"A FALSE MOVE IN THE GAME."
Pretty, piquant Winnifred French was the staunch friend of Leslie
Warburton.
When Winnie was the petted only daughter of "French, the rich merchant,"
she and Leslie Uliman had been firm friends. When Leslie Uliman, the
adopted daughter of the aristocratic Uliman's, gave her hand in marriage
to Archibald Warburton, a wealthy invalid and a widower with one child,
Winnie was her first bridesmaid.
Time had swept away the fortune of French, the merchant, and death had
robbed Leslie of her adopted parents, and then Winnifred French gladly
accepted the position of salaried companion to her dearest friend.
Not long after, Alan Warburton had returned from abroad, and then had
begun a queer complication.
For some reason known only to himself, Alan Warburton had chosen to
dislike his beautiful sister-in-law, and he had conceived a violent
admiration for Winnie,--an admiration which might have been returned,
perhaps, had Winnie been less loyal in her friendship for Leslie. But,
perceiving Alan's dislike for her dearest friend, Winnie lost no
opportunity for annoying him, and lavishing upon him her stinging
sarcasms.
On her part, Leslie Warburton loved her companion with a strong sisterly
affection. As for her feelings toward Alan Warburton, it would have been
impossible to guess, from her manner, whether he was to her an object of
love, hatred, or simple indifference.
When Winnie and Alan turned their backs upon the scene in the anteroom,
and entered the dancing hall, the girl was in a particularly perverse
mood.
"I shall not dance," she said petulantly. "It's too early and too warm,"
and she entered a flowery alcove, and seated herself upon a couch
overhung with vines.
"May I sit down, Winnie?"
"No."
"Just for a moment's chat." And he seated himself as calmly as if he had
received a gracious permission.
"You are angry with me again, Winnie. Is my sister-in-law always to come
between us?"
She turned and her blue eyes flashed upon him.
"Once and for all," she said sharply, "tell me why you hate Leslie so?"
"Tell _me_ why she has poisoned your mind against me?" he retorted.
"_She!_ Leslie Warburton! This goes beyond a joke, sir. Leslie Warburton
_is_ what Leslie Uliman was, a _lady_, in thought, word, and deed. Oh, I
can read you, sir! Her crime, in your eyes, is that she has married your
brother. Is she not a good and faithful wife; a tender, loving mother to
little Daisy? You have hinted that she does not love her husband--by
what right do you make the assertion? You believe that she has married
for money,--at least these are _fashionable_ sins! Humph! In all
probability I shall marry for money myself."
"Winnifred!"
"I _shall_; I am sure of it. It's an admirable feature of our best
society. If we are heiresses, we are surrounded with lovers who are
fascinated by our bank account. If we are poor, we are all in search of
a bank account; and many of us have to do some sharp angling."
"My sister-in-law angled very successfully."
"So she did, if you _will_ put it so. And she did not land her last
chance; she might have married as wealthy a man as Mr. Warburton, or as
handsome a man as his _brother_. But then," with a provoking little
gesture of disdain, "Leslie and I never did admire handsome men."
There was just a shade of annoyance in the voice that answered her:
"Pray go on, Miss French; doubtless yourself and Mrs. Warburton have
other tastes in common."
"So we have," retorted the girl, rising and standing directly before
him, "but I won't favor you with a list of them. You don't like Leslie,
and I do; but let me tell you, Mr. Alan Warburton, if the day ever comes
when you know Leslie Warburton _as I know her_, you will go down into
the dust, ashamed that you have so misjudged, so wronged, so slandered
one who is as high as the stars above you. And now I am going to join
the dancers; you can come--or stay."
The last words were flung at him over her shoulder, and before he could
rise to follow, she had vanished in the throng that was surging to and
fro without the alcove.
He starts forward as if about to pursue her, and then sinks back upon
the couch.
"I won't be a greater fool than nature made me," he mutters in scornful
self-contempt. "If I go, she'll flirt outrageously under my very nose;
if I stay--she'll flirt all the same, of course. Ah! if a man would have
a foretaste of purgatory let him live under the same roof with the woman
he loves and the woman he hates!"
A shadow comes between his vision and the gleam of light from without,
and, lifting his eyes, he encounters two steady orbs gazing out from
behind a yellow mask.
"Ah!" He half rises again, then sinks back and motions the mask to the
seat beside him.
"I recognize your costume," he says, as the British officer seats
himself. "How long since you came?"
"Only a few moments. I have been waiting for your interview with the
lady to end."
"Ah!" with an air of abstraction; then, recalling himself: "Do you know
the nature of the work required of you?"
