Within the gloomy cell of a French prison Leslie Dane was seated on a low cot-bed, looking out through the narrow, grated window at the blue and sunny sky of France. The young artist looked haggard and wan in the clear light of the pleasant day, for though it was winter the rigors of that season had not yet set in. His dark eyes had a look of suffering and despair in their beautiful depths, and his lips were set in a weary line of pain. It was the day after his incarceration, and he had spent a wretched, sleepless night, almost maddened by the horror of his fearful situation. Suddenly the heavy key turned in the iron door; it swung open to admit a visitor, and then the jailer closed and re-locked it, shutting into the gloomy cell the blonde face of Carl Muller.
"Bon jour," he said, with his debonair smile that seemed to light the gloomy place like a beam of sunshine. "How goes it,mon ami?"
A gleam of pleasure shone faintly over his friend's haggard features.
"Is it you, Carl?" he said; "I thought you had deserted me!"
"Ingrate, could you think it?" responded Carl. "I was busy yesterday trying to find out some particulars of this mysterious affair, and they would not admit me last night. I came this morning as soon as they would let me in."
"Thanks Carl; I might have known you were true as steel. And yet there is so much falsity and treachery on earth, how could I be sure of your loyalty? Have you learned anything?"
"Your accuser is the American, Colonel Carlyle," was the startling reply.
"My God!" exclaimed Leslie Dane, with a violent start; and then he added in a passionate tone, and half to himself: "Has he not already wronged me beyond all forgiveness?"
"He seems to have pushed it forward with the greatest malignity," continued Carl. "There are other countrymen of yours here in this city who declare they knew of the foul charge against you, yet they say that the verdict against you was given on purely circumstantial evidence, and that, such being the case, they did not intend to molest you, believing that you might after all be innocent of the crime. But Colonel Carlyle has pushed the affair in a way that seems to indicate a personal spite against you."
Leslie's broad, white brow clouded over gloomily.
"It is true, then, that there is such a charge against me. I fancied theremustbe some mistake. The whole affair seemed too monstrous for belief, yet you say it is a stern fact. It is so inexplicable to me, for I swear to you, Carl, that up to the very moment of my arrest yesterday I did not know that Francis Arnold was dead."
"And I believe you, Leslie, as firmly as I believe in the purity of my mother away off in my beloved Germany. I know you never could have been guilty of such a foul crime."
"A thousand thanks for your noble confidence, Carl. Now I know that I have at least one true friend on earth. I was rather cynical in such matters before. A sad experience had taught me to distrust everyone," exclaimed Leslie, as he warmly grasped the young German's hand. "But what reason do they assign for my alleged commission of the crime?"
"They told me," said Carl, hesitatingly, "that you were poor and unknown, and aspired to the hand of the millionaire's beautiful and high-born niece. Mr. Arnold, they said, declined your suit for the young lady's hand, and you became enraged and left him, uttering very abusive language coupled with threats of violence. He was murdered while sleeping in his arm-chair that night on his piazza, and it was supposed that you had stealthily returned and wreaked your vengeance upon him."
"My God!" said Leslie Dane, "they have made out a black case against me, indeed. But upon whose circumstantial evidence was my conviction based?"
"Mrs. Arnold, the wife of the murdered man, and his step-daughter, Miss Herbert, heard and witnessed the altercation from their drawing-room windows. Their evidence convicted you, it is said."
"My soul!" exclaimed the unhappy prisoner to himself. "Bonnibel was there; she at least knew my innocence, yet she spoke no word to clear me from that most foul aspersion! And yet I could have sworn that she loved me as her own life. Oh, God! She was falser than I could have dreamed. But, oh, that angel face; those beguiling lips—how can they cover a heart so black?"
"Come, come,mon ami, don't give up like this," said Carl, distressed by the sight of his friend's uncontrollable emotion. "It is a monstrous thing, I know, and will involve no end of time and worry before you get clear, of course, but, then, there is no doubt of your getting off—you have only to prove your innocence, and you can easily do that, you know. So let's take it as a joke, and bear it bravely. Do you know I mean to cross the ocean with you, and see the farce played out to the end? Then you shall take me around, and do the honors of your native land."
Leslie looked at the bright, buoyant face of the German artist as he spoke so cheerily, and a suspicious moisture crept into his dark eyes. He dashed his hand across them, deeming it unmanly weakness.
"Oh! Carl," he exclaimed, remorsefully, "how little I have valued your friendship, yet how firm and noble it has proved itself in this dark and trying hour! Forgive me, my friend, and believe me when I say that I give you the sole affection and trust of a heart that heretofore has trusted nothing of human kind, so basely had it been deceived. I thank, I bless you for that promise to stand by me in my trial! And now I will do what I should have done long ago if I had known the value of your noble heart. I will tell you my story, and you shall be my judge."
Word for word, though it gave him inexpressible pain to recall it, he went over the story of his love for Bonnibel Vere, and her uncle's rejection of his suit, and the high words that passed between them. He passed lightly over their farewell, omitting but one thing. It was the story of their moonlight sail and secret marriage. That story was sealed within his breast. He would have died before he would have revealed Bonnibel's fatal secret to any living soul.
"I left Cape May, where they were summering, on the midnight train," he concluded, "and the next day I sailed from New York for Europe. I never heard from Francis Arnold or his niece again. She had promised to be faithful to our love, but though I wrote to her many times I never received one line in return until that fatal note which you remember. In it she wrote me that she loved another."
"Perfidious creature!" muttered Carl.
"I never heard of her again," continued Leslie, "until, to my unutterable surprise, I met her as the wife of Colonel Carlyle."
