"Of all that life can teach us,There's naught so true as this;The winds of fate blow ever,But ever blow amiss!"
"Of all that life can teach us,There's naught so true as this;The winds of fate blow ever,But ever blow amiss!"
The brief winter day came at length, gloomy and overcast, with clouded sky that overflowed with a wild, tempestuous rain, as though
"The heart of Heaven was breakingIn tears o'er the fallen earth."
"The heart of Heaven was breakingIn tears o'er the fallen earth."
At night the storm passed over, the bright stars shone through the misty veil of darkness, a lovely silver moon hung its crescent in the sky. All things seemed propitious for the hour that was "big with fate" to the lovely girl whose changing fortunes we have followed to the turning point of her life.
Cold, and dark, and gloomy though it seemed outside, all was light, and warmth, and summer in the splendid chateau.
Hot-house flowers bloomed everywhere in the most lavish profusion. The air was heavy with their fragrance.
Entrancing strains of music echoed through the splendid halls, tempting light feet to the gay whirl of the dance. The splendid drawing-rooms, opening into each other, looked like long vistas of fairy-land, in the glow of light, and the beauty shed around by countless flowers overflowing great marble vases everywhere. The gay masquers moved through the entrancing scene, chatting, laughing, dancing, as though life itself were but one long revel. In the banqueting hall the long tables were loaded with every luxury under the sun, temptingly spread on gold and silver plates. Nothing that taste could devise, or wealth could procure, was lacking for the enjoyment of the guests; and pleasure reigned supreme.
It was almost the hour for unmasking, and Colonel Carlyle stood alone, half hidden by a crimson-satin curtain, looking on idly at the gay dancers before him.
He felt weary and dull, though he would not have owned it for the world. He hated to feel the weakness and feebleness of old age creeping over him, as it was too surely doing, and affected to enter into all the gaieties of the season, with the zest and ardor of a younger and stronger man.
He had for a few moments felt dull, sad and discontented. The reason was because he had lost sight of his beautiful idol whom no mask could hide from his loving eyes.
She had disappeared in the moving throng a little while ago, and now he impatiently waited until some happy chance should restore her to his sight again.
"I am very foolish over my darling," he said to himself, half proudly, half seriously. "I do not believe that any young man could worship her as passionately as I do. I watch over her as closely and jealously as if some dread mischance might remove her from my sight at any moment. Ah, those dreadful two years in which I so cruelly put her out of my life and starved my eyes and my heart—would that I might recall them and undo their work! Those years of separation and repentance have sadly aged me!"
He sighed heavily, and again his anxious gaze roved through the room.
"Ah, there she is," he murmured, delightedly. "My beautiful Bonnibel! how I wish the time for unmasking would come. I cannot bear for her sweet face to be hidden from my sight."
At that moment a small hand fluttered down upon his arm.
He turned abruptly.
Beside him stood a woman whose dark eyes shone through her concealing mask like coals of fire. She spoke in a low, unfamiliar voice:
"I know you, sir. Your mask cannot hide Colonel Carlyle from my eyes."
"Madam, you have the advantage of me," he answered politely. "Will you accord me the privilege of your name?"
"It matters not," she answered, with a low, eerie laugh, whose strangeness sent a cold thrill like an icy chill along his veins, "I am but a wandering sibyl; I claim no name, no country."
"Perhaps you will foretell my future," he said, humoring her assumption of the character.
"It were best concealed," she said, and again he heard that strange, blood-curdling laugh.
He bowed and stood gazing at her silently, wondering a little who she could be.
The wandering sibyl stood silent, too, as if lost in thought. Presently she started and spoke like one waking from a dream:
"And yet perhaps I may give you a word of warning."
"Pray do so," he answered carelessly, for his eyes had returned to the graceful form of Bonnibel as she stood leaning against a tall stand of flowers at a little distance from him.
The woman's eyes followed his. She frowned darkly beneath her mask.
"You have gathered many distinguished guests around you to-night, Colonel Carlyle," she said, abruptly.
"None more honored than yourself, madam, be sure, although unknown," he answered, with a courtly bow.
"Pretty words," she answered, with a mocking laugh. "Let me repay them by a friendly warning."
She bent nearer and breathed in a low, sibilant whisper:
"Your wife and the great artist who is your honored guest to-night, were lovers long ago. Watch well how they meet when unmasked to-night!"
With the words she glided from him like the serpent forsaking Eden.
And that deadly serpent, jealousy, that had lain dormant in the colonel's heart for months, "scotched but not killed," now coiled itself anew for a fatal spring.
The blood in his veins seemed turning to liquid fire.
His heart beat so wildly that he could distinctly hear its rapid throbs.
He felt frightened at the swiftness and violence of the passion that flooded his whole being.
The words spoken by the masked woman seemed to burn themselves into his heart.
"Your wife and the great artist who is your honored guest to-night were lovers long ago. Watch well how they meet when unmasked to-night."
For a moment Reason tried to assert her supremacy, and whisper, "Peace, be still," to the seething whirlpool of emotion.
"Do not believe it," she said. "Someone is trying to tease you. It is quite impossible that Bonnibel and this foreign artist should have met before. Anonymous warnings should always be treated with contempt."
And then he remembered the anonymous note he had received at Long Branch two years before.
"Thatwas true," he said to himself. "Bonnibel as good as admitted it, for she would not show me the inscription in the ring, and she refused to give up wearing it. But she said that the giver was dead. Had she had two lovers, then, innocent and youthful as she was? Perhaps she deceived me. Women are not to be trusted, they say. I will obey the warning of my unknown friend and watch."
He waited impatiently for the summons to supper, which would be the signal for laying aside the masks.
"It must be true," he said to himself, "for that would explain why he was so discourteous about painting her portrait. He did not wish to be thrown into familiar contact with her again. Perhaps she had used him cruelly. It may be that she threw him over because he was poor and unknown, then, and accepted me only for the sake of my wealth."
He was nearly maddened by these tumultuous thoughts. He was almost on the point of going to her at once and overwhelming her with the accusation of her wrong-doing.
At that moment the signal came and his guests unmasked.
