After that one shriek of surprise and almost terror, Mrs. Cleveland remains silent, devouring the man's face with a gaze as fixed and burning as his own. Ivy, in her corner, is forgotten by her mother, and unnoticed by the stranger.
"Yes, Lawrence Campbell," he answers her in a deep, hoarse voice, that thrills to the hearts of the listeners. "Are you glad to see me, Mrs. Cleveland?"
"Glad!" she shudders, in an indescribable voice.
"After these long years," he pursues, speaking under the spur of some deep, overmastering agitation, "I have come back to curse you, traitorous, false-hearted woman, and to make atonement."
"Atonement!" she falters, with a start of fear.
"Yes, Marcia Cleveland, atonement," he bursts out passionately. "Tell me, where is the dear, true angel-wife whom I was led to believe false and unfaithful to me, through your heartless machinations. At last I know the truth, at last I know you, devil that you are! You maligned the truest, purest, gentlest woman that ever lived! Your own sister, too—the beautiful, innocent child that was left to your charge by her dying parents. God only knows what motive you had for your terrible sin."
She glares at him with fiery eyes from which the momentary fear has fled, leaving them filled with the mocking light of a wicked triumph.
"Youshould have known my motive, Lawrence Campbell," she bursts out, passionately. "When I first met you in society, the plain, untitled English gentleman, I was a young, beautiful, wealthy widow, and by your attentions and visits you led me to believe that you loved me.
"Then Edith came home from her boarding-school, and with her baby-face and silly school-girl shyness won you from me. You married her, and the very torments of the lost were mine, for I loved with a passion of which she, poor, weak-natured creature, could never dream. Did you think I could tamely bear the slight that was put upon me? No, no, I swore revenge—a deep and deadly revenge, and I have had it; ha, ha! a costly cup, full to the brim and running over!"
She pauses with a wild and maniacal laugh. The man stares at her with starting eyes and a death-white face. The enormity of the wrong that has been done him seems to strike him dumb.
"I have had a glorious revenge," she goes on, wildly, seeing that he cannot speak; "you fell an easy prey to my plan of vengeance through your foolish and ridiculous jealousy. Through the efficient help of a poor, weak fool who loved me I made you believe Edith false and vile, and taunted you into deserting her! Have you suffered? Ah, God, so did I! I was on fire with jealousy and hate. Every pang I made you and Edith suffer was like balm to my heart. I parted you, I came between your wedded hearts, and made your life and hers a hell! Aye, and your child's, too—ha, ha, I made her weep for the hour in which she was born!"
She tosses her white arms wildly in the air, and laughs low and wickedly with the glare of malice and revenge in her flashing, black eyes. She is transformed from the handsome, clever woman of the world into a mocking devil. Even Ivy, who knows her mother's heartlessness as none other know, stares with distended eyes at the infuriated woman. She involuntarily recalls a verse she has somewhere read:
"Earth has no spell like love to hatred turned,And hell no fury like a woman scorned."
"Earth has no spell like love to hatred turned,And hell no fury like a woman scorned."
"My child," the man breaks out, with a yearning heart-hunger in his melancholy eyes. "She lives then—my child, and Edith's! Oh, God, will she ever forgive me the wrong I have done her mother? Speak, woman—devil, rather—and tell me where to find my Edith and her little one!"
"Little one!" mocks Mrs. Cleveland, scornfully. "Do you forget, Lawrence Campbell, that seventeen years have come and gone since you deserted Edith and her unborn child?"
"No, I am not likely to forget," he answers, with the bitterness of remorse in his low voice. "The child must be a woman now. But I will atone to Edith and her child for all I have made them suffer through your sin. I am rich, now, and I have fallen heir to a title in my native land. Edith will be a countess, our child a wealthy heiress. And I will make them happy yet. My heart is young, although my hair is gray. I love my wife yet, with all the fire of youth. Tell me where to find them, Marcia Cleveland, and for that one act of grace, I will forgive you all the black and sinful past."
He pauses, with his hollow, burning eyes fixed eerily upon her, waiting her reply. The autumn winds wail sharply round the house, the chilly rain taps at the window pane with ghostly fingers, as if to hint of those two graves lying side by side under the cold and starless sky of night.
"Tell me," she says, putting aside his questions scornfully. "How did you learn that I had deceived you?"