"And it is for one so false and cruel that you rest under this dreadful charge," exclaimed the German. "But, please God, you will soon be cleared from it. Of course you will have no difficulty in proving analibi. That is all you need to clear you."
But Leslie did not answer, and his friend saw that he was pale as death.
"Of course you can prove analibi—cannot you, Leslie?" he asked, with a shade of anxiety in his tone.
But Leslie looked at him with a gleam of horror in his dark eyes, and his voice shook with emotion as he answered:
"No, Carl, I cannot!"
Carl Muller started as though a bullet had struck him.
"Leslie you jest," he exclaimed, hoarsely. "Of course you can prove where you were at that exact time when the murder took place. Your safety all hinges upon that. Do you not remember where you were at that time?"
"Ah, Heaven, do I not remember? Every moment of that time is indelibly stamped upon my memory," groaned the unhappy prisoner.
"Then why do you talk so wildly, my dear fellow? All you have to do is to tell where you were at that time, and produce even one competent witness to prove it."
"I cannot do it!" Leslie answered, gravely.
"But, good Heavens, man, your life may have to pay the forfeit if you fail to establish analibiat the trial."
"I must pay the forfeit, then. Carl, I choose death rather than the only available alternative," was the inscrutable and final reply.
"Words fail me, Colonel Carlyle, when I try to express my burning sense of your injustice in this high-handed outrage! What, in this enlightened age, in this nineteenth century, do men turn palaces into prisons, and debar weak women of their liberties? Am I a slave that you have turned your keys upon me, and set hirelings and slaves to watch me? Am I a criminal? If so, where is my crime?"
A long and elegant saloon in a beautiful palace in Italy. The rich curtains of silk and lace are looped back from the windows, and the view outside is the beautiful Bay of Naples with the clear, blue, sunny sky reflected in its blue and sparkling waves. A garden lies below the windows, rich, in this tropical clime, with beautiful flowers, and vines and shrubbery, while groves of oranges, lemons, figs and dates abound in lavish luxuriance. Within the room that was furnished with princely magnificence and taste, were a man and a woman, the man old, and bowed, and broken, the woman young and more beautiful than it often falls to the lot of women to be. Her delicate features, chiseled with the rare perfection of a head carved in cameo, were flushed with passion, and the glow of anger shone through the pure, transparent skin, tinting it with an unusual bloom. As she walked restlessly up and down the room, in her trailing robe of soft azure hue, her sea-blue eyes blazed under their drooping lashes until they looked black with excitement.
"I tell you," she said, pausing a moment, as no answer came to her passionate outburst, and facing the man before her with a slim, uplifted finger, as if in menace, "I tell you, Colonel Carlyle, that the vengeance of Heaven will fall upon you for thiscruel, unmanly deed! Oh, how can you forget your sense of honor as a soldier and a gentleman, and descend to an act so ignoble and unworthy? To imprison a weak and helpless woman, who has no friend or defender save Heaven! Oh, for shame, for shame!"
His eyes fell before the unbearable scorn in hers, and he turned as if to leave the room. But half way to the door he paused and came back to her.
"Bonnibel," he said, sternly, "cease this wild raving, and calm yourself. My troubles are hard enough to bear without the additional weight of unmerited reproaches from you. I am of all men the most miserable."
She shook off the hand with which he attempted to lead her to a seat, as if there had been contagion in the mere contact of his white, aristocratic fingers.
"No, do not touch me!" she exclaimed, wildly. "At least spare me that indignity. All other relations that have existed between us are altered now, and merged simply into this—I am your prisoner, and you are my jailer. The eagle spurns the hand of its captor. Remember, there is proud, untamable blood in my veins that will not be subdued. I am Harry Vere's daughter."
Bonnibel saw him wince as the name of her beloved father passed her lips.
"Ah, you are not lost to all sense of shame," she cried. "You can tremble at the name of the hero you have wronged through his helpless daughter! Oh, Colonel Carlyle, by the memory of my father, whom you pretended to love and honor, I beg you to let me go free from this place."
Her angry recklessness had broken down suddenly into pathetic pleading. Her slender hands were locked together, her eyes were lifted to his with great, raining tears shining in them. He turned half away, trembling in spite of his iron will at sight of those tearful eyes, and parted, quivering lips.
"Bonnibel," he answered, in a voice of repressed emotion, "my suffering at the course I have found myself compelled to pursue with you is greater than your own. I love you with all the strength of a man's heart, and yet I am almost compelled to believe you the falsest of women. And yet, through all the distrust and suspicion which your recent conduct has forced me to harbor, the instinct that bids me have faith in the honor of Harry Vere's daughter is so much beyond the mere power of my reason that at one little promise from your lips you might this moment go free!"
"And that promise?" she asked, dashing the blinding tears away from her eyes and looking into his face.
"Bonnibel, on the night when I presumed to lock you into your chamber you were about to fly from me—to what fate I know not, but—I feared the worst. Think of the shame, the disgrace, the agony I must have endured from your desertion! Can you wonder that I took stringent measures to prevent you from carrying your wild project into execution? I would have laid youdeadat my feet before you should have broken my heart and made me a target for the scorn of the world."
She did not flinch as he uttered the emphatic words and looked keenly into her face. She thought of herself vaguely as of one lying dead at the feet of that stern, old, white-haired man, yet the passing thought came to her indifferently as to one who was bearing the burden of a "life more pathetic than death." She felt no anger rising within her at the threat. Only a faint, stifled yearning awoke within her for a moment as his stern voice evoked a vision of the rest and peace of the grave.