He saw Monsieur Favart coming toward him accompanied by a handsome distinguished-looking young man in the costume of a knight. He had never met the great Roman artist, yet he felt a quick intuition that this must be the man. The premonition was verified for Monsieur Favart paused before him and said:
"Colonel Carlyle, it gives me pleasure to present my artist friend, Mr. Dane."
The two gentlemen bowed to each other, but for a moment Colonel Carlyle could not speak. When he did his voice was hoarse and strained, and his words of welcome were so few that Monsieur Favart looked at him in surprise. What had become of the old colonel's urbanity and courtliness?
"You will allow me to present you to my wife, Mr. Dane," said the host, breaking the silence with an effort.
The artist bowed and they moved down the long room side by side, the old man with his white face and silvery beard, the young one with his princely grace and refined beauty.
Leslie Dane had been most reluctant to attend the ball given by the American colonel, but Carl Muller had teased him into compliance. He had nerved himself for the trial, and found that he could bear the contact with one from his native land with moresang froidthan he expected.
"Now I shall see the old lady," was his half-smiling comment to himself as he walked along. "I wonder if she is very angry with me because I would not paint her portrait."
The next moment, before he had time to raise his eyes, he found himself bowing hurriedly at the sound of his host's voice uttering the usual formal words of introduction.
Bonnibel was standing alone by a talljardiniereof flowers, looking downward a little thoughtfully. She was dressed as Undine, in a floating robe of sea-green, with billows of snowy tulle, looped with water-lilies and sea-grasses, and lightly embroidered with pearls and tiny sea-shells. Her appropriate ornaments wereaquamarinesin a setting of golden shells. Her long, golden hair fell unbound over her shoulders and rippled to her waist, enveloping her form in a halo of brightness. She looked like a beautiful siren of old ocean, as fair and fresh and beautiful as Venus when she first arose from its coral caves.
Someone had said to her just a moment before, "Mrs. Carlyle, you look like a beautiful picture," and the words had recalled to her mind the great artist who had refused to paint her portrait.
"I wonder if Mr.Deaneis here to-night," she was thinking, when Colonel Carlyle's voice spoke suddenly beside her, and she bowed haughtily, actuated by a little feeling of pique, and lifted her sea-blue eyes to the face of the artist. She met his gaze fixed steadily upon her with a look of utter surprise, bitter pain and bitterer scorn upon his deathly pale face. In an instant the tide of time rolled backward and these two, standing face to face the first time in years, knew each other!
Ah, me! how could she bear the revelation that flashed over her so swiftly, and live through its horror, its shame and disgrace! The words she had been about to speak died unutteredon her lips, the lights, the flowers, the stern, set face of Leslie Dane, all swam before her eyes as things "seen in a glass, darkly." She threw up her hands blindly and reeled backward, striking against the lightjardiniereas she fell. It was overturned by the shock, and scattered its wealth of flowers about her as she lay there unconscious, as beautiful, as fragile, as innocent as they.
For a moment neither Colonel Carlyle nor Leslie Dane moved or spoke. It was a third person who pushed past them and lifted the fair, inanimate form. For Colonel Carlyle, there was murder seething in his jealous heart that moment, and in the breast of Leslie Dane a grand scorn was strangling every emotion of pity.
"Falser than all fancy fathoms,Falser than all songs have sung,"
"Falser than all fancy fathoms,Falser than all songs have sung,"
was the thought in his heart as he looked down on the pale and lifeless face.
People crowded around, with advice and restoratives, and as she came back slowly to life they asked her what had caused her to faint. Was she ill, were the flowers too overpowering, were the rooms too warm?
"I struck my head against thejardiniereand fell," was all she would say as she hid her pale face in her hands to shut out the sight of the cold, calm eyes that looked down upon her with veiled scorn.
Colonel Carlyle revived sufficiently to lead her away to her room, and people told each other that an accident had happened to Mrs. Carlyle. She had struck her head against thejardiniereof flowers and fainted from the pain.
Colonel Carlyle would fain have lingered in Bonnibel's apartment and asked for some explanation of her fainting spell, which he was convinced was the result of her meeting with the artist, although her simple assertion of striking her head against thejardinierehad deceived all others except himself, as it might have deceived him but for the warning of the masked sibyl.
But it was quite true that she had hurt her head, and when the faithful Lucy parted the thick locks and began to dress the slight wound, her young mistress turned so ghastly pale and closed her eyes so wearily that the jealous old man saw that it was no fitting time for recrimination, and went away to attend to his guests, half-resolved to have it out with the artist himself.
But calmer thoughts stepped in and forbade this indulgence of his spleen. After all, what could he say to the young man? What did he know wherewith to accuse him? His anonymous informant had only said that his wife and the artist had been former lovers. What, then? How the gay world would have laughed if he picked a quarrel with the lion of the hour on such a charge as that.
Many of the women whom Colonel Carlyle knew would have deemed it an honor to have been loved either in the past or presentby the gifted artist. No, there was nothing he could say to the man on the subject, yet he determined that he would at least watch him closely, and if—if there should be even the faintest attempt on his part to revive the intimacy of the past, then woe unto him, for Colonel Carlyle was nerved to almost any act of frenzy.
Bonnibel lifted her head when the colonel was gone and looked at her faithful attendant with a face on which death itself seemed to have set its seal.
"Oh, me! Miss Bonnibel, you are as white as a ghost," exclaimed Lucy. "And no wonder! It is a bad cut, though not very deep. Does it hurt you very much?"
"What are you talking of, Lucy? Whatshouldhurt me?" inquired her mistress in a wild, startled tone, showing that she had quite forgotten her wound.
"Why, the cut on your head, to be sure," said Lucy in surprise.
"Oh! Heaven, I had forgotten that," moaned the poor young creature. "I do not feel the pain, Lucy, for the wound in my heart is much deeper. It is of that only I am thinking."
She bowed her face in her hands and deep, smothered moans shook her from head to foot. The delicate frame reeled and shook with emotion like some slender reed shaken by a storm.