"From the dying lips of your tool—Egbert Harding. He was in London—dying of the excesses brought on by a fast and wicked life. At the last he repented of his sins, afraid to face the God whom his wicked life had outraged. He sent for me and confessed all—how he had lent himself to your diabolical plan to dupe and deceive me. He swore to me that my beautiful Edith was as innocent as an angel. I left him, poor, frightened, despairing wretch, at his last gasp, and came across the seas to seek for you and my wronged wife. Tell me, Marcia, for I can wait no longer; my heart is half-broken with grief and suspense. Where shall I find my wife and child?"
"In their graves!" she answers, with the hollow and exultant laugh of a fiend.
Lawrence Campbell reels backward as if some invisible hand had smitten him across the face. He throws up his thin, white, quivering hands in the air, as though in the agonies of death. But in a moment he rallies himself and looks at the tormenting fiend with lurid, blazing eyes.
"You lie!" he exclaims, hoarsely. "You are false to the core of your heart, Marcia. I will not believe you. God, who knows how much I have suffered, would not afflict me so cruelly. I ask you again—where are they?"
"And I tell you they aredead!" she answers, hoarsely. "If you will not believe me, go to Glenwood. You know our family burial-plot. There you will find two new-made graves. Ask the sexton whose they are, and he will tell you Mrs. Campbell's and her daughter Vera's. Your wife died three nights ago—died of a broken heart, while I, her sister who hated her, was dancing at a ball! Your daughter, Vera, died the night before last by her own hand—died the death of the suicide! Ha, ha!" she laughed, sneeringly, "have I not had a glorious revenge for my slighted love?"
"I will not believe you—I cannot. It is too terrible," LawrenceCampbell moans, with his hands pressed to his head, and a dazed look in his great, black eyes.
"You may, for it is true," exclaims Ivy, coming forward into the light, with a wicked triumph in her pale-blue eyes. "If you will not believe my mother, go to the graveyard and see, as she bade you."
He lifts his eyes and stares at her a moment, a white, dizzy horror on his face. The next moment he reels forward blindly, like some slaughtered thing, and falls in a white and senseless heap upon the floor.
"You have killed him, too, mamma," Ivy exclaims, exultantly.
The heartless woman, turning around, spurns the fallen body with her foot.
"A fit ending to the tragedy," she utters, cruelly. "Ring the bell for a servant, Ivy."
In a moment a white-aproned menial appears in the room. Mrs. Cleveland looks at him frowningly.
"John, who admitted this drunken fellow into the house?" she inquires, sharply.
"I did, madam. He said he was an old friend of yours," the man answers respectfully. "Is anything wrong about it, madam? He seems," bending over him, "to be dead."
"Dead drunk," the woman utters, scornfully. "Drag him out of the house, John, and throw him into the street."
The man stares in consternation.
"It's pouring down rain, ma'am," he exclaims, deprecatingly, "and pitchy dark. Hadn't I best call the police?"
"Do as I bid you," Mrs. Cleveland storms. "Throw him into the street, and leave him there. And mind how you admit such characters into the house again, or you may lose your place!"
She stands still with lowering brows, watching the man as he executes her orders, dragging the heavy, unconscious form from the room, and along the hall to the door.
When the lumbering sound has ceased, and the heavy clang of the outer door grates sharply on the silence, she draws a deep breath of relief.
"Now I know why you always hated Vera and her mother so much," Ivy exclaims. "Why did you never tell me, mamma?"
"It was no business of yours," Mrs. Cleveland answers, sharply.
"Oh, indeed, we are very lofty!" Ivy comments, impudently.
Mrs. Cleveland makes her no answer. She has sunk into the depths of a velvet-cushioned chair, and with lowered eyelids and protruding lips seems to be grimly brooding. Her form seems to have collapsed and grown smaller, her face is ashy white.
"You are a smarter and wickeder woman than I gave you credit for," Ivy resumes, curiously. "So, then, the tale you told Leslie Noble about Vera's dissipated father was altogether false."
"Yes," her mother mutters, mechanically.
But presently she starts up like one in a panic.
"Ivy, we must go away from here," she exclaims, in a strange and hurried voice. "I am afraid to stay."
"Afraid of what?" Ivy queries, impatiently.
"Of Lawrence Campbell's vengeance," the woman answers, fearfully. "It is a fearful wrong I have done him, and he will strike me back. We must fly—fly from his wrath!"
