Again the poor child picked up the cruel letter; but she could not read a line of it, though she sat looking at the written page.
"Not his wife!" she moaned over and over again, clutching her little hands over her heart.
With a sudden frenzy she tore the letter into a thousand shreds, and flung the pieces from her through the open window.
Would her poor, sick mother's heart break when she told her all? When she went home, would they force her to marry the terrible being she abhorred?
Home! Ah, God! what a mockery! She had only a shelter. If she refused to marry the horrible hunchback, her mother and herself would not even have that.
How could she face the future? The very thought of it made the blood chill in her veins.
"Oh, Royal! Royal! death from your hands would have been easier than that!" she moaned.
The next moment there was a heavy fall, and one of the house-maids, passing the parlor, saw the girl lying in a heap.
They did all in their power to restore her to consciousness; but it was quite useless. When they had worked an hour over her, they became alarmed.
Where was her husband? Why did he not return? The hotel physician did all in his power, but without avail.
"It looks like a case of brain fever," he said, "or perhaps typhoid. Either is contagious, therefore dangerous. I should advise that she be sent to the hospital around the corner."
"That husband of hers has not settled his bill!" exclaimed the proprietor, his face darkening angrily.
"It ismyopinion," said the doctor, "that it is best not to await the return of the young gentleman who accompanied her here. In short, it is my opinion that he has deserted her."
In less time than it takes to tell it, poor, hapless Ida May, the victim of such a cruel misfortune, and a sadder fate yet to follow, was taken to the hospital. The waning summer days drifted slowly by, and autumn came with its dead, rustling leaves and sobbing winds, before Ida May opened her eyes to consciousness and turned them full upon the white-capped nurse bending over her.
"Where is Royal?" she asked, faintly.
"You mean the young man who left you at thehotel?" queried the nurse, who had heard the young girl's sad story; adding: "He never came back to inquire for you. He has deserted you. He did not care whether or not the shock would kill you. If there was ever a heartless scoundrel on the face of the earth, he is that one!"
The lovely white young face never changed its pallor, the dark eyes never left the grim countenance of the nurse.
"I want to leave this place at once," said the girl, attempting to rise from her cot.
"No, no; you must not do so!" exclaimed the nurse. "It would be dangerous in your case."
"But I want my mother," moaned Ida, piteously.
When the nurse made her rounds an hour later, to her great consternation she found that Cot 27 was empty. The girl had flown! The most diligent search through the city failed to elicit the slightest trace of her whereabouts.
An hour later a little dark figure, ensconced in a corner of the car, was whirling rapidly toward Dorchester.
She sat staring from the window with eyes that did not see so intent was she with her own thoughts.
"I can not marry Mrs. Deering's nephew," she sobbed, under her breath. "It would be easier for me to die. But what shall I do to raise the money for which they hold my poor mother a veritable slave!"
She clasped her hands in piteous entreaty; but the soft, radiant moon and the golden stars to which she raised her eyes so appealingly could find no answer for her.
As the train slowed up at the station, she pulled herveil down closely. She hurriedly alighted and sped like a storm-driven swallow up the village street and along the high-road, until, almost out of breath, she reached the Deerings' mansion. She stood transfixed for a moment at the gate.
What was there about the place that caused such a shudder to creep over her? What did the awful presentiment, as of coming evil, mean that took possession of her body and soul?
How weird the place looked, how gaunt and bare the great oak-trees looked, looming up darkly against the moonlit sky! The dead leaves rustled across her path as she crept around to the rear door.
She looked up at her mother's window, and another great chill crept over her. All was dark there. It had always been her mother's custom to place her lamp on the broad window-sill at night. Many a time it had been her beacon-light in cutting across lots from the station on evenings when she had been detained by her work. How strange it was that the light was not in the window to-night!
"Mother is not expecting me to-night," she said to herself, "that is the reason it is not there."
But ah, how she missed it! How her heart had yearned to behold it, with a yearning so great that it had been the most intense pain. She lifted the latch and entered tremblingly, hesitatingly. It had been over two months since her mother had heard from her.How had her patient, suffering mother lived through it?
As she crossed the hall she heard the sound of Mrs. Deering's voice in a sharp, high key. Perhaps the horrible nephew was with her. She paused in a paroxysm of terror. She was talking to her husband, scolding him, rather.
"It isn'tmyfault that we lost the fortune," he was answering her meekly. "You brought your nephew out of the asylum too soon. You knew he would not be here a fortnight before he would do some terrible deed—burn the house down over our heads, or kill himself when the attendant was not watching, or some other horrible deed of that kind. When he did succeed in mutilating himself before any of us was aware of it, instead of sending him back to the asylum, to be cared for, you kept him here under lock and key thinking to cure him yourself in a couple of months or so."
"Ah!" thought Ida May, leaning faint and dizzy against the wall, "now I understand why Mrs. Deering consented to let me go away. Anything to get me out of the house while she was curing the insane nephew whom she had vowed I must wed."
The next words, while they shocked her inexpressively, lifted a world of woe from her heart.
"Well, despite our watchfulness, he succeeded in killing himself at last; so there's the end of it. The fortune is lost, and there's no use in raving over it, and in venting your bitter wrath upon everything and every one that comes within your range."
Mrs. Deering's anger was so great that she could not utter a word. She flung open the door and dashed into the hall. The very first object that met her gaze wasthe cowering little figure leaning against the balustrade.
"You!" she cried, quite as soon as she could catch her breath. "How dare you come here, Ida May, you wicked girl! I am amazed that you have the effrontery to face honest people after what you have done! We read all about it in the newspapers—how you ran away from Newport with a gay, dashing fellow who soon after deserted you. Don't attempt to tell me anything about it. I won't listen to a word. Get out of this house as quick as you can! Go, before I bid the servants throw you from the house!"