"You see how strongly I feel on this subject, my wife," he continued, after a long pause, "yet even now you shall go free if you will give me your sacred word of honor, by the memory of your father, that you will not desert me—that you will not leave me!"
Silence fell—a long, painful silence. He stood quite still, looking down at her pale face, and waiting for her answer with quickened heart-beats. For her, she seemed transformed to a statue of marble only for the quick throbs that stirred the filmy lace folded over her breast. She stood quite still, her eyes drooping from his, a look of pitiful despair frozen on the deathly pallor of her face. Outside they could hear a soft wind sighing among the flowers and kissing the blue waves of the bay. Within, the fragrance of an orange tree, blooming in a niche, came to them with almost sickening oppressiveness. Still she made no sign of answer.
"Bonnibel," he said, and his hoarse, strained voice fell so unnaturally on the stillness that he started at its strange sound, "Bonnibel, my darling little wife, you will give me that promise?"
She shivered through all her frame as if those pleading words had broken her trance of silence.
"Do not ask me," she said, faintly, "I cannot!"
"You will not give me that little promise, Bonnibel?"
"I cannot," she moaned, sinking into a chair and hiding her face in her hands.
"You are determined to leave me, then, if you can?" he exclaimed in a voice of blended horror and reproach.
"I must," she reiterated.
"Then tell mewhyyou must go away, Bonnibel. What is this fatal secret that is driving you forth into exile? This mystery will drive me mad!"
She removed her hands a moment, and looked up at him with sad, wistful eyes, and a face crimson with painful blushes.
"Colonel Carlyle, I will tell you this much," she said, "for I see that you suspect me of that which I would rather die than be guilty of. I am not going because a guilty passion for a former lover is driving me from your arms to his. If I go into exile I shall go alone, and I shall pray for death every hour until my weary days upon earth are ended forever. Death is the only happiness I look for, the future holds nothing for me but the blackness of darkness. I can tell you nothing more!"
She ceased, and dropped her anguished face into the friendly shelter of her hands again. He remained rooted to the spot as if he could never move again.
"Bonnibel," he said, at last, "surely some subtle madness possessesyou. You do not know what you would do. I must save you from yourself until you become rational again."
With these words he went out of the room, locking the door behind him.
Colonel Carlyle had not quitted the room an hour before Bonnibel's maid, Dolores, came into her presence, bearing a sealed letter upon a salver.
"Une lettrefrom monsieur le colonel, for Madam Carlyle," she said, in her curiousmelangeof French and English. Bonnibel took the letter, and Dolores retreated to a little distance and stood awaiting her pleasure.
"What can he have to write to me of?" she thought, in some surprise, as she opened the envelope.
She read these words in a rather tremulous hand-writing:
"Bonnibel, my dear wife," and she shuddered slightly at the words—"I sought you a little while ago to inform you of my immediate departure for Paris, but our interview was of so harrowing a nature that I was forced to leave you without communicating my intention. I could not endure your reproaches longer. I am compelled to leave you here—circumstances force my immediate return to Paris. It is possible, nay, probable, that I may have to make a trip to the United States before I return to Naples. Believe me, it is distressing to me beyond measure to leave you now under existing circumstances, but the business that takes me away is most imperative and admits of no delay."I have made every possible provision for your comfort and pleasure during my absence. The housekeeper, the domestics and your own especial maid will care for you faithfully. In an hour I leave here. If you have any commands for me; if you are willing to see me again, and speak even one word of kind farewell, send me a single line by Dolores, and I will be at your side in an instant."Clifford Carlyle."
"Bonnibel, my dear wife," and she shuddered slightly at the words—"I sought you a little while ago to inform you of my immediate departure for Paris, but our interview was of so harrowing a nature that I was forced to leave you without communicating my intention. I could not endure your reproaches longer. I am compelled to leave you here—circumstances force my immediate return to Paris. It is possible, nay, probable, that I may have to make a trip to the United States before I return to Naples. Believe me, it is distressing to me beyond measure to leave you now under existing circumstances, but the business that takes me away is most imperative and admits of no delay.
"I have made every possible provision for your comfort and pleasure during my absence. The housekeeper, the domestics and your own especial maid will care for you faithfully. In an hour I leave here. If you have any commands for me; if you are willing to see me again, and speak even one word of kind farewell, send me a single line by Dolores, and I will be at your side in an instant.
"Clifford Carlyle."
She finished reading and dropped the letter, forgetful of the lynx-eyed French woman who regarded her curiously. Her eyes wandered to the window, and she fell into deep thought.
"Madam," the maid said, hesitatingly, "Monsieur le colonel awaitsunereply. He hastens to be gone."
Bonnibel looked up at her.
"Go, Dolores," she answered, coldly; "tell him there isno reply."
Dolores courtesied and went away. Bonnibel relapsed into thought again. She was glad that Colonel Carlyle was going away, yet she felt a faint curiosity as to the imperative business which necessitated his return to his native land. She had never heard him allude to business before. He had been known to her only as a gentleman of elegant leisure.
"Some of the banks in which his wealth is invested have failed, perhaps," she thought, vaguely, and dismissed the subject from her mind without a single suspicion of the fatal truth—that thejealous old man was going to America to be present at the trial of Leslie Dane, and to prosecute him to the death. Ah! but too truly is it declared in Holy Writ that "jealousy is strong as death, and as cruel as the grave."
Colonel Carlyle was filled with a raging hatred against the man who had loved Bonnibel Vere before he had ever looked upon her alluring beauty.