The unconscious man who has been so heartlessly thrust forth in the bleak, inclement night, lies still upon the wet and flinty pavement, his ghastly face upturned to the uncertain flicker of the street lamps, his eyes closed, his lips half parted as if he were, indeed, dead. No one is passing, no one notes that the form of an apparently dead man has been hustled out of the inhospitable gates of the stately Cleveland Mansion. None care to be abroad this wet and windy night. The chilly rain beats down into the still, white face, and at last revives him. He drags himself wearily up to his feet, and clinging to the iron spokes of the ornamental lawn fence, stares up at the dark, gloomy-looking building which now, with closed and darkened windows, appears dreary as a tomb. He shudders, and his eyes flash luridly in the darkness.
"May the curse of God light upon her," he murmurs, distractedly. "She robbed me of everything, and laid my life bare and desolate. My heart is a bare and empty ruin where the loathsome bats and shrieking night birds of remorse flap their ebon wings in the haunted darkness. Edith, Vera, my wronged, my murdered darlings—would God that you might have lived to forgive me for the madness that ruined your lives, and broke your tender hearts!"
No answer comes to his wild appeal from the wide and limitless spaces of the black night. Those two whom he adjures so despairingly, lie still "under the sod and the dew," deaf to his yearning calls, though he cry out ever so loudly to them, from his sore and tortured heart.
And at last, tormented with doubts, and longing to know the truth, for he cannot trust the oath of the false Marcia Cleveland, he flings himself into a passing car that goes toward the cemetery, fired with the wild resolve that he would never believe her wicked assertion until he can prove its truth—not until looking into the coffin, and calling on her loved name, he shall know that his wife is surely dead, because she is dumb to the wild and yearning cry of his heart.
A wild resolve—worthy of a madman. But Lawrence Campbell is scarcely sane to-night. Remorse and despair have driven him wild.
Gold—potent gold—what will it not buy? It opens the gates of the cemetery to the wronged, half-maddened husband and father, it throws off the heavy clods that lie between him and the face he yearns for. Quick and fast fall the rapid strokes of the spade, the dull thud of the fresh earth thrown out on the soft grass is continuous.
At last the sexton, pausing to take breath and wipe the beaded dews from his hot brow, utters a smothered cry of dismay:
"What was I thinking of to blunder so? I have made a great mistake, sir. This is the daughter's grave, not the mother's."
"No matter—go on with your work. Let me see the face of the child that I never beheld in life," Lawrence Campbell answers, resolutely.
Seeing how useless would be remonstrance the sexton bends to his task again. In a few minutes the earth is all out, but it requires the united strength of both men to raise the casket and lay it upon the upper ground.
"Now the lid—have it off quickly," groans the wretched man; "and the lantern. Bring it near that I may look on my dead."
Eagerly he kneels on the ground and scans the beautiful white features of the dead. A groan burst from his lips:
"It isshe, my wife, my lost Edith, still young and beautiful as when I wooed her to be my own! Ah, even time and death could not efface that surpassing loveliness!"
But the sexton answers, compassionately:
"Ah, sir, it is not your wife, but your daughter. Your wife had grown older and sadder. Her bonny locks were mixed with gray; I used to see her here on many a Sabbath when she came to weep by her parents' graves. This, sir, is your daughter, with her mother's face."
"My daughter, with her mother's face!" he cries, and stoops to press a long-lingering kiss on the white brow beneath the careless rings of sunny hair. He starts back with a loud cry: "My God!"
The sexton trembles with apprehension.
"My dear sir, let me beg you to be more prudent," he whispers. "What if we should be discovered?"
But Lawrence Campbell's face is transfigured with a trembling hope and joy.
"I believe that I am sane," he exclaims, "I do not believe that I am dreaming. Yet when I kissed Vera's brow it felt warm and moist like the flesh of the living. Tell me, am I right?"
The sexton wipes his grimy hand to press it on the fair, girlish brow. He bends his ear to the delicate lips that still retain the warm, natural coloring of life. A smothered cry breaks from him.
"You are right, Mr. Campbell. Her flesh is warm and moist, her color is life-like and natural, and she breathes faintly. Oh, wonderful—most wonderful! She seems to be in a deep trance-like sleep. How terrible—how terrible to think of! Your daughter has been buried alive."
"She lives!" the father echoes, in wild thankfulness.
"She lives and we must carry her to my cottage as soon as possible. She must not awaken in this dreadful place. It would frighten her into real death," answers the sexton.