"But my mother! Surely you will let me see my mother!" sobbed the girl, piteously. "The whole wide world may be against me, but she will believe me guiltless!Pleaselet me see her."
A laugh that was horrible to hear broke from Mrs. Deering's thin lips.
"Your mother!" she sneered; "much you cared about her, or how your doings affected her. That article in the newspapers did the work, as you might have known it would. I carried the paper to her myself, and when she read it she fell to the floor with a bitter cry, and she never spoke again. It was her death-warrant!"
For one moment the girl looked at the woman with frightened eyes, as though she could not quite comprehend the full import of what the woman was saying.
"It killed your mother!" she repeated pitilessly. "You might have known it would. She died of a broken heart!"
A long, low moan came from the girl's lips. The awful despair in the dark eyes would have touched any other heart, even though it were made of stone; butin Mrs. Deering's heart there was neither pity nor mercy.
"Go!" she repeated, threateningly, "and do not dare to ever darken my door again!"
"Will you tell me where you have buried my poor mother?" moaned Ida May, with bitter anguish.
"In the lot where the poor of the village are put," she answered, unfeelingly. "We had to have a mark put over her. You can easily find it. It's to the left-hand corner, the last one on the row. It would be better for you, you shameless girl, if you were lying beside her rather than sink to the lowest depths of the road you are traveling. Go—go at once!"
With trembling feet she crept down the broad path and out of the gate. She was drenched to the skin, and the chill October winds pierced through her thin wet clothes like the sharp cut of a knife. It did not matter much; nothing mattered for her any more. She was going to find her mother's grave, kneel down beside it, lay her tired head on the little green mound, and wait there for death to come to her, for surely God would grant her prayer and in pity reach out His hand to her and take her home. There would be a hometherewhere her mother was, even if all other doors were closed to her.
She had little difficulty in finding the place—a small inclosure in the rear of the old church that had fallen into decay and crumbling ruins many years ago—and by the blinding flashes of lightning, she found the grave of her mother—her poor, suffering mother, the only being who had ever loved her in the great, cold, desolate earth.
"Mother," she sobbed, laying her face on the cold,wet leaves that covered the mound, "mother, I have come to you to die. The world has gone all wrong with me. I never meant to go wrong. I do not know how it happened. Other young girls have married the lovers whom they thought God had sent to them, and lived happy enough lives. I built such glorious air-castles of the home I should have, the handsome, strong young husband to love and to labor for me, and how you should live with me, mother, never having to work any more. But oh, mother, all my plans went wrong! I don't know why."
Ida May crouched there among the sleeping dead, her brain in a whirl; and the long night wore on. The storm subsided, the wind died away over the tossing trees and the far-off hills, and the rain ceased. Morning broke faint and gray in the eastern sky, and the flecks of crimson along the horizon presaged a bright and gladsome day.
The station-agent, hurrying along to his duties at that early hour, was startled to see a dark figure lying among the graves. In a moment he was bending over the prostrate form. He could not distinguish in the dim light whose grave it was upon which the poor creature was lying, but as he lifted the slender figure, and the faint, early light fell upon the white, beautiful young face, he started back with an exclamation of horror.
"Great God! it is little Ida May!"
For an instant he was incapable of action, his surprise was so intense.
"Dead!" he muttered, cold drops of perspiration standing out like beads on his perturbed brow."Little Ida May dead on her mother's grave! God, how pitiful! She was so young to die!"
Then he knelt down beside her in the thick, wet grass, and placed his hand over her heart in the wild hope that a spark of life might yet be there.
With bated breath, Hugh Rowland, the station-agent, knelt down in the dew-wet grass, and placed his hand over the girl's heart. Although the sweet white face upturned to the gray morning light was as white as death, he cried out sharply to himself: "Her heart still beats! God be praised! There is life in her yet!"
Gathering her in his arms, as though she were a little child, he carried her quickly across lots to the station, and placed her upon a rude bench. Once there, he could control himself no longer. He dropped upon his knees beside her, burying his face in the folds of her wet dress, chafing her hands, and sobbing as though his heart would break.
He had loved the girl lying there so stark and motionless as he had never loved anything in his life before; but he had never dared to tell her of it. Though he was station-agent, and she a telegraph operator, she seemed as far above him as the star is from the earth.
For a moment Hugh Rowland had almost lost control of himself; then he remembered how horribly cold she was, and he had the presence of mind to start a fire in the big stove that always stood in the center of the waiting-room.
The grateful heat that rose from it quickly brought the breath of life to the girl's white lips. The great, dark, somber eyes opened wide, and she saw the rugged, kindly face of the young station-agent bending over her.
"I found you—you had fainted in the graveyard," he said. "Luckily enough, I was just passing, and I brought you here."
"Oh, why didn't you let me die?" moaned the girl, so bitterly that he was shocked.
"It is very wicked to talk like that," he said, forcing down the great lump that rose in his throat.
"No!" she cried, vehemently. "How could it be very wrong to leave a great, cold, cruel world in which nobody wants you. I have nothing to live for."
"But somebody does want you, Ida May!" cried the great rough fellow, with tears that were no disgrace to his manhood coursing down his cheek. "I want you with all my heart!"
"Hush, hush, hush!" she cried; "you must not talk so to me!" she cried. "Don't say any more! It can never be! You do not know all!"
"Do not say me nay. Give me the right to protect you, Ida. We can go away from this village. I can get a job on the road anywhere along the line. I will work for you, and tend to you so very carefully that you will forget the past!"
