CHAPTER XII.

"'Italia, oh, Italia, thou who hastThe fatal gift of beauty: which becameA funeral dower of present woes and past,'"

repeated the voice of a young man leaning from an upper window, and looking down upon the antique streets of famous Rome.

"I think you have more taste for poetry than painting, Carl," said a second voice.

The scene is an artist's studio, up four flights of stairs, and very near the sky. A large skylight gives admission to the clear and radiant light, and the windows are open for the soft breeze to enter the room, though it is the month of December in that fair Italian clime, where it is always summer. Pictures and palettes, statuettes and bronzes adorn the walls, and somewhat litter the room, and its only two occupants wear artists' blouses, though one of the wearers sits idly at the window gazing down into the street. He is blonde and stout, with gay blue eyes, and is unmistakably German, while his darker companion, who is busily painting away at a picture, is just as certainly an American. They both bear their nationalities plainly in their faces.

"Poetry and painting are sister arts, I think," said Carl Muller, laughing. "The poets paint with words as we do with colors. They have the advantage of us poor devils, for their word-paintings remain beautiful forever, while our ochres crack and our crimsons fade."

"You should turn poet, then, Carl."

"I had some thought of it once," said the mercurial Carl, laughing, "but upon making trial of my powers, I found that I lacked the divine afflatus."

"Say rather that you lacked the more prosaic attribute that you lack in painting—industry," said the American.

"Whatever failing I may have in this respect is fully atoned for by you, Leslie. Never saw I a poor dauber so deeply wedded to his art. Your perseverance is simply marvelous."

"It is the only way to conquer fame, Carl. There is no royal road to success," said the artist, painting busily away as he talked.

Carl yawned lazily and repeated Beattie's well-known lines:

"'Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climbThe steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar;Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime,Has felt the influence of malignant star,And waged with fortune an eternal war!'"

"The 'malignant star' in your case meansidleness, Carl. You have talent enough if you would but apply yourself. Up, up, man, and get to your work."

"It is impossible to conquer my constitutional inertia this evening, Leslie. To-morrow I will vie with you in perseverance and labor like a galley-slave," laughed the German, stretching his lazy length out of the window.

There was silence a few moments. Carl was absorbed in something going on in the street below—perhaps a street fight between two fiery Italians, or perhaps the more interesting sight of some pretty woman going to mass or confession—while Leslie Dane's brush moved on unweariedly over his task. Evidently it was a labor of love.

"I should like to know where you get your models, Leslie," said Carl Muller, looking back into the room. "You do not have the Italian type of women in your faces. What do you copy from?"

"Memory," said the artist, laconically.

"Do you mean to say that you know a woman anywhere half as beautiful as the women you put on your canvas?"

"I know one so transcendently lovely that the half of her beauty can never be transferred to canvas," said Leslie Dane, while a flush of pride rose over his features.

"In America?" asked Carl.

"In America," answered Leslie.

"Whew!" said the German, comprehensively. "I thought you did not care for women, Mr. Dane."

"I never said so, Carl," said Leslie Dane, smiling.

"I know—but actions speak louder than words. You avoid them, you decline invitations where you are likely to meet them, and the handsome models vote you a perfect bear."

"Because there is but one woman in the whole world to me," answered Leslie Dane, and he paused a moment in his painting, and looked away with a world of tenderness in his large, dark eyes.

Carl Muller began to look interested.

"Ah! now I see why you work so hard," he said. "There is a woman at the bottom of it. There is always a woman at the bottom of everything that goes on in this world whether it be good or evil."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Leslie, resuming his work with a sigh to the memory of the absent girl he loved.

"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,For love is heaven, and heaven is love,"

hummed Carl in his rich tenor voice.

"Leslie, you will accompany me to thefeteto-night?" said he, presently.

"Thank you. I do not care to go," said Leslie.

"Heavens, what a selfish fellow!" said Carl, turning back to the window.

Silence fell between them again. The soft breeze came sighing in at the window ruffling Carl's sunny curls and caressing Leslie Dane's cheek with viewless fingers.

A pot of violets on the window ledge filled the air with delicate perfume. After that evening the scent of violets always came to Leslie Dane wedded to a painful memory.

There was a heavy step at the door. Their portly landlady pushed her head into the room.

"Letters, gentlemen," she said.

Carl Muller sprang up with alacrity.

"All for me, of course," he said. "Nobody ever writes to Dane."

He took the packet and went back to his seat, while his companion, with a smothered sigh, went on with his work. It was quite true that no one ever wrote to him, yet he still kept waiting and hoping for one dear letter that never—never came.

"Ah, by Jove! but I was mistaken," Carl broke out suddenly. "Hurrah, Leslie, here's a love letter from the girl you left behind you."

He held up a little creamy-hued envelope, smooth and thick as satin, addressed in a lady's elegant hand, and Leslie Dane caught it almost rudely from him. Carl gave a significant whistle and returned to his own correspondence.

Leslie Dane tore open the letter so long waited and hoped for, and devoured its contents with passionate impatience. It was very brief. Let us glance over his shoulder and read what was written there:

"Leslie," she wrote, "your letters have kept coming and coming, and every one has been like a stab to my heart. I pray you never to write to me again, for I have repented in bitterness of spirit the blind folly into which you led me that night. Oh, how could you do it? I was but a child. I did not know what love meant, and I was bewildered and carried away by your handsome face, and the romance of that moonlight flitting. It was wicked, it was cruel, Leslie, to bind me so, for, oh, God, Iloveanother now, and I never can be his! But at least I willneverbe yours. I have burned your letters, and I shall hate your memory as long I live for the cruel wrong you did me. God forgive you, for I never can!"Bonnibel."