They lift the slight form out of its grim receptacle and bear her to the sexton's secluded cot where he lives alone, his wife having died a few months previous. They lay her down on his clean bed in the warm, cozy room; and still her strange, deep slumber is unbroken.
"I will watch beside her," says Mr. Campbell. "You must goback, restore the empty coffin to the grave, and throw in the earth again."
"You do not wish that this discovery shall ever be known, then?" the sexton asks, gravely.
"No—at least not now," Mr. Campbell answers, after a pause of silent thought.
A moment later he adds, wistfully:
"My wife's grave—you will open that too? Who knows but that she, too, may be only sleeping?"
"It is scarce probable, sir, but I will do it to satisfy you," the sexton answers, moving away.
The dawn of a new day is breaking when he returns, having just finished his weary task. Lawrence Campbell starts up from his weary vigil by his daughter's silent form.
"You promised to come for me, and I waited and waited!" he cries, reproachfully. "You did not do as I bade you."
The old sexton's face is ashen gray as if with the memory of some recent horror.
"Oh, sir, I swear to you, I kept my word," he cries, "but—but—oh, Mr. Campbell, I spared you in mercy that dreadful sight! You would not have known her, you could not have borne to see how death had effaced her beauty. You must remember her as she was—not as she is."
Lawrence Campbell's despairing moan is echoed by a low and fainter one.
Vera's dark eyes open slowly, her lips part in faint, shivering sighs.
"Quick—the wine!" exclaims the sexton. "Pour a few drops between her lips."
Lawrence Campbell obeys gladly, and Vera's lips part thirstily to receive the potent medicine. She lifts her white hand to her brow as if to clear away the shadows that cloud her brain.
"I have been asleep, and my dreams were strange and wild," she murmurs. "I thought I had found my father. You, sir, look at me lovingly and kindly. Can it be——"
"That I am your father—yes, my precious Vera," he answers, pressing a father's holy kiss on the sweet, wistful lips.
Her dark, dreamy eyes look searchingly up into the handsome, noble face.
"Ah, I am so glad," she murmurs, "and you are good and true and noble. I cannot understand why you went away from mamma, but I can tell by your face that you are not the bad and wicked wretch that woman pretended."
"Mrs. Cleveland?" he asks, a spasm of rage and hatred distorting his pallid features.
"Perhaps it will be best not to excite the young lady by talking to her just at first," the sexton interposes, anxiously and respectfully. "She must be very weak, having taken no nourishment for so long. I will go out and prepare a little warm broth for her."
"You must lie still and rest, darling," Lawrence Campbell whispers, pouring a little more of the stimulant between her pale lips—paler now from exhaustion than they were when she laysleeping in the coffin, and with a faint sigh of assent she closes her eyes and lies silent, while the sexton goes out on his kindly meant errand.
The moments pass, Lawrence Campbell sits still with his head bowed moodily on his hand, his thoughts strangely blended, joy for his daughter's recovery, despairing grief for his wife's loss, and unutterable hate for Marcia Cleveland all mixed inextricably together. All that he has lost by that woman's perjury rushes bitterly over him. In the stillness, broken only by the crackle of the fresh coals upon the fire, and the monotonous ticking of the clock upon the mantel, he broods over his wrongs until they assume gigantic proportions.
And Vera—so strangely rescued from the coffin and the grave—she is very silent also, but none the less is her brain active and her mind busy. One by one she is gathering up the links of memory.
Her strange marriage, her mother's death, her terrible defeat in the triumph she had anticipated over the Clevelands—all come freshly over her memory, with that crowning hour in which wounded to the heart and filled with a deadly despair, she had crept away to die because she could not endure the humiliation and shame of the knowledge she had gained.
"I remember it all now; I could not decide upon the right vial, and by chance I took the wrong one. It was the sleeping potion. How long have I been asleep, and how came I here?"
Unclosing her languid eyes, she repeats the question aloud:
"Father, how came I here?"
He starts, nervously, at the unexpected question.
"My dear, you must not ask questions," he answers. "At least—not yet."
"But just this one, father. It keeps ringing itself in my head. I am filled with wonder. I drank a vial of what I imagined contained death, and lay down on my bed to die. But I only slept, and my dreams were wild. Then I awoke in this strange room, and saw you looking at me so kindly, and I knew you in my heart for my father. My wonder is so great that I cannot rest. Suspense is worse than knowledge. Only tell me how I came to be here?"