She only turned away from him, pleading with him for the love of Heaven to say no more. He stopped short, looking at her gloomily. He had used all the words that he could command, and they had been of no avail. She would not even listen.
"One moment more!" he cried, hoarsely. "Alwaysremember, Ida May, that you leave behind you a heart that beats only for you—only for you. No other woman's face shall ever win my love from you. I will wait here, where you leave me, for long years, until you come back to me—ay, I will wait from day to day with this one hope in my heart: Some day she will come back to me; she will find the world too cold and hard, and will come back to me to comfort her. I will watch for you from darkness until day dawns again. My form, so straight now, may grow bent with years, my hair grow white, and lines seam my face, but through it all I shall watch for your coming until God rewards my vigilance. Good-bye, and God bless you, Ida May, oh love of my heart!"
She passed from his sight with those words ringing in her ears, and when the New York express passed on again after she had boarded it, the young station-agent fell prone upon his face to the floor, and lay there like one dead.
Few passengers turned to look at the little figure that entered the car at the way-side station at so early an hour of the morning, and Ida May cowered quickly down into the first seat. The clothes under the long, dark cloak were saturated, but no one could see that, nor notice how damp and matted were the curling rings of dark hair which the hood of the cloak but half concealed. The hours crept on as the express whirled over the rails; but Ida May paid no heed to time.
But hunger at last began to tell upon her, and sheeagerly hailed a boy who passed through the train with a basket of sandwiches on his arm.
She looked at the coins she still held loosely in her hand, and found to her dismay that, with the exception of two pieces of silver, she held a handful of gold dollars.
"His pocket-pieces," she sobbed. "Oh, if I had known that, I would have refused to take them; but—but I will work and earn money, and—and pay him back double their value. Poor fellow—poor fellow!" and she laid her face on the window-sill, sobbing as though her heart would break.
Suddenly she heard a voice in the seat back of her say:
"You seem very much distressed, poor girl. Is there any way in which I can serve you?"
The deep, musical voice was so kind, so humane, so sympathetic, that Ida May turned around with a start to see who it was who had asked the question.
She saw directly back of her a fair, handsome young man who had evidently just entered the car, and who was depositing his grip-sack and umbrella in the rack above his head.
At the first glance a faint shriek broke from her lips. She was just about to cry out, "Royal Ainsley—great Heaven!—do we meet again?" when she saw her error in time. Although bearing a certain resemblance to the lover who had so cruelly betrayed her, a second glance told her it was not him.
It was a moment ere she recovered herself sufficiently to answer, then she faltered, piteously:
"Iamin sorrow, sir, so great that I do not thinkany young girl but me could ever pass through it—and live."
"I do not wish to pry into your private affairs," said the young man, courteously, "but I wish to repeat, if you will tell me what troubles you, and I can be of service to you, I shall be only too pleased. Although a stranger, you will find me worthy of your confidence, my poor child!"
There was something about the handsome, kindly, blue-eyed young man that caused Ida May's heart to go out to him at once. His was a face that women always trusted, and no one had ever had cause to regret it.
"I am going to New York in search of work," faltered the girl, clasping her little hands closely together.
"That is certainly reason enough to weep," he replied earnestly. "May I ask if you have friends there to whom you are going until you can find employment?"
Ida May shook her head, her breast heaved, her white lips quivered, while great tears welled up to the great dark eyes, so like purple velvet pansies drowned in rain.
"I have no friends—no one. I am all alone in the world, sir," she sobbed. "My mother is dead—dead. I have just left her grave. She and I were all in all to each other; now she is gone, and I—Oh, only the angels know that no sorrow is so bleak, so pitiful, so awful, as to be all alone in the world."
"I can understand the situation perfectly," he answered in a low voice, "and I can pity you. Although not quite alone in the world myself, I am almost as badly off. But to return to yourself: I may be ableto serve you. What kind of employment were you intending to search for? In some store, or dress-making or millinery establishment?" he queried.
She looked blankly up into his fair, handsome, earnest face.
"I do not know how to do anything of that kind," she answered, simply. "I thought perhaps I might find employment in some telegraph office."
"Why, yes, indeed. I wonder that that idea did not occur to me before. A friend of mine is superintendent of a large branch of the Western Union, up Broadway. I will give you a note to him, and I have no doubt he will do all in his power to aid you, providing he has a vacancy."
"Oh, thank you a thousand times, sir," cried Ida May, thankfully; "I shall be so grateful—oh, so very grateful!"
"Mind, it is not a certainty, you know," admonished the stranger earnestly; "I can only write the letter. But that is not assuring you of a situation—we can only hope for it."
He tore out a leaf from his memorandum, and taking a gold pencil from his vest pocket, hastily jotted down a few lines upon it.
"I am sorry I am not going through to New York; otherwise I would take you there myself," he said, courteously, as he folded up the note and handed it to her.
At that moment his station was reached. He had barely time to touch his hat to her, gather up his parcels, and alight, ere the train moved out again. The young man looked after it and the sweet, tearful youngface pressed against one of the windows until it was out of sight.
"By all that is wonderful!" he ejaculated in a very troubled voice, "I am almost positive that I forgot to sign my name to that note, and it was written so badly on that jolting car, Ernscourt won't be able to make it out or know whose writing it is. Poor little girl! I hope she will find a position there. What a terrible thing it is to be young and desolate in the great wicked city of New York! She is so young, guileless and innocent, I hope no ill will befall her. I must remember to look up my friend Ernscourt to learn if he gave her a position or not. I declare, if it were not that I am betrothed to the sweetest girl in all the world, I am afraid I should commit the desperate folly of falling in love with that beautiful, dark-eyed little stranger. Now that I think of it, it did not occur to me to even ask her name or where she was from."
