After that one shriek of surprise and almost terror, Mrs. Cleveland
remains silent, devouring the man's face with a gaze as fixed and
burning as his own. Ivy, in her corner, is forgotten by her mother, and
unnoticed by the stranger.
"Yes, Lawrence Campbell," he answers her in a deep, hoarse voice, that
thrills to the hearts of the listeners. "Are you glad to see me, Mrs.
Cleveland?"
"Glad!" she shudders, in an indescribable voice.
"After these long years," he pursues, speaking under the spur of
some deep, overmastering agitation, "I have come back to curse you,
traitorous, false-hearted woman, and to make atonement."
"Atonement!" she falters, with a start of fear.
"Yes, Marcia Cleveland, atonement," he bursts out passionately. "Tell
me, where is the dear, true angel-wife whom I was led to believe false
and unfaithful to me, through your heartless machinations. At last I
know the truth, at last I know you, devil that you are! You maligned
the truest, purest, gentlest woman that ever lived! Your own sister,
too--the beautiful, innocent child that was left to your charge by her
dying parents. God only knows what motive you had for your terrible
sin."
She glares at him with fiery eyes from which the momentary fear has
fled, leaving them filled with the mocking light of a wicked triumph.
"_You_ should have known my motive, Lawrence Campbell," she bursts out,
passionately. "When I first met you in society, the plain, untitled
English gentleman, I was a young, beautiful, wealthy widow, and by your
attentions and visits you led me to believe that you loved me.
"Then Edith came home from her boarding-school, and with her baby-face
and silly school-girl shyness won you from me. You married her, and
the very torments of the lost were mine, for I loved with a passion
of which she, poor, weak-natured creature, could never dream. Did you
think I could tamely bear the slight that was put upon me? No, no, I
swore revenge--a deep and deadly revenge, and I have had it; ha, ha! a
costly cup, full to the brim and running over!"
She pauses with a wild and maniacal laugh. The man stares at her with
starting eyes and a death-white face. The enormity of the wrong that
has been done him seems to strike him dumb.
"I have had a glorious revenge," she goes on, wildly, seeing that he
cannot speak; "you fell an easy prey to my plan of vengeance through
your foolish and ridiculous jealousy. Through the efficient help of a
poor, weak fool who loved me I made you believe Edith false and vile,
and taunted you into deserting her! Have you suffered? Ah, God, so did
I! I was on fire with jealousy and hate. Every pang I made you and
Edith suffer was like balm to my heart. I parted you, I came between
your wedded hearts, and made your life and hers a hell! Aye, and your
child's, too--ha, ha, I made her weep for the hour in which she was
born!"
She tosses her white arms wildly in the air, and laughs low and
wickedly with the glare of malice and revenge in her flashing, black
eyes. She is transformed from the handsome, clever woman of the world
into a mocking devil. Even Ivy, who knows her mother's heartlessness as
none other know, stares with distended eyes at the infuriated woman.
She involuntarily recalls a verse she has somewhere read:
"Earth has no spell like love to hatred turned,
And hell no fury like a woman scorned."
"My child," the man breaks out, with a yearning heart-hunger in his
melancholy eyes. "She lives then--my child, and Edith's! Oh, God,
will she ever forgive me the wrong I have done her mother? Speak,
woman--devil, rather--and tell me where to find my Edith and her little
one!"
"Little one!" mocks Mrs. Cleveland, scornfully. "Do you forget,
Lawrence Campbell, that seventeen years have come and gone since you
deserted Edith and her unborn child?"
"No, I am not likely to forget," he answers, with the bitterness of
remorse in his low voice. "The child must be a woman now. But I will
atone to Edith and her child for all I have made them suffer through
your sin. I am rich, now, and I have fallen heir to a title in my
native land. Edith will be a countess, our child a wealthy heiress.
And I will make them happy yet. My heart is young, although my hair is
gray. I love my wife yet, with all the fire of youth. Tell me where
to find them, Marcia Cleveland, and for that one act of grace, I will
forgive you all the black and sinful past."
He pauses, with his hollow, burning eyes fixed eerily upon her, waiting
her reply. The autumn winds wail sharply round the house, the chilly
rain taps at the window pane with ghostly fingers, as if to hint of
those two graves lying side by side under the cold and starless sky of
night.
"Tell me," she says, putting aside his questions scornfully. "How did
you learn that I had deceived you?"
"From the dying lips of your tool--Egbert Harding. He was in
London--dying of the excesses brought on by a fast and wicked life.
At the last he repented of his sins, afraid to face the God whom his
wicked life had outraged. He sent for me and confessed all--how he had
lent himself to your diabolical plan to dupe and deceive me. He swore
to me that my beautiful Edith was as innocent as an angel. I left him,
poor, frightened, despairing wretch, at his last gasp, and came across
the seas to seek for you and my wronged wife. Tell me, Marcia, for I
can wait no longer; my heart is half-broken with grief and suspense.
Where shall I find my wife and child?"
"_In their graves_!" she answers, with the hollow and exultant laugh of
a fiend.
Lawrence Campbell reels backward as if some invisible hand had smitten
him across the face. He throws up his thin, white, quivering hands in
the air, as though in the agonies of death. But in a moment he rallies
himself and looks at the tormenting fiend with lurid, blazing eyes.
"You lie!" he exclaims, hoarsely. "You are false to the core of your
heart, Marcia. I will not believe you. God, who knows how much I have
suffered, would not afflict me so cruelly. I ask you again--where are
they?"
"And I tell you they are _dead_!" she answers, hoarsely. "If you will
not believe me, go to Glenwood. You know our family burial-plot. There
you will find two new-made graves. Ask the sexton whose they are, and
he will tell you Mrs. Campbell's and her daughter Vera's. Your wife
died three nights ago--died of a broken heart, while I, her sister who
hated her, was dancing at a ball! Your daughter, Vera, died the night
before last by her own hand--died the death of the suicide! Ha, ha!"
she laughed, sneeringly, "have I not had a glorious revenge for my
slighted love?"
"I will not believe you--I cannot. It is too terrible," Lawrence
Campbell moans, with his hands pressed to his head, and a dazed look in
his great, black eyes.
"You may, for it is true," exclaims Ivy, coming forward into the light,
with a wicked triumph in her pale-blue eyes. "If you will not believe
my mother, go to the graveyard and see, as she bade you."
He lifts his eyes and stares at her a moment, a white, dizzy horror
on his face. The next moment he reels forward blindly, like some
slaughtered thing, and falls in a white and senseless heap upon the
floor.
"You have killed him, too, mamma," Ivy exclaims, exultantly.
The heartless woman, turning around, spurns the fallen body with her
foot.
"A fit ending to the tragedy," she utters, cruelly. "Ring the bell for
a servant, Ivy."
In a moment a white-aproned menial appears in the room. Mrs. Cleveland
looks at him frowningly.
"John, who admitted this drunken fellow into the house?" she inquires,
sharply.
"I did, madam. He said he was an old friend of yours," the man answers
respectfully. "Is anything wrong about it, madam? He seems," bending
over him, "to be dead."
"Dead drunk," the woman utters, scornfully. "Drag him out of the house,
John, and throw him into the street."
The man stares in consternation.
"It's pouring down rain, ma'am," he exclaims, deprecatingly, "and
pitchy dark. Hadn't I best call the police?"
"Do as I bid you," Mrs. Cleveland storms. "Throw him into the street,
and leave him there. And mind how you admit such characters into the
house again, or you may lose your place!"
She stands still with lowering brows, watching the man as he executes
her orders, dragging the heavy, unconscious form from the room, and
along the hall to the door.
When the lumbering sound has ceased, and the heavy clang of the outer
door grates sharply on the silence, she draws a deep breath of relief.
"Now I know why you always hated Vera and her mother so much," Ivy
exclaims. "Why did you never tell me, mamma?"
"It was no business of yours," Mrs. Cleveland answers, sharply.
"Oh, indeed, we are very lofty!" Ivy comments, impudently.
Mrs. Cleveland makes her no answer. She has sunk into the depths of a
velvet-cushioned chair, and with lowered eyelids and protruding lips
seems to be grimly brooding. Her form seems to have collapsed and grown
smaller, her face is ashy white.
"You are a smarter and wickeder woman than I gave you credit for," Ivy
resumes, curiously. "So, then, the tale you told Leslie Noble about
Vera's dissipated father was altogether false."
"Yes," her mother mutters, mechanically.
But presently she starts up like one in a panic.
"Ivy, we must go away from here," she exclaims, in a strange and
hurried voice. "I am afraid to stay."
"Afraid of what?" Ivy queries, impatiently.
"Of Lawrence Campbell's vengeance," the woman answers, fearfully. "It
is a fearful wrong I have done him, and he will strike me back. We must
fly--fly from his wrath!"