shan't make me eternally miserable with her pining and remorse."
Elsie paused before a mirror as these thoughts rose in her mind and half
broke from her lips. She was threading out her curls and trying the
effect as they floated, like golden thistledown, over the roses of her
cheek. All at once she started, and a look of pale horror stole to her
face; the hand which had been wandering among her hair dropped to her
side, turning cold and white as marble; the lips which had been just
parted with an admiring smile of her own beauty, lost every trace of
color. She still gazed intently into the glass, but not at herself.
Beyond her pretty image, reflected from the distance, sat a man with a
pen in his hand, as if just arrested in the act of writing. Rich shadows
of crimson drapery lay around him, and a gleam of pure light from a
half-closed upper blind fell across his head, lighting it up grandly.
It was a magnificent picture that Elsie gazed upon, far beyond her own
image in the glass. But she only saw the man, without regard to his
surroundings, and the very heart in her bosom turned sick with loathing
or with fear.
It was North, looking at her through the open door, with a sneering
smile on his lip--North in the very chamber of her brother's wife,
quietly seated there as if he had been master of the house. For a full
minute Elsie stood, forming a double picture in the glass with that
bold, bad man, then her color came hotly back, and she turned upon him,
brave with indignation.
"You here!" she said, advancing into the room till its crimson haze
overwhelmed her. "You here, and in this chamber! Get up at once and
begone. If my brother finds you under his roof he will shoot you on the
spot."
"Never fear, pretty one," said North, with an evil gleam on his face.
"Two can play at a game of that sort. If he made the first assault
nothing would give me more pleasure. Self-defence is justifiable in law,
and his will is made."
Elsie was trembling from head to foot, but she leaned one hand heavily
on the table that he might not see her agitation.
"Man, man, you would not--you dare not meet my brother. You that have
wronged him so!"
"Excuse me," said North, biting the feather of his pen and looking down
on a sheet of note-paper on which he had been about to write; "I do not
see this wrong so clearly. If a woman's heart will wander off in any
forbidden direction, am I to blame because it flutters into my bosom?
And if other hearts follow after----"
"Stop!" cried Elsie, stamping her little foot passionately on the
carpet. "How dare you speak of a fraud so black, of treason so
detestable! I am his sister, sir, and have something of his courage,
frivolous as people think me. Persecute her or provoke me too far and I
will tell him all."
"Indeed you would not," answered North, quietly.
"What should prevent me?"
"She will. You dare not break a solemn promise to her."
"I dare!" she almost shrieked, clenching her little hand in a paroxysm
of rage. "I will, if ever you come here again."
"No; I think not. Women are weak creatures, but they generally find
strength to keep secrets that bring ruin in the telling. You cannot be
over anxious to see this proud brother of yours commit murder on----"
"On a villain--a household traitor--a--a----"
Elsie stopped for want of breath.
"Be quiet," said North, rising sternly and towering over her. "I have no
dealings with you. One might as well reason with a handful of silkweed
thrown upon the wind."
"But I will have something to say--everything to say. You have pursued
her, plundered her, tortured her long enough. More than once she has
been on the brink of discovery by your persistence in prowling over the
grounds and from her attempts to conceal your rapacious extortions. All
this must end."
"With all my heart; let the lady accede to my terms and I disappear."
"What are those terms?"
"I will write them, and your own fair hands shall give her the note."
Elsie did not answer, but her white lips closed firmly, and her blue
eyes glittered like steel in the glow of a hot fire, as he dipped his
pen deliberately in the bronze inkstand and began to write.
"There," he said, folding the note and presenting it to her with a
princely air, as if her courage had impressed him with respect; "place
this in her hands and she will know how to carry it out."
Elsie took the note and hid it away in the folds of her dress.
"Do not fail," he said, before taking his hat from the table.
"I will not," answered Elsie. "But these cruel visits must cease now and
for ever. I will give the note only on this condition."
"Her answer will decide that. Now, good-bye."
He reached forth his hand, smiling pleasantly upon her; but she clenched
hers, as if tempted to strike him for the insolent offer, and turned
away biting her pale lips.
The hand, rejected with such disdain, fell towards the hat which North
placed lightly on his head, casting one glance in the opposite mirror as
he did so. Then, with the elastic step of a man retiring from a
festival, he left the chamber, while Elsie looked after him with
wondering eyes and parted lips, astonished by an audacity which was
absolutely sublime.
The young creature stood with bated breath till his light footsteps died
away in the nearest passage. She listened anxiously, but heard no door
close or further movement of any kind. His exit was noiseless as his
entrance had been.
When Elsie was left alone she sat down in the dim light of Elizabeth's
room, pushed the hair back from her forehead and pressed both palms on
her temples, where pain was throbbing like a pulse. She moaned and cried
out under the sudden anguish, for resistance to suffering of any kind
was killing to this young creature, and the reaction which followed that
passionate outburst of feeling left her helpless as a child.