His reverie was somewhat rudely interrupted by a hearty slap on the shoulder and a hearty voice calling out gayly:
"Why, Royal, how are you, old fellow? What, in the name of all that's amazing, brings you to Yonkers?"
"Why, Hal, is this you?" cried the other, in astonishment and delight. "This is an additional pleasure, meeting my old college chum fully a thousand miles from where I would never have imagined finding him. But a word in your ear, my dear boy: It's two years since you and I parted at college, old fellow, and a great deal has happened in that time. We will walk up the street while I inform you."
"With the greatest of pleasure, Royal," returned his companion.
"Tut! tut! Don't call me Royal—Royal Ainsley. I'm that no longer, you know—no, I suppose you don't know; but that's exactly what I want to talk to you about."
"I am too astonished for utterance," declared his friend.
"Why, the explanation is certainly simple enough," declared the other, with a good-natured, mellow little laugh; adding: "Why, you, my college chum, knew what many another friend of mine doesnotknow, namely, that there are two Royal Ainsleys, or, rather, there was up to the present year. It's a bit of secret family history; but I am obliged to take you into my confidence, in order that you may fully understand my most peculiar position. Two brothers, who were almost enemies born, married about the same time, and to each of the gentlemen—namely, my uncle and my father, was born a son—my cousin and myself.
"These gentlemen had an eccentric elder brother who had money to burn, as the saying is, and what should each of these younger brothers do but name their sons after the wealthy old Royal Ainsley, if you please, each hoping thathisson would be the old uncle's heir.
"A pretty mess these two belligerent gentlemen made of the affair, I assure you. Two Royal Ainsleys, each resembling the other to an unpleasantly startling degree, of almost the same age, being born scarcely a week apart.
"We were constantly getting into all manner of scrapes, a case of being continually taken for the fellow that looks like me, as the song goes. Each disputed with the other the right to bear the name, and neither would put a handle to it or do anything to cause it todiffer in any way from the cognomen of the famous old uncle, who was certainly quite as bewildered as any one else.
"As we two lads grew older, I took to books, my cousin to sports and the pretty faces of girls. When his folks died and he was left to follow the bent of his own inclination, in spite of my earnest admonition and my uncle's combined, he jumped the traces of home restraint altogether, and started out to see life on his own hook. The last I heard of him he was with some distant relative, clerking in a New York importing house.
"Now formyside of the story. From the hour he defied uncle and shook off his restraint, old Royal Ainsley's hatred of him grew so bitter we dared not mention my wayward cousin, Royal Ainsley, in his presence. My uncle actually forced me to change my name through legislative enactment to make it legal. He insisted upon naming me Eugene Mallard, declaring that my cousin would be sure to disgrace the name of Royal Ainsley through the length and breadth of the land before he stopped in his mad downward career.
"Well, to make a long story short, my uncle sent me to Europe on business for him, and his sudden death brought me hurriedly home this week, to find that he has left me his entire fortune, with the proviso that not one dollar shall ever go to my cousin, who, in all probability, does not yet know of his sad plight.
"Now, last but by no means least, on the steamer coming back from London I met a beautiful young girl, Miss Hildegarde Cramer. It was a case of love at first sight between us. You know I'm a very impulsive fellow. I proposed, and she accepted me on thespot; but mind, she knows me as Eugene Mallard, and so she shall know me to the end of her sweet life, bless her.
"Now you know the whole story. Mind, I'm not Royal Ainsley, but, instead, Eugene Mallard, at your service.
"Hildegarde is visiting in Yonkers, so I ran up to see my sweetheart. Sounds like a romance or a comedy, doesn't it?"
"I hope there will be no tinge of tragedy in it," laughed his friend, thoughtlessly.
With a note of introduction to the superintendent clutched tightly in her hand, Ida May reached New York City. She took barely time to swallow a cup of coffee ere she hurried to the number indicated. Her heart sunk within her as she looked up at the immense building; but with a courage which should have met with a better reward, she took the elevator, and soon found herself on the eighth floor, where the superintendent's office was situated.
"He is not in," an attendant told her. "He left the city two days ago, and is not expected to return for a fortnight."
Tears that she could not control sprung into Ida May's dark eyes.
"Oh, what shall I do?" cried the girl; "I want to see him so much!"
The attendant was moved to pity by her great distress.
"If you are looking for a position, or anything of that kind, perhaps I could suggest something."
"Oh, yes, that is it, sir," exclaimed Ida May, looking up through her tears—"that is my errand. I want to secure a position."
"Then it is the manager, instead of the superintendent, you will have to apply to. I think he is in his office. Step this way, please."
He threw open a door to the right, and Ida May followed him into a large room, in which were dozens of young girls bending over tables.
The deafening click! click! click! of the telegraph instruments drowned every sound.
Some girls never raised their heads, as Ida May, following the attendant, passed down the long aisle. Others, however, glanced at her, at first casually, which deepened instantly into a gaze of curiosity and intense interest, for they had never beheld a creature with such superb beauty. Their hearts beat with envy.
"The manager will be sure to engage her," they whispered. "Her pretty face will be sure to be a passport to favor. There used to be a time when it was 'How much do you know about the business?' but now it is 'What kind of a face have you? If it's a pretty and dashing one, I'll engage you.' An old or a homely girl doesn't stand any show whatever nowadays."