"Bonnibel."

Leslie Dane threw that dreadful letter down and ground it beneath his heel as though it had been a deadly serpent. It was, for it had stung him to the heart.

Carl Muller looked up at the strange sound of that grinding boot-heel, and saw his friend standing fixedly staring, into vacancy, his dark eyes blazing like coals of fire, his handsome face pallid as death, and set in a tense look of awful despair and bitterness terrible to behold.

Carl Muller sprang up and shook him violently by the arm.

"My God! Leslie," he cried, "what is it? What has happened to move you so? Is there anyone dead?"

The handsome artist did not seem to hear him. He stood immovablesave for the horrid crunching of his boot-heel as it ground that fatal letter into fragments.

"Leslie," exclaimed Carl, "speak, for mercy's sake! You cannot imagine how horrible you look!"

Thus adjured Leslie Dane shook off his friend's clasp roughly, and strode across the room to a recess where a veiled picture hung against the wall.

He had always refused to show it to his brother artist, but now he pushed the covering aside, disclosing a female head surrounded by silvery clouds like that of an angel. The face, framed in waving masses of golden hair, was lighted by eyes of tender violet, and radiantly beautiful.

"Look Carl," said the artist in a changed and hollow voice, "is not that the face of an angel?"

Carl Muller looked at the lovely face in wonder and delight.

"Beautiful, beautiful!" he exclaimed, "it is the face of a seraph!"

"Yes, it is the face of a seraph," repeated Leslie Dane. "The face of a seraph, but oh, God, she isfickle,faithless,false!"

He stood still a moment looking at the fair young face smiling on him in its radiant beauty, then caught up his brush and swept it across the canvas.

One touch, the tender blue eyes were obliterated, another, and the curved red lips were gone with their loving smile, another and another, and the whole angelic vision was blotted from the canvas forever.

"No, don't attempt to excuse yourself, mother! If you had taken my advice, and turned your wax doll out upon the world to look out for herself, this would never have happened! But no, you must saddle yourself with the charge of her, and pamper her as foolishly as her uncle did! And now you see the result of your blind folly. It needed but one sight of her baby-face by that old dotard to ruin my prospects for life. I hope you are satisfied with your work!"

It was ten o'clock at night, and Felise Herbert had come into her mother's room in her dressing-gown, with her dark hair hanging over her shoulders, and her eyes flashing angrily, to upbraid her mother for her weakness in the matter of Bonnibel Vere.

"You should have turned her adrift upon the world," she repeated, stamping her slippered foot angrily. "She might have starved to death for all I cared!After all I did for you, I think you could have done that much to pleaseme!"

"But, Felise, you know it was quite impossible to take such extreme measures without incurring the censure of the world, and perhaps its suspicion!" said Mrs. Arnold, deprecatingly.

"Who cares for suspicion—they could not prove anything!" said Felise, snapping her fingers.

"No, perhaps not," Mrs. Arnold answered, "but all the same, I should not like to run the risk. You are blinded by anger,Felise; or you would reason more clearly. You know I did not want to keep the girl here. I hate her as much as you do. I have hated her ever since she was born, but you know I dare not turn her off. Society would taboo us if we dared hint such a thing. Turn a girl of her aristocratic antecedents out upon the world to earn her living, while I am rolling in wealth! A girl who knows no more of the world than a baby! The daughter of General Vere, the niece of my dead husband! Felise, you must see that it would never do!"

"It would if I had been suffered to have my way," answered the girl, marching angrily up and down the floor. "To be thwarted this way in my prospect of making the most brilliant match of the season is too bad! It is shameful! For her to step into my place this way makes me hate her worse than ever!"

"But, Felise, shecannotstep into your place, my dear. Did you not tell me you had learned from Leslie Dane's intercepted letters that the girl was secretly married to him? Why did you meddle with their correspondence, anyway? Why not have let him come back in time to claim her? She would then have been out of your way!"

"Mother, you talk like a fool!" exclaimed the daughter, angrily. "You know I dare not let Leslie Dane return here! I am compelled to keep him out of the country for the sake of my own safety. I am compelled to separate the two because he must not hear of the charge of murder that we made against him. If she should hear it, as she is likely to do at any time, and should communicate it to him, what would be the consequence? He would return here and disprove the charge at once. Bonnibel was with him that night. They went to Brandon and were married while your husband was being mur—— put out of the way. He could prove analibiat once. You talk of suspicion—where would suspicion fall then?"

"Surely not on us, Felise!" said Mrs. Arnold, fearfully.

"And why not?" sneered the girl. "If the now quiescent subject were agitated again what absurd theories might not be propounded by the suspicious world? Who can tell whether Wild Madge could keep the secret? I tell you I have only consulted our vital interests in separating Leslie Dane and Bonnibel Vere, though to do so I have had to destroy my every prospect of becoming the millionaire's wife. I am compelled to keep that beggarly artist out of the country at any cost."

"But, my dear, there is no chance of Bonnibel marrying Colonel Carlyle even though she should be separated forever from her artist-husband, for she is a married woman anyhow. One hint of this to Colonel Carlyle would make your affair all right with him again!"

"It would not," answered Felise, passionately. "He is madly in love with her. Have I not seen it in these few weeks since she has been well enough to come down-stairs? Has not the old fool hung over her as dotingly as any boy-lover could do? Suppose I told him the truth? Do you think he would return to me? No, he would only hate me because I had shattered his brilliant air castle!"