Lucy knelt down at her feet and implored her mistress to tell her what she could do to help her in her trouble, whatever it might be.
"Miss Bonnibel," she urged, "tell me something that I can do for you—anything, no matter what, to help you out of your trouble if I can."
Bonnibel hushed her sobs by a great effort of will, and looked down at the faithful creature.
"Bring me my writing-desk, Lucy," she said, "and I will tell you what you can do for me."
Lucy complied in wondering silence.
Bonnibel took out a creamy white sheet, smooth as satin, and wrote a few lines upon it with a shaking hand. Then she dashed her pen several times through the elaborate monogram "B.C." at the top of the sheet.
"Lucy," she said, as she inclosed her note in an envelope and hastily addressed it, "do you remember a gentleman who used to visit at Sea View before my Uncle Francis died—a Mr. Dane?"
"Perfectly well, ma'am," Lucy responded, promptly. "He was an artist."
"Yes, he was an artist. Should you know him again, Lucy?"
"I think I should, ma'am. He was very handsome, with dark eyes and hair," said the girl, who was by no means behind her sex in her appreciation of manly beauty.
"He is down-stairs now, Lucy—he is one of our guests to-night," said Bonnibel, with a heavy sigh.
"Is it possible, ma'am?" exclaimed the girl, in surprise. "I thought—at least I heard—Miss Herbert's maid told me a long while ago that Mr. Dane was dead."
"There was some mistake," answered Bonnibel, drearily. "He is alive—I have seen him. And now, Lucy, I will tell you what I wish you to do."
The girl stood listening attentively.
"You will take this note, my good girl, and go down-stairs and put it in the hands of Mr. Dane, if you can find him. Try and deliver it to him unobserved, and bring me back his answer."
"I will find him if he is to be found anywhere," said Lucy, taking the note and departing on her secret mission.
Leslie Dane's first passionate impulse after his abrupt meeting with his lost wife was to leave the house which sheltered her false head.
But as he was about to put his resolve into execution he was accosted by a group of ladies and detained for half an hour listening to an idle hum of words, from which he longed to tear himself away in the frenzy of scorn and indignation which possessed him.
At length he excused himself, and was about passing through the deserted hall on his way out when he encountered Bonnibel's maid.
Lucy had, like many illiterate persons, a keen recollection of faces. She knew the artist immediately.
"You are Mr. Dane," she said, going up to him after a keen glance around to see if she were unobserved.
"Yes," he answered, looking at her in wonder.
"I have a note for you, sir. Please read it and give me an answer at once."
He took it, tore off the envelope, and read the few lines that Bonnibel had penned, while a frown gathered on his brow.
"Well, sir?"
"Wait a moment."
He took a gold pencil from his pocket and hastily scribbled a few lines on the back of Bonnibel's sheet. Lucy, watching him curiously under the glare of gas-light, saw that he was deadly pale, and trembled like a leaf.
"Give this to your mistress," he said, putting the sheet back in the torn envelope, "and tell her that I am gone."
He turned away and walked rapidly out of sight.
Lucy sighed, she could not have told why, and turned back along the hall.
"Hold, girl!" exclaimed a hoarse, passionate voice behind her.
She turned in a fright, and saw Colonel Carlyle just behind her, his features distorted by rage and passion. He caught her arm violently and tore the note from her grasp.
"I will myself deliver this note to your mistress," he said, "and as for you, girl, go!"
He dragged her along the hallway to the open door, and pushed her out violently into the street, bareheaded and with no wrapping to protect her frail, womanly form from the rigors of the wintry night.
"Go, creature!" he thundered after her, "go, false minion of a false woman, and never darken these doors again with your hated presence!"
Lucy sank down upon the wet and sleety pavement with a moan of pain, and Colonel Carlyle closed and locked the door upon her defenseless form.
Rage had transformed the courteous old man into something more fiend-like than human.
As soon as he had disposed of his wife's attendant so summarily he turned his attention to the note he had wrested from her reluctant grasp.
Retiring into a deserted ante-room he opened and read it as coolly as if it had been addressed to himself.
What he read caused the veins to start out upon his forehead like great twisted cords, and his lips to writhe, while his face grew purple, and his eyes almost started from their sockets.
Bonnibel had written:
"Leslie, forgive me if you can. Before God, I wronged you innocently! I thought youdead! If there is one spark of pity or honor in your breastkeep my secret. It wouldkillme to have it known to theworld! I will go away from here and hide myself in obscurity forever! Of course I cannot remain with Colonel Carlyle a day longer. You seemed very angry to-night—your eyes flashed lurid lightnings upon me. I pray you, do not believe me willfully guilty—do not betray me for the sake of revenge! The shame, the horror, the disgrace ofour fatal secretwill kill me soon enough.Bonnibel."
"Leslie, forgive me if you can. Before God, I wronged you innocently! I thought youdead! If there is one spark of pity or honor in your breastkeep my secret. It wouldkillme to have it known to theworld! I will go away from here and hide myself in obscurity forever! Of course I cannot remain with Colonel Carlyle a day longer. You seemed very angry to-night—your eyes flashed lurid lightnings upon me. I pray you, do not believe me willfully guilty—do not betray me for the sake of revenge! The shame, the horror, the disgrace ofour fatal secretwill kill me soon enough.
Bonnibel."
Looking at the top of the page he saw that she had dashed her pen several times through her monogram. He gnashed his teeth at the sight.
"What could she possibly mean by it?" he asked himself, as he turned the sheet and read the artist's reply:
"Do not fear for your proud position, Bonnibel. Mine is the last hand upon earth that would drag you down from it! Pursue your wonted way in peace and serenity. You need not go away—that is for me to do. God knows I would never have come here to-night had I dreamed of meetingyou! But try to forget it! To-morrow I shall have passed out of your life forever, and that most deplorablesecretwill be as safe with me as if I really were dead!Leslie Dane."
"Do not fear for your proud position, Bonnibel. Mine is the last hand upon earth that would drag you down from it! Pursue your wonted way in peace and serenity. You need not go away—that is for me to do. God knows I would never have come here to-night had I dreamed of meetingyou! But try to forget it! To-morrow I shall have passed out of your life forever, and that most deplorablesecretwill be as safe with me as if I really were dead!
