The new maid arrived the next morning and Phebe, who had duly received
her discharge from Cecil, came in to bid her mistress good-bye.
She was calm and quiet, resolutely keeping back her tears for fear that
she might make the parting too painful.
“You’ll keep my secret, Phebe? You will not tell any one?” Molly
implored, clinging to her in pathetic despair.
“Oh, Mrs. Laurens, what do you take me for? Wild horses should not drag
a word from me without your consent. You hurt me almost as bad as your
husband did this morning,” she said.
“Cecil?” Molly queried, in surprise, and Phebe answered:
“He asked me how much money it would take to pay me to keep silent
over all the secrets I had found out here. It was hard to bear, Mrs.
Laurens, but I was patient. I would not anger him, for I wanted to come
back to you some time. So I told him I needed no bribe to keep the
secrets of my unhappy young mistress--that my love for her was enough.”
“Dear, good Phebe!” cried Molly, lovingly, and then she made the woman
promise not to go too far away, and to send her an address to which to
write when she should have coaxed Cecil to let her come back.
Phebe promised to give her address to Miss Madelon Trueheart.
“That will be best, dear, for if I sent it to The Acacias who knows but
that the new maid might keep it from you?” she said.
* * * * *
Molly did not like the crafty-looking Frenchwoman who took the place
of her good Phebe, whom Cecil had hired for her in New York, when they
were starting on their wedding-trip.
But Florine, as she called herself, gave her new mistress no cause for
offense. She was quiet, polite, attentive to Molly’s lightest wants,
and the most tasteful and skillful of maids. Her intense sympathy was
irksome for she persisted in declaring that madame looked too ill to
leave her room.
In fact Molly made no effort at mingling with the family for several
days after that first time. The cruel rebuff she had received chilled
and disheartened her. She shrank sensitively from another one, and so
assented passively to Florine’s advice to keep to her room.
During those days of tiresome seclusion she busied herself at intervals
as her strength would permit in writing a long letter to Doctor
Charley--a letter that required many postage stamps for mailing, for
Molly wrote down the whole story of her going to Ferndale, and all
that had followed upon that visit. She wrote eagerly, hopefully, for
she believed that her brother-in-law would force Cecil to read this
explanation from his unhappy girl-wife.
“He can not think so hardly of me then, when he finds that my only
sin was committed through love of him,” she thought, hopefully, and
she stole out one night when she thought Florine was busy in the
dressing-room, and herself placed the important letter in the box that
stood ready in the hall for the family’s mail.
But lynx eyes watched the furtive act, and before Molly’s excited eyes
closed that night Florine had secured the letter, and very soon it was
in the hands of Louise Barry.
Ah, how hopefully Molly waited for an answer--an answer that never
came, for the young doctor’s letters to her were always intercepted as
were hers to him.
But she was too loyal-hearted to believe that he had forgotten her,
or that he neglected to write. She said to herself that he had never
received her letter.
“It is some more of Louise’s treachery,” she thought.
For two weeks she had not ventured out of her room, but one evening she
was so restless she felt that she could bear it no longer.
“Florine, you may bring out a dinner dress for me, I shall dine with
the family,” she said.
“Madame does not mean it--ill as she looks!” disapprovingly.
“I am strong enough. It is for you to obey my commands, Florine, not to
dictate to me,” Molly answered, with sudden dignity that silenced all
remonstrance.
Florine brought a pretty white dress and some pearls and dressed her
mistress exquisitely. Then she said, apologetically:
“It was not that I did not want you to go out, madame, but I feared it
would exhaust you, dining with company.”
“Is there company?” Molly asked disappointedly.
“The Barrys, madame.”
“Do they come here often, Florine?”
“Do you mean the Barrys, madame?”
“Yes.”
“They are here every day, or nearly so; and when they fail to come
here, Madame Laurens, your mamma, and Monsieur Cecil, your husband, go
to them. It is fortunate for monsieur, your husband, that he has such
a dear friend as Miss Barry to amuse him while you, madame, are sick,”
smoothly.
Molly’s heart began to beat loudly, the angry color to flood her cheeks.
“She does _not_ amuse him,” she said hotly, and Florine arched her
brows in surprise.
“As madame wills, but I thought she would be pleased,” she said,
apologetically.
Molly flung herself down sighing on the sofa.