"I am surprised that Bonnibel tolerates his attentions as she does," said Mrs. Arnold, stirring up the fire that was beginning to burn low in the grate.

"She does not suspect what the old fox is after; I will do her that much justice," said Felise, bitterly. "He is very cautious. He has a thousand tales of her father's prowess with which to pave his way and awaken her interest. She makes an idol of her wretched father who squandered every penny of her mother's fortune, and only redeemed himself by dying recklessly in some foolish charge on the battle-field!"

She resumed her walk up and down the floor which she had temporarily ceased during the last outburst. She was furiously angry.

Her eyes blazed luridly, her lips were curled back from her glittering teeth, her step seemed to spurn the floor. Her mother watched her uneasily.

"Felise, do you not fret yourself, my dear. I am persuaded that everything will come right soon. Suppose Colonel Carlyle is in love with Bonnibel. If he proposes to her she is compelled to refuse his offer. What more natural than that he should return to you then, and make you his wife. Hearts are often caught on the rebound, you know."

"Mother, hush! You talk like a simpleton as you are!" was the fierce retort.

Mrs. Arnold was stung to anger by the unprovoked insolence of her daughter. She rose and looked at her in dignified displeasure.

"Felise," she said, threateningly, "you are my daughter, but you must not suppose that I will tamely bear the continued disrespect and contumely I have lately been forced to receive at your hands. In your rage at losing Colonel Carlyle you seem to forget that it is in my power to make you almost as wealthy as he could do. Remember, I am a very rich woman, and I can leave my wealth to whom I please."

"And who placed you in that position?" sneered Felise. "How much would you have been worth but for my constant care of your interests? A third of your husband's property, which was all you could legally claim! That was what he said to his big wax-doll. The balance of his money was for her, to make her a queen and win the homage of the world for her. Perhaps you will leave her the money I have risked so much to gain for you?"

"Felise, this is but idle recrimination. You know I would not leave Bonnibel Vere a penny to save her soul from perdition, and you know I have been scheming all my life to get that money for you, and that I will certainly give it to you. But I do not understand your mood to-night. What is it that you wish me to do?"

"Nothing, nothing! Months ago I begged you to send the girl away and you refused me. You knew I hated her, and you knew I spared nothing that came in my way. She has come between me and my dearest ambition. Now let her look to herself. I tell you, mother, I will take aterrible revengeon Bonnibel Vere for what I have lost.I have sworn it, and I will surely keep my vow!"

She stood still a moment with upraised hands, looking fixedly at her mother, then she turned and went swiftly from the room.

Mrs. Arnold stared after her blankly. She was a cruel and wicked woman, but she would not have dared to go such lengths as her daughter. She was afraid of her daughter, and frightened at the terrible intent expressed in her tone and manner.

"My God!" she murmured, with a shiver, "what rash act is she about to commit?"

Colonel Carlyle was as deeply infatuated with Bonnibel Vere as the jealous Felise had declared him to be; but, as she had always asserted, he was very wily and cautious in his advances. He was afraid of frightening the pretty bird he wished to ensnare. He, therefore, adopted a deportment of almost fatherly tenderness toward her that was very pleasant to the lonely girl, who missed her uncle's protecting care so much, and who also began to perceive in Mrs. Arnold and her daughter a changed manner, which, while it could scarcely be colder than usual, was tinged with an indefinable shade of insolence.

Poor, pretty Bonnibel! she had fallen upon dark days. She had been deceived by Mrs. Arnold's protestations at first, but by degrees a new light began to break upon her. Mrs. Arnold began to practice a degree of parsimony toward her that was bewildering to the girl. She withdrew Bonnibel's allowance of money, and at last the girl found her dainty little purse quite empty, and likely to remain so—a thing that had never happened to her before in the course of her life, for her uncle had been lavishly generous to her in respect to pin-money. Her supply of mourning was extremely limited, and but for her quiet mode of life would have been quite inadequate to her needs.

But if Mrs. Arnold had wished to diminish Bonnibel's beauty by giving it so meager a setting she failed in the endeavor. The jewel was too bright to miss extraneous adornment.

The somber black dresses could not dim the gleam of her golden hair, the sparkle of her sea-blue eyes. Her white brow and throat were like the petals of a lily, and with returning health a lovely rose-tint began to flush her cheeks.

Her beauty was a royal dower of which no spite or malignity could deprive her. Clothed upon with sackcloth she would still have remained,

"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,And most divinely fair."

Bonnibel knew that she was beautiful. She had heard it remarked so often that she could not be ignorant of the fact.

In those past happy days that now seemed so far away she had taken a childish, innocent pride in the knowledge. But now in her trouble and loneliness she had forgotten it, or cared for it no more. So it never occurred to her to ascribe the painful change in her aunt and Felise to the fact that was quite obvious to others—the very plain fact that she had unconsciously rivaledFelise with Colonel Carlyle and that he only waited a proper season to declare himself.

There was none of the dawdling and hesitation now that had marked his courtship of Felise and prevented him from making the important declaration she had schemed and toiled for. He had virtually jilted Felise, for he had done everything but speak the important words, but the proud girl bore his desertion in ominous silence that boded no good to the man who had thus wronged her.

Lucy and Janet, the respective maids of the two young ladies, held many a whispered colloquy over Colonel Carlyle's defection. Janet indeed was an object of sympathy in those days, for she had to bear the brunt of Felise's anger, which was no slight thing to endure. Indeed, it is probable that the much-enduring maid would have given warning on the spot had it not been for anaffaire du cœurwhich she was carrying out with the footman.