Leslie Dane."
Colonel Carlyle crumpled those strange, unfathomable notes into his breast-pocket, and went out with ominous calm to bid adieu to his parting guests.
They had enjoyed themselves so much, they said, and with many regrets for Mrs. Carlyle's unfortunate accident they hastened their departure.
Bonnibel sat crouching in her chair, a prey to the most hopeless misery, waiting for Lucy's return.
She was stunned and bewildered by the force and suddenness of the blow that had stricken her.
One tangible thought alone ran through the mass of confused and conflicting feeling.
It was that she must fly, at all hazards, from her humiliating position in Colonel Carlyle's house.
She did not know where she would go, or how she would manage her flight. She would leave it all to Lucy.
The girl was clear-headed and intelligent. They would go away together, and Lucy would find a hiding-place somewhere for her wretched head.
But, oh! the shame, the misery of it all!
Leslie Dane was alive, yet she who was his wife in the sight of Heaven dare not rejoice in the knowledge. His resurrection from his supposed death had fixed a blighting hand upon her beautiful brow.
"Oh, God!" she moaned, wringing her white hands helplessly, "what have I done to deserve this heavy cross?"
The minutes passed slowly, but Lucy did not return. The little Frenchpenduleon the mantel chimed the quarters of the hour three times while Bonnibel sat drooping in her chair alone. Then the door was pushed rudely open and Colonel Carlyle entered.
In her dumb agony the creature failed to look up or even to distinguish the difference in the step of Colonel Carlyle.
"You saw him, Lucy?" she asked, without lifting her head.
There was no reply.
She looked up in surprise at the girl's silence and saw Colonel Carlyle standing in the center of the room regarding her fixedly.
Bonnibel had seen him jealous and enraged before, but she had never seen him look as he did then.
The veins stood on his forehead like thick, knotted cords. His face was purple with excitement, his eyes glared like those of a wild animal, his hands were clenched. It seemed as though he only restrained himself by a powerful effort of will from springing upon and rending her to pieces.
Thus convulsed and speechless he stood gazing down upon her.
"Oh, Colonel Carlyle, you are ill," she exclaimed, regarding him in terror. "Shall I not ring for assistance?"
He did not answer, but continued to gaze upon her in the same stony silence.
Fearing that he was suddenly seized with some kind of a fit, she sprang up and shook him violently by the arm.
But he shook off her grasp with such force and passion that she lost her balance and fell heavily to the floor.
Half stunned by the violence of the fall she lay quite still a moment, with closed eyes and gasping breath.
He looked at her as she lay there like a broken flower, but made no effort to assist her.
Presently the dark blue eyes flashed open and looked up at him with a quiet scorn in their lovely depths. She made no effort to rise, and when she spoke her voice startled him with its tragic ring.
"Finish your work, Colonel Carlyle," she said, in those deeptones. "I will thank you and bless you if you will strike one fatal blow that shall lay me dead at your feet."
Something in the words or the tone struck an arrow of remorse into his soul. He bent down and lifted the slight form, gently placing her back in her chair.
"Pardon me," he said, coldly, "I did not mean to hurt you, but you should not have touched me. I could not bear the touch of your hand."
She lifted her fair face and looked at him in wonder.
"Colonel Carlyle, what have I done toyou?" she asked, in a voice of strange pathos.
"You have wronged me," he answered, bitterly.
Her face blanched to a hue even more deathly than before, at his meaning words. What did he suspect? What did he know?
"I know all," he continued, sternly.
For a moment she dropped her face in her hands and turned crimson from brow to throat under his merciless gaze, then she looked up at him proudly, and said, almost defiantly:
"If, indeed, you know all, Colonel Carlyle, you know, of a truth, that I did not wrong you willfully."
He was silent a moment, drawing her crumpled note from his breast and smoothing out the folds.
"This is all I know," he said, holding it up before her eyes. "This tells me that you have wronged me, that you have a dreadful secret—you and the man at whose feet you fainted to-night. You must tell me that secret now."
"Where did you get the note?" she panted, breathlessly.
"Perhaps the artist gave it to me!" he sneered.
"I will not believe it," she said, passionately. "Lucy—where is Lucy?"
"She is out in the street where I thrust her when I found her with this note," he answered, harshly. "It is enough that my roof must shelter a false wife, it shall not protect her false minion!"
"Out in the street!" gasped Bonnibel, hoarsely. "In the cold and the darkness. My poor Lucy! Let me go, too, then; I will find her and go away with her. We will neither of us trouble you!"
She was rushing to the door, but he pushed her back into her seat, locked the door and put the key into his pocket.
"We will see if you shall disgrace me thus," he cried out. "You would fly from me, you said. And where? Perhaps to the arms of your artist-lover! You would heap this disgrace on the head of an old man, whose only fault has been that he loved you too well and trusted you too blindly."
She shivered as he denounced her so cruelly; but not one word of defiance came from her pale, writhing lips. The fair face was hidden in her hands, the golden hair fell about her like a veil.
"But I will protect my honor," he continued, harshly. "I will see that you do not desert me and make my name a by-word for the scorn of the world. You shall stay with me, even though I am tempted to hate you; you shall stay with me if I have to keep youimprisonedto save my honor!"
She looked up at him wildly.
"Oh, for God's sake, let me go!" she said. "In pity for me, in pity for yourself, let me go away from you forever! It is wrong for me to stay—I ought to go, I must go! Let the world say what it will—tell them I am dead, or tell them I am mad, and chained in the walls of a mad-house! Tell them anything that will save your honorable name from shame, but let me go from under this roof, where I cannot breathe—where the air stifles me!"
"It must indeed be a fatal secret that can make you rave so wildly," he answered, bitterly. "Let me hear it, Bonnibel, and judge for myself if it is sufficient to exile my wife from my home and heart."
She shivered at the words.
"Oh! indeed it is sufficient," she moaned, wringing her hands in anguish. "I implore you to let me go."
"Let me be the judge," he answered again. "Tell me your reasons for this wild step."