All unconscious of these remarks, Ida May passed on. The attendant threw open another door at the end of a large room, and she found herself in a luxuriously furnished office. A young and exceedingly handsome man sat at a desk writing. He glanced upangrily at the sound of footsteps, and was about to make a sharp remark to the man, when he caught sight of the beautiful young creature he was ushering into his presence.
"Ah, sit down," he said, blandly; "I will attend to you in one moment."
The attendant had scarcely closed the door behind him ere the manager—for such he proved to be—turned quickly about and faced the young girl.
"What can I do for you?" he said in his blandest voice. He had taken in at first glance the wondrous beauty of the young girl. It was certainly the most exquisite face he had ever beheld, and a strange gleam leaped into his eyes. He told himself that, from her appearance, she had certainly come in search of a position. Ida May looked up into the dark, handsome face. Instinctively she shrunk from him, but could not tell why. Very timidly she stated her errand, the color on her face deepening, as she could not help but notice the ardent glance of admiration he bent upon her, and there was something in the bold glance of his eyes that made her feel extremely uncomfortable.
In a falteringly voice Ida stated her errand, and what experience she had had in her little village home. To her great delight and surprise, he answered quickly:
"I think I will be able to make a place for you. It would be a pity to send away such a pretty girl as you are."
Ida May drew back in alarm. She did not like the remark, nor the look which accompanied it; but she dared not make an indignant reply.
"Where are you stopping?" he asked in the next breath.
"I have just reached the city, sir," she responded. "I came in search of a position even before I found a place to stop."
"It is well you did so," he responded quickly. "I know of a place that I think will suit you. The lady has no other boarders. You would be company for her. I would make this observation here and now: the girls we have here are a talkative set. Pay no attention to their remarks."
He wrote an address on a slip of paper, and handed it to the girl.
"I am very grateful, sir, for the interest you have taken in me, a poor girl," she said, tremulously. "Shall I report to-day for work, sir?" she asked. "I should like to commence as soon as possible."
"To-morrow will do," he answered.
With a heart full of thanks, she left the office.
Frank Garrick, the manager, looked after her with a smile that was not pleasant to see.
"I have run across many a little beauty in my time," he muttered, gazing after her, "but surely never such an exquisite little beauty as this one."
The girls looked at one another, nodding grimly, when Ida May presented herself for duty the next day.
"Didn't I tell you how it would be?" sneered one of the girls. "Our handsome manager, Mr. Garrick, was captivated by the girl's beauty, as I knew he would be, and engaged her, although he refused to take on, only the day before, three girls whom I knew to be actually starving."
There was one girl who looked at Ida May with darkening eyes.
She bent over her task; but though the hours passed, the terrible look never left her face.
"Nannie is jealous," more than one girl whispered to her neighbor. "You see, she's head over heels in love with our manager. If he so much as looks at any other girl that passes along, she sulks for a week. What fun it would be to make her jealous. Oh, let's try, girls! Let's put up a job on her. It would be such fun!"
"Not for the new-comer!" laughed another girl.
"Nannie would make it pretty hot for her here."
Little dreaming of the tempest they were stirring up, the girls thoughtlessly planned their little joke. Their shouts of laughter would have been turned into tears of pity could they have beheld the harvest of woe that was to spring from it.
Nannie Rogers noticed that the beautiful new-comer was assigned to an instrument at a table almost directly opposite the private office. This inflamed the jealously of Nannie Rogers.
She noted how he watched her from the window of his office all the next day.
More than one girl called Nannie Rogers' attention to this at noon-hour.
"You will have to look to your laurels, Nan," more than one declared, banteringly. "You will find this Ida May a rival, I fear."
"Any girl had better be dead than attempt to be a rival of mine," she answered.
There came a time when the girls remembered that remark all too forcibly.
Ida May bent over her task, paying little attentionto anything around her. She was trying to forget her double sorrow, all that she had gone through, and the death of her poor mother that had followed.
Ida May had found no difficulty whatever in securing board at the place where Frank Garrick had suggested.
Mrs. Cole, who owned the cottage, told Ida that she was a widow.
"I have a little income that keeps me comfortable," she added; "but to accommodate my friend, Mr. Garrick, I will take you in."
"He is a friend of yours?" exclaimed the girl.
"Yes; I used to be in the telegraph office before I married," she responded. "In fact, my husband and Mr. Garrick were both paying attention to me at the same time. To be candid, I liked Mr. Garrick the better; but we had a little misunderstanding, and through pique I married his rival. I lost sight of him after that until my husband died. After I became a widow he called upon me several times."
She gave the impression to Ida that she expected a proposal from her old lover some time in the near future, but the girl paid little heed to the blushing widow. Her thoughts were elsewhere.
One evening, at the end of the second week, as Ida was hurrying homeward, she was startled by a step behind her.
"You seem to be in a hurry, Miss May," a voice said; and turning quickly around, she beheld the handsome manager, Mr. Garrick.
"Iamin a hurry!" she assented. "I am a little late now, and Mrs. Cole does not like me to keep supper waiting."
"Never mind what she likes," he returned, impatiently. "Let us take a little walk, I have something to say to you, pretty one."
There was something in his eyes, his voice, that somehow startled her.
"Pardon me, but I do not care to walk," she said, simply, with the haughty air of a young princess.
"Don't put on airs," he said, harshly; "you are not very wise to try to snub a manager who has the power to turn you out of your position at any moment."
Ida grew frightfully pale.
"Come, let us take a little walk," he urged. "You're a very pretty girl, and I like you."
Ida May drew back with an exclamation of alarm.
"I refuse to walk with you!" she said.
"Don't make an enemy of me, Ida May!" he hissed between his teeth.
"If such a trifle will make an enemy, I would rather make an enemy than a friend of you!" she answered.