He had received an anonymous letter filled with exaggerated descriptions of Bonnibel's love for the artist, and his wild passion for her. The writer insinuated that the lovely girl had sold herself for the old man's gold, believing that he would soon die, and leave her free to wed the poor artist, and endow him with the wealth thus obtained. Now, said the unknown writer, since the lovers had met again their passion would fain overleap every barrier, and they had determined to fly with each other to liberty and love.
Colonel Carlyle was reading the letter for the hundredth time when Dolores returned from delivering his letter to Bonnibel with the cold message that there was "no reply."
That bitter refusal to the yearning cry of his heart for one kind farewell word only inflamed him the more against the man whom he believed held his wife's heart. It seemed to him that that in itself was a crime for which Leslie Dane merited nothing less than death.
"She read my letter?" he said to the maid who stood waiting before him.
"Oui, Monsieur," answered Dolores, with her unfailing courtesy.
"That is well," he said, briefly; "now, go."
Dolores went away and left him wrestling with the bitterest emotions the heart of man can feel. He was old, and the conflicting passions of the last few years had aged him in appearance more than a score of years could have done. He looked haggard, and worn, and weary. But his heart had not kept pace with his years. It was still capable of feeling the bitter pangs that a younger man might have felt in his place. Felise Herbert had done a fearful work in making this man the victim of her malevolent revenge. Left to himself he had the nobility of a good and true manhood within him. But the hand of a demon had played upon the strings of the viler passions that lay dormant within him, and transformed him into a fiend.
"Not one word!" he exclaimed, to himself, in a passion of bitter resentment. "Not one word will she vouchsafe for me in her pride and scorn. Ah, well, Leslie Dane, you shall pay for this! I will hound you to your death if wealth and influence can push the prosecution forward! Not until you are in your grave can I ever breathe freely again!"
"The slow, sad days that bring us all things ill" merged into weary weeks, but brought no release to the restless young creature who pined and chafed in her confinement like a bird that vainly beats its wings against the gilded bars of its cage. Dolores Dupont guarded her respectfully but rigorously. Weary daysand nights went by while she watched the sun shining by day on the blue Bay of Naples, and the moonlight by night silvering its limpid waves with brightness. Her sick heart wearied of the changeless beauty, the tropical sweetness and fragrance about her. A cold, northern sky, with darkening clouds and sunless days, would have suited her mood better than the tropical sweetness of Southern Italy. As it was she would sometimes murmur to herself as she wearily paced the length of her gilded prison:
"Night, even in the zenith of her dark domain,Is sunshine to the color of my fate."
"Night, even in the zenith of her dark domain,Is sunshine to the color of my fate."
But "the darkest hour is just before day," it is said. It was as true for our sweet Bonnibel as it has proved for many another weary soul vainly beating its weary wings against the bars of life in the struggle to be free. Just now, when her heart and hope had failed utterly and her only chance of escape seemed to lie in a frank confession of the truth to Colonel Carlyle, the path of freedom lay just before her feet, and destiny was busy shaping an undreamed-of future for that weary, restless young heart.
"I can bear it no longer," she murmured, as she paced the floor late one night, thinking over her troubles until her brain seemed on fire. "I will write to Colonel Carlyle and tell him the truth—tell him that dreadful secret—that I am not his wife, that I belong to another! Surely he must let me go free then. He will hate me that I have brought such shame upon him; but he will keep the secret for his own sake, and let me go away and hide myself somewhere in the great dark world until I die."
She dropped upon her knees and lifted her clasped hands to heaven, while bitter tears rained over her pallid cheeks.
"Heaven help me!" she moaned; "it is hard, hard! If I only had not married Colonel Carlyle all might have gone well. Oh, Leslie, Leslie, I loved you so! God help me, I love you still! Yet I shall never see you again, although I am your wife! Ah, never, never, for a gulf lies between us—a gulf of sin, though Heaven is my witness I am innocent of all intentional wrong-doing. I would have died first!"
Her words died away in a moan of pain; but presently the anguished young voice rose again:
"The sibyl's fateful prophecy has all been fulfilled. Yet how little I dreamed that itcouldcome true! Oh, God, how is it that I, the proud daughter of the Veres and the Arnolds, can live with the shadow of disgrace upon my head?"
She dropped her face in her hands, and the "silence of life, more pathetic than death," filled the room. All was strangely still; nothing was heard but the murmurous waves of the beautiful Bay of Naples softly lapping the shore. Suddenly a slight, strange sound echoed through the room. Bonnibel sprang to her feet, a little startled, and listened in alarm. Again the sound was repeated. It seemed to Bonnibel as if someone had thrown a few pebbles against the window. Yes, it must be that, she was sure.
Full of vague alarm, blent with a little trembling hope of she knew not what, Bonnibel ran to the window, which was fortunately not fastened down, pushed up the sash and peered down into the night. The moon had not fully risen yet, and there was but a faint light in the clear sky, but down in the dark shrubbery below she fancied she could see a human form and a white face upturned to the window.
Yes, she was right. In a moment a low and cautious, but perfectly audible voice, floated up to her ears.
"Oh! mydearMiss Bonnibel," was what it said, "is that you?"
Bonnibel put her hand to her heart as if the shock of joy were too great to be borne.
It was the voice of the poor girl over whose unknown fate her heart had ached for many weary days—the welcome voice of faithful Lucy Moore.
"Yes, it is Bonnibel," she murmured gently back, fearing that her voice might be heard by Dolores Dupont, who slept on a couch in the dressing-room to be near her mistress.
"Are you alone?" inquired Lucy, softly.
"Yes, quite alone," was answered back.
"Miss Bonnibel, I have a rope-ladder down here. I am going to throw it up to you. Try and catch it, and fasten it to your window strongly enough for me to climb up to you."