She was silent from sheer despair.
"Bonnibel, will you tell me the secret?" he urged, feverishly.
"I cannot. I cannot! Do not ask me!" she answered pleadingly.
"What if I demand it from Mr. Dane?" he said, threateningly.
"I do not believe he will tell you," she answered bitterly. "If he did you would regret that you learned it. Oh! believe me, Colonel Carlyle, that 'ignorance is bliss' to you in this case. Oh! be merciful and let me go!"
"Would you know what answer your artist lover sent to your wild appeal?" he exclaimed abruptly.
She looked at him wildly. He straightened out the sheet and read over the words that Leslie Dane had written, in a bitter, mocking tone.
"Leslie Dane," he repeated. "Leslie Dane! Why, this is the first time I have caught the villain's name aright! It seems familiar. I have heard it somewhere long ago—let me think."
In a sudden excess of excitement he dropped the note and paced furiously up and down the room. Bonnibel watched him forlornly under her drooping lashes.
He stopped suddenly with a violent start, and looked at her sternly.
"I have it now," he said triumphantly. "My God! it is worse than I thought; but when I knew his real name it all rushed over me! Yes, Bonnibel, I know the fatal secret now, that you, oh! my God, share with that miserable wretch!"
"Oh! no, you cannot know it," she breathed!
"I do know it," he answered sternly. "I remember it all now. Leslie Dane is that guilty man who rests at this moment under the charge of murdering your uncle!"
"It is false!" she exclaimed, confronting him indignantly. "No one ever breathed such a foul aspersion upon Leslie Dane but you!"
"Great God! do you deny it?" he exclaimed in genuine surprise and amazement. "Surely your brain is turned, Bonnibel. Everyone knows that Leslie Dane was convicted of the murderon circumstantial evidence; everyone knows that he fled the country and has been in hiding ever since. But the fatal charge is still hanging over his head."
"I have never heard such a thing before, never! And I would believe that Leslie Dane was guiltless in the face of all the evidence in the world! He is the very soul of honor! He could not do a cowardly act to save his life!" exclaimed Bonnibel, springing up in a fever of passionate excitement.
Colonel Carlyle was fairly maddened by her words.
"You shall see whether he be guilty or not," he exclaimed, leaving the room in a rage.
Bonnibel heard the key grate in the lock outside, and discovered, to her dismay, that she was Colonel Carlyle's prisoner in truth.
"You went off from the ball in a hurry last night, Leslie. Why did you not stop for me?"
It was Carl Muller who spoke. He had come into Mr. Dane's rooms the morning after the ball and found him sitting over a cup of coffee, looking haggard and weary in the clear light of day.
"Excuse me, Carl," he responded. "The actual truth is, I forgot you. I was tired and wanted to come away, and I did so,sans ceremonie."
"Well, you look fagged and tired out, that's a fact. I never saw you look so ill. Have a smoke; it will clear the mist from your brain."
"Thank you, no," said the artist, briefly.
Carl sat down on a chair and hummed a few bars of a song while he regarded his friend in some surprise at his altered looks.
"I was sorry you went off without me, last night," he said presently. "I wanted to chaff you a little. Weren't you surprised and abashed when you found that the old woman whose portrait you declined to paint was the loveliest angel in the world?"
"It was quite a surprise," Mr. Dane said, sipping hiscafe au laitcomposedly.
"Did you ever see such a beautiful young creature?" continued Carl, with enthusiasm.
"Yes," was the unexpected reply.
"You have!" exclaimed Carl; "I did not think it possible for two such divinities to exist upon this earth. Have the goodness to tell me where you ever saw Mrs. Carlyle's equal in grace and loveliness."
But Mr. Dane, who but seldom descended to Carl's special prerogative, poetry, sat down his cup and slowly repeated like one communing with himself:
"'I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move;Such an one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.'"
"'I remember one that perished; sweetly did she speak and move;Such an one do I remember, whom to look at was to love.'"
"She is dead, then?" said Carl.
"She is dead to me," was the bitter reply.
And with a significant look Carl repeated the lines that came next to those that Leslie had quoted:
"'Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?No, she never loved me truly; love is love forevermore.'"
"'Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?No, she never loved me truly; love is love forevermore.'"
"Forevermore," Leslie Dane repeated with something like a sigh.
He rose and began to pace the floor with bowed head and arms folded over his breast.
"Carl," he said suddenly, "I have had enough of Paris. Have you?"
"What, in seven days? Why, my dear fellow, I have just begun to enjoy myself. I have only had a taste of pleasure yet."
"I am going back to Rome to-day," continued Leslie.
"I should like to know why you have made this sudden decision, Leslie—for it is sudden, is it not?" asked Carl, pointedly.
Leslie Dane flushed scarlet, then paled again.
"Yes, it is sudden," he answered, constrainedly, "but none the less decisive. Don't try to argue me out of it, Carl, for that would be useless. Believe me, it is much better that I should go. I want to get to work again."
"There is something more than work at the bottom of this sudden move," said Carl Muller, quietly. "I don't wish to intrude on your secrets,mon ami, but I could tell you just why you are going back to Rome in such a confounded hurry."
"You could?" asked Leslie Dane, incredulously.
"You know I told you long ago, Leslie, that there is a woman at the bottom of everything that happens. There is one at the bottom of this decision of yours. You are running away from a woman!"
"The deuce!" exclaimed Leslie, startled out of his self-control by Carl Muller's point-blank shot; "how know you that?"
"I can put two and two together," the German answered, coolly.
Leslie looked at him with a question in his eyes.
"Shall I explain?" inquired Carl.
Leslie bowed without speaking.
"Well, then, last night, when we laid aside our masks I happened to be quite near to our lovely hostess, and a friend who was beside me immediately presented me."
"Well?" said Leslie Dane, with white lips.
"I was immediately impressed with the idea," continued Carl, "that I had met Mrs. Carlyle before. The impression grew upon me steadily during the minute or two while I stood talking to her, although I could not for the life of me tell where I had met her. But after I had left her side I stood at a little distance and observed her presentation to you."