Rather than be separated from this object of her fond affections Janet remained in Felise's service and endured her caprices and ill-treatment with that heroic fortitude with which women from time immemorial have borne slight and wrong for love's sake.

"Will Miss Bonnibel marry him, do you think, Lucy?" asked Janet at one of their solemn conclaves.

"I don't know," Lucy answered. "Seems to me the child don't have the least idea of what is going on right afore her eyes. I don't believe she knows that the colonel is a courtin' her! She thinks he is a friend, like, and because he knew her father in the army and talks a good deal about his bravery, she listens to him and never dreams that she has cut Miss Felise out right afore her face."

"And serves her right, too," said Janet, heartily, taking a malicious pleasure in the defeat of her over-bearing mistress; "I, for one, am downright glad that she has cut my lady out of her rich beau! It would be a fine match for Miss Bonnibel since her uncle has left her without a cent."

"I hope she will marry him," said Lucy. "Things isn't going at all to my notion in this house, Janet. Sour looks and impident words is flung around altogether too free in my young lady's hearing. And she getting that shabby that she have got but one decent mourning gown to her back, and I hear nothing said of a new one! As for money I don't believe Mrs. Arnold has given her a single penny since her uncle died; I've seen her little purse and it's quite empty. I'd have put a few of my own savings into it, only I was afraid she might be angry."

"I hope she'll marry Carlyle and queen it over them both," said Janet. "I tell you, Lucy, it was very strange that Mr. Arnold'swillwasn't found. I am quite sure he made one—he wouldn't have slighted your young lady intentionally. He loved that pretty little blue-eyed girl as the apple of his eye, and there was small love lost between him and t'other one. 'Twas mysterious the way things turned out at his death, Lucy."

"Aye, it were," assented Lucy; "I heard Miss Bonnibel, myself,tell Mrs. Arnold down at Sea View when she were sick, that her uncle told her he had made a will and provided liberally for her. And Mrs. Arnold laughed at her and pretended that the fever hadn't got out of her head yet.Shedidn't want to believe there was a will, Janet,shedidn't! Now I ask you, Janet, what has become of that there will?"

Janet laughed scornfully and significantly.

"Ah! it's gone where Miss Bonnibel's blue eyes will never shine on it," said she. "It'll never see the light of day again. All that she can do is to marry Colonel Carlyle and get even with them all."

"I wish she would," sighed Lucy; "but I don't believe she will. They said she was in love with a young artist last summer, and that her uncle drove him away—the same young man they laid the murder on, you know."

"Do you believe he did it, Lucy?"

"Not I," said Lucy, with a scornful sniff. "I'd sooner believetheydid it between themselves! I've seen the young man when he used to come visiting the master at Sea View. A handsome young man he was, and that soft-spoken he would not hurt a fly, I know. But he was poor and made his living by drawing pictures, and since Miss Bonnibel is poor, too, now, I'd rather she'd marry that rich old man, for, poor dear, what good couldshedo as a poor man's wife!"

"Has she forgotten the young feller, do you think?" inquired Janet, thinking of her own "young feller" below stairs with a thrill of romantic sympathy for Miss Vere's love affair.

"Oh, dear,no, and neverwill," said Lucy, confidently. "She never names him; but I know she's been grieved and unhappy over and above what natural grief for Mr. Arnold could amount to. But I doubt it's all over between them. He's been in hiding, of course, somewhere, ever since they accused him of the murder, and I doubt if Miss Bonnibel ever sets her sweet blue eyes on his handsome face again."

"If he's not guilty why don't he come out and prove his innocence?" exclaimed the romantic Janet. "What a fine scene there would be—Miss Bonnibel all in smiles and tears of joy, and t'other ones scowling and angry at them two lovers."

"Ah! I can't tell youwhyhe doesn't do so," answered Lucy, sighing; "but there must be some good reason for't. No one could get me to believe that Mr. Dane did that wicked and cruel murder! My young mistress, so innocent as she is herself, could never have loved a man that was mean enough to do that deed!"

The loud peal of Miss Herbert's dressing-room bell resounding through the house broke up the conference between the maids, and Janet went away to answer it, muttering, angrily:

"Lucy, I do wish we could change mistresses for awhile. I'm that tired with tramping up and down to wait on that ill-natered upstart that all my bones are sore."

So Bonnibel's circumstances and prospects were discussed in high life up-stairs, and by servantdom down-stairs, while she herself, the most interested party, was ignorant of it all.

How could she, whose torn heart was filled with one single aching memory, take note of all that went on about her?

She was still living in the past, and took small heed of the present. She thought Colonel Carlyle was still fond of Felise, and that his little kindnesses and attention to her were offered to her for her father's sake. She felt grateful to him, but that was all. She was not pleased when he came, nor sorry when he went. So, when the long, cold days of winter wore away and nature began to smile with the coming of a genial spring, and Colonel Carlyle could restrain his impatient ardor no longer, his proposal of marriage, worded with all the passion of a younger lover, came upon her with the suddenness of a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

"Surely, Mr. Carlyle, I have misunderstood your meaning," she said, looking up at him when he ceased to speak, with terror and fright in her large eyes. "You asked me to—to——"

"Tomarryme," said the colonel. "You have not misunderstood me, Bonnibel. I love you, my darling, as passionately as any young man could do. I ask you to give yourself to me for my cherished wife. It would be the sole aim of my life to make you happy. Will you be my wife, little darling?"

"Why, you—you are engaged to Miss Herbert," said Bonnibel, in surprise and reproach.