"Are you mad, girl, to defy me like this?" he cried, setting his white teeth together, his eyes fairly blazing.
"I have no wish to defy you! I can not see why my refusing to walk with you should offend you!"
"Come, be reasonable," he urged; "let us have a little quiet talk. I have called at your boarding-house half a dozen times since you have been there, but that idiotic fool, who is half in love with me herself, would not let me see you. I might have known how it would be: I'll look for another boarding-place at once for you."
The interest he took in her alarmed her.
"I am very well satisfied where I am, Mr. Garrick," she answered, with dignity. "I beg that you will not call upon me, for I do not care to receive gentlemen callers."
Again a rage that was terrible to see flashed into his eyes.
"Youmustsee me!" he hissed. "It is not for you to be chooser. Don't you see I have taken a fancy to you," he said, throwing off all reserve. "You must be mine! I never really knew what love meant until I saw you!"
"Stop! Stop!" panted Ida May. "I will not listen to another word. You must not talk to me of love!"
"Yes, I loved you, Ida May, from the first time I saw you. There was something about you which thrilled my heart and caused me to wish that you should be mine, cost what it would!"
"I will not listen to another word!" said Ida May.
He laughed an insolent laugh that made the blood fairly boil in her veins.
"Come, we will go into this restaurant where we can talk at our leisure."
He had caught her by the arm. With a cry of terror the girl wrenched herself free from his grasp and fairly flew down the street, and she did not stop until she reached her boarding-house.
"Why, dear me, Miss May, one would think you were flying from a cyclone!" declared Mrs. Cole, who was just passing through the hall as she came in.
Gasping for breath, and scarcely able to keep from tears, Ida May told her all, believing that the woman would sympathize with her.
"Why, you are more of a prude than I thought you were," said Mrs. Cole.
Ida May drew back with dilated eyes.
"You, a woman, to tell me this! Why, I tell you he was insulting me!" cried the girl, vehemently.
Mrs. Cole laughed cynically.
"Nonsense!" she declared. "You might do worse than accept his attentions. He's over head and heels in love with you. I could have told you that a week ago."
"He is a bold, bad man!" cried Ida May. "And yet you would counsel me to encourage him wouldn't you?"
The elder woman shrugged her shoulders.
"Any one could easily see that you are a country girl," she said, with a harsh laugh that grated on the girl who listened with amazement.
With this parting shot the woman turned on her heel and left Ida May staring after her.
To Ida's intense anxiety, her landlady was unusually cool at the tea-table. She did not come up to Ida May's room that evening to chat, but announced that she had a headache, needed quiet, and would stay in her own room. Her presence during the long evenings had done much toward making the girl forget her sorrow, and she felt her absence keenly enough on this night when she had so much need of sympathy.
Feeling too restless to commune with her own thoughts, she concluded to read a book to fill in the time that hung so heavily on her hands.
Ida May descended to the sitting-room, where, she remembered, she had left the book on the table. She went down the carpeted stairs quietly, passing Mrs.Cole's door with noiseless feet, that she might not disturb her.
As she stood before the door of the sitting-room, with her hand on the knob, she was suddenly attracted by the sound of voices from within, her own name falling distinctly upon her ears. She stood still with astonishment, for the voice that uttered her name was that of Frank Garrick.
Her first impulse was to turn quickly away; but the words that she heard him utter held her spell-bound.
Mr. Garrick was talking to Mrs. Cole in a low, excited voice, and what the girl heard filled her soul with wildest terror.
For a moment she stood irresolute; then her decision was made. As soon as the morning broke, she would leave that house.
She flew back to her room, her mind in a whirl, her brain dizzy with conflicting emotions. She sat down in a chair by the open window, and leaned her hot, flushed face in the palms of her hands. She was beginning to learn the lessons of the great, wicked world. How long she sat there she never knew.
She was planning about what she should do when the morrow came. Though she starved on the street, she would not go back to the telegraph office where Frank Garrick was; nor could she remain in the house that now sheltered her, where the woman who pretended to be her friend and counselor was deliberately plotting against her.
She had purchased a dress, cloak, and hat out of the money she had found in her pocket. This expenditure had reduced the little sum considerably; but she had been obliged to present a respectable appearance.
Where should she look for work in the great big city? While she was cogitating over the matter, Mrs. Cole appeared in the door-way with a glass of lemonade in her hand.
"I have brought you something very refreshing, Ida," she said. "It took awaymyheadache, and it will make you enjoy a good night's sleep."
"Thank you, but I do not care for the lemonade," returned the girl, coldly.
Her first impulse had been to spring to her feet, and inform her that she had accidently overheard her conversation with Frank Garrick, and upbraid her for it in the bitterest of words. Then the thought occurred to her that discretion was the better part of valor—to say nothing, and leave the house quietly in the morning.
"But I insist upon your drinking the lemonade," declared the young widow.
Ida looked at her steadily, and something in the reproachful glance of the girl's eyes made her wince. The hand that held the glass shook in spite of her efforts at composure.
"It will induce an excellent night's sleep, my dear," said Mrs. Cole, smoothly. "Stir it up; you are letting all the sugar settle at the bottom."
"I do not care for it," repeated Ida, a trifle more haughtily.
"But as it is for your good, youmustdrink it!" repeated her companion. "I shall not leave the room until you do so."
At that moment Katie, the little maid of all work, entered the room with towels.
Passing near the back of her chair, she managed to whisper in her ear, unobserved by Mrs. Cole:
"Promise her to drink the lemonade if she will leave it on the table; but don't touch a drop of it. I'll tell you why later."