Leslie Dane walked away to a window and stood looking out with his back turned to his friend.
"I saw her look at you, Leslie," Carl went on, "and that minute she fell back and fainted. They said that she struck her head against thejardiniere, which caused her to faint. But I know better. She may have struck her head—I do not dispute that—but the primal cause of her swoon was the simple sight ofyou!"
"I do not know why you should think so, Carl," said his friend, without turning round. "It is not plausible that themere sight of a stranger should have thus overcome her. Am I so hideous as that?"
"You were not a stranger," said Carl, overlooking the latter query, "for in that moment when she bowed to you it flashed over me like lightning who she was. I was mistaken when I thought I had met her before. She was utterly a stranger to me. But I had seen her peerless beauty portrayed in a score of pictures from the hand of a master artist. It is no wonder the resemblance haunted me so persistently."
There was silence for a minute. Leslie did not move or speak.
"Leslie, you cannot deny it," Carl said, convincingly: "the beautiful Mrs. Carlyle is the original of the veiled portrait you used to keep in your studio, and which you allowed me to look at only on the occasion when you painted it out."
"I do not deny it," he said, in a voice of repressed pain. "What then, Carl?"
"This,mon ami—she was false to you! I do not know in what way, but possibly it was by selling herself for that old man's gold. You owe her no consideration. Why should you curtail your holiday and disappoint your friends and admirers merely because her guilty conscience feels a pang at meeting you? You two can keep apart. Paris is surely large enough for both to dwell in without jostling each other."
What Leslie Dane might have answered to this reasoning will never be a matter of history, for before he could open his lips to speak there was a thundering rap at the door.
In some suspense he advanced and threw it open.
Three or four officers of the French police, in their neat uniform, stood in the hallway without.
"Enter, gentlemen," he said, courteously, though there was a tone of surprise in his voice that they could not mistake.
Carl Muller, too, though he did not speak, rose from his seat and expressed his amazement by his manner.
The officers filed into the room gravely, closing the door after them. Then the foremost one advanced, with an open paper in his hand, and laid his hand firmly but respectfully on Leslie Dane's arm.
"Monsieur Dane," he said, in clear, incisive tones that fell like a thunder-clap on the hearing of the two artists—"Monsieur Dane, I arrest you for the willful murder of Francis Arnold at his home in America three years ago!"
"Quelle horreur, Felise! that was a shockingdenouementto-night. We tremble on the brink of a volcano."
Mrs. Arnold and her daughter were rolling homeward in their luxurious carriage from the masquerade ball at Colonel Carlyle's chateau, and the elder lady's remark was uttered in a tone of trepidation and terror.
But Felise leaning back in her corner among the silken cushions in the picturesque costume of a fortune-teller, only laughedat her terror—a low and fiendish laugh that expressed unqualified satisfaction.
"Ma mere, was Leslie Dane's resurrection a great surprise to you?" she inquired, with a covert sneer.
"A great surprise, and a terrible shock to me, too," the lady answered. "Of course, after believing him dead so long, it is very inconvenient to have him come to life again—as inconvenient for Colonel Carlyle and his wife as for us."
And again Felise laughed mockingly, as if she found only the sweetest pleasure in her mother's words.
"Felise, I cannot understand you," exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, anxiously. "Surely you forget the peril we are in from this man's resurrection from the grave where we thought him lying. I thought you would be as much surprised and frightened at this dreadfulcontretempsas I am."
"I have known that Leslie Dane was living all these three years," answered Miss Herbert, as coolly as before.
"Then the paper you showed to me and to Bonnibel must have been a forgery!'
"It was. I had the notice of Leslie Dane's death inserted myself."
The carriage paused at their hotel, and they were handed out.
Mrs. Arnold followed her daughter to her own apartments.
"Send your maid away, Felise. I must talk to you a little," she said.
Felise had a French maid now instead of Janet, who had resolutely declined to cross the ocean with her.
"Finette, you may go for awhile," she said. "I will ring when I need you."
The maid courtesied and went away.
Felise motioned her mother to a chair, and sank into another herself. Mrs. Arnold seated herself and looked at her daughter searchingly.
Mrs. Arnold took up the conversation where it had been dropped when they left the carriage.
"You say you forged the notice of Leslie Dane's death in the newspaper," she said. "Of course you had some object in doing that, Felise."
"Yes, of course," with another wicked laugh. "It was to further the revenge of which I have had so sweet a taste to-night."
"So what has happened to-night is only what you have intended and desired all along?"
Felise bowed with the grace of a duchess.
"Exactly," she answered, with a triumphant smile. "I have been planning and scheming over two years to bring about the consummation of to-night."
"It was cleverly planned and well executed," Mrs. Arnold said, admiringly; "but is it quite finished? Of course Colonel Carlyle does not know the truth yet."
"He knows that Leslie Dane was a former lover of his wife; he witnessed their meeting to-night. That of itself was enough to inflame his jealous passions to the highest degree, and make him wretched. I rely upon Bonnibel herself to finish my work."
"Upon Bonnibel! How will she do it?"
"You know her high and overstrained sense of honor, mother. Of course she will not remain with Colonel Carlyle, now that she knows she is not his wife. There is but one course open to her. She will fly with Leslie Dane, and leave a note behind her revealing the whole truth to him."
"Are you sure she will, Felise?"
"I am quite certain, mother. That is the only orthodox mode for such a heroine of romance as your husband's niece. To-morrow Leslie Dane and his silly young wife will have flown beyond pursuit and discovery, yet neither one can be happy. The years in which she has belonged to Colonel Carlyle will be a blight and a blot upon her fair fame that she can never forget, while Leslie Dane, with the passions of manhood burning in his veins,cannotforget and will scarcelyforgiveit. They cannot be happy. My revenge has struck too deep at the root of that evanescent flower that the world calls happiness. And Colonel Carlyle is the proudest man on earth. Think you that he can ever hold up his head again after the shame and disgrace of that dreadful blow?"