"I beg your pardon, my dear. I am not. I admire and esteem Miss Herbert very much, but I have never addressed a word of love to her. It isyouwhom I love—youwhom I wish to make my wife," exclaimed the ardent colonel.

"I certainly understood that you would marry Felise," answered Bonnibel, gravely.

"It was a very serious error on your part, my dear little girl, for I have been trying all the winter to make you see that I loved no one butyou."

"I never dreamed of such a thing," exclaimed the girl, in a tone of genuine distress.

"Then you are the only one who did not suspect it," said he, in a mortified tone. "The fact was very patent to all others."

Bonnibel looked down at the shimmering opal on her finger, and a blush of shame rose over her delicate features. She thought to herself, impulsively:

"This is dreadful for me—a wedded wife—to sit here and listen to such words without the power of protesting against them."

"Perhaps you think I am too old for you, my angel," said the colonel, breaking the silence; "but my heart and my feelings are much younger than my years. I could not have loved you more ardently thirty years ago. But if age is a fault in your eyes, my darling, I will atone for it by every indulgence on earth, and by a deathless devotion."

"Oh, pray, do not say another word, Colonel Carlyle. It can never be, sir. I can never be your wife!" exclaimed the girl, in deep agitation.

"But why not, my dearest girl?"

"I do not love you, sir," said the girl, cresting her graceful head half-haughtily upon her slender throat.

"I will teach you to love me, darling. Come, say that you will let me take you away from this house, where I can see that they hate you, and make your life more happy. I will do anything to further your happiness, Bonnibel," urged the colonel.

"What you wish is quite impossible, sir. I beg that you will dismiss the subject, my dear, kind friend, and forget it," repeated Bonnibel, earnestly.

"I will not takenofor an answer," replied the colonel, obdurately. "I have taken you by surprise, and you do not know your own mind, my dear little girl. I will give you a week to decide in. Think of all the advantages I can offer you, Bonnibel, and of my devoted love, and sayyeswhen I come back for your answer."

So saying he abruptly took his leave.

"Mother, Bonnibel has refused Colonel Carlyle."

Mrs. Arnold looked up from the sofa where she lay reading a novel by the gas-light with a start of surprise. Felise had come into the room as quietly as a spirit in her white dressing-gown.

"Mercy, Felise, how you startled me!" she exclaimed. "I had just got to such an exciting part where the heroine was just about to be murdered by her jealous rival when in you came with your long hair and trailing white wrapper, like Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep. I almost expected to hear you exclaim:

"'Here's the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand!'"

"You are quite dramatic to-night, mother—your novel must be an exciting one," said Felise, with a slight sneer. She came forward and sat down in a large easy-chair opposite her mother. She looked pale, and her eyes burned with repressed excitement.

"It is," said Mrs. Arnold, "the most thrilling book I have read lately. But what were you saying when you came in and frightened me so?"

"I said that Bonnibel hadrefusedColonel Carlyle," repeated Felise, distinctly.

Mrs. Arnold sat up with her fingers between the pages of her book, whose interesting perusal she felt loth to stop. She said, half stupidly:

"Oh, she has, has she? Well, it had to come to that, sooner or later, you know, my love."

"Indeed?" answered Felise, shortly.

"Well, you know we have been expecting it some time, Felise, ever since Colonel Carlyle lost his heart about her. I must say his conduct to you has not been that of a gentleman, my dear."

"I quite agree with you," said Felise dryly.

She was very quiet, but her small hands were tightly clenched. She seemed "to hold passion in a leash" by a strong effort of will.

"But how did you find it out?" inquired her mother, thinking that Felise was taking it quite calmly, after all.

"As I find out most things—by keeping my eyes and ears open!" retorted her daughter, tartly.

"When did it happen?"

"This afternoon, while you were out calling on the Trevertons."

"Was the old fool much cut up about it?" inquired Mrs. Arnold, inelegantly.

"He would not takenofor an answer," said Felise. "He wanted her to take time to think of all the advantages he offered her, and he is coming in a week to hear her decision."

"The silly old dotard!" ejaculated her mother. "Well, all he can get by his persistence is a second refusal."

Felise Herbert straightened herself in her chair, and looked at her mother with a strange smile on her face.

"I do not intend that he shall get asecond refusal!" she said, in a low voice that was very firm and incisive.

Mrs. Arnold stared at her daughter in blank surprise and incredulity.

"Why, Felise, what can you mean?" she inquired.

"I mean that Bonnibel Vere shall marry Colonel Carlyle!" her daughter answered, in the same low, determined voice.

"Why, my dear, you know it cannot be when she already has ahusband! Besides, I did not know that you wanted them to marry. I thought—I thought—" said Mrs. Arnold, stopping short because surprise had overpowered her.

She looked at the white figure sitting so quietly there in the arm-chair, with some apprehension. Had Felise's disappointment impaired her reason?

"You need not look at me so strangely, mother," said Felise. "I assure you I am not mad, as your eyes imply. I am as sane as you are; but I have said that Bonnibel Vere shall marry my recreant lover, and I mean to keep my word. She has stolen him from me, and now she shall marry him and get out of my way! Or perhaps you would prefer to keep her here to spoil the next eligible chance I get," said Felise, looking at her mother with burning eyes.

"I don't see how you can bring her to consent to such a thing, even if you are in earnest, my dear."

"You have got to help me, mother. You shall tell her that you will not allow her to refuse Colonel Carlyle—that she shall become his wife, and that if she does not revoke her rejection, you will turn her instantly into the street!"