Bonnibel leaned forward silently. A twisted bundle was skillfully thrown up, and she caught it in her hands. Stepping back into the room she uncoiled a light yet strong ladder of silken rope.
"Fasten it into the hooks that are used to secure the window-shutters," said Lucy's voice from below.
Trembling with joy, Bonnibel fastened the ends strongly as directed, and threw the rope down to Lucy. In a few moments the girl had climbed up to the window, sprang over the sill, and had her young mistress in her arms.
"One kiss, you darling!" she said, in a voice of ecstasy, "then I must pull up the rope, for I fear discovery, and I have much to tell you before I take you away with me!"
Bonnibel's heart gave a quick bound of joy.
"Oh! Lucy, will you really take me away?" she exclaimed, pressing the girl's hand fondly.
"That's what I am here for," answered Lucy, withdrawing her mistress into the darkest corner of the room, after having drawn her rope up and dropped the curtains over the coil as it lay upon the floor.
"Lucy, how did you ever find me?" exclaimed Bonnibel, gladly, as they sat down together on a low divan, mutually forgetting the difference in their position as mistress and maid in the joy of their re-union.
"I've never lost track of you, Miss Bonnibel, since the night your husband turned me into the cold, dark street."
"Cruel!" muttered Bonnibel, with a shudder.
"Yes, it was cruel," said Lucy, "but I didn't spend the night inthe streets! Pierre, the hall-servant, let me in again unbeknownst to Colonel Carlyle, and I slept in my old room that night, though I couldn't get to speak to you because he had locked you into your room and kept the key. At daylight I went away and secured a lodging near you—you know I had plenty of money, Miss Bonnibel, because you were always very generous! That evening when Colonel Carlyle took you away, along with that hateful furrin maid, I followed after, you may be sure, and I've been in Naples ever since trying to get speech of you; but though I've tried bribery, and corruption, and cunning, too, I've always failed until to-night."
She paused to take breath, and Bonnibel silently pressed her hand.
"So there's the whole story in a nutshell," continued Lucy, after a minute; "I ain't got time to spin it out, for you and me, Miss Bonnibel, has to get away from here as quick as ever we can! Do you think you can climb down my ladder of rope?"
Bonnibel smiled at the anxious tone of the girl's question.
"Of course I can, Lucy," she said, confidently, "I wish there were nothing harder in life than that."
"Miss Bonnibel," said the girl, in a low voice, "we must be going in a minute or two, now. Can you get a dark suit to put on? And have you any money you can take with you? For it will take more money than I have in my purse, perhaps, to carry us home to New York."
"To New York—are we going back there?" faltered the listener.
"As fast as wind and water can carry us!" answered the girl. "You and me are needed there in a hurry, my darling mistress. At leastyouare, for I feel almost sure that a man's life is hanging on your evidence."
"Lucy, what can you mean?" exclaimed Bonnibel, in amazement.
"Ah! I see they have told you nothing!" answered Lucy.
Bonnibel caught her arm and looked anxiously into her face.
"No one has told me anything," she said. "What should they have told me?"
"Much that you never knew, perhaps," said the girl, shaking her head gravely.
"Then tell it me yourself," said Bonnibel. "Do not keep me in suspense, my good girl."
"May I ask you a question first, Miss Bonnibel?"
"As many as you please, Lucy!"
"You remember the night poor old master was murdered?" said the girl, as if reluctant to recall that painful subject.
"As if I could ever forget it," shuddered the listener.
"You were down at the shore until late that night," pursued the girl, "and when you got back you found your uncle dead—murdered! Miss Bonnibel, was Mr. Dane with you that night on the sands? I have sometimes been athinkin' he might a been."
"Lucy, what are you trying to get at?" gasped the listener.
"I only asked you the question," said Lucy, humbly.
"And I cannot understand why you ask it, Lucy, but I willanswer it truly. Leslie Dane was with me every moment of the time."
"I thought so," said Lucy, fervently. "Thank God!"
"Lucy, please explain yourself," said Bonnibel anxiously. "You frighten me with your mysterious looks and words. What has gone wrong?"
"I am going to tell you as fast as I can, my dear young mistress. Try and bear it as bravely as you can, for you must go back to America to right a great wrong."
"A great wrong!" repeated the listener, helplessly.
"You were so sick after Mr. Arnold died," said Lucy, continuing her story, "that the doctors kept the papers and all the news that was afloatin' around, away from you; so it happened that we never let you know that your friend, Mr. Leslie Dane, was charged with the murder of your uncle."
There was a minute's shocked silence; then, with a smothered moan of horror, Bonnibel slid from her place and fell on the floor in a helpless heap at Lucy's feet.
"Oh! Miss Bonnibel, rouse yourself—oh, for God's sake don't you faint! Oh, me! oh, me! what a born fool I was to tell you that before I got you away from this place!" cried Lucy in terror, kneeling and lifting the drooping head upon her arm.
"Oh! Miss Bonnibel, please don't you faint now!" she reiterated, taking a bottle of smelling salts from her pocket and applying it to the young lady's nostrils.
Thus vehemently adjured, Bonnibel opened her blue eyes and looked up into the troubled face of her attendant.
"We have got to be going now," urged the girl, "you must keep all your strength to get away from here."
"I will," said Bonnibel, struggling to a sitting posture in Lucy's supporting arms. "I am quite strong, Lucy, I shall not faint, I give you my word, I will not! Go on with your story!"
"I mustn't—you can't stand it," answered the girl, hesitating.
"Go on," Bonnibel said, with a certain little authoritative ring in her voice that Lucy had always been wont to obey.