"Scarcely," said Mrs. Arnold, echoing her daughter's laugh with one as cold and cruel. "You have taken a brave revenge, Felise, for Colonel Carlyle's wrongs against you, and if all goes as you have planned, I shall be proud of your talents and rejoice in your success. But my mind misgives me. Suppose some officious American here—and you know there are plenty such now sojourning in Paris—should remember Leslie Dane and arrest him for my husband's murder?"
For a moment Felise Herbert grew pale, and an icy hand seemed tugging at her heart-strings.
"I do not have the least apprehension of such a calamity," she answered, throwing off the chill presentiment with an effort. "I feel sure that Leslie Dane and his Bonnibel will be far beyond pursuit and detection before to-morrow night. And you will infinitely oblige me by keeping your doleful croaking to yourself, mother."
Mrs. Arnold looked at her watch and rose wearily.
"It is almost morning," she said; "I think I will retire. Good-night, my dear, and pleasant dreams."
"They cannot fail to be pleasant!" answered Felise, with her mocking, triumphant laugh.
But her dreams were all waking ones.
She was too triumphant and excited to sleep.
"This is a happy, happy night for me!" she exclaimed again and again.
Bonnibel was completely crushed by the knowledge that Colonel Carlyle had put into execution his threat of making her a prisoner.
For a moment she ran wildly about the room, passionatelyseeking some mode of egress, filled with the impulse of seeking and following her poor, maltreated Lucy.
But no loophole of escape presented itself.
Her suite of rooms, boudoir, dressing-room, and sleeping-apartment, all communicated with each other, but only one opened into the hall, or presented any mode of egress from her imprisonment. Of this room, the boudoir which she then occupied, Colonel Carlyle had taken the key. She was in an upper story, many feet from the ground, or she would have jumped from the window in her desperation. As it was she could do nothing. She threw herself down upon the floor, crushing her beautiful ball-dress with its grasses and lilies, and wept unrestrainedly.
The slight form heaved and shook with emotion, the tears rained from her eyes in a torrent. At length, worn out with passionate weeping, and overcome by the "dumb narcotic influence of pain," she fell asleep where she lay on the floor, her wet cheek pillowed on her little hand, her golden hair floating about her in "sad beauty."
Thus Colonel Carlyle found her when he entered, late that morning. He was honestly shocked at the sight, for he had supposed that she would yield gracefully to the inevitable, and retire to her sleeping-apartment without more ado when she found how inflexible a will he was possessed of. Instead, here she lay prostrate on the rich velvet carpet of the boudoir, still attired in her ball-dress, the traces of tears on her pale cheeks, and her restless slumber broken by sobs and moans that shook her slight form like a wind-shaken-willow.
He stood still looking down at her, while pity vainly struggled against the fierce anger and resentment burning hotly in his heart.
"She can grieve for him like this," he muttered bitterly, and lifted her, not rudely, but yet unlovingly, and laid her down upon a silken sofa.
The movement disturbed her, and for a moment she seemed about to wake; but the heavy lethargy of her troubled sleep overpowered her.
Colonel Carlyle stood silently watching her for a little while, marveling at her beauty even while he felt angry with her for the uncontrollable emotion that had touched her fairness with the penciling of grief. Then, with a deep yet unconscious sigh, he kissed her several times and went softly away. It was noon when she started up from her restless slumbers, pushing off the silken coverlet that had been carefully spread over her.
She sat up, pressing her hand upon her aching temples, and looked about the room with dazed, half-open eyes. For the moment she had forgotten her trouble of the previous night, and fully expected to see her faithful Lucy Moore keeping her patient vigil by the couch of her weary mistress. But memory returned all too swiftly. The kind, loving face of Lucy did not beam its welcome upon her as of old. Instead, the cold, hard face of a smartly-dressed, elderly Frenchwoman looked curiously at her as the owner rose and courtesied.
"I am the new maid, madam," she explained. "I hope madam feels better."
Bonnibel stared at her in bewilderment.
"Where is Lucy? I want Lucy," she said almost appealingly.
"Madam, I knows nothing of Lucy," she answered. "Monsieur le colonel, the husband of madam, engage me to attend upon madam. I will remove your ball dress,s'il vous plait."
With those words the whole bitter truth rushed over Bonnibel's mind. A low, repressed cry, and she fell back on the sofa, again hiding her convulsed face in her hands.
"Madam, you make yourself more sick by dis emotion," said the new maid in her broken English. "Allow me to bring you someding to break your fast—some chocolate, a roll, a bit of broiled bird."
"I want nothing," Bonnibel answered, bitterly at first, but the next moment she sat up and struggled to regain her composure.
"What is your name, my good woman?" she inquired.
"Dolores, madam, at your service," said the maid, with one of her low courtesies, "Dolores Dupont."
Bonnibel rose and moved slowly toward her dressing-room.
"Dolores," she said, "you may come and remove this robe. I was very tired last night, and my maid having left me, I fell asleep in my ball costume."
Dolores deftly removed the crushed and ruined robe, and substituted a dressing-gown, while she brushed and arranged the beautiful golden hair that was straying on her shoulders in wild disorder.
"It is the most beautiful hair in de world," she said. "Dere are many ladies would give a fortune to have it on deir own heads."
But Bonnibel did not heed the praise. She had no thought or care for her beauty now. She only said, listlessly:
"Never mind removing the dressing-gown, Dolores, I will lie down again. I am very tired."
"I shall bathe your head with theeau de cologne—shall I?" the maid inquired.
"No, no, only let me rest."
"You will breakfast, at least, madam?" the woman persisted.
"Not now, Dolores. I wish for nothing but rest," she said, as she passed into her boudoir and lay down again upon the sofa.
The maid followed after her.
"I should wish your keys, madam, to pack your trunks," she said, solicitously.
"To pack my trunks!" exclaimed the mistress, in surprise. "Why should you wish to do that, Dolores?"
Dolores looked back at her in surprise also.
"For your journey, of course, Madam Carlyle," she said. "Monsieur, your husband, tells me dat Paris do not agree with your health, and dat he removes you dis day to his palace in Italy on de Bay of Naples."
Alas for that one triumphant night of Felise Herbert. It was succeeded by a day of disappointment.
