In the trouble that had fallen upon him, Norman de Vere quite forgot
Lord Stuart and his sister, the guests whom he was soon to receive at
Verelands, or he would have written to them of all that had happened
during his trip to New York and since his return to Jacksonville.
But, half crazed with trouble and anxiety, the young man could
remember nothing except that his dear mother lay upon a sick, perhaps
death-bed, and that his darling wife and child had gone into a most
impenetrable exile, hounded from home and love by the most fiendish
plot the brain of a wicked woman ever devised. While duty held him
chained to his mother’s side, he had committed to a clever detective
the task of tracing Sweetheart, and every moment a prayer went up from
his heart that she might soon be found. That she could no longer be
his--that Camille’s life had thrust their lives apart--he realized,
but that a home must be provided for Sweetheart and the child, he felt
imperatively necessary. If Heaven spared his mother’s life, she would
go and live with them, he knew, and for himself nothing remained but
to denounce Camille for the murder of Robert Lacy--to denounce her
and doom her to the solitude of the prison cell. The murder had been
committed so long ago that she would not be hung for it, he knew. Time,
and the fact that she was a woman, would both be in her favor. Southern
juries were chivalrous, too. He recalled all this with satisfaction,
for bitterly as Camille had wronged him and his, the man’s heart shrunk
at thought of the vengeance he must take on the fair, faulty creature
who had once been his wife, for whom he had felt a boy’s delirious
passion.
“But I can not spare her if I would, for she has rushed madly,
recklessly upon her fate. For Sweetheart’s sake, for our child’s sake,
this guilty woman must be placed behind prison bars. Then the law will
free me forever from her hated claim, and the marriage ceremony shall
make Sweetheart once more my own,” he thought. But while his mother lay
ill he made no effort to molest Camille in her triumphant occupation of
Verelands. His anxiety over his loved ones tortured him too cruelly.
Meantime, the days rolled by, and Lord Stuart and Lady Edith Moreland
left New York for Jacksonville. They did not think it necessary to
write or telegraph to their friends, still carrying out their fancy for
surprising Sweetheart.
Lady Edith was as eager and joyous as a child when they took a carriage
at the station to drive to Verelands.
“Dear child, I know she will be so happy to see me again!” she
exclaimed, excitedly; and her brother looked in surprise and delight
at her charming, animated face, which was flushed to a soft, roseate
color, while her dark-blue eyes sparkled with feeling.
“You look like a girl again, Edith,” he said, admiringly.
“Nonsense!” she laughed. Then she added, with a pensive glance: “Why, I
am old enough to be Thea’s mother and her child’s grandmother. I wish I
were!” and tears sprung to her gentle eyes.
“You will have to adopt them as such,” Lord Stuart said, lightly; but
he put his arm around her, and soothed her tenderly as though she were
a child, and presently their carriage was stopping at the white gates
of beautiful Verelands.
“Just a few more minutes, and I shall see her. Oh, what happiness!”
Lady Edith cried, with the eagerness of a child.
“If she should be out calling or driving, I do not see how you
could bear the shock of disappointment, Edith,” her brother said,
good-humoredly.
“Alan Arthur would be at home anyhow, so I should amuse myself with him
till his pretty mamma returned,” she replied, gayly, as he handed her
out of the carriage; and they entered the white gates, within which
they were destined to meet such a terrible disappointment.