"Felise, will you tell me why you are so determined upon their marriage? I supposed you were unwilling to it—it would be only natural for you to oppose it—but you seem as anxious for it as Colonel Carlyle himself. Again, I ask you why?

"Mother, I told you I would take revenge upon my rival. This is a part of my revenge. Their marriage will be the first act in the drama. Do not ask me how I am going to proceed. Let me work out my revenge in my own way. I owe them both a score. Never fear but I will pay it off with interest!"

"But, Felise, you must know that Bonnibel would sooner declare her secret marriage than be forced into another one. I can turn her into the street if you are determined upon it; but Iknow I cannot make a girl as truthful and pure as Bonnibel Vere knowingly become the wife of two husbands."

"I fully admit your inability to do that, mother. I do not intend to insist on your performance of impossibilities. As for Leslie Dane, look here!"'

She straightened out a folded paper she had carried in her bosom, and leaning forward pointed out a small paragraph to her mother.

Mrs. Arnold read the brief paragraph with starting eyes, then turned and looked at her daughter. She no longer kept her finger between the pages of her novel. It had slipped down upon the floor. She was getting absorbed in this tragedy in real life.

"Is it possible?" she exclaimed. "Felise, can it be true?"

"Why not?" was the cool interrogatory. "Such things happen often—don't they?

"'Every minute dies a man,Every minute one is born.'"

"Let me see the date," Mrs. Arnold said, bending forward. "Ah! it is very recent. Well, Iamsurprised. But yet it is a very fortunate occurrence, is it not? Of course it is genuine."

"Why, of course it is," said Felise, with a short, dry laugh. "How else could it be in the paper? They don't put such things in for sport, I suppose."

"Of course not; but it came upon me so suddenly I felt quite incredulous at first. Well, this puts a new face upon the matter, does it not, my dear?"

"Certainly, mother. I will show her this paper, and she cannot have any pretext for repeating her refusal in the face of the alternative with which you shall threaten her. I suppose any girl in her senses would marry Colonel Carlyle and his millions rather than be turned out homeless into the street."

She sat still a moment staring before her into futurity with lurid eyes that saw her revenge already, and curling lips that began to taste its sweetness in anticipation.

"When must I tell her, Felise?" inquired Mrs. Arnold.

"To-morrow, mother. There is no use in delaying matters. Let us bring the marriage about as speedily as possible. You will tell her to-morrow what she has to do, and I will be on hand with the paper."

She rose slowly.

"Well, I will go, and leave you to finish your novel," she said; "but if you take my advice you will retire instead. It is growing late. Good-night."

"Good-night, my love, and pleasant dreams," her mother answered.

She went out as quietly as she had entered, her dark hair flying wildly over her shoulders and her white robes trailing noiselessly after her. She was twisting her hands together, and again Mrs. Arnold thought of Lady Macbeth washing her hands and crying in her sleep, "Out, damned spot!"

Ah, Felise Herbert! There was a stain on your soul as red as that on Lady Macbeth's hand!

The morning after the rejection of Colonel Carlyle, Bonnibel Vere sat alone in a pleasant little morning-room that was thrown out from the main residence as a wing. It was daintily furnished in blue plush and walnut, and had double glass doors that looked out upon a lovely little garden that in this pleasant May season was glowing with bloom and fragrance.

Bonnibel had been trying to read, but in the perturbed state of her mind she could not fix her attention upon the book. It had fallen from her lap upon the floor, and as she sat in the luxurious arm-chair she leaned forward with her little chin buried in one pink palm and her blue eyes gazing into vacancy, as if lost in thought.

She looked very fair and sweet sitting there in a cool, white morning-dress, trimmed in lace and dotted about with several bows of black ribbon. Her beautiful hair, which was growing long and thick again, fell upon her shoulders in loose curls, like glints of sunshine.

She had broken a spray of white hyacinth and pinned it on her bosom, and she looked as pure and sweet as the flower itself.

"I am very sorry," she was thinking to herself, "that I was so unfortunate as to win Colonel Carlyle's affection. I certainly never dreamed of such a thing, and a year ago I should have laughed in the face of any old man who dared propose to me, and have told him I did not wish to marry my grandfather. Heigh-ho! I have grown graver now, and do not turn everything into a jest as I did then. Still, I wish it had not happened. I liked him simply as my father's friend, and I thought he liked me just as papa's daughter."

She sighed heavily.

"I think I understand some things now that have puzzled me all the winter," she mused. "He was Felise's lover when I first came, and I have unconsciously rivaled her. She hates me for it, and Aunt Arnold hates me, too. Ah! if they knew all that I knew they need not be afraid. Felise is welcome to him, and I will try to induce him to return to her. I never thought that Colonel Carlyle could have acted so basely toward her, as it seems he has——"

Mrs. Arnold's sudden entrance into the room interrupted her meditations. She looked so angry and overbearing that Bonnibel rose and was about leaving the room when she was recalled abruptly.

"Stay, Bonnibel; I wish to speak with you. Resume your seat, if you please."

Flushing with resentment at the insolent authority of the tone, Bonnibel turned and faced the lady with a gleam of pride shining in her blue eyes.

"Pardon me," she answered, coldly. "I will hear what you have to say standing."

"As you please," said Mrs. Arnold, with a sneer. "Perhaps your strength may not stand the ordeal, however."

Bonnibel stared at her in silent surprise.

"You have refused an offer of marriage from Colonel Carlyle," said Mrs. Arnold in a tone of deep displeasure.

Bonnibel's fair cheeks deepened their color ever so slightly.

"Yes, madam, I have," she answered after a moment's thought. "But I am ignorant of the means by which you became cognizant of the fact."