“I will not go down,” she said, sadly, and she owned to herself that
she was afraid of Louise.
She took a book and read until she was quite sure that the late dinner
was over. She, in her character of invalid, had had her own simple meal
an hour ago.
She called Florine from the dressing-room.
“Go and ask Mr. Laurens to give me some piano music. Tell him I will
not come out of my room. I can hear quite plainly here.”
Florine went out and Molly sank back, sobbing softly.
“He will think I am very bold, but, oh, I could not help it. It will
take him away from her side at least, and it will make him think of me.
But will he grant my request, or treat it with disdain?”
Florine came back, smirking.
“He will do as you wish, madame.”
And almost immediately the soft, full strains of music arose upon the
air.
Molly lay back upon her sofa listening with blended pleasure and pain.
It took her back to that first night at Ferndale when Cecil’s wonderful
music had charmed the anger and resentment away from her heart.
Perhaps some such thought came to the offended husband too. He played
one after another the old melodies he had played that night, then some
later ones that she had loved. His touch was very soft and sweet.
Perhaps the plaintive request from his neglected wife combined with the
subtle influence of the music softened and thrilled his proud heart.
“This is better than going down. Oh, how kind he was to grant my
request!” the young creature sighed, her heart swelling with passionate
love and sorrow.
Cecil played for more than an hour, then there came a pause.
“It is over. He is weary, or perhaps already repenting of his kindness
to me,” she murmured, but the sense of his indulgence and the influence
of the music caused a new hope to spring in her heart.
But it was of short duration, for in a moment the music began
again, and voices rose on the air in a duet, the tenderest of
love-songs--voices that it was not hard to distinguish as those of her
husband and Louise Barry.
“Oh, cruel, cruel; they have done this to wound me!” she cried, and
sobbed herself to sleep.
Yet she might have known that the artful Louise was at the bottom of it
all. She had begged so that he would accompany her in that duet that he
could not in courtesy refuse.
Molly’s pathetic request for the music had made Cecil think of her, as
she had hoped; and it had done more--it had softened his hard heart to
some degree.
That night, alone in his chamber, his thoughts turned to her with more
kindness than he had dreamed he could ever feel for her again. Her
meek acquiescence in his hard decree of separation, her humility, her
illness, her patience rose before him in so touching and pathetic a
light, that a moisture dimmed his eyes.
“Poor girl! she is crushed to earth by the exposure of her treachery,”
he thought, and a great wonder at her humility came over him. “Such a
spirited little creature, such a mad-cap, as she used to be! What has
subdued her so? Can it be the work of love--love for me?”
These softened thoughts followed him until the next morning, and
something like pity began to blend with his anger toward his unhappy
wife.
“She is ill and lonely, and perhaps I ought to show her some little
courtesy. I will send her some new books; she can beguile her lonely
hours with them,” he told himself, and spent an hour selecting a dozen
books on poetry, romance, travel, and kindred subjects.
His heart, that had been so heavy through all its pride and resentment,
felt lighter as he retraced his steps to The Acacias. He deemed himself
quite fortunate in meeting Florine in the hall. He called to her
hastily, and gave her the large package of books.
“Take these to my wife, from me,” he said, in a softened voice. “Tell
her I selected them especially for her reading, and hope she will find
them interesting.”
Florine took the books with a courtesy. She went slowly along the
hall--very slowly. She did not mean to deliver the books, if she could
help it.
But, glancing in a furtive way over her shoulder, she saw Cecil
Laurens leaning against the newel, and intently watching her progress.
“_Diable!_ he distrusts me,” she muttered, and a clever thought came to
her. She opened the door and went in with the books.
Molly looked up at her with those dark, wistful orbs that ought to have
moved even the Frenchwoman’s wicked heart, but their plaintive sorrow
did not touch the creature that Louise had bribed with gold.
“Madame,” she said, smoothly, “Miss Barry has sent you some good,
Christian books to read, and hopes they will do you good. She called
to take your husband to a morning concert, and left the books and the
message.”
The sorrow in the dark eyes changed to jealous anger.
“Has he gone with that woman?” Molly asked.
“_Oui_, madame,” said Florine, with a profound courtesy; then, smiling,
“Ah, madame, what a glorious beauty is that queenly Miss Barry! No
wonder--” She pauses.