Notwithstanding that the sinister message, contained in the single line
of the mysterious missive brought to Lady Wynde by her gray companion,
had been long expected, it brought with it none the less a shock when
it came.
The paper fluttered slowly from the unloosed fingers of the baronet’s
wife to the floor, and into the liquid black eyes stole a look half
of horror and half of eagerness. Unconsciously her voice repeated the
words of the message, in a hoarse whisper:
“_It is time to get rid of him._ Now!”
Lady Wynde shuddered at the sound of her own voice, and she stared at
her gray companion, her eyes full of shrinking and terror. Those ashen
orbs returned her stare with one that was bold, evil, and encouraging.
“I--I haven’t the courage I thought, Artress,” faltered her ladyship.
“It is a terrible thing to do!”
“You love Sir Harold, after all?” taunted the companion, as she picked
up the sinister slip of paper and burned it.
“No, no, but he trusts me; he loves me. There was a time, Artress, when
I could not have harmed a dog that licked my hand or fawned upon me.
And now--but I am not so bad as you think. I am base, unscrupulous,
manœuvring, I know. My marriage was but part of a wicked plan, the
fruit of a conspiracy against Sir Harold Wynde, but I shrink from the
crowning evil we have planned. To play the viper and sting the hand
that has warmed me--to wound to the core the heart that beats so fondly
and proudly for me--to--to cut short the noble, beneficent, happy life
of Sir Harold--oh, I cannot! I cannot!”
Her ladyship swept forward impetuously toward the hearth and knelt down
before a quaint crimson-cushioned chair, crossing her arms upon it, and
laying her head on her bare white arms. The firelight played upon the
ruddy waves of her long robe, upon the gems at her throat and wrists,
upon her picturesquely dishevelled hair, and upon her stormy, handsome
face. She stared into the fire with her great black terrified eyes, as
if seeking in those dancing flames some mystic meaning.
Her gray companion flitted across the floor to her side like an evil
shadow.
“How very tragic you are, my lady,” she said, with a sneer. “It almost
seems as if you were doing a scene out of a melodrama. No one can force
you to any step against your will. You can do whatever you please. Sir
Harold dotes upon you, and you can continue his seemingly affectionate
wife, can receive his caresses, can preside over his household, and
can soothe his declining years. He is not yet fifty-eight years old,
vigorous and healthy, and, as he comes of a long-lived race, he will
live to be ninety, I doubt not. You will, should you survive him,
then be seventy. You can play the tender step-mother to his children.
His daughter is sure to dislike you, and she may cause her father to
distrust you. All this will no doubt be pleasant to you--”
“Hush, hush!” breathed Lady Wynde, with a tempestuous look in her eyes.
“Let me alone, Artress. You always stir up the demon within me. Forty
years of a dull, staid, respectable existence, when I might be a queen
of society in London, might be married to one I have loved for years!
Forty years! Why, one year seems to me an eternity. It seems a lifetime
since I was married to Sir Harold. I--I will act upon the letter.”
The gray companion smiled.
“I was sure you would,” she said.
“But Sir Harold has not made a new will since our marriage,” urged
Lady Wynde. “By our marriage settlements, I am to have the use of the
dower house, Wynde Heights, during my lifetime, and a life income of
four thousand pounds a year. At my death, both house and income revert
to the family of Wynde. I have nothing absolutely my own, nothing left
to me by will to do with as I please. Craven expected that I would
have the dowry of a princess, I suppose, out of Sir Harold’s splendid
property.”
“It is not too late to acquire it,” said the companion, significantly.
“Sir Harold is clay in your hands. You can mould him to any shape you
will. He has no child here to counteract your influence. He has money
and estates which he intends to leave by will to his daughter Neva.
If you are clever, you can divert into your own coffers all of Miss
Wynde’s property that is not settled upon her already from her mother’s
estate. It will do no harm to delay acting upon the message for a day
or two, since something of so much importance remains to be transacted.”
“I am thankful for even a day’s respite,” murmured Lady Wynde. “I have
been eager to receive the message, intending to act upon it promptly.
But I am not all bad, Artress, and I shrink from the consummation of
our plans. If Sir Harold would only die naturally! If something would
only occur to remove him from my path!”
She breathed heavily as she arose, shook out the folds of her dress,
and moved toward the door.
“The phial I had when we came here I found was broken yesterday,” said
Artress. “I shall have to go up to London to-morrow for more of that
fluid, so that there must be a day’s delay in any case. We must be very
cautious, for people will wonder at the sudden death of one so hale and
strong, and should suspicion arise, it must find no foundation to build
upon.”
Lady Wynde nodded assent, and opened the door and went out with a weary
step. She descended the broad staircase, crossed the great hall, and
entered the drawing-room.