"It does not matter," Mrs. Arnold replied, flushing to a dark red under the clear pure eyes bent upon her. "Perhaps he told me himself. One would think that even so elderly a lover would consult a young lady's guardian and protector before addressing her! But no matter how I came by my information, you admit its truth."

"Certainly, madam," Bonnibel answered quietly, but wondering within herself what all this fencing meant. She was growing slightly nervous. The fair hands trembled slightly as they hung lightly clasped before her, and the white and red rose triumphed alternately in her cheek.

Mrs. Arnold stood resting her folded arms on the back of a chair, regarding the lovely young creature as if she had been a culprit before the bar of justice.

"May I ask what were your reasons for declining the honor Colonel Carlyle offered you?" she inquired in measured tones.

Bonnibel was half-tempted to deny Mrs. Arnold's right to ask such a question. With an effort she fought down the quick impulse, and answered in a voice as gentle as the other's was rude and self-assertive:

"I did not love him, Aunt Arnold!"

"Love! Love!" sneered the widow contemptuously. "What hadloveto do with the matter? You, a poor, penniless, dependent creature, to prate of love when such a man as Colonel Carlyle lays his millions at your feet! You should have jumped at the chance and thanked him for his condescension!"

The listener regarded her with horror and amazement. Her delicate lips quivered with feeling, and her eyes were misty with unshed tears.

"Surely, Aunt Arnold," she said, questioningly, "you would not have had me accept Colonel Carlyle simply for his gold?"

"Yes, I would, though," answered Mrs. Arnold roughly, "and what is more, I intend that youshallaccept him, Bonnibel Vere! Girl, you must have been mad to dream of refusing such a splendid offer. When Colonel Carlyle returns for his final answer you will tell him that your first refusal was only a girlish freak of coquetry, to try his love, and that you accept his offer gratefully."

Bonnibel's cheeks turned as white as her dress, a mist rose before her eyes, shutting out the sight of her aunt's angry face.

She staggered and put out her hand to steady herself by a chair. Mrs. Arnold regarded her with an air of cold insolence.

"I thought you would find it rather beyond your strength to stand before our conversation was over," she remarked, with slight sarcasm.

Bonnibel did not seem to hear the last shaft of malice. Sheanswered the preceding words in a voice that she strove to render steady and controlled.

"I cannot recognize your right to dictate to me in a matter that concerns myself alone, madam."

Mrs. Arnold listened to the proud, calm tones in furious wrath.

"You defy my authority? You refuse to obey me?" she broke out angrily.

"Your violence leaves me no other alternative, Aunt Arnold," said the young girl, trying hard to speak calmly. "I do not wish to marry yet, and the man whom you wish me to accept as a husband, could never be the choice of my heart. I cannot understand why you should wish to force me into a marriage so unsuitable."

The graceful, womanly dignity of the young girl's words and manner made no impression on the coarse woman's nature. She only saw before her the girl she had hated ever since her innocent babyhood, the girl whose peerless beauty had come between Felise and her brilliant prospects. She broke out in a passionate resentment:

"Because I want to be rid of you, girl! You have been a tumbling-block in my path your whole life, and I hate the very sight of your baby-face! But I took pity on you and cared for you when poverty came upon you. In return for my kindness you stole my daughter's lover! Now you shall marry him and get out of her way. It is the only reparation you can make her. Do you think I will allow you to refuse Colonel Carlyle, and remain here to cheat her out of the next eligible chance that offers? Never!"

It was hard work for the listener to be so fiercely assailed by this woman and not break out into the angry remonstrances that were swelling in her heart. But Bonnibel had learned the difficult art of self-control lately. She reflected to herself that it was but natural that Mrs. Arnold should feel sore over the disappointment and humiliation of her clever, handsome daughter.

"I am very sorry to hear that you hate me so much," she said, a little sadly. "I have had no one to love me since Uncle Francis died, and I hoped I might win a little place in his wife's heart. But you wrong me, indeed, in charging me with stealing Felise's lover. I never dreamed of winning him away from her; I was deceived by his interest in me, thinking it was simply because he had been a friend and comrade of my dear papa. I might have known better, you say. Perhaps I might, but I was blinded by private troubles of my own, and scarcely heeded what went on around me. I am very sorry I have been the innocent cause of pain to Felise."

"Spare her the additional mortification of your sympathy," was the ironical answer. "I think she can bear the old dotard's desertion. She does not desire your regrets, and I believe I have named the only reparation possible for you."

"And that?" said the girl, slowly.

"Is to marry Colonel Carlyle and get out of her way," was the harsh reply.

"I cannot do that," said Bonnibel, hurriedly. "It is impossiblefor me to marry Colonel Carlyle—there are many reasons why I should not. As to the other, I will——"

She was about to add, "I will go away from here," but a sickening thought flashed across her.Wherecould she go?

She had no relative to fly to in her trouble. She did not know how to work and take care of herself. She had never learned anything useful, and her education had been mostly limited to those showy, superficial accomplishments in vogue in the fashionable world. She had five hundred fashionable friends, but not one to whom she could turn for comfort in this her dark hour.

"You say you cannot marry Colonel Carlyle," said Mrs. Arnold, breaking in on her troubled silence. "Listen to the only alternative that is left you. I give you until he returns for his answer to decide in. If you do not then accept him you shall no longer have the shelter of my roof. Yes, in the very hour that you refuse Carlyle's millions, I will turn you out homeless into the streets!"

Into the streets! How the words grated on the girl's horrified hearing. She had seen them take up a dead girl from the street once, a girl as young and fair almost as herself.