He looks at the beautiful, eloquent lips and pleading eyes, looking so dark with the purple shadows around them, and the pale, pale face.
"I must not tell her the truth," he said to himself. "She looks too slight and frail to bear the shock of hearing it. She need not ever know that she had been buried alive, and rescued out of the blackness of the grave. The horror of it would be enough to unhinge her reason."
"The last that I remember," she continues, "I was lying on my bed at Mrs. Cleveland's, waiting for death to come. I awoke here in this strange place. How did it happen?"
"I had you conveyed here in your sleep," he answers. "My dear, I see that you have all of woman's proverbial curiosity. But there is no mystery here. The simple truth is, that I went to Mrs. Cleveland's to seek my wife and child. I found that yourmother was dead, and you were locked in a strange, narcotic sleep, almost as deep as death. I had you conveyed here, and watched over you until you awakened from your long slumber. That is all, my dear little daughter. Now, can you rest satisfied?"
The dark eyes seek his, still wistfully, and with dawning tenderness.
"Father, you do not know how I love the sound of your voice," she murmurs. "It does not excite nor weary me. It is full of soothing, calming power. It falls on my thirsty, yearning heart like the dew upon flowers. I wish that you would talk to me. Nothing you can say would weary me so much as my own tumultuous thoughts."
He sighs, and smooths back the soft waves of gold that stray over the blue-veined temples.
"What shall I talk of, little one?" he inquires.
"Tell me where you have been all these long years, father, and why you never came for mamma and I when you were so unhappy?" she sighs.
Tears that do not shame his manhood crowd into his dark, sad eyes.
"Vera, you will hate me when I tell you that it was a mad, unreasoning jealousy, aroused and fostered by Marcia Cleveland, that led me to desert my innocent wife, and you, my little child, before you were born," he answers, heavily.
Vera's dark eyes flash with ominous light. She lies silent a moment, brooding over her mother's terrible wrongs.
"I have been a lonely wanderer from land to land ever since," he goes on, slowly. "God only knows what I suffered, Vera, for I could never tear the image of my wife from my breast, although I believed her false and vile. But I was too proud to go back to her. I never knew how she was breaking her heart in silent sorrow for me, her life made doubly wretched by the abuses of the false sister who hated her because I loved her. At last I was recalled from my wanderings. I had fallen heir to a title I had never dreamed of inheriting, and which only filled me with bitterness. I reflected that, but for Edith's falsity, she might have been my countess; as fair a lady as ever reigned in my ancestral halls."
"Poor mamma, leading her slavish life in Mrs. Cleveland's house," the girl murmurs, in vain regret.
"Poor martyr to the sins of others," the man echoes, heavily.
"Yet you came back at last," Vera murmurs. "Had you repented of your hasty desertion?"
"I had learned the truth, Vera, through the dying confession of Mrs. Cleveland's weak tool. I had learned how terribly I had been deceived, and that I had deserted my angel wife for naught. Vera, did she curse my memory when she lay dying of a broken heart?"
"She never named you either in praise or blame, father. I had some vague impression that you were dead. I knew no better until I overheard Mrs. Cleveland telling some one that you had deserted my mother before I was born, and that you were a low,drunken, brutal wretch, who had abused and maltreated her from the first."
"Oh, my God, my God! that such demons should walk the earth!" the man groans through his clenched teeth.
He rises and walks up and down the floor, struggling with his strong, overmastering agitation.
"Vera, we three—you and I, and our lost loved one—have been wronged as, it seems to me, never mortals were before. My heart is on fire with rage and hate for the devil who has so blasted our lives. It seems to me that I can never rest until I strike back. Vera, shall we not avenge ourselves?"
His dark, passionate eyes fill with the fire that rages in his soul. Vera looks up at him, half-fearfully.
"How, father?" she queries, slowly.
The heavy gloom deepens in his night-black eyes.
"How—I cannot tell!" he says, hoarsely. "But I will bide my time. I will wait and watch. Edith's wrongs shall not go unavenged."
The beautiful young face on the pillow softens and saddens.
"Mother was very gentle and forgiving," she murmurs. "Shewould have said, leave it to Heaven."
"She was an angel—I am but human," he answers. "Vera, we must work together for vengeance. The time will come when we will make Marcia Cleveland bite the dust—when she shall curse the stars that shone over her ill-fated birth."