Sir Harold was seated near the fire, in a thoughtful reverie, but arose
at her entrance with a beaming face and a tender smile.
“It’s a wild night, Octavia,” he said. “Come forward to the fire my
darling. How pale you are! And you are shivering with the cold.”
He gently forced her into the easy-chair he had vacated, bent over her
with lover-like devotion, patting her head softly with his hand.
“You look unhappy, dear,” resumed the baronet, after a pause. “Is there
anything you want--a ball, jewels, a trip to the Continent? You know my
purse is yours, and I am ready to go where you may wish to lead.”
“You are very good!” said Lady Wynde, her black eyes fixed in a gaze
upon the fire, and again she shivered. “I--I am not worthy of all your
kindness, Harold. Hark! There is the dinner-bell. Thank fortune for the
interruption, for I believe I was growing really sentimental!”
She forced a laugh as she arose and took her husband’s arm, and was
conducted to the dining-room, but there was something in her laughter
that jarred upon Sir Harold, although the unpleasant impression it
produced upon him was evanescent.
At the dinner Lady Wynde was herself again, bright and fascinating,
only now and then, in some pause of the conversation, there came again
into her eyes that horrified stare which they had worn up stairs,
and which testified how her soul shrank from the awful crime she
contemplated.
After dinner the pair returned to the drawing-room. Sir Harold drew a
sofa toward the corner of the hearth and sat down upon it, calling his
wife to him. She obeyed, taking a seat beside him. Her face was all
brightness at this moment, and Sir Harold forgot his late anxieties
about her.
“I believe I am the happiest man in the world, Octavia,” he said
thoughtfully, caressing one of her jewelled hands he had lifted from
her knee, “but my cup of joy lacks a drop or two of sweetness still.
You are all the world to me, my wife, and yet I want something more.”
“What is it you want, Harold?”
“I have been thinking about my children,” said the baronet. “It is
over a month since I heard from George, and he does not intend to leave
India this year, although I have urged him to sell his commission and
come home. The boy has a passion for a military life, and he went out
to India against my better judgment. I cannot have George home again
this year, but there is Neva near me. I long to see her, Octavia.”
“You are the most devoted of fathers,” laughed Lady Wynde. “We have
been married but little over a year, and yet you have made two trips
alone to Paris to see Neva. She must be a very paragon of daughters to
cause her father to forget his bride.”
Sir Harold’s fair cheeks flushed a little.
“You forget,” he said, “that Neva was my especial charge from the hour
of her mother’s death till I sent her to that Paris school. My love for
you, Octavia, cannot lessen my love for her. I begin to think that I
have done wrong in not bringing you two together before. I had a most
pathetic letter from Neva before the holidays, begging to be allowed to
come home, but at your request, Octavia, I denied her natural entreaty
and compelled her to remain at her school. Even Madame Da-Caret, the
head of the establishment, thought it singular that Miss Wynde should,
alone of all the English pupils, spend her holidays at the deserted
institution. And now to-day I received a letter from Neva asking if
she was to come home for the Easter holidays. I am afraid I have not
rightly treated my motherless child, Octavia. She has never seen you;
never been at home since you became mistress here. I fear that the poor
child will think her exile due to your influence, to speak frankly,
dear, and that she will regard you with dislike and bitterness, instead
of the trust and confidence I want her to feel in you. You are both so
dear to me that I shall be unhappy if you do not love each other.”
“There is time enough to form the acquaintance after Neva leaves
school,” said Lady Wynde. “She is but a child yet.”
“She is seventeen years old, Octavia. I have decided to have her home
at Easter, and I hope you will take some pains to win her trust and
affection. She will meet you half-way, dear.”
“I am not fond of bread-and-butter school-girls,” said Lady Wynde, half
frowning. “The neighborhood will be agape to see how I play the role
of step-mother. And, to own the truth, Harold, I have no fancy to be
called mother by a tall, overgrown girl, with her hair hanging down her
back in two braids, and her dresses reaching to her ankles. I shall
feel as old as Methuselah.”
Sir Harold sighed, and a grave shadow settled down upon his square
massive brows.
“I hope that Neva will win her way to your heart, Octavia,” he remarked
gently. “I thought it would look better if my daughter were to call her
father’s wife by the endearing name of mother, but teach her to call
you what you will. I have faith in your goodness of heart, my wife.”
“Perhaps I am a little jealous of her,” returned Lady Wynde, with a
forced smile. “You fairly idolize her--”
“Have I not made her second to you?” interposed the baronet. “Has she
not been banished from her home to please you since you entered it?
When I think of her dull, dreary holidays in her school--holidays!
the name was a mockery--my soul yearns for my child. Jealous of her,
Octavia? What further proofs do you need that I prefer my wife in all
things above my child?”