It was scarcely noon before she heard that Colonel Carlyle had caused the arrest of Leslie Dane upon the charge of murdering Mr. Arnold, and that he had been committed to prison to await a requisition from the governor of New Jersey, in which State the deed had been committed. Mrs. Arnold entering her room in a tremor of nervous agitation, found her pacing the floor, wildly gesticulating, and muttering to herself, in terms of the fiercest denunciation, anathemas against Colonel Carlyle.
"The miserable old dotard!" she exclaimed, furiously. "To think that his madness should have carried him to such lengths! Just when I felt so sure of my revenge he has balked me of my satisfaction and imperiled my safety by his jealous madness!"
"Felise, you have heard all, then?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, anxiously.
Felise turned her blazing dark eyes toward her mother, and Mrs. Arnold shuddered.
"All, all!" she echoed passionately; "ill news flies apace!"
"Felise, I feared this!" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold. "You were over-confident last night. Who could tell what form that old man's madness would take?"
"Who, indeed!" cried her daughter passionately. "And yet my theory seemed so plausible—who could have dreamed of its failure? But for him all would have gone as I planned it! But you cannot dream, mother, what that besotted old villain had the audacity to do!"
"It is not possible he suspected your complicity in the affair, Felise—he has taken no steps againstus?" wildly questioned the mother as she sank into a chair half-fainting with terror.
"No, no, he has not done that, mother—his deviltry took another form."
"What, then, my dear? Oh! Felise, do sit down and calm yourself, and let us talk this matter over quietly," implored Mrs. Arnold anxiously.
"Calm myself—ha, ha, ha, when the blood in my veins has turned to molten fire, and is burning me to ashes! You are an iceberg, mother, with your cold words and calm looks, but you cannot put out the fire that is raging within me! Surely I must be wholly my father's child! There is nothing of you about me—nothing!"
"Yes, she is like her father—the more pity! For there was madness in his blood," Mrs. Arnold muttered inaudibly; "and I, oh! God—all my life I have fostered her evil passions, in my greed of gold, until now, when her reason totters on the brink of insanity. Oh! that I might undo my part in this fearful tragedy, and save her from the gulf that yawns beneath her feet!"
Overcome by her late remorse and terrible forebodings, she hid her face in her hands while a nervous trembling seized upon her from head to foot. Felise paused in her frenzied walk and eyed her curiously.
"Mother, are you turning coward in the face of danger?" she asked, with a ring of contempt in her voice.
There was no reply. The bowed face still rested on the trembling hands, the form still shook with nervous terror. Something in the weakness and forlornness of that drooping attitude in the mother who had subordinated everything else to her daughter's welfare, struck like a chill upon Felise, and partially tamed the devil raging within her. She spoke in a gentler tone:
"Rouse yourself, mother. See! I have quite sobered down, and am ready to discuss the matter as calmly and dispassionately as you could wish. Ask what you please, and I will answer."
Mrs. Arnold looked up, taking new heart as she saw that Felise still retained the power to subdue her fiery passions.
"Then tell me, dear, what else Colonel Carlyle has done besides causing Leslie Dane's arrest," said her mother.
Felise grasped the arms of her chair and held herself within it by a frenzied effort of will. Her voice was low and intense as she answered:
"Mother—he found out that Bonnibel was about to fly from him last night—just as I told you she would, you remember—and he—he actually locked her into her rooms, turned Lucy Moore, her maid, into the street—and is keeping his wife a prisoner to prevent her escape."
Mrs. Arnold was too astonished to speak for a minute or two. At length she found voice to utter:
"How know you that, Felise?"
"I have a spy in the chateau, mother—nothing that transpires there remains long unknown to me," returned the daughter, calmly.
Again there was momentary silence and surprise. Mrs. Arnold's weaker nature was sometimes confounded by a new discovery of her daughter's powerful capabilities for evil.
"What must Bonnibel's feelings be under the circumstances?" she exclaimed at last.
"I cannot imagine," was the dry response.
"Will she confess the truth to him, do you think?"
"I cannot tell; I hope shewill not," said Felise with strong emphasis.
"I thought you wished him to know the truth. Was not that a part of your cherished scheme of revenge?"
"Yes, it was, but 'there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,' you know. And now that he has prevented her escape with Leslie Dane, and caused the artist's arrest, the only chance of safety for you and me lies in his keeping her a close prisoner until the trial is over."
"What can that avail us, Felise?"
"Can you not see?" exclaimed Felise impatiently. "Leslie Dane must be sacrificed to save us. He must be convicted by circumstantial evidence, and punished. Bonnibel is the only person who could prove his innocence. Let her keep out of the way and all will go well with us. Should she appear at the trial then discovery and ruin stare us in the face."
"But you forget, my dear, that Leslie Dane can prove his ownalibiby the minister who married him that night, even though we could procure Bonnibel's silence."
Felise laughed heartlessly.
"Yes, he could, certainly, but the question is, would he? I am quite sure he would not."
"But why should he be silent when his life would most probably pay the forfeit?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, with a slight shudder.
"Mother, there are men who would die for an over-strained point of honor. From all that I can gather from his intercepted letters, Leslie Dane is precisely that sort of a man. He is a Southerner, you know—a Floridian. You have been in the South, and you know that its natives are proud, chivalrous, honorable to the highest degree! Well, he can have no means of knowing that Bonnibel is imprisoned by her husband—of course the proud old colonel will keep that fact a dead secret, and invent some plausible excuse for her retirement from society. The artist can therefore attribute her absence from the trial to but one thing."
"And that?" queried Mrs. Arnold.
"He will think that Bonnibel is silent because she would sooner sacrifice him than lose her prestige in society, and her brilliant position as the wife of Colonel Carlyle. He will scorn to betray her secret, and will go to his death with the self-sacrifice of a martyr."
"But suppose Colonel Carlyle should let Bonnibel go free? What then?"
Felise laughed softly.
"He will not do so, mother. I have sent him an anonymous letter to-day that will fairly madden him with jealousy. He will never unlock her prison-door until the grass is growing over the handsome face of Leslie Dane."