The remark was accompanied by a warning glance from the girl's eyes. Laying down the towels, Katie retreated to the door; but the warning look that she cast back at her aroused Ida May.
"Set the glass down, and I will drink the lemonade later on," she said, quietly.
"Do you promise me that you will?" said Mrs. Cole, with unusual interest.
"Yes," said Ida, hesitatingly. "Put it down on the table."
"I will come back in ten minutes," declared Mrs. Cole, "and if you have not drunk it by that time—well, I'll make you, that's all," she added, with a forced laugh, but meaning just what she said.
Ida May sat down when she found herself alone, wondering in amazement what Katie could have meant by her strange words. At that moment the girl glided into the room.
"Oh! do not touch it, my dear young lady!" cried Katie, rushing into the room and seizing the lemonade with hands that were trembling. "Listen, miss," she cried in an awful whisper. "They put something into it—the lemonade is drugged!"
Ida May looked at her with the utmost astonishment. She could scarcely understand her words.
"I saw them do it!" repeated the girl. "I heard him say, 'Put in enough, and it will make her sleep soundly.' It was a white powder he had brought with him," the maid went on, excitedly. "Oh, he makes such a dupe of my poor mistress! He has hypnotized her so that she is afraid to say that her soul is her own. I heard a great deal more that he said, but I can not tell you now. All I can do is to warn you. Go away from here as quickly as you can. They are enemies of yours, both of them."
The girl's words terrified Ida May. She recalled Frank Garrick's words as he walked along the street beside her.
"Take care! beware, girl! You had better not make an enemy of me! If you do, you will rue the hour! For I can make it very unpleasant for you. Ay, you will be sorry that you were ever born."
Shehadmade an enemy of him, and now he was about to take some terrible revenge upon her. She did not have time to exchange another word with the maid, for she had fled from the room as quickly as she had entered it, and she was left alone with her conflicting thoughts.
The window was open, and she threw the contents of the glass out on the pavement below.
She had scarcely set it down, before Mrs. Cole glided into the room.
"Ah! you have drunk the lemonade. That's right!" she added in a triumphant tone. "But I won't sit down to talk to you to-night; you look sleepy. I would advise you to retire at once."
Ida looked at her steadily, remembering the startling words that Katie had whispered in her ears. Was this a woman or a fiend incarnate? Ida wondered.
Her footsteps had scarcely died away ere Ida took down a long dark cloak, and hurriedly donning it, together with her hat and veil, she gathered her effects together, and thrusting them into a hand-bag, stole silently as a shadow out into the darkened hall. As she passed the sitting-room door she heard the sound of voices.
Frank Garrick was still there.
In the shadow of the vestibule door she saw Katie waiting for her.
"Good-bye, and God bless you, Ida May!" she said, holding out her rough, toil-worn little hand.
"Good-bye, and thank you for the service you have rendered me," she answered, with deep feeling. "If we ever meet again, perhaps it may be in my power to repay you," added Ida, the tears standing out on her long lashes.
She little dreamed that the hour would come when she would be called upon to remember that promise.
Out of the house she stole, out into the darkness of the street.
At last, when faint and almost falling down from exhaustion, she ran directly into the arms of a blue coat who was leisurely passing a corner.
"Halloo there, my good girl!" he cried. "What are you doing out at this hour of the night?"
Trembling piteously, and all unnerved at this unexpected encounter, for a moment the girl was speechless.
"I am trying to find shelter until to-morrow morning, sir," she said. "Then I shall look for work."
But the officer would not parley with her. He grasped her by the arm, and was forcing the sobbing girl along, when he was suddenly confronted by a young man who was passing, and who had witnessed the affair.
"Officer," he said, sternly, "this is an outrage. Why do you not let that young girl go her way in peace? Why do you molest her?"
"It's my duty to run in every girl who walks the street at night, without a justifiable reason."
"Letmebe responsible for this young woman," said the man. "I believe what she told you to be true—that she wants to find a place to stop until day-break, and then she will look for work."
The officer recognized the young man at once.
"Ifyouwill vouch for her," he said, "why, she can go her way, certainly."
"I think I'm a tolerably good judge of character," returned the young man, "and I see nothing in her face to mistrust. Take her to one of the missions near at hand. She can certainly stay there till morning."
The policeman made a low bow, and the young man passed on.
"You have interested one of the richest young men in New York in your behalf," said the policeman, after they had passed on.
Ida did not ask the name of her benefactor, though she felt deeply grateful for the kind service he had rendered her.
The matron of the home for friendless girls received the young girl with the kindliness that characterized her.
She assigned her a little cot, and, wretched and footsore, Ida May threw herself upon it and sobbed herself to sleep.
The matron looked at her as she passed through the long dormitory on her way to her room.
"She has a sweet face!" she muttered, as she turned away; "but one on which a tragedy is written."
Ida May was sitting in the reception-room when the matron passed through it the next morning, and she asked her if there was anything she could do for her.
"If you could only tell me, please, where I could find something to do," she answered. "I must find work, or—starve!"
"When do you wish to look for a situation?" asked the matron, noting how wan and pale the girl looked.
"This day, this very hour!" cried Ida May, eagerly.
The matron hesitated.
"I must first know what sort of employment you are seeking—what you are best suited for."
"I am suited for nothing," Ida answered, despondently. "But that must not deter me. If one did only the work one was fitted for, three-quarters of the world would be idle."
"Would you take a situation as governess if one could be found for you?"
She shook her head dejectedly.
"I have not education enough," she replied. "I did not have much opportunity of going to school when I was a little girl, and I am suffering for it now."
After a moment's pause the matron said, thoughtfully:
"Would you like to try dress-making?"