So the wronged man raves, and Vera's passionate heart is kindled into flames by his burning eloquence. She is with him heart and soul, loyal to the core of her woman's heart.
Strange, that when she tells him the story of her short, sad life she should hold one secret back. The words die on her white lips when she tries to tell him. A passionate shame fills her heart. Oh, the bitter pain, the deep humiliation of the thought that she is Leslie Noble's wife. Leslie Noble whom she scorns and despises. Have they told her father the truth? she wonders.
No, for presently he says, tenderly:
"Do not think that all my thoughts are given up to vengeance, Vera. I shall care for you very tenderly, darling. And if you should ever marry, I pray God that your wedded happiness may not be blighted by such a terrible wrong as mine."
Her heart gives a great throb of relief. He does not know. He never shall know by her telling, she resolves.
The day comes soon when they kneel hand in hand by Edith's grave to bid her good-bye before departing for England's shore.
"Edith, my darling," he whispers to the dead heart below, "the human vampire has escaped me this time. She has fled from my vengeance, and left no trace behind her. But let her beware, for I but bide my time. The bloodhounds of hate are howling behind her, and sooner or later she will be brought to bay. Farewell, my murdered darling. Remember that I only live to avenge your wrongs, and to protect your child!"
No one had created such a sensation in London for several years as did Lady Vera, the Earl of Fairvale's only child, when she was presented at court. She was just nineteen, and a perfect beauty. She was more American than English in style—tall and slenderly formed, with a stately grace all her own, with large, dark eyes, and black brows and lashes, with hair of a magnificent, dark-golden shade, and well-formed, aristocratic features. Then, as the crowning charm to her brilliant loveliness, she had inherited from her English ancestry a dazzling complexion of lilies and roses.
People who studied and admired Lady Vera most, said that they could not quite understand the expression of her face. It was too intense for one so young. It was full of passion, tempered by the gravest thought.
The young English girls had dimples and smiles for everyone, but Lady Vera was different. She had the sweetest, most radiant smile in the world when you saw it, but that was so very seldom. She seemed to be thinking all the time—thinking deeply, even when she danced or sang, or conversed. And her favorite flowers were the beautiful, velvety pansies, whose very emblem is thought.
Yet when you looked into the Earl of Fairvale's face, you ceased to wonder at his daughter. The shadow on her face was reflected from the cloud on his. His dark, handsome face was a study. Where Lady Vera seemed to be thinking, his expression was that of one brooding—brooding all the while on one subject, and that not a pleasant one.
It was with some difficulty that he met the requirements of society. When spoken to suddenly sometimes, he would start and look bewildered as if his thoughts were far away. Ladies admired him immensely, although he was very inattentive to them. The dark, sad, melancholy face had a peculiar charm for them. They said he reminded them of Byron's heroes.
The earl was very fond of his daughter, and very careful of her. His eyes followed her everywhere, but their expression was always sad and melancholy. No one knew that every time he looked at her, he remembered how he had wronged her mother, and that his heart was breaking with remorse and grief, as well as with the consuming fires of a baffled revenge.
His story was not generally known. He had succeeded to the Earldom of Fairvale through a series of unexpected deaths, and though everyone knew of handsome Lawrence Campbell's accessions, little was known of him personally beyond the rumor that he had married an American lady, who had died and left him one only child, his beautiful and worshiped Vera.
Lady Vera had many admirers. Aside from her personal charms, the fact that she would succeed to the title and estates of Fairvale, cast a flattering prestige around her.
She was the same to all who came to woo—cool, courteous, gently indifferent. After awhile they began to say that the earl's daughter was very proud. Ordinary people were not to herfancy, evidently. She must be waiting for a duke or a prince. Poor Lady Vera! Who was to know the bitter secret, the ceaseless dread that ached in the fair breast, that rose and fell beneath the knots of velvety pansies that were her simple and favorite adornment?
Vera has seen and learned a great deal since that night when her father's mad frenzy had been the means of saving her from the horrors of a dreadful death.
She has traveled, she has had masters and governesses; luxuries of which she never even faintly dreamed, have surrounded her and become daily necessities. Pleasure has wooed her softly to its flowery paths, love has been lavishly laid at her feet. But through it all a loathing remembrance of Leslie Noble has poisoned her peace.
"Where is he? Does he know where I am? Will he ever come to claim me?" she often asks herself, never dreaming that he of whose coming she is so terribly afraid believes her dead, and that he has erected a costly marble monument over the spot where her remains are supposed to rest.