"If I must then," said Lucy, reluctantly, "but there's but little more to tell. Mr. Dane got away and they never caught him till the night of your grand masquerade ball when Colonel Carlyle recognized him. The next day he had him arrested and put in a French prison on the charge of murder."
"And now?" asked Bonnibel, in horror-struck accents.
"And they all sailed for the United States more than two weeks ago," answered Lucy, sadly. "Mr. Dane to his trial, and Colonel Carlyle, Mrs. Arnold and Miss Felise Herbert to testify against him."
"More than two weeks ago," repeated Bonnibel like one dazed.
"I heard some men talking about it," Lucy went on, "and they said that if Mr. Dane couldn't prove his absence at the time of the murder he would certainly get hung."
A moan was Bonnibel's only response.
"So you see, my dear young mistress, that his only chance rests on your evidence, and we must start right away if we are to get there to save him!"
Bonnibel sprang to her feet, trembling all over.
"Let us go this moment," she said, feverishly; "oh, what if we should be too late!"
Wild with horror she set about her preparations. Her one thought now was to save Leslie Dane though the whole world should know the shameful secret she tried so hard to keep from its knowledge.
February winds blew coldly over the sea at Cape May, the day was bleak and sunless, a misty, drizzling rain fell slowly but continuously, chilling the very marrow of one's bones. No one who could have helped it would have cared to venture out in such dreary, uncomfortable, depressing weather. But up and down the beach, before the closed mansion of Sea View, walked a weird, strange figure, bareheaded in the pitiless war of the elements, bowed and bent by age, clothed in rent and tattered finery, with scant, gray locks flying elfishly in the breeze that blew strongly and cruelly enough to have lifted the little, witch-like form and cast it into the sea.
"I am a fool to come out in such stormy weather!" this odd creature muttered to herself. "What is it that drives me out of my sick bed to wander here in the rain and wind before Francis Arnold's house? There is a thing they callRemorse, ha, ha—is that the haunting devil that pursues me?"
She looked at the lonely mansion, and turned back to the sea with a shudder.
"Whoseis the sin?" she said, looking weirdly out at the wild waves as if they had a human voice to answer her query. "Shetempted me with her gold—she had murder in her heart as red as if she had dyed her hands in his life-blood! Ugh!" she wrung her hands and shook them from her as if throwing off invisible drops, "how thick and hot it was when it spurted out over my hands! Yet was not the sin hers? Hers was the brain that planned, mine but the hand that struck the blow!"
"Gold, gold!" she went on, after a shuddering pause, "what a devil it is to tempt one! I never harmed human being before, but the yellow glitter was so beautiful to my sight that it betrayed me. Strange, that when it had made me do her will, it should have grown hateful to my sight, and burned my hands, till I came here and cast every golden piece of my blood-bought treasure into the sea."
She drew nearer to the waves, peeping into them as if perchance the treasure she had cast into their bosom might yet be visible.
"There was a man named Judas," she muttered; "I have heard them tell of him somewhere—he sold a man's life for some pieces of silver—but when it was done he went and cast the treasure back to those who had bought his soul. He must have felt as I do. What is it that I feel—remorse,repentance, or a horror of that dreadful leap I shall soon be taking into the dark?"
Walking wildly up and down she did not see two figures comingtowards her through the mist of the rain—two female figures shrouded in long water-proof cloaks and thick veils.
"Miss Bonnibel," said one to the other, "'tis the wicked old witch—the fortune-teller—Wild Madge. Sure the old thing must be crazy, tramping out in such wild weather!"
Bonnibel shuddered as she looked at the weird old creature.
"Cannot we avoid her notice?" she inquired, shrinking from contact with the sibyl.
At that moment Wild Madge turned and saw them. Directly she came up to them with her fortune-teller's whine:
"Cross my palm with silver and I will tell your fortune, bonny ladies."
"No, no, Wild Madge, we haven't got time to hear our fortunes told," said Lucy Moore. "Don't try to detain us. We are on a mission of life and death."
"So am I," mocked the sibyl with her strange, discordant laugh. "Death is on my trail to-day; but I know you, Lucy Moore, and you, too, lovely lady," she added, peering curiously under Bonnibel's veil. "I told your fortune once, pretty one—did the prophecy come true?" she inquired, seizing hold of Bonnibel's reluctant hand, and drawing off her glove.
"Yes, it came true," she answered, tremblingly.
"Yes, I see, I see," said the sibyl, peering into the little hand; "you have suffered—you suffer still! But, lady, listen to me! The clouds are breaking, there is a silver lining to every one that droops over you now. You may believe what I tell you; ha! ha!
"'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,And coming events cast their shadows before.'"
"'Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,And coming events cast their shadows before.'"
Uttering the quotation with the air of a prophetess, she released Bonnibel's hand and suddenly sank upon the wet ground with a stifled moan of pain.
"Oh! Lucy, she is ill—her hands are as hot as fire, her eyes are quite glassy," exclaimed Bonnibel in alarm as she bent over the fallen form.
"We can't help that, Miss Bonnibel—we are compelled to hurry on to Brandon," said the girl, for though ordinarily the softest-hearted of human beings her impatience to be gone made her rather indifferent to the visible weakness and illness of the sibyl.
"Oh! but, Lucy, we must spare her a moment," cried Bonnibel, full of womanly pity, and forgetting her dread of the sibyl at sight of her sufferings; "she must not die out here in the cold and rain. Let us take her between us and lead her to the house, and leave her in care of the old housekeeper if she is there."
"We must hurry, then," said Lucy; "Mr. Leslie Dane's life is worth more than this old witch's if she lived two hundred years to follow her trade of lying!"
