CHAPTER XLV.NAMING THE DAY.
Raymond Challoner lost no time in acting upon Queenie’s advice. The very next afternoon he presented himself at her home, and Queenie herself went to fetch Jess at once.
“How shall I ever go down to the drawing-room to see him!” cried Jess, distractedly, as she clung to her false friend with death-cold hands; “if he speaks to me of love, or marriage, I am sure I shall fall in a swoon at his feet.”
“That is not being brave,” retorted Queenie, impatiently, “you promised me faithfully that you would put the pastfrom you, and try to believe that it was but a dream; this is not carrying out your word.”
Jess straightened herself up with apparent difficulty, the awful pallor still upon her face. How she made her way down the stairway, she never afterward quite remembered, so strong was the feeling within her that she would swoon with each step.
Raymond Challoner advanced to greet her in his jaunty, inimitable, graceful manner.
“Little Jess!” he cried, holding out both hands in greeting, “words fail to express to you how glad I am to see you.”
Her white lips parted, and her large, dark, startled eyes looked away from the eager blue ones in much trepidation. She murmured some faint words which he could not quite catch.
“Why, how changed you are, little Jess!” he cried, holding her off at arm’s length and looking in puzzled wonder down at her fair, marvelously beautiful face. “New York and the society of our mutual friend Queenie seem to have metamorphosed you completely. You left me a romp of a girl, I find you a woman; there is something in your eyes, in your face, that I have never seen there before, and I am puzzled to know what it is.”
He saw her flush and then turn deadly pale under his keen, searching scrutiny.
“You are a thousand times more beautiful, and therefore more lovable than when we last met,” he cried, enthusiastically. “I regretted from the bottom of my heart that they had let you slip off to New York without my knowledge, or approval, but I am obliged to confess that it has done wonders for you, my Jess—wonders.”
“How could you leave me in that reckless fashion?” he went on, reproachfully. “You struck a cruel blow at my heart by doing so, and a still more cruel blow when you wrote me that you intended to break our engagement. Why, little girl, I was sick for weeks from the effects of it, praying to die, I fought bitterly against allowing them to cure me; that will show you how completely I was wrapped up in your sweet self.
“The bitterest drop in my cup of woe was that theywould not tell me where you had gone, in accordance with some foolish promise given. It seemed like a stroke of fate that I should come to New York, and in coming to visit an old friend stumble directly into the house where you were visiting. Do you not agree with me that it was indeed fate? If it had not been intended that we should be reunited, I would not have been able to discover where my pearl had hidden herself.
“But, dear me, come and sit down in this sunshiny bay window, my little Jess, that I may have a better look at my newly recovered treasure; you are now so royally, regally beautiful, that I can scarcely believe you are one and the same little Jess whom I met in the wilds of Louisiana that eventful September morning, which seems long months ago, though it is in reality not so very long ago.”
During the call, which seemed long and tedious to Jess, who was wondering if he would never, never go, her companion did all the talking, the girl barely answering in monosyllables, but he attributed this to bashfulness, though that was a trait in her character that he had not discovered during his brief sojourn at Blackheath Hall.
“With your permission, Jess,” he said at length, “I should like to talk about our wedding; when shall it take place, my own love?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” cried the girl, distractedly, “do not mention it to me—until the very last moment—and let it be as far off as you possibly can.”
His brow darkened.
“That is not a very kind speech, Jess,” he remarked, with considerable pique, “and does not speak very well for the depths of love you shall bear the man to whom you have plighted your troth.”
She looked up at him appealingly. It seemed to her if he uttered another word on the subject she would go mad. How could she listen to words of love or marriage from another’s lips when her heart lay buried in the grave of the man she had loved so passionately, with all the strength of her nature?
But she knew if she made the sacrifice which Queenie had impressed upon her was her solemn duty, she mustmake no outcry, utter no word of protestation against the marriage, or when it was to take place.
“I know that you spoke in jest, my sweetheart,” Ray Challoner went on, smoothly, “to think otherwise would be to drive me mad, my heart is so entirely yours.”
“Forgive me,” answered Jess, bravely, choking down a great sob that threatened to break forth and betray the state of her feelings.
She listened like one in a far-off troubled dream while he talked to her of his plans for the future, and ended by praying her to name the day when he should claim her as his own.
“I—do not know,” murmured the girl, wearily; “I—I will leave everything to you, Mr. Dinsmore,” and if he had not been so jubilant over the victory and the fortune so near his grasp, he would have noticed the suspicion of tears in her lovely, dark, mournful, despairing eyes.
“Then I say, let it take place at once, my own,” he declared, “the sooner the better, say a week from to-day!”
Jess shuddered, as with a sudden chill, but she kept control of her nerves by a great effort. He must not see how obnoxious the very thought of marriage with him was to her.
She wondered vaguely how she was to pass the rest of her life with him when she found a few hours so intolerable as to almost drive her mad.
“Your silence gives sweet consent, my own charming little bride to be,” he cried, exultantly, and it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from embracing her then and there.
He took his leave soon after with that matter settled completely to his satisfaction, the ceremony was to be performed just a week from that day. He would have named the morrow, but that he was sure Jess would be suspicious that there was something wrong in his intense eagerness to claim her. Of all things he must avoid raising her suspicions.
He was anxious to get away from her, and celebrate his victory over the outcome of his desperate and daring plan for a fortune, by indulging in as much champagne as he could stand, for once in his life; for there wouldsoon be an end to reckless indulgence, at least for a time. Until the Dinsmore fortune was within his grasp, and he had turned it into cash, he would be obliged to play the part of a model husband.
“She is a thousand times more beautiful than ever,” he muttered, as he walked briskly down the avenue, “but her every action shows me that she abhors me, simply that and nothing else. And because of that, I feel the demon that is in me rising to the surface. I hate her for her coldness toward me and her pride, which will ever be an insurmountable barrier between us. I will marry you, my proud, haughty Jess, and after the knot is tied which makes me your lord and master, I will set my heel upon your white neck, crush that heart of yours, without mercy, and make life itself a torture to you. I will take a glorious revenge upon you for all the indignities you have heaped upon me, I promise you that.”
Finding himself opposite a fashionable café he entered it, and soon finished the bottle of champagne they brought him, another bottle was as quickly dispatched; and in the best of humor with himself and the world, he began to look about him, as to who made up the fashionable throng filing into the place, in hopes that he might discover some boon companion of other days, who would share with him another bottle of the shining, sparkling beverage which had already gone to his brain.
He was getting jovial, and that was the danger signal which should have warned Raymond Challoner to desist then and there from indulging in any more of his dearest foe—sparkling champagne. Already he had begun to see two waiters filling his glass instead of one.
“Not a soul I know in the entire room,” he muttered, staring around disconsolately, “now that is annoying; I would like some one to keep me company.”
Suddenly his attention was drawn to a gentleman who, with two companions, was watching him furtively from a convenient point across the room.
“Wonder where I have seen that face!” muttered Challoner, “can’t think to save my neck.”
His memory refused to aid him.
The gentleman was—John Dinsmore.