AT A FIEND'S MERCY.
Doctor Jay listened with breathless attention, and so did Roma.
Pale as a breathing statue, her great eyes dilated with dismay and
horror, her heart beating heavily and slow, Roma crouched in her chair
and listened to the awful words that told her who and what she was, the
base-born child of Cora Jenks, and granddaughter of old granny, whose
very name was a synonym for contempt in Stonecliff.
She, Roma, who despised poor people, who treated them no better than
the dust beneath her well-shod feet, belonged to the common herd, and
was usurping the place of beautiful Liane, whom she had despised for
her lowly estate and hated for her beauty, but who had become first her
rival in love and now in fortune.
To the day of her death beautiful, wicked Roma never forgot that bleak
November night, that blasted all her pride and flung her down into the
dust of humiliation and despair, her towering pride crushed, all the
worst passions of her evil nature aroused into pernicious activity.
Stiller than chiseled marble, the stricken girl crouched there,
listening, fearing to lose even a single word, though each one quivered
like a dagger in her heart.
Her greatest enemy could not have wished her a keener punishment than
this knowledge of her position in the Clarke household--an adopted
daughter, secretly despised and only tolerated for the mother's sake,
holding her place only until the real heiress should be discovered.
No words could paint her rage, her humiliation, her terrors of the
future, that held a sword that might at any moment fall.
Oh, how she hated the world, and every one in it, and most of all Liane
Lester, her guiltless rival.
While she listened, she wished the girl dead a hundred times, and all
at once a throbbing memory came to her of the fierce words Granny Jenks
had spoken in her rage against Liane.
"I would beat her; yes, I would kill her, before she should steal your
grand lover from you darling!"
Roma could understand now the old hag's devotion to herself. It was
the tie of their kinship asserting itself. She shuddered with disgust
as she recalled the old woman's fulsome admiration and adoration, and
how she had been willing to sell her very soul for one kiss from those
fresh, rosy lips.
How eagerly she had said:
"I will scold Liane, and whip her, too. I will do anything to please
you, beautiful lady!"
No wonder!
Roma was bitterly sorry now that she had not let granny kill Liane when
she had been so anxious to do it. She felt that she had made a great
mistake, for her position at Cliffdene would never be assured until
Liane was dead.
Edmund Clarke was certain now that Liane was his own child, and he
swore to Doctor Jay that he would find her soon, if it took the last
dollar of his fortune.
The old doctor replied:
"I do not blame you, my friend, for it does, indeed, appear plausible
that this Liane Lester must be your own lost child, and I can conceive
how galling it must be to your pride to call Nurse Jenks' grandchild
your daughter, while, as for your noble wife, it is cruel to think of
the imposition practiced on her motherly love all these years. But it
is certain that she must have died but for the terrible deception we
had to practice."
Edmund Clarke knew that it was true. He remembered how she had been
drifting from him out on the waves of the shoreless sea, and how the
piping cry of the little infant had called her back to life and hope.
"Yes, it was a terrible necessity," he groaned, adding:
"And only think, dear doctor, how sad it is that Roma, with a devilish
cunning, that must be a keen instinct, has always hated sweet Liane,
and has succeeded in poisoning my wife's mind against her, arousing a
mean jealousy in my uncomprehended interest in the girl! Think of such
a sweet mother being set against her own sweet daughter!"
"It is horrible," assented Doctor Jay, and he continued:
"But this excitement is telling on your nerves, dear friend, weakened
by your recent severe illness. Let me persuade you to retire to bed,
with a sedative now, and to-morrow we will further discuss your plan of
employing a detective to trace Liane and the fiendish Nurse Jenks."
"I believe I will take your advice," Roma heard Edmund Clarke respond
wearily, and Doctor Jay insisted on preparing a sedative, which he
said should be mixed in a glass of water, half the dose to be taken on
retiring, and the remainder in two hours, if the patient proved wakeful.
"I wish it was a dose of poison," Roma thought vindictively, as she
hurried from the room and gained her own unperceived, where she found
her maid waiting most impatiently to assist her in her bath.
"Never mind, Dolly, you can go to bed now. I went to mamma's room for
a little chat, and we talked longer than I expected, so I will wait on
myself this once," she said, with unwonted kindness in her eagerness to
be alone; so Dolly curtsied and retired, though she said to herself:
"She is lying. She was not in her mother's room at all, for I went
there to see, and Mrs. Clarke had retired. She must have been up to
some mischief and don't want to be found out. She had a guilty look."
Meanwhile Roma flung herself into the easy-chair before the glowing
fire, stretched out her slippered feet on the thick fur rug, and gave
herself up to the bitterest reflections.
"There are four people who are terribly in my way, and whom I would
like to see dead! They are Liane Lester, Granny Jenks, old Doctor Jay,
and Edmund Clarke, the man I have heretofore regarded as my father,"
she muttered vindictively.
She knew that the two last named would know neither rest nor peace
till they found Liane and reinstated her in her place at Cliffdene as
daughter and heiress, ousting without remorse the usurper.
"Ah, if I only knew where to find her, granny would soon put her out of
my way forever!" she thought, regretting bitterly now that she had not
made the old hag keep her informed of her whereabouts.
The spirit of murder was rife in Roma's heart, and she longed to end
the lives of all those who stood in her way.
"I wish that Edmund Clarke would die to-night! How easy it would be if
some arsenic were dropped into his sedative--some of that solution I
was taking a while ago to improve my complexion," she thought darkly,
resolving to wait until all was quiet and herself attempt the hellish
deed.
One death already lay on her conscience, and the form of the man she
had remorselessly thrust over the bluff stalked grimly through her
dreams. To her soul, already black with crime, what did the commission
of other deeds of darkness matter?
The death of Edmund Clarke so quickly decreed, she began to plan that
of the old doctor.
This was not so easy. He did not have a convenient glass of sedative
ready by his bedside. But she had noticed at supper that he was fond of
a glass of wine.
"I must poison a draught for him before he leaves Cliffdene," she
thought, regretting that she could not accomplish it to-night.
But Edmund Clarke's speedy death would delay the search for Liane a
while, even if it did not postpone it forever.
For the old physician was not likely to prosecute it after the death
of his patron. He could have no interest in doing so, though she would
make sure he did not by putting him out of the way if she could.
Her mind a chaos of evil thoughts, Roma rested in her chair, waiting
till she thought every one must be asleep before she stole from the
room to poison the draught for the man she had regarded until this
hour as her own father, and to whose wealth she owed her luxurious life
of eighteen years.
Neither pity nor gratitude warmed her cold heart. She had never loved
him in her life, and she hated him now.
In her rage and despair she had forgotten Jesse Devereaux's letter to
her father until, in a restless movement, she heard the rustle of paper
in her corsage.
An evil gleam lightened in her eyes, and she drew the letter forth,
muttering:
"Ah, this will beguile my weary waiting!"
In five minutes she was mistress of the contents.
It was the letter Devereaux had written to acquaint Edmund Clarke with
Liane's address--the fateful letter that was to betray the girl into
the hands of her bitterest foe.
Ah, the hellish gleam of wicked joy in the cruel red-brown eyes; the
stormy heaving of Roma's breast as she realized her great good fortune;
all her enemies in her power, at her mercy! The mercy the ravenous wolf
shows to the helpless lamb!
She laughed low and long in her glee, and that laughter was an awful
thing to hear.
"Oh, how can I wait till to-morrow?" she muttered. "Yet I cannot go to
Boston to-night, nor to-morrow, if Edmund Clarke dies to-night. Shall
I spare his life till I go to Boston, and have his daughter put out of
the way?"