They said she had poisoned herself because she had no home. They took her away to the Morgue, but Bonnibel had never forgotten that fair, still face as it lay cold in death.

She recalled it now with a shiver. Some one had turned the poor girl into the streets to die. Would that be her fate?

A deadly weakness stole over her. She dropped into a chair like one shot, and Mrs. Arnold as she stood near her could hear the loud, wild beating of her heart. Her little white hands trembled, and her cheeks and lips turned white as marble.

"Aunt Arnold," she said, looking up at the cruel, relentless woman, "you would not do that, surely? I should have nowhere to go, and I am so terribly afraid of the night and the darkness in the dreadful streets of the city!"

"No matter," sneered the listener. "You can go to one of the finest houses in the city if you like, and have every luxury that wealth can command—but if you refuse that, out you go from under the shelter of this roof!"

There was the sound of some one singing in the flower-garden outside.

It was Felise. She came in with one handful of roses, while the other held a newspaper which she was studying with a thoughtful brow.

"Bonnibel," she said, abruptly, "do you recollect that young artist, Leslie Dane, who used to visit at Sea View last summer?"

A wave of color drifted into the girl's white cheek. She looked up quickly into the thoughtful face of Felise.

"Yes," she answered, "what of him, Felise?"

"Did he not go to Rome to study painting?" inquired the artful girl.

"That was his intention, I believe," said Bonnibel, wondering what was coming now.

"I thought so. There can be no mistake, then—poor fellow! Look here, Bonnibel."

She put the paper she carried into the young girl's hand, and touched her taper finger to a marked paragraph.

Bonnibel's eyes followed the jeweled finger and read the few lines with staring gaze, mutely conscious of the overpowering scent of the roses that Felise carried in her hand.

Ever afterward Bonnibel associated roses with the thought of death.

"Died on the 10th of April, at Rome, Italy, of malarial fever, Leslie Dane, in the 24th year of his age. Mr. Dane was an artist and a native of the United States of America.Requiescat in pace."

Felise was prepared to see her rival fall fainting at her feet.

She expected nothing less from the shock to the girl's already overwrought feelings, and in anticipation she already gloated over the sight of her sufferings.

But she was mistaken. Bonnibel neither screamed nor fainted. She sat like one dazed for a moment, her blue eyes riveted to the paper, and her face growing white as death, while the two women who hated her watched her with looks of triumph.

The next instant, with a bound like that of a wounded fawn seeking some leafy covert in which to die, she sprang from her seat and rushed from the room, clenching the fatal paper in her hand.

They could hear her light feet flying along the hall and up the stairs to her own especial apartments.

The two wicked women looked at each other blankly.

"I did not expect her to take it that way," said Mrs. Arnold.

"Nor I," returned Felise. "I looked for a fainting spell, or some kind of a tragic scene at least."

"Perhaps she does not care much after all," suggested Mrs. Arnold. "She is young, and the young are proverbially fickle. She may have ceased to love him."

"No, she has not. I am confident of that, mother. Her face looked dreadful when she went out. She is too proud to let us see how she is wounded—that is all. She turned as white as a dead woman while she was reading, and there was a hunted, desperate look in her eyes. Depend upon it she is terribly stricken."

"Do you think she will consent to marry Colonel Carlyle now, Felise?"

"I rather think she will after the awful alternative you placed before her."

"Did you hear our conversation, my dear?"

"Every word of it, mother. I must say you sustained your part splendidly. I feared you would not display sufficient firmness, but you came off with flying colors."

Mrs. Arnold smiled. She was well-pleased at her daughter's praise, for though her life was devoted to the service of Felise,this scheming girl seldom gave her a word or smile of commendation. She answered quickly:

"I am glad you were pleased, my love. I tried to be as positive as you wished me to be. I fancied I heard you under the window once."

"I was there," said Felise, with a laugh.

"She was very much shocked when I threatened to turn her out of doors," said Mrs. Arnold. "She looked at me quite wildly."

"She will be more shocked when she finds you meant every word, for, mother, if she does not accept Colonel Carlyle, you shall certainly drive her away!" exclaimed Felise, and a wild and lurid gleam of hatred fired her eyes as she spoke, that boded evil to the fair and innocent girl upon whom she had sworn to take a terrible revenge.

Bonnibel flew up the stairs to her own room, still clenching the fatal paper tightly in her hand, and locking her door, threw herself downward upon the carpet and lay there like one dead.

She had not fainted. Every nerve was keenly alive and quivering with pain. Her heart was beating in great, suffocating throbs, her throat felt stiff and choked as if compressed by an iron hand, and her head ached terribly as if someone had hurled a heavy stone upon it.

Her whole being seemed to be but one great pulse of intense agony, yet she lay still and moveless, save that now and then a convulsive clutch of the small hand pressed to her throat showed that life still inhabited that beautiful frame.

Life! The thought came to her suddenly and painfully. She raised herself slowly and heavily, as if the weight of her sorrow crushed her down to earth, and the full realization of the terrible change broke over her. Leslie Dane wasdead. That graceful form, that handsome face was hidden beneath the damp earth mould. The dark eyes of her artist husband would never shine down upon her again with the love-light beaming in them, those lips whose smiles she had loved so well would never press hers again as they had done that night when he had blessed her and called her his wife. Butshe—she was a living, agonized creature, the plaything of fate—oh, God! she thought, clasping her hands together wildly, oh, God! that she were dead and lying in the grave with the loved one she would never see again. She felt in all its passionate intensity the force of another's heart-wrung utterance.

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