"That's another thing that I know nothing about,"she said. "I was never taught to mend or sew. I always got out of it. Mother did it for me rather than scold me."
"Perhaps you would take a position as lady's-maid."
A gasp, a shiver passed over her. Quick as lightning there flashed before her mind the humiliation of three or four maids who had accompanied their mistresses to the Ocean Hotel, at Newport, and how Lily Ryder and Hildegarde Cramer had turned up their noses at them because they had pretty faces, and had dared to pin in a pretty ribbon or two in the lace caps they were forced to wear on all occasions.
"I am afraid I wouldn't be a success at that," she declared.
"I don't suppose you would like to be a house-maid," suggested the matron, looking at the small white hands that lay in the girl's lap—the blue-veined hands that were never designed to scour kettles or clean floors. "My dear child," said the matron, compassionately, "there is little else in a great city to do."
There was a pause—a pause broken presently by Ida May.
"Don't you think that if I could get into one of those large stores, I could try on cloaks and hats without requiring any great amount of knowledge of any kind?"
The matron looked doubtful.
"It is not as easy as you may imagine, my dear, to obtain admission into any of those large stores. They have any amount of girls on their books who are waiting eagerly for positions—persons with whom they are acquainted—and they would stand a better chance than a stranger. Besides, I hardly think a situation in a place of that kind would be suitable for one so young. Wewill look over the paper and read the advertisements."
She touched a bell, and told the attendant who answered it to bring in the morning paper.
"You can look over it, my child," said the matron. "I will return in half an hour. By that time you will perhaps have found something that will suit you."
Left alone, Ida May commenced to look through the "Want" columns.
All through sixteen columns of the paper the girl's eyes eagerly ran. She did not find anything that she was competent to do, and tears of vexation rolled down her cheeks.
Suddenly her eyes rested upon an advertisement which she must have missed in her hurried examination of the column.
"Wanted.—A few more hands in a cotton-mill. No. — Canal Street. Applicants must apply between the hours of nine and ten, thisA. M."
"Wanted.—A few more hands in a cotton-mill. No. — Canal Street. Applicants must apply between the hours of nine and ten, thisA. M."
Little dreaming of what was to come of it, Ida May concluded that this was certainly the only position she could dare apply for.
The matron entered presently, and Ida May showed her the advertisement that had attracted her attention.
"It might be as well to try that," said the matron, encouragingly.
She looked after the girl as she went slowly down the steps, and shook her head sadly.
As usual, Ida May's lovely face attracted the envyof all the girls in the mill. The foreman, as well as the clerks in the office, admired her, and that was enough to make the girls detest her.
Ida had secured lodgings in a boarding-house where a score of the girls stopped. She shared her room with Emily Downs, a very quiet little thing, who had been a general favorite with the girls up to this time.
Matters were going from bad to worse in the mill. The girls gathered together in little groups here and there, and looked darkly at Ida May. Even those who were wont to say "good-night" or "good-morning" passed her by without a word.
The comments of the jealous girls became louder and deeper as another fortnight dragged its slow lengths by. Whether Ida May heard or heeded them, they did not care to know. The beautiful face grew whiter still, and the large dark eyes became more pitiful in their pathetic terror.
The girls gathered together one noon hour, and held a long and excited conversation.
Ida and Emily Downs were eating their luncheon at the further end of the room, quite apart by themselves. Emily could see that something of an unusual order was transpiring, by the girl's fierce gesticulations and the angry glances that were cast upon her companion, who seemed oblivious to it all.
At length one of them called Emily to them. There was a whispered conversation, and looking mechanically across the table at that moment, Ida May saw Emily start back with a cry of horror.
"They are talking about me," thought Ida, crushing back a sob. "They want to turn the only friend I have from me."
She finished her simple luncheon in silence. It was scarcely concluded ere she noticed with wonder that the girls had formed a group and were marching over in her direction in a body. There were fully fifty of them, and Ida noticed with wonder that the face of every one of them was white, set, and stern.
"Ida May," said the ringleader, harshly, "we have something to say to you!"
"Yes," she answered, thinking that they had reconsidered the matter, and were going to ask her to join them.
For a moment the girl seemed at a loss to know what to say, but the angry murmurs of her companions in the rear nerved her to her task.
"After consultation, we have concluded that, as respectable girls, we can not remain in the mills another day if you are allowed to work here. You must leave at once, or we shall do so."
For an instant Ida May was fairly dazed. She scarcely believed that she had heard aright—surely her senses were playing her false. She sprung to her feet, and confronted the girls, who stood, with angered faces, looking at her.
"Surely you can not mean what you say!" she gasped. "What have I done that you should say this to me?"
The ringleader looked at her with withering scorn.
"We do not consider you a proper companion to mingle among us," returned the girl, stolidly. "We all work for our living in this cotton-mill, but if wearepoor we arehonest. Is that plain enough for you to understand? If not, I will add this"—and stepping up to the trembling girl's side, she whispered a fewsharp words in her ear—words that made Ida May recoil as though they had been thrusts of a knife that cut to her heart.
With a piteous cry she sunk on her knees, covering her death-white face with her trembling hands.
"It remains with you to deny or affirm our accusation," went on the girl, harshly "What have you to say to our charge, Ida May; is it true or false?"
There was no answer, save the heartrending sobs of the girl cowering before them in such abject misery—surely the most pitiful a human heart ever knew.
"You see shecan notdeny it," cried the ringleader, turning triumphantly to her companions. "I assured you all that I was certain before I advised this step. We may well look upon her with scorn; she is not worthy to breathe the same air with us!"
Ida May rose slowly to her feet.