“Why,” said Lady Wynde tremulously, a hectic flush burning on either
cheek, “look at the magnificent fortune she will have! While, if you
should die I have only the pitiful income of four thousand pounds a
year.”
“Pitiful, Octavia!”
“Yes, it _is_ pitiful, compared to Neva’s. You have estates which
you can convey away absolutely by will. Why should you not make me
independently rich, with property that I can sell if I choose? What you
leave to me is to be mine _for life_. What you leave to Neva is hers
absolutely. This is monstrous, hateful, unjust!”
The baronet regarded his wife in amazement.
“You were satisfied with your marriage settlements when they were drawn
up, Octavia,” he said.
“I was not satisfied even then, but I had no male relatives to speak to
you about the matter, and it would have been indelicate for me to have
said what I thought. But I hoped you would make things right in a will,
as you can easily do. It is _not_ right that such a distinction should
be made between a daughter and a wife!”
“I am surprised at you, Octavia,” declared the baronet. “Neva inherits
her mother’s fortune with something from me, but I cannot undertake to
alter my intentions in regard to her. The provisions that were made for
my mother are the same as those that have been made for you, and she
found them ample. I can promise you nothing more; but, Octavia,” and he
smiled faintly, “I have no intention of dying soon, and while I live
your income need not to be limited to any certain sum. Let no jealousy
of my Neva warp your noble nature, Octavia. I shall love you all the
better if you love her.”
“Then you decline to make a new will, with further provision for me?”
demanded the wife, her eyes downcast, the hectic spot burning fiercely
on both cheeks.
“You surprise me, Octavia. Why are you so persistent about a subject of
which I never dreamed you even thought? I _do_ decline to make further
provision for you, but not because I do not love and appreciate you,
for I do both. So long as there is no issue to our marriage, the
sum settled on you is ample for your own wants. If Providence sends
us children, they will be provided for separately. We will let the
discussion end here, Octavia, with the understanding that Neva will
spend her Easter at Hawkhurst.”
Lady Wynde compressed her lips and looked sullen, but, as Sir Harold
suggested, the discussion was dropped. The baronet was troubled, and
disappointed in the wife he had believed faultless. The first shadow of
their married life, the first suspicion of distrust of Lady Wynde in
her husband’s mind had come at last, and they were hard to bear. Lady
Wynde went to the piano and executed a dashing fantasia, all storm and
violence, expressive of her mental condition. Sir Harold moved back
from the fire and took up a book, but his grave, saddened face, his
steady, intent gaze, and anxious mouth, showed that he was not reading,
and that his thoughts were sorrowful.
When Lady Wynde had become tired of music, she went up to her rooms
without a word to her husband. She entered her sitting-room, made
beautiful by her husband’s taste, and going to the fire, knelt down
before it on the hearth-rug. Artress and her maid were neither of them
to be seen, and the baronet’s wife communed in solitude with her own
deformed soul.
The winds tore through the trees in the park and on the lawn with a
melancholy soughing, and the sound came to the ears of the kneeling
woman. Her room was warm and bright with firelight, lamplight, and the
glowing hue of crimson furniture. Every luxury was gathered within
those walls dedicated to her use. Silken couches and fauteuils,
portfolios of choice engravings, rare bronzes on the low marble
mantel-piece, exquisite statuettes on carved brackets, albums of scenes
in every hand done in water-colors, a beautiful cottage piano, and
a hundred other articles made the room a very temple of comfort and
beauty, yet in the spot where only loving thoughts of her husband
should have had place she dared to harbor thoughts of crime! And that
crime the most hideous that can be named--the crime of _murder_!
While she was kneeling there, the gray companion stole in softly and
silently.
Lady Wynde slowly turned her head, recognized the intruder, and stared
again with wide eyes into the flames.
“You look like a tragedy queen,” said Artress, with a soft laugh
like the gurgling of waters. “You look as if you cast away all your
scruples, and were ready to carry out the game.”
“I am,” said Lady Wynde, in a hard, suppressed voice.
“I thought you would come to it. Will Sir Harold make a new will?”
“No; he absolutely refuses.”
“Well, four thousand pounds a year need not be despised. And perhaps,”
added Artress significantly, “we can make the sum larger. Am I to go to
town to-morrow?”
“Yes, by the morning train. Go to Craven, and tell him the phial he
gave you is broken and the contents spilled, and ask him for more of
the--the preparation. I will find occasion to administer it. I have
worked myself up to the necessary point, and would not scruple at any
crime so long as I need not fear discovery. You will be back before
dinner,” added Lady Wynde, her brunette complexion turning as gray as
that of her companion, “and to-morrow night at this time I shall be a
widow!”