Under his mask, Van Vernet's face flamed and he bit his lip with
vexation. This man in black and scarlet, this aristocrat, addressed him,
not as one man to another, but loftily as a king to a subject. But there
was no sign of annoyance in his voice as he replied:
"Um--I suppose so. Delicate bit of a shadowing, I was told; no
particulars given."
"There need be no particulars. I will point you out the person to be
shadowed. I want you to see her, and be yourself unseen. You are simply
to discover,--find out where she goes, who she sees, what she does.
Don't disturb yourself about motives; I only want the _facts_."
"Ah!" thought Van Vernet; "it's a _she_, then." Aloud, he said: "You
have not given the lady's name?"
"You would find it out, of course?"
"Of course; necessarily."
"The lady is my--is Mrs. Warburton, the mistress of the house."
"Ah!" thought the detective; "the old Turk wants me to shadow his wife!"
By a very natural blunder he had fancied himself in communication with
Archibald, instead of Alan, Warburton.
"Have you any suspicions? Can you give me any hint upon which to act?"
he asked.
"I might say this much," ventured Alan, after a moment's hesitation:
"The lady has made, I believe, a mercenary marriage and she is hiding
something from her husband and friends."
"I see," said Vernet. And then, laughing inwardly, he thought: "A case
of jealousy!"
In a few words Alan Warburton described to Vernet the "Sunlight,"
costume worn by Leslie, and then they separated, Vernet going, not in
search of "Sunlight," but of the Goddess of Liberty.
What he found was this:
In the almost deserted music room stood the Goddess of Liberty, gazing
down into the face of a woman in the robes of Sunlight, and both of them
engaged in earnest conversation.
He watched them until he saw the Goddess lift the hand of Sunlight with
a gesture of graceful reverence, bow over it, and turn away. Then he
went back to the place where he had left his patron. He found the object
of his quest still seated in the alcove, alone and absorbed in thought.
"I beg your pardon for intruding upon your solitude," began the
detective hastily, at the same time seating himself close beside Alan;
"but there is a _lady_ here whose conduct is, to say the least,
mysterious. As a detective, it becomes my duty to look after her a
little, to see that she does not leave this house _until I can follow
her_."
"Well?" with marked indifference in his tone.
"If she could be detained," went on Vernet, "by--say, by keeping some
one constantly beside her, so that she cannot leave the house without
being observed--"
Alan Warburton threw back his head.
"Pardon me," he said, "but I object to thus persecuting a lady, and a
guest."
"But if I tell you that this _lady_ is a man in silken petticoats?"
"What!"
"And that he seems on very free and friendly terms with _your wife_."
"With my wi--"
Alan Warburton stopped short and looked sharply at the eyes gazing out
from behind the yellow mask.
Did this detective think himself conversing with Archibald? If so--well,
what then? He shrank from anything like familiarity with this man before
him. Why not leave the mistake as it stood? There could be no harm in
it, and he, Alan, would thus be free from future annoyance.
"I will not remove my mask," thought Alan. "He is not likely to see
Archibald, and no harm can come of it. In fact it will be better so. It
would seem more natural for him to be investigating his wife's secrets
than for _me_."
So the mistake was not corrected--the mistake that was almost
providential for Alan Warburton, but that proved a very false move in
the game that Van Vernet was about to play.
There was but one flaw in the plan of the proposed incognito.
Alan's voice was a peculiarly mellow tenor, and Van Vernet never forgot
a voice once heard.
"Did you say that this disguised person knows--Mrs. Warburton?"
"I did."
"Who is the fellow, and what disguise does he wear?"
"I am unable to give his name. He is costumed as the Goddess of
Liberty."
"Oh!"
Van Vernet had his own reasons for withholding Richard Stanhope's name.
"So!" he thought, while he waited for Alan's next words. "I'll spoil
your plans for this night, Dick Stanhope! I wonder how our Chief will
like to hear that 'Stanhope the reliable,' neglects his duty to go
masquerading in petticoats, the better to make love to another man's
wife."
For Van Vernet, judging Stanhope as a man of the world judges men, had
leaped to the hasty, but natural, conclusion, that his masquerade in the
garb of the mother of his country, was in the character of a lover.
"Vernet," said Alan at last, "you are a clever fellow! Let me see; there
are half a dozen young men here who are ripe for novelty--set the
whisper afloat that behind that blue and white mask is concealed a
beautiful and mysterious intruder, and they will hang like leeches about
her, hoping to discover her identity, or see her unmask."
"It's a capital plan!" cried Vernet, "and it can't be put into execution
too soon."