She stooped very gently, however, and helped the poor creature to her feet; supporting the frail form between them, the mistress and maid walked on toward the house.
"What threatens Leslie Dane's life?" inquired the old sibyl suddenly, as she walked between them with drooping head.
"They are trying him for the murder of Mr. Arnold, more than three years ago, if you must know," said Lucy.
"Is he innocent?" inquired the old creature in a faltering voice.
"Innocent? Of course he is—as innocent as the angels," answered Lucy, "but he can never prove it unless me and Miss Bonnibel can get the witnesses at Brandon to prove analibifor him. So you see we are wasting time on you, old woman."
"Yes, yes," faltered Wild Madge, humbly. "But where are they trying him, Lucy Moore?"
"At Cape May Court House, old woman—and the evidence will be summed up to-day, the jurors will give their verdict. You see we must hurry, if we would save him."
"Yes, yes; better to leave the old woman to die in the rain, and hurry on," whined the sick woman.
"We are here now. We will leave you under shelter at least," Bonnibel answered gently.
They led her in, and consigned her to the care of the wondering old housekeeper at Sea View, and went back to the shore.
TheBonnibel, battered and worn, but still seaworthy, rocked at her moorings yet. They loosened the little craft, sprang in, Bonnibel took up the oars, and the little namesake shot swiftly forward through the rough waves to Brandon.
"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why the sentence of death shall not be pronounced against you?"
The solemn words of the judge echo through the crowded court-room, and the sea of human faces turn curiously and with one accord towards the spot where the prisoner sits with his friend, the handsome German artist, by his side, where he has remained throughout the trial.
The case has excited much interest, for the murdered man had been widely known, and as for the man accused of the murder, his native land had but just commenced to hear of him as a son whose brow was crowned with laurels in the world of art. But almost simultaneously with the announcement of his brilliant success abroad had followed the dreadful tidings of his arrest for the murder of Mr. Arnold, and the distinguished position of the murdered man and the fame of the gifted young artist accused of the crime had drawn thousands to the trial.
It was all over now. Day after day the prisoner had sat with his flashing dark eye, and calm, pale brow, listening to the damning evidence against him. From first to last, despite the entreaties of his lawyer and friends, he had resolutely declined to attempt proving analibi—the only thing that could have saved him. Now, the trial was over, the evidence had been summed up and given to the jury, and they had returned their verdict of willful murder. Nothing now remained but the dreadful duty of the judge—to pronounce upon that young, handsome, gifted man the sentence of annihilation—ofdeath!
And accordingly he had begun with the usual ceremonious formula:
"Have you anything to say why the sentence of death should not be pronounced against you?"
And the eager crowd surged forward for a nearer view of Leslie Dane's face.
Colonel Carlyle was there, sitting with Mrs. Arnold and Felise Herbert. There was an ill-concealed expression of relief and satisfaction upon the faces of the three. They had pursued an innocent man to the death, but no twinge of remorse stirred their hard hearts as he rose in his seat, pale, proud and handsome, towering above the crowd in his kingly hight and stateliness, and confronted the judge.
"I have nothing to say, your honor, except thatI am not guilty!"
A low murmur of approbation from some, and of dissent from others instantly arose, and was immediately hushed by the crier of the court.
At that moment, when the judge rose to the performance of his duty, a messenger brought a tiny slip of paper and placed it in the hands of Leslie Dane's lawyer. As he read it his gloomy face brightened marvelously. He rose in his seat flushed and radiant.
"May it please your honor to suspend the sentence of the court. There is a new and important witness."
The next moment a graceful, veiled figure, clad in heavy, soundless black silk, glided into the witness-box.
She was sworn, and lifted her veil to kiss the book. A perfectly beautiful face, blanched to the pallor of marble, was revealed by the action. A murmur of admiration arose from the spectators, blent with subdued exclamations of horror from three who were nearly stricken lifeless by her unexpected advent.
"Silence in the court!" thundered the crier.
The examination of the witness began.
"What is your name?"
And clear and sweet as a silver bell the lady's voice arose in answer, penetrating every strained ear in the densely-packed court-room.
"I have been known as Bonnibel Carlyle, but I am Bonnibel Dane, the wife of the prisoner at the bar!"
As the words left her lips she glanced beneath her long lashes at the face of Leslie Dane. In her swift look there was shame, abnegation, self-sacrifice, curiously blended with uncontrollable pity and almost tenderness. The face that looked back at her was so radiant that it almost dazzled her. Her eyes dropped swiftly, and she never looked at him again while she stood there.
Many eyes turned upon Colonel Carlyle to see how he bore the stroke of fate. He sat perfectly still, white as marble, staring like one frozen into a statue of horror at the beautiful witness in the box, whose blue eyes took no note of his presence.
The examination proceeded. Bonnibel told her story calmly, clearly, bravely. When she concluded and left the witness-stand she was succeeded by the old minister and his wife, whom she had brought from Brandon.
They corroborated her testimony and left no flaw in the evidence. The clouds which had hung over Leslie Dane's fair name so long were dissipated by the sunlight of truth. Hisalibiwas triumphantly established, his innocence perfectly vindicated. And then, to the surprise of all and the utter consternation of Felise Herbert, Wild Madge, the sibyl, hobbled weakly into the witness-box, pale, wrinkled, cadaverous, the image of hideous old age and approaching death. Breathless silence pervaded the multitude while the dying woman told her story, interspersing it with many expressions of remorse and horror. Briefly told, her confession amounted to this: Felise Herbert had sought her humble cabin the night that Mr. Arnold and Leslie Dane had quarreled, and bribed her to murder the millionaire. Tempted by the large reward, she had stolen upon Mr. Arnold as he slept in his arm-chair on the piazza and stabbed him to the heart with a large knife. Then, ere long, remorse had fastened upon her, and she had cast the golden price of her dreadful crime into the engulfing waves of the ocean. Finishing her story with a last labored effort, and throwing up her arms wildly into the air, Wild Madge, the feared and dreaded sibyl of Cape May fell forward on the floor of the court-room—dead!
