The guests were beginning to take leave. Already their gay farewells
floated out upon the air of the night where Norman de Vere had been
walking alone since the detective had left him.
He went back to the house, deathly pale, but calm.
When the last good-night had been uttered, when the echo of the
carriage wheels had died away in the distance, the young man turned
back into the house.
His mother and his wife were going up the broad stairway to their
rooms. He called them back.
“I wish to speak with you in the library,” he said.
His face was so white, his eyes so stern that they followed him in
awe-struck silence. He locked the door and placed chairs for both.
Beautiful Camille began to grow a little frightened. She cried out,
half defiantly:
“I wish you would wait till morning, Norman. I am tired and sleepy.”
She flung herself indolently back in her chair, with her white arms
upraised over her head, yawning lazily.
Her husband paid no attention to her complaint. He had fallen on one
knee before his mother. He lifted her soft, white hand to his lips.
“Mother, I have deeply wronged you. Forgive me!” he exclaimed.
“My son,” she faltered.
“I am ashamed to confess it; but perhaps you have suspected--I
feared--nay, believed--that you, out of sympathy with Camille, had
hidden Little Sweetheart away from me.”
Yes, she had suspected--had guessed his thought--had grieved in silence
over his proud coldness to her, his mother. She could not answer now
save by a low, pained sob.
Still on his knees before the gentle mother he had wronged, he turned
his face toward Camille.
“I was base enough to confide my suspicions to you,” he said, bitterly.
“You, Camille, fostered and encouraged them. To save yourself you
turned traitor to her who was your mother’s dearest friend, and who for
that at least should have been sacred from your treachery. What have
you to say for yourself?”
“That I am no worse than you. You first suggested it to me. It--it
seemed plausible!” Camille replied, with a defiant face.
A low groan broke from him, and he gazed at her for a moment in steady
scorn; then he turned back to the agitated elderly woman.
“Mother, I wronged you,” he said again, in a voice of deep contrition.
“Can you forgive me?”
“Freely, Norman,” she replied, tenderly.
“If this was all you wanted, it might have waited until to-morrow.
Unlock that door; I am going,” Camille said, sharply, eager to escape,
for she began to fear that his suspicions were now directed against
herself.
He did not obey her haughty command, but rising, stood looking at her,
his arms folded over his breast, a gleam of fierce anger in his eyes.
“You will wait a moment,” he said. “I have news for you. The missing
child is found.”
“Really!” she sneered; but an icy shudder shook her from head to foot,
and a silent malediction against Finette’s bungling trembled on her
lips.
“Yes, she is found, Camille,” he said. “And, oh, Camille, Camille,
imagine my feelings when I found that you had deceived me--that you
were the guilty party!”
“How dare you accuse me?” she stormed, springing to her feet,
wrathfully beautiful, determined to brave it out to the end; but he
answered her with that smile that was half sorrow, half scorn:
“Denials are useless. You worked through Finette, your diabolical
French maid. She took the child from my mother’s arms while she slept.
She went on horseback with her captive to one of the worst quarters of
Jacksonville, where she gave her to a miserable, brutal old rag-picker,
who has half starved that innocent little angel, beaten her till she
is covered with stripes, and forced her to stand in the streets and
beg for her food! Oh, my wife! how little I dreamed that you could be
capable of such cruelty!”
While he spoke the guilty woman stood her ground, facing him defiantly,
her white face twitching with sneers, her jeweled hands clinching and
unclinching themselves in impotent wrath, as the young man went on,
scathingly:
“It is no wonder you will not part with your clever maid. She is too
useful to you. But her time has come now. She shall go!”
“Norman!” cried his mother, beseechingly; but neither of them heeded
her. Camille was crying passionately:
“Who is my accuser?”
“The detective whom I employed to unravel the mysterious affair. He
dragged it out of the miserable old rag picker with whom Finette made
her bargain.”
She stood still a moment, looking at the white set face of the man she
loved with such jealous passion, and a feeling like death stole over
her at the thought of losing him.
Despite all her caprices, all her taunts, all her jealous madness,
she knew that Norman de Vere had loved her well and truly in their
two stormy years of wedded life, and she, ah! she--she adored him in
her wild, strange fashion. To lose his love were to lose heaven, she
thought, impiously.
Yet in the dark, burning eyes that he fixed on her face, in the curl of
his beautiful lips she read something that she feared and dreaded--the
dawning of that hour when, goaded by her injustice, her jealousy, her
cruelty, he should throw off the fetters of love that bound him, and
regret the fatal hour that made their two lives one.
As white as death she stood facing him, wondering how she should
extricate herself from her terrible strait, how escape from the web of
fate her own reckless hands had spun, for escape she must, or bear his
stinging contempt to her life’s end.
The passionate, undisciplined creature flung her jeweled hands up to
her face, and her slender, graceful figure shook for a moment like
a leaf in a storm, then as suddenly she withdrew them, and, with a
gesture of infinite pathos, fixed her blazing eyes upon the face of the
angry man.
“This from you, Norman--this from you? Oh, Heaven, it is too cruel!”
she cried out in accents of reproach and pain.
He did not answer; he stood staring at her dumbly, while she continued:
“Poor indeed must be the quality of your love for me if you can credit
such a charge against my honor!”
“There is proof,” he answered, icily.
“There is no proof! There can not be, for I am not guilty of this
thing!” she cried out, wildly. “Oh, send for Finette! Surely there is
some horrible mistake.”
He crossed to the door and said something to a servant in the hall.
In a few moments Finette made her appearance among them, and the door
was again shut and locked.
“Oh, miladi, are you ill again?” cried the deceitful French woman,
pretending the liveliest anxiety.
She went eagerly forward to Mrs. de Vere, and a swift, telegraphic
glance passed between the two unnoticed by the others.
“No, Finette, I am not ill. It is worse--far worse! My honor is
assailed! We are charged--you and I--with being the parties who
abducted that child from Verelands a week ago!”
“Oh, miladi!” recoiling in amazement.
“Do you not understand, Finette? My husband employed a detective to
find the child. He succeeded in doing so, and now declares that you
were the abductor, and that you were doing my bidding. Speak, Finette;
tell our accusers that we are innocent.”
Her burning hazel eyes seemed to shoot red lights of indignation and
fury, and clever Finette caught the clew at once.
“Oh, my mistress! who has dared accuse you?” she exclaimed, calculating
rapidly that if she cleared her mistress from this charge, unlimited
opportunities of blackmail lay before her in the future. She assumed
an appearance of virtuous indignation, and went on: “I will confess
all, miladi! I took the child away, indeed, but I swear it was not done
at your bidding. You suspected nothing; but Finette, in her devotion
to her mistress, took on herself the responsibility of the abduction.
Alas! it has failed, and I am _désolé_. You will never forgive me--you
will drive me from you!”
“Yes, Finette, I will send you away to-morrow. Your sin is too great
for me to pardon. Oh! how could you think to please me by so vile a
deed?” Camille exclaimed, angrily.
“Miladi, I beg ten thousand pardons! It was a mistake. I thought to
serve you, but I erred. I will go to-night. But, sir”--turning to her
master--“Mrs. de Vere had nothing to do with that--I swear it. Punish
me, but not her; she is innocent.”
He turned to Camille, and saw tears standing thick in her lovely eyes.
“You wronged me,” she said, sadly, reproachfully. He stood undecided,
doubting, and she went on, in the same sad voice: “I am innocent,
Norman. To prove it, I bid you bring the child back here to Verelands,
and no mother could be kinder to her child than I will be to your
pretty little protégée. I was mad with jealousy that night, and scarce
knew what I said. Whatever wild words I uttered, I take them all back
and crave your pardon.”
Her sweet humility, her tender yielding, did what all her defiance had
failed in--they melted the ice about his heart. One moment he gazed
in silence, then, springing to her side, clasped her closely to his
breast, exclaiming, gladly:
“Forgive me, darling, for my unjust suspicions! I will atone for them
by deeper devotion than in the past.”