Her father's mistaken kindness has kept from her the knowledge of her deadly peril and her opportune rescue, little dreaming in what an untoward hour the startling truth shall come to her.
And she, in her sensitive pride, has held her peace over that ill-fated marriage by the bedside of her dying mother—the poor, heart-broken mother who had erred so fatally, when, with weak, human foresight she had tried to plan for the future well-being of her helpless child.
"Oh, mamma, dearest," she moans, when alone in her silkenboudoir, she recalls the wretched past, "how terribly blind and mistaken you were. Oh, to be free from these fetters that chafe and fret and gall so terribly!"
"Shall you never marry, Vera?" her father asks her one day.
It is the day after she has refused Lord Greyhurst, one of the finest and wealthiest young noblemen in London.
The deep color flows into the girl's fair cheeks.
"I think not, father," she answers, gravely. "I have no wish to marry. I have never met anyone that I could love."
Earl Fairvale is well pleased.
"I am glad to hear you say that, my dear," he answers. "I have no wish to lose my daughter. And, after all, so much sorrow comes from love, one is best without it."
Lady Vera is very glad to hear him talk so. He will never urge her to marry, and she may keep her secret always—always,unless—dreaded possibility—Leslie Noble should return to claim her.
"But he will not. Why should he? He never cared for me. Yet how strange that he should have let my father take me away without one word. He must indeed have been glad to be rid of me," she muses.
The earl and his daughter are staying with Lady Clive for the "season." She is an American, and the daughter of a famous American general. She is very happily married to Sir HarryClive, baronet. Loving everything American with intensest love, she falls an instant victim to Lady Vera's charms.
"Your mother was an American—so am I," she says, vivaciously; "so I claim you on that score. Do you like England, Lady Vera, and English people?"
"Yes," Vera answers, in her grave way.
"And," Lady Clive goes on, in her bright, airy fashion, "do you intend to marry an Englishman or an American?"
"I shall never marry at all," Lady Vera says, with a face of extreme disgust.
"Never! Ah, my dear, you are too young to decide such a momentous question. Only wait and see," cries Lady Clive, who has a match laid out in her mind for Vera, but who is far too wise to give her a hint of it.
"I shall never marry," Vera repeats, calmly. "I do not even like to think of such things as love and marriage. Dear Lady Clive, let us talk of something more interesting. You promised to take me into the nursery, and show me your little children—did you not?"
"Yes, and we will go now," her friend answers, leading the way; but to herself she says, wonderingly: "What a strange girl. At her age I did not think a set of noisy children more interesting than love and marriage."
The grave young face grows brighter than Lady Clive has ever seen it as Vera watches the beautiful little children at their playful sports. She even smiles when they caress her, and gives them the flowers from her bosom in payment for kisses.
"She loves children dearly," Lady Clive says to herself, well pleased. "How strange that she should be so set against marriage. She is an odd girl, but I think I shall live to see her change her mind."
Lady Vera having gained theentreeto the nursery, pays it daily visits, always finding herself vociferously welcomed by the three small dwellers therein.
And one day she finds the youthful trio in a hubbub of excitement.
"Our uncle from America is coming over to visit us," they triumphantly announce to their friend.
"You seem to be glad," Lady Vera answers, kindly.
"Oh, we are," they laugh. "Aren't you glad, too, Vera?"
"I do not know. I do not like Americans much," says Lady Vera, with a distinct remembrance of the Clevelands and Leslie Noble.
"Oh, but you will be sure to like Uncle Phil. He is awfully jolly, and he is a soldier, too. He has a sword and a gun and has promised to teach me to shoot. I am going to be a soldier, too," cries out Mark, the second son.
"And when is this terrible soldier coming?" Lady Vera inquires, with languid interest.
"We do not know exactly, but very soon," they tell her. "Hecame about this time last year. Mamma had a letter from him this morning."
"You have not told me his name yet," Lady Vera continues.
"He is Captain Philip Lockhart, and his father, our own grandpapa, is General Lockhart," answers Hal, the heir, while little Dot claps her small hands gleefully, crying out:
"Uncle Phil will bring us lots of bu'ful playt'ings from New York. He always does."
But though "Uncle Phil" remains the favorite topic of the nursery for several days, Lady Clive quite forgets to tell her guest that she expects her brother.