As soon as her body had been removed from the place the lawyer who had prosecuted Leslie Dane rose hastily in his seat. It might be out of order, he said, but he should be glad to ask a few questions of the minister who had performed the marriage ceremony between Leslie Dane and Miss Bonnibel Vere.
His request was granted, and the aged, white-haired preacher was again placed on the witness-stand, while curiosity was on the qui vive for further developments. The lawyer cross-questioned the old man closely for a few minutes; then he turned to the judge.
"I am bound, your honor," he said, "to inform those most interested that, though the lady's evidence has completely vindicated Leslie Dane, she has utterly failed to establish the legality of her marriage with him. On the contrary, owing to the youth and inexperience of the young man, perhaps partly attributable to his haste and agitation that night, and to the culpable forgetfulness and carelessness of the aged minister here, there was no license procured for the authority of the marriage ceremony. Her former marriage, therefore, has no legality in the eyes of the law, and she still remains, as she has been known the last three years, the wife of Colonel Carlyle."
As the lawyer resumed his seat, amid a breathless hum of excitement, a loud shriek pierced the air of the court-room—a wild, horrible, blood-curdling, maniacal cry. Every eye turned on Felise Herbert, who had risen in her seat, and with distorted features, livid lips and burning eyes, was wildly beating the air with her hands. Her appearance was appalling to behold as she stood there with her hat falling off, her hair in disorder, and foam flecks on her livid, writhing lips.
"Foiled! foiled!" she exclaimed wildly. "I am baffled of my revenge at every point."
Everyone seemed horror-struck. None attempted to molesther as she moved forward and stood before Colonel Carlyle. The old man looked up at her vacantly. He had neither moved nor spoken since the entrance of his wife; he seemed to be fettered hand and foot by a trance of horror. He did not heed the threatening look in the eyes of Felise Herbert as they fell upon him, full of the wild glare of madness.
"You jilted me, fool!" she said, passionately, wildly gesticulating with her hands—"jilted me for the sake of Bonnibel Vere's baby beauty. I swore revenge upon you both. I forged the notice of Leslie Dane's death, made her believe it was true, and drove her to desperation and forced her to marry you. I made you jealous by my anonymous letters, and turned your married life into a hell upon earth. But now, the sweetest drop in my cup—the illegality of your marriage—is turned into bitterness. But I will have my revenge yet.Die,die, villain!"
One movement, swift as the lightning flash, and a little dagger gleamed in her hand, and the next instant was buried to the hilt in Colonel Carlyle's heart.
With a groan he fell on the floor at her feet.
Strong hands bore the raving maniac away, attended by her frightened, horror-struck mother.
The poor victim of the madwoman's fatal revenge, as he lay weltering in his blood, lifted his dimming eyes, and gasped one imploring word:
"Bonnibel!"
Trembling like a wind-blown leaf, she came at his call, and knelt down at his side with a great pity shining in her soft blue eyes.
The dying man's gaze dwelt on her for a moment, drinking in all the sweetness and fairness of the face he loved, and which he was losing forever.
"My wife," he murmured, in hollow, broken accents, "do you not—see—I—was—not wholly—to blame? A—fiend's—work—goaded me—on! She has—had—her revenge. But—it—might have been—so different—if I had known. Bonnibel,forgive!"
She took his hand in hers and bent her face lower over him, with all the divine pity and forgiveness of a tender woman shining in the eyes that were brimming over with tears.
"I am sorry it all fell out so," she said, very gently, "and I forgive all—as freely as I hope to be forgiven."
A beam of love and gratitude flashed over his features an instant; then it faded out in the grayness and pallor of death. Bonnibel turned away, and hid her face on the shoulder of the faithful Lucy.
"It's all over, my poor darling. Shall we go away now?" Lucy whispered.
"We must go back to his home with him, Lucy. We must show him the last tribute of respect. I have forgiven him. He was more sinned against than sinning," she murmured back.
So when the mournful funeral cortege moved from the gates of his stately home, Colonel Carlyle's darling, whom he had so passionately loved despite his jealous madness, went down to theportals of the grave with him, and saw all that was mortal of Clifford Carlyle laid away in the kindred dust.
Felise Herbert was pronounced by the most competent physicians a dangerous and incurable maniac. She was accordingly removed to an insane asylum for life.
Mrs. Arnold escaped all suspicion of complicity in her daughter's crimes, and was suffered to go free from the terrors of the law. But she had no object in life now. The destruction of her idol had torn down the fair citadel of hope and plunged her into incurable despair. Wealth and position were nothing to her now, since the beautiful girl for whose sake she had schemed to secure them could never enjoy them. Among Felise's effects she found Mr. Arnold's stolen will. In a spasm of remorse, she restored it to the owner, and Bonnibel received her share of the large fortune her Uncle Francis had bequeathed her. Mrs. Arnold went into the insane asylum where her daughter was confined, and became a nurse there for the sake of being near the wretched and violent maniac.
And Bonnibel?
Colonel Carlyle had bequeathed her the whole of his large fortune, which, added to her inheritance from her uncle, made her one of the wealthiest women in New York. But wealth cannot buy happiness. Mrs. Carlyle, young, beautiful and wealthy though she was, might yet have exclaimed with the gifted poet: