Molly’s Treachery
_By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller_
HART SERIES NO. 62
COPYRIGHT 1886 BY GEO. MUNRO
PUBLISHED BY
THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY
CLEVELAND, O., U. S. A.
Printed in the United States of America
MOLLY’S TREACHERY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
CHAPTER XL.
CHAPTER XLI.
CHAPTER XLII.
CHAPTER XLIII.
CHAPTER XLIV.
CHAPTER XLV.
CHAPTER XLVI.
CHAPTER I.
“FERNDALE, GREENBRIER CO., WEST VA.
June 20, 1878.
“Dear sister and Aunt Lucy, oh, please do let me come home! Ferndale
is horrid, the lonesomest old hole I ever saw in my life, and Aunt
Thalia is a real old dragoness! And I’m tired of behaving like a
grown-up lady, and just dying for some sort of a lark. And although
I don’t like her much, I hate to fool her as I’m doing. It makes me
feel mean as if I were a regular little fraud. I try to keep it up for
your sake, Lou, but it goes hard. Bother the money! It isn’t worth
the deceit, or, as our old French governess used to say, ‘_Le jeu ne
vaut pas la chandelle!_’ Can’t you let me off now? I’ve been here
two weeks, and I don’t think I can stand it any longer! It’s like a
catacomb, so deadly lonesome! Not a caller since I came, and I haven’t
seen a man for two weeks except the gardener and the old black coach
driver! But that’s all the better, since my clothes are shabby anyhow!
I think Aunt Thalia must have noticed that my red cashmere is out at
elbows, for this morning she actually gave me forty dollars, and told
me to go into town and buy myself a summer silk and her maid would
make it for me this week. But I’m going to post this letter to you
instead with the money registered to you (as you told me to do). I
expect she will be fearfully angry when she finds it out. No doubt she
will want to drive me away, so you had better send a telegram right
off for me to come home. Say that Aunt Lucy’s sick, or somebody’s
dying--anything--so that you get me away at once and forever from
Ferndale! I shall die of the blues if I stay any longer! With love to
you both,
“MOLLY E. TRUEHEART.”
“TO MISS LOUISE BARRY,
“Staunton, Va.”
The Ferndale estate did not deserve the title “horrid old hole,” as
applied to it in that gushing, school-girlish letter. On the contrary
it was a magnificent place of about a hundred acres--a valley farm,
situated a few miles distant from the historic old town of Lewisburg,
and less than six miles distant from the Greenbrier White Sulphur
Springs. The large, old-fashioned red brick mansion was almost hidden
by a far-spreading grove of gigantic old forest trees, beneath whose
shade, dark and damp and heavy, flourished the splendid ferns that gave
the place its distinctive name. But after all, perhaps the dense shade
and unavoidable dampness made the old house unwholesome, for old Mrs.
Barry, its mistress, was an aged, withered crone, little more than skin
and bones, with a temper none of the sweetest, and her servants as a
whole were sour-tempered too, as if they did not get enough sunshine on
their faces and into their souls. It was this subtle influence perhaps
that made Mrs. Barry’s young guest vow to herself that she should go
melancholy mad if she stayed much longer at Ferndale.
So with a heart beating high with hope she entered the old-fashioned
family carriage and was driven into Lewisburg ostensibly to purchase
the silk dress, but in reality to secretly register and post the
letter of entreaty that was to wring her release from her probation at
Ferndale and insure her speedy return to her own home.
She rather enjoyed the ride that sunny June afternoon, up hill and down
dale in the jolting carriage over the rough, mountainous road, and her
depressed spirits rose until she began to feel mildly jolly and hummed
a little tune softly to herself that ended suddenly in an undeniable
whistle of surprise as they came around a bend of the road and in sight
of a picturesque plateau on which stood a beautiful country residence
built of rough gray stone. There were two towers over which the pretty
American ivy was picturesquely creeping, and the oriel windows here
and there, and jutting verandas, were in a style of architecture quite
unusual to the country, and betokening both wealth and taste. Our
heroine thought she had never seen anything prettier than the great
gray stone house with its creeping ivy, and its windows glistening in
the sunlight, which had free play here, for there was a sloping lawn in
front of the house with just enough trees grouped here and there to add
beauty to the scene without at all obstructing the view.
The girl put her pretty, dark head out of the window and said, eagerly,
“Who lives there, Uncle Abe?”
The old family servant who had spent all his life in West Virginia, and
knew every place for many miles around, answered promptly:
“Dat’s de ole Laurens place, honey. Fambly’s all in Yurrup now
eddicating de darters and de sons. Mighty rich and proud, all dem
Laurenses, missie. Come uv old English stock and ebry now an’ den some
o’ dere kin dies ober de sea and leabes dem anoder fortin.”
“Oh,” said Molly, drawing a long breath, her piquant face glowing with
eager interest.
She looked in something like awe at the beautiful home of these
favorites of fortune.
“I wish I was one of ‘de darters’!” she said, quaintly.
“Hi, honey!” exclaimed old Uncle Abe, quite reproachfully. “Ole Mis’
Barry’s niece just as good as dem proud Laurenses.”
“Yes, Uncle Abe,” answered Molly, demurely, the mischievous golden
brown lights dancing in her big, dark eyes, and her red lips dimpling
with mirth at the old negro’s family pride.
Then she said, half-questioningly:
“But of course the Laurens family are too proud to notice any of their
neighbors?”
Uncle Abe was too busy with his horses to reply for a moment or two,
but presently he looked around quite crossly at his interlocutor, and
said, severely:
“Miss Looisy Barry, I t’ink you mus’ be c’azy. Don’t you know dere
ain’t nobody better den de Barrys? I been livin’ long o’ dem as slave
and freedman all my life, me an’ my ole ’oman, and de Barrys is always
de top o’ de pot, or, as ole missus say, _cweam delly cweam_. Dat’s
F’ench for top o’ de pot, you mus’ know, chile. As fo’ de Laurenses,
dey hab always been hand and glove wif de Barrys! Umph, chile, you
don’t seem to know nuffin’ ’tall ’bout de ’portance of your own
fambly,” concluded old Abe, shaking his gray head disgustedly, and
turning his attention wholly to his horses for they had left the gray
stone house out of sight, and were descending a steep hill now.
Molly Trueheart sat quite still with a distinctly wistful expression on
her lovely girlish face.
“What do I care about the importance of the Barrys? I know that
one of them at least can stoop to selfish scheming!” she muttered,
impatiently. “Oh, I wish I was well out of this scrape. It is not so
funny masquerading as I thought it would be! I nearly exploded into a
confession when the poor old soul gave me that money, little fraud that
I am!”