Lady Vera scarcely gives it a thought. In the expected arrival of Captain Lockhart she takes not the slightest interest.
So it happened that when Vera runs into the nursery one evening—having promised the children a peep at her ball dress—she comes upon an unexpected tableau. A man on his knees, hammering at the lid of a big box, three hopefuls gathered around him, and chattering like magpies; the prim, white-aproned nurse vainly endeavoring to command silence.
Before Vera can beat her instantly-attempted retreat, the little "Philistines are upon her."
"Here she is," they cry. "This is Vera, of whom we have been telling you. Isn't she pretty, Uncle Phil?"
"But she doesn't like Americans," adds oneenfant terrible.
"I am sorry for that," says Captain Lockhart, rising hastily, and giving Lady Vera a soldier's stately bow. "Cannot you persuade her that I am of some other nationality, my dears?"
The ease and lightness of his words and manner carry off some of the embarrassment of the meeting. Lady Vera gives him a bow, and a slight little smile, sweet and transient.
"I am sorry to have interrupted you," she says. "I am going now, directly."
But her swift, upward glance has given her a glimpse of a tall, soldierly form, and a handsome-featured face, with dark-blue eyes, and dark-brown mustache, while short, curling locks of deepest brown cluster about a finely-shaped head—"every inch a soldier."
Our hero, on his part, sees a vision of dazzling beauty—dark eyes, golden tresses, scarlet lips, a slim yet daintily-rounded figure in costly lace, with knots of purple, golden-hearted pansies. Around the slender, stately column of the white throat a necklace of pansies formed of dark, purple amethysts with diamond centers radiating fire—a birthday gift from her father.
"Pray do not go," Captain Lockhart says, persuasively, with the winning tongue of a soldier. "The children have been eagerly expecting you. Do not damp their pleasure. Rather let me withdraw."
"No, no," Lady Vera says, hastily, as he crosses to the door, her haughtiness melting for the moment under his chivalrous manner. "We will both stay—that is, I can only give the children a moment. I am going to a ball."
"So am I, directly, with my sister and Sir Harry. It is verystrange Nella did not tell me she had a young lady guest. I am," smiling under the brown mustache, "puzzled over your name."
"It is Vera Campbell," she answers, with a slight flush.
"LadyVera," pipes the prim nurse from her corner, obsequiously.
"Lady Vera," he says, with a bow and smile; then: "Thank you for the favor. Mine is Philip Lockhart."
"Captain Phil," shouts Mark, anxious that his uncle shall abate no jot of his soldierly dignity.
"He has brought us a great big box," Dot confides to Lady Vera, triumphantly at this moment.
"Which I will leave him to open. My maid has not finished me yet," fibs Vera, and so makes her escape, leaving Captain Phil to the tender mercies of his small relatives, who give him no peace until the heavy box is unpacked, and its contents paraded before their dazzled and rejoicing sight.
Meanwhile Vera secures her opera-cloak, and goes down to the drawing-room, where the earl and Sir Harry are waiting for the ladies.
"Nella will be here in a moment," explains Sir Harry. "She has gone to hurry up her brother, over whom the children are having no end of a jollification. Oh, I forgot, you may not know whom I am talking about. Lady Clive's brother arrived this evening, and will accompany us to Lady Ford's ball."
Vera bows silently, and presently Lady Clive sails in, proudly, with the truant in tow. Evening dress is marvelously becoming to the handsome soldier. Involuntarily Vera thinks of Sir Launcelot:
"The goodliest man that ever among ladies sat in hall,And noblest."
"The goodliest man that ever among ladies sat in hall,And noblest."
"Lady Vera, this is my brother, Captain Lockhart," Lady Clive begins, with conscious pride; then pauses, disconcerted by the "still, soft smile" creeping over either face.
"We have met before," Lady Vera explains, with, for her, unusual graciousness. "Met before! Not in America?" cried Lady Clive, bewildered.
"Oh, no," her brother answers, and Lady Vera adds, smiling: "In the nursery, ten minutes ago."
So there is only the earl to introduce, and then they are whirled away to Lady Ford's, where Captain Lockhart meets a score of last season's friends, and to the surprise of Lady Vera, who is prejudiced against almost anything American, he develops some of the graces of a society man, even playing and singing superbly in a full, rich tenor voice.
"Yet, why should he have selected that old,oldsong: 'The Banks of Allan Water?'" Lady Vera asks herself, scornfully, "and when he sang: