In spite of his outwardnonchalanceandsang froid, Leslie Noble at heart was restless and impatient and consumed by a burning anxiety.
Six weeks had elapsed since he had incarcerated his beautiful prisoner in the ruined old house in the wood, and in all that time he had been afraid to venture back to see her, owing to a keen suspicion he had imbibed regarding the close espionage that was kept upon his movements by the employes of Colonel Lockhart.
The slight flesh wound Lady Vera had inflicted on his arm had entirely healed, and with it had died out his futile anger against her, giving place again to the weak love that had urged him to that desperate recourse of abducting her.
"I was rash and hasty in my last interview with her," he tells himself, "I should have remembered that love cannot be forced. I must woo her gently, with respectful looks and reverential words. I must sue for her favor humbly, as if she were a queen and I her humble slave. Many a woman has been won by flattery."
The longing came over him to woo her with rich gifts and costly jewels poured lavishly at her feet as if naught were too splendid and costly for his beautiful idol.
Alas! his splendid fortune had dwindled to a wretched competency under the various extravagances of Ivy and her mother.
"Weak fool that I was to allow Ivy to retain those magnificent jewels," he thinks, bitterly. "She ruthlessly sacrificed my fortune to obtain them, and by every right on earth they belong to Lady Vera, who is my real wife, not to the woman who usurped her place."
Fostering these thoughts and feelings ceaselessly in his breast, Leslie Noble at last conceived a dastardly design to possess himself of the jewels which he had at first decided should remain the property of his deserted and repudiated second wife.
Accordingly one morning, when he had ascertained that his mother-in-law was away from home, and not likely to return for several hours, he sent up his card to Ivy, who, after some little delay in arranging her toilet, received him in the shabby-genteel little parlor.
In the trembling hope that she might yet win back the recreant, Ivy had made herself as fair as she could without the assistance of her maid, with whose services her mother's parsimony had compelled her to dispense.
"Overdressed and daubed with paint, as usual," was Mr. Noble's disgusted, inward comment, but he allowed none of this feeling to appear upon his face. Instead, he threw a glance of deep tenderness and contrition into his soft, dark eyes, and held out his arms, exclaiming sadly:
"My injured wife! Can you ever forgive me the sorrow I have caused you?"
"Oh, Leslie, you have repented!" the lady sobs, throwing herself into the open arms.
And for a while we will draw the curtain of absence over this touching picture of sacred conjugal love and reunion, while we seek others of our friends.
On the afternoon of that same day Colonel Lockhart received a call from the chief detective.
"I have discovered," he says briefly, "that Mr. Noble has hired a conveyance to take him down into the country about twenty-five miles to-night."
"Well?" Colonel Lockhart inquires, his blue eyes blazing with excitement.
"I have hired a fast trap for myself, and intend to give secret chase to the gentleman," Mr. Sharp replies.
"That is right. I will accompany you," decides his employer, eagerly, and with a springing hope in his breast.
It is late noon when Mrs. Cleveland returns to her lodgings, and finds Ivy lounging on a sofa in the shabby parlor, in a state of blissful beatitude.
"You have been out, Ivy?" she exclaims, in surprise, glancing at the elegant carriage dress of brocaded black silk and sparkling jet.
"Yes," Ivy answers complacently.
"Where?" her mother inquires, surprised, for hitherto Ivy has spent all her time in the seclusion of her chamber, bewailing her untoward fate.
"I have been—to the jeweler's," Mrs. Noble answers, with shining eyes, and enjoying her mother's amazement with all the zest of one who has taken new hold on life.
Mrs. Cleveland lifts her kidded hands in real dismay.
"You have never been selling your jewels—oh, Ivy!" she cries.
"Don't be a fool, mother!" cries the dutiful daughter. "Of course I haven't sold them. You know I would die before I would part with my diamonds!"
"Then why have you been to the jeweler's?" Mrs. Cleveland asks, sharply, and Ivy answers, with a little, cunning, triumphant laugh:
"I have left my pearls and diamonds to be reset. You know I have wanted them reset ever since we came to London. At last I have my wish, and they are to be done in truly royal style."
Mrs. Cleveland stares at the speaker, the color fading from her cheeks and lips, her eyes startled.
"And who is to pay for this last mad extravagance of yours?" she demands, in a low, angry voice.
"Leslie Noble, of course," Ivy answers, laughing in her mother's face.
"She is mad, I fear—stark, raving mad," Mrs. Cleveland exclaims, gazing apprehensively at her daughter.
"Oh, no, I am not, mamma. Leslie was with me at the jeweler's. He has been here and begged my pardon for everything. He does not believe now that Lady Fairvale is his wife. I am going to live with him again."
"Where? At Darnley House?" Mrs. Cleveland asks, almost stupefied at this unexpected news.
"No, for Darnley House is sold, and he cannot get it back. But he means to take another just as fine for me, and I am to choose all the furniture. Oh, mamma, he is so sorry for the bad way in which he treated me. He loves me still. There is nothing strange about that, is there, that you look so incredulous? I was his first love, you know. And he thinks me beautiful still. He is ready to do anything to prove his repentance."
"Did you put him to the test?" Mrs. Cleveland inquires, ironically.
"Yes, indeed! You know how often he has refused to have my jewels reset for me. So I said, 'if you really mean that, Leslie, let me have my pearls and diamonds put into a more elegant setting.'"
"Oh!" groans Mrs. Cleveland, wringing her hands.
"He was delighted at the idea," pursues Ivy, triumphantly, "and proposed that we should see about it at once. We drove down to the jeweler's, taking the pearls and diamonds with us. I selected the design for the settings at a terrible outlay, but Leslie did not murmur. He was glad to be forgiven on any terms."
"Oh!" Mrs. Cleveland groans again.
"Mother, I never saw you act so much like a simpleton!" Ivy exclaims. "Leslie is coming again to-morrow. He wants you to forgive him, too."
"Oh, Ivy, you blind, credulous, silly little fool!" exclaims Mrs. Cleveland, in a towering passion.
"What do mean?" the daughter cries, indignantly, springing to her feet.
"I mean that you will never see Leslie Noble or your jewels again. It was all a plot to rob you of them. He has taken them for Vera, whom he has abducted and hidden away in obscurity."
"He denies the charge, mamma. He believes with Mr. Gilbert that Vera has run away herself. But my jewels—oh, mamma, do you really believe he would rob me of them? Let us go downto the jeweler's and bring them back at once," exclaims Ivy, in feverish terror.
"I will go with you, but I doubt if we shall find them there. He would no doubt take them away on some clever pretext as soon as he left you. Oh, how foolish you were to trust that villain's exaggerated repentance."
"Let us go," Ivy answers, with feverish energy, tying on her bonnet, and hurrying her mother from the room.
The sequel proved Mrs. Cleveland right.
Leslie Noble had already taken away the jewels on the shallow pretext of his wife's change of mind. Poor Ivy was driven back to her lodgings, this time in real genuine hysterics.
"This is no time for hysterics, Ivy," Mrs. Cleveland tells her daughter sharply. "You would do better to rally your strength and calmness, and consider what you are to do to get back your jewels."
Ivy struggles up to a sitting posture, her pale-blue eyes all drowned in tears over the loss of her diamonds—the golden calf of her vain heart's worship.
"If you have nothing to do but ridicule me, you had better leave the room," cries Ivy, flushing to angriest crimson. "I thought you were going to suggest something to help me."
"That would be hard to do," Mrs. Cleveland answers, with an irrepressible angry sneer.
Never in all her life has she been so angry with her silly, petted daughter.
Ivy bursts into petulant sobs again, bewailing her fate in having such a hard-hearted mother and wicked husband.
"I will go and see Mr. Noble, if you wish me," Mrs. Cleveland announces, after a moment's pause.
"Oh, pray do, mamma," her daughter cries out eagerly. "Perhaps you may get them back for me, if you manage him right. Leslie used to be quite under your thumb."
"That was long ago," Mrs. Cleveland answers dryly. "But I will do the best I can to remedy your dreadful mistake."
Still in her street dress, she has only to tie on her bonnet and depart on her mission.
Ivy, after hearing the door close behind her, lies down again, with a sigh of relief and a sensation of hope in her breast. She has great faith in the diplomatic powers of her mother.
After waiting in suspense an hour or two she falls asleep easily on the corner of the sofa and dreams that she is an eastern queen and that her robe of cloth of gold is all frosted with sparkling diamonds.
The gray dusk is falling when Mrs. Cleveland re-enters the room. She stands for some moments looking down at Ivy's wan, sleeping face, with the trace of tears still on the pale, thin cheeks, then wakes her with an impatient shake.
"I should have thought that your suspense would be too greatto allow you to sleep so profoundly," she exclaims wrathfully, her ill-temper hightened by non-success in her errand.
"Oh, mamma, I felt so relieved when you went after Leslie, and so sure that you would get the diamonds, that I fell asleep without knowing it," Ivy answers, with some contrition. "But, mamma, you saw him—he gave them back, did he not?" she continued, eagerly, stretching out her hand for her treasures.
For answer, Mrs. Cleveland holds up her empty hands expressively, and Ivy utters a wail of woe.
"What did he say to you?" Ivy inquires, after a little, pausing in her angry sobs.
"I did not see him. He had gone out, and his servant could not tell me where," her mother answers.
"Then you will go again to-morrow. He will be at home then," Ivy exclaims, with renewed hope.
"No, for he is leaving town to-night," is the short reply.
"Leaving town!" Ivy's voice and look are full of consternation.
"Yes, I learned that much by bribing his servant. He is going down into the country to-night in a hired conveyance, some twenty-five miles or more."
"For what reason?" Ivy asks, dimly divining a certain significance in her mother's manner.
"I do not know, but I strongly suspect it is to visit his captive countess, and present her with your diamonds," Mrs. Cleveland answers, divining the truth with a woman's ready wit.
"Oh, mamma!" screams Ivy.
"But I intend to follow him," pursues Mrs. Cleveland, "I mean to checkmate him if I can."
"I am going with you—remember that, mamma," her daughter cries out, hastily.
While Lady Vera's friends are seeking with heavy hearts some clew to her strange fate, the fair young countess, half distracted with grief, remains a closely-guarded captive in the ruined mansion in the lonely wood. In spite of all her tears and protestations Betsy Robson persists in believing her to be a dangerous lunatic, and in treating her as such, albeit always kind and complaisant as to an ailing child.
The summer days glide slowly past, each one bearing some portion of hope from Vera's lonely heart. With the dawn of each day she had hoped for release—with the sunset of each day she had wept over her disappointment. The days were so long and lonely without books, music or occupation to beguile them of their length and dreariness. It seemed to Lady Vera almost as if she were dead and buried, living in this lonely house, seeing, hearing no one save stolid Betsy Robson, who glided about like another ghost in this strange world of the dead.
"If rescue does not come soon I shall either die or go mad, as that woman already believes me to be," Lady Vera tells herself in a passion of despair.
She wonders why Philip does not come to her aid. In her despair and loneliness bitter thoughts begin to creep into her mind.
"Perhaps he has no care over me now that I am lost to him forever," she thinks. "He has turned to Miss Montgomery or Lady Eva, perhaps. Either one would be glad enough to console him."
From the world without there came no answer to these silent accusations against her lost lover. The world seemed dead to her as she appeared to it. All her companions were memory and sorrow.
As the weeks rounded slowly into a month, Lady Vera's fierce anger against Leslie Noble, her restlessness, her impatience, began to settle down into the calmness of despair.
She gave up pacing the floor, and weeping and grieving over her captivity like some poor caged bird beating the bars of its prison with unavailing wings. She began to sit still in her chair for long hours daily, with her white hands folded on her lap and her dark eyes fixed on vacancy—long hours in which the color and roundness fled from her face and form, leaving behind a startling pallor and delicacy that frightened Mrs. Robson, who thought that her charge had developed a new phase of her mania.
"Them still and cunning ones is always the most dangerous, so I've heard," she confides to the tabby cat that is her only companion in the kitchen. "I do wish she would ha' give up that sharp little knife she carries in her bosom. And I do wish Mr. Noble would come and see her. I can't think what keeps him away this long. He said he should come soon. Lucky he laid in a good store of provisions, or we might starve to death in this lonely wilderness afore he comes."
She busies herself in preparing little dainties to tempt the appetite of her charge, but Lady Vera scarcely tastes the delicate morsels.
"Be you a-grievin' for your husband, my poor dear?" Mrs. Robson asks her kindly one day.
"I have no husband," Lady Vera answers, disdainfully, with a smouldering fire in her great, dark eyes.
She accuses herself of no falsehood in uttering those words, for she never means to acknowledge Leslie Noble's claim upon her, and she has mentally decided that if she ever goes free again she will appeal to the strong arm of the law to sever the hated bonds that hold her.
After that one flash of wrath she subsides into mournful apathy again. Two weeks more roll by into the irrevocable past. Lady Vera droops more and more, like some gently fading rose. Betsy Robson, frightened and alarmed, sees that her hold on life is slowly loosening day by day.
The flowers she brings her from the tangled, neglected garden fall lightly from her grasp, as if her hands were too weak to hold them. She lies all day on her couch now, too weak or too weary to rise, and the snowy pillow day by day is drenched with her languid, hopeless tears.
"It is too bad that Mr. Noble does not come," Mrs. Robsonmutters to herself. "His poor young wife is dying, I honestly think. She has gone so thin and white, and her big, black eyes frighten one with their uncanny look. She has fretted herself to death. It goes on to seven weeks now since he brought her here. I wonder if aught has happened him? I do wish I could let him know some way that she's a-dying."
The last days of August have passed now. September comes in cool and blustery, inclining to storms. With every day Lady Vera sinks more and more, complaining of no pain or disease, only growing weaker and weaker, paler and thinner, while, as Mrs. Robson says, her great, black eyes look unearthly in her death-white face. If Leslie Noble does not come soon his captive will escape him through the open gates of death.
"It's a-going to storm to-night, Tab," remarks Mrs. Robson to her familiar, as she opens the kitchen door and peers out into the gathering darkness one chilly night; "the moon looks pale and watery, and the clouds keeps scudding over it. There isn't any stars to speak of, and the wind's blustery and damp. It's a-going to storm. You may blink and purr by the fire alone to-night, Tabby, for I must sit up with poor Mrs. Noble. It wouldn't be right to leave the poor, crazy creetur alone, ill as she is, and seems that harmless a body could hardly believe that she stuck a knife into her own husband. Yes, I'll set up with her to-night. Sometimes the spirits ride on storms to carry away the souls of them that's a-dying, and mayhap they may come for that poor young thing's to-night."
She closes the door with a shudder of superstitious terror in the face of the gathering storm, and betakes herself to the gloomy upper chamber where Countess Vera, still robed in the gray silk dress in which she had been brought from her home a captive, lies silently across the gloomy, crimson-hung bed, as white and still as if she were already dead.
"You have eaten no supper, dearie," Mrs. Robson remarks, glancing at the untasted dainties upon the tea-tray that she had brought up two hours before.
"No," the captive answers, with a weary sigh, and relapses into silence.
"There's a storm coming. Do you hear the wind howl, and the rain beating on the windows?" remarks Mrs. Robson, to break the spell of the dreary, brooding silence.
Lady Vera, turning her head listlessly a moment, listens aimlessly to the wail of the autumn wind moaning like a voice in human pain around the ruined gables of the house.
"It is a wild night," she answers, drearily. "What time is it, Mrs. Robson?"
"It is nigh onto eleven o'clock," the woman answers, consulting the broad-faced silver watch stuck in her belt; then, curiously: "You've never asked me that question afore since here you've been, my dearie. Why do you do so now?"
"When the hours of life are few, one is fain to count them," Lady Vera answers, with subdued bitterness.
And again there ensues a silence, filled up by the wild voice of the wind that has now increased to a gale.
The furious rush of the rain is distinctly audible; a flash of lightning quivers into the room in spite of the shielding curtains.
"Mrs. Robson, I believe I am going to die. When your cruel master comes, he will find that his captive has escaped him, after all," Lady Vera says, weakly, and with a faint triumph in her voice.
Before Mrs. Robson can reply, there comes a hasty, thundering rap on the hall door that brings her screaming to her feet. It is thrice repeated before her frightened senses return.
At that strange and unexpected sound, Lady Vera, as if endowed with new strength, starts up to a sitting posture in the bed. Instead of being startled by the noise, she seems to rejoice in it. Her eyes flash with new life.
"Go, Mrs. Robson," she exclaims. "Do you not hear the knocking? Someone is come."
"Who can it be, this dreadful night? Do you think it could be Mr. Noble?" exclaims the woman, timorously.
"God forbid!" exclaims Countess Vera, passionately. "I pray that it may be some friend of mine who has come to bring me deliverance."
But Mrs. Robson, by this, has begun to revive her scattered wits.
"Of course it's my master, Mr. Noble. How foolish I was for a moment. I am main glad that he has come at last," she declares, eagerly, and hastening to leave the room, though not forgetting to lock the door after her as usual.
Countess Vera waits in an agony of suspense for five almost anguished minutes, then footsteps mount the stairs toward her chamber. Mrs. Robson, opening the door, ushers in Leslie Noble.
At the sight of that hated face, at the wild revulsion from ardent hope to absolute despair, Countess Vera utters a heart-wrung cry and falls weakly backward.
Mrs. Robson hastens forward, with a cry of dismay, to lift her mistress from the pillows, fearing to find her dead. But Lady Vera has not even fainted. Her white, quivering, anguished face turns upon her enemy with scorn and defiance, struggling bravely with pitiful weakness and despair.
"You have almost come too late," she cries, resting against Mrs. Robson's broad shoulder, and looking at him with a strange triumph in her hollow, gleaming eyes. "Death has nearly been here before you. You have but come now to see him wrest your prey from your merciless grasp. You will have nothing but my poor, wasted body to gloat over. The soul that you have tortured out of its earthly tenement will soon be past your power."
He stares at her, growing ghastly pale and alarmed. Mrs. Robson has told him that his wife is ill, that she is fretting herself to death, but he is scarcely prepared for this. It looks like death, indeed, that marble pallor, those wide and brilliant eyesthat gleam upon him so weirdly, triumphing over him, even in death. A horrible sense of loss and disappointment thrills through him. Is she dying, indeed, his beautiful Vera, his rich and honored countess, the glories of whose state he has meant to share?
"Vera, my darling, you must not die," he exclaims, going forward and holding out his arms to her entreatingly. "Live for me, my dearest wife. I love you more than life! Give yourself to me, Vera; let me win your heart, and I swear I will make you happy."
She waves him away with a gesture of supreme loathing. In their anger and excitement no one is aware that the door has creaked softly on its hinges, that it is pushed slightly ajar now, and that two faces, lurid with jealous rage and deadly anger, are peering cautiously around it.
"I love you, Vera," he repeats, undaunted by her proud scorn, sure that he must win at last. "I love you, Vera, and I have never loved but you. Thinking you dead, I was lured into that marriage with Ivy Cleveland. She turned out to be a termagant, who only cared for my money, and I hated her long before that blissful night when you, so grand and beautiful that I already adored you, not knowing who you were, boldly claimed me as your husband. You must forgive that ill-starred marriage with your cousin, my precious Vera. She and her base mother made me repent it every hour of my life. I suffered enough through them, Vera, so you ought to be kind to me."
Strange that they do not hear the sibilant whisper of threatening hate that hisses through the room! But they are absorbed in their own passions, and the storm now raging at the hight of its fury has many strange sounds of its own as it surges around the ivy-mantled room.
Now and then a sheet of vivid lightning illuminates the curtained windows, and a peal of terrible thunder shakes the old mansion from garret to cellar. But only Mrs. Robson has any ear or any thought for the fury of the storm.
"Kind to you," Lady Vera repeats, in her faint, but cutting voice, gazing at her cringing suppliant. "Were you kind to me in my sore distress and misery when my mother lay dead in her grave, and I had no one to turn to but you in my bitter desolation and despair? Were you kind and loving to your friendless bride then, in her poverty and woe? No! and it is not Vera Campbell you seek to win now. It is Lady Fairvale, of Fairvale, countess in her own right, with thirty thousand pounds a year. You see, I understand the value of your vapid protestations of love and repentance."
"You mistake me, Lady Vera, in attributing mercenary motives to me," he answers, with pretended sadness and grief. "I love you for yourself alone. I am very rich still, although not so wealthy as you are. I am not yet too poor to woo you as a royal lover. See, my darling, I bring you jewels fine enough for a queen—jewels that even your grandeur need not disdain; diamonds bright as your eyes, pearls as fair as your milk-white skin."
He has drawn two jewel caskets from his breast, and unlocks them before her wondering eyes. The diamonds flash in the light, seeming to fill the gloomy room with sunshine, the large, pale pearls shine with the lustrous whiteness of the moon's chill rays.
His eyes shine as he looks into her face to note the effect. Surely such an offering as this must win her back even from the portals of death to be his own. These must win her love for him, surely. No fair woman ever turned her back on the donor of such sparkling, flashing, burning diamonds, such moon-white, gleaming pearls.
But as he gazes triumphantly into her eyes, her lips curl, she recoils in scorn and aversion.
"I spurn both you and your offerings," she answers, quickly. "They are poor Ivy Cleveland's diamonds and pearls. Oh, how could you be so mean and vile as to rob that poor girl of her jewels now, when already bereft of the jewel of honor?"
"They are not Ivy's jewels," he answers. "I bought them for you to-day in London. Do you think I would offer you aught that had belonged to that woman who had wronged you?"
"Liar! Coward! Robber!" cries a voice of raging hate and jealousy, and like a sudden vision, Ivy Cleveland appears among them, her golden tresses flying in disorder, her face livid with passion, her blue eyes blazing with wrath, in her clenched, white hand, a tiny, gleaming pistol, like a pretty toy.
"Liar! Coward! Robber! I will have your life for my wrongs," she shrieks, and the gleaming pistol covers his heart, there is a terrible report, a flash of thick smoke, and with a cry of horror, Leslie Noble leaps into the air and falls backward—dead!
"He is dead, but I have my jewels again!" the murderess cries, with maniacal triumph, gathering the fallen jewels to her breast and exulting wildly over them.
At the loud report of the pistol, and Ivy's frenzied cry, Mrs. Cleveland rushes into the room and kneels by the side of the prostrate man, whose life-blood has gushed out in a crimson tide upon the faded carpet. She puts her hand over his heart and bends her ear to his lips. But in a moment she lifts her head and regards her daughter with a blank stare of terror.
"Oh, Ivy, Ivy, you have killed your husband!" she exclaims, in a frightened voice.
But Ivy, sitting on the floor like a child, running a diamond necklace lovingly through her fingers, like a stream of light, only glances up carelessly at the dead body on the floor, whose life-blood has crept slowly along the carpet, until it has crimsoned the hem of her dress. She laughs aloud, a chill, blood-curdling laugh.
"He deserved death," she answers, in a strange, unnatural voice. "He stole my pretty jewels from me—my diamonds and my pearls, ha, ha! I am the Queen of England, did you not know that? I beheaded my false subject because he stole the crown jewels. There is a ball to-night. I am engaged to dance with the President of the United States. He is coming for that purpose.Ha, ha! will it not be a fine sight?" and springing to her feet she began to dance wildly around the room, her precious jewels clasped in her arms like a babe to her mother's breast, while she sang in terrible, maniacal glee:
"The king is dead, long live the king!"
Again there crept to the door two watchers who peered in all unheeded by those within the room, who watched with straining, horrified gaze the wild gyrations of the maddened Ivy, whose small figure continued to spin aimlessly around the floor to the accompaniment of gay, lilting tunes sung in a high-pitched, tuneless voice, that was terrible to hear.
"The poor lady is raving crazy!" at last exclaimed Mrs. Robson, finding voice for the first time since she had ushered Mr. Noble into the room. The sudden and unexpected appearance of two strange women on the scene, and the murder of her master had struck her dumb with terror, but all the while she had continued to uphold the exhausted frame of Lady Vera in her strong, protecting arms.
"Yes, she is mad," Lady Vera answers, in a low, sad, pitying tone.
"Who says that I am mad?" demands Ivy, sinking down upon the floor, wearied by her wild performance. "I deny it! I am the Shah of Persia's bride, and these jewels are my dowry from my royal bridegroom!"
Mrs. Cleveland, turning her eyes for the first time from the face of her stricken daughter, rests them upon Countess Vera's wasted, death-white features.
"See what your cursed arts have done," she cried out, harshly. "It is all your work! I am glad that you are dying, Vera Campbell! I have hated you from the hour of your birth! You were born to be my stumbling-block, and to work out my destruction!"
"I was born to be the avenger of my parents' wrongs," Lady Vera answers, proudly. "And though it kill me, I have kept my oath of vengeance!"
The wind moans ominously around the creaking gables, the thunder mutters hoarsely, the blue flame of the lightning casts its ghastly glare into the room. No one heeds the fierce war of the elements in the fiercer war of human passions raging within the gloomy chamber.
"Yes, you have kept your oath, curse you, curse you!" Marcia Cleveland answers, venomously. "You have dragged me and mine down to poverty, to shame, to madness! But live, Vera Campbell, live yet a little longer, and you shall see your weapons turned against yourself. You will be thrust from your splendid home and high estate, branded, disgraced, while I shall reign in your stead! But the sweetness will be taken from my revenge. You have driven my daughter, the light of my eyes and heart, mad, mad! It is a wound that naught on earth can heal. Oh, curse you, curse you! May you never know one hour of peace! May you be racked by every ill that flesh is heir to! May God's——"
The terrible curse she is invoking stays forever on her lips! A blinding flash of forked and vivid blue lightning shatters thewindow panes, rends the curtains, and darts into the room like a living sword. A peal of awful thunder seems to rend the earth in twain, and the old house rocks for a moment like an infant's cradle. Then the rain rushes wildly again, and the thunder subsides into ominous mutterings and long, rolling sounds of terrible wrath, and Marcia Cleveland lies prone upon the floor, her distorted face upturned to the light, a single blue spot on her temple telling its awful story to the shocked beholders—slain by thelightning!
"Oh, my poor, young mistress, you are dead, too! We shall all be killed!" Mrs. Robson exclaims in an access of mortal terror, for Lady Vera, overcome by the horrors of that dreadful night has fallen back in a deathly swoon upon her pillow.
At that cry of grief the two who have lingered at the door spring into the room. Mr. Sharpe, the detective, and Colonel Lockhart.
It is Mr. Sharpe who recoils from the sight of the two dead bodies, and the still sadder sight of the living madwoman, crooning her senseless songs, and counting her jewels in a distant corner.
Colonel Lockhart has no eyes for these. At one bound he is by the bedside where the missing countess lies cold and white and still in all her beauty.
"Oh, Vera, my love, my darling, have I found you only for this?" he groans, taking the slight form into his arms, pressing it to his aching heart, and lavishing passionate kisses on the cold, white lips.
But as if his love had power to call her back to life, Lady Vera sighs faintly and opens her eyes, heavily at first then with a flash of wondrous brightness in them as she recognizes her lover.
"Oh, Philip, is it you?" she sighs with ineffable content, nestling closer in his strong loving clasp. "I thought I was dying, but your voice has called me back from the world of shadows. I cannot die, now that you have come for me. Am I safe at last, Philip?"
"You are safe at last, my darling," he answers, solemnly, and glancing behind him with a slight shudder. "A terrible retribution has overtaken your enemies."
"I know," she answers, shuddering. "Is it not fearful, Philip? But oh, tell me," she continues, pleadingly, "am I responsible for the terrible ending of these selfish lives?"
"No, Vera. They were wicked people whose sins wrought out their own retribution. No blame can attach to you, darling," he answers, decisively.
"Do you really know this lady, sir?" inquires poor Betsy Robson, touching him timidly on the arm.
"Yes," he answers, looking round at her. "She is the Countess of Fairvale, my betrothed wife, whom Leslie Noble abducted from her home."
"Oh, me, and I thought she was Mr. Noble's crazy wife.Hesaid so," cries Mrs. Robson, dissolved in penitent tears. "Oh,my lady, can you ever forgive me for not listening to your true story?"
"Freely, my poor creature, since you were always kind to me," Lady Vera answers, moved to greatest compassion by the woman's humble penitence.
Then, with something of a shudder, Lady Vera turns back to her lover.
"It seems a dreadful thing to do, but you must search Mr. Noble's person," she says. "He had the stolen memorandum-book."
"My lady, I have already taken the liberty of doing as you suggest," Mr. Sharpe answers, respectfully, advancing with the gold-clasped book in his hand.
She takes it from him with a subdued cry of joy.
"And now, Vera, when will you feel able to leave this dreadful place?" inquires Colonel Lockhart.
"To-morrow," she answers, promptly.
"Then we will start for London in the morning. How glad Sir Harry and Nella will be," he exclaims. "And now, Sharpe, we will, with this good woman's assistance, make some arrangement for removing Lady Vera from this scene of horror into another chamber."
"There's only the kitchen," Mrs. Robson said, dismayed at her lack of resources. "All the chambers but this are leaky and damp. But the kitchen where I cook and sleep is warm and dry."
"The kitchen will suit me excellently well; anywhere but this," Lady Vera answers, shuddering. "You must bring poor Ivy, too," she adds, with a compassionate glance at the poor, insane creature.
The maniac went willingly enough, satisfied to go anywhere so long as she was not parted from her beloved jewels, and the warm, clean kitchen was felt by all to be a safe haven of refuge from the inclement night and the horror-haunted chamber up-stairs.
The remainder of the night was spent in a wakeful vigil. The next morning the gentlemen made hurried preparations for the inquest that was necessary to be held over the dead.
It was found that Mrs. Cleveland had come to her death by a stroke of lightning, and that Leslie Noble had been murdered by Ivy Cleveland.
But human vengeance was powerless to touch poor Ivy. The hand of God had already smitten her. A lunatic asylum received her for the remainder of her poor, wrecked life.
Marcia Cleveland and Leslie Noble were buried in a quiet, country graveyard. By Lady Vera's care a plain gray stone was raised above their graves recording their names and nationality, with a brief line commending them to the mercy of Heaven.
The remnant of Leslie Noble's once princely fortune revertedto the Countess of Fairvale. She devoted it to the maintenance of poor Ivy Cleveland in the best insane asylum in England.
She hoped that with time and care her reason might return to her, but the poor creature remained a confirmed maniac to the end her long life, never very dangerous or troublesome, but always fancying herself some royal personage, and always planning new costumes for some imaginary ball.
The splendid jewels, for whose sake she dyed her hands in human blood, were kindly spared to her as playthings. They constituted all the happiness of her life.
For Countess Vera, after that night of storm and death and merciful rescue, there dawned a brighter day.
Only one cloud dimmed the horizon of her life-sky. It was Raleigh Gilmore's suit at law. Even her best friends, those who believed in her the most loyally, secretly feared that it would go against her.
When Lady Vera met Sir Harry Clive again she went to him with a smile, the open memorandum-book in her white hand.
"You see," she said to him with that triumphant I-told-you-so smile, which women are wont to wear on such occasions, "it was no dream, Sir Harry. Here are the precious lines in my father's writing, word for word, as I repeated them to you that day."
Sir Harry humbly begged her pardon for his doubts.
"You wrote to this Joel McPherson, did you not?" he asks, anxiously.
"Yes," she answers. "Has no word come from him yet?"
"No," Sir Harry replies, "not a word. Perhaps he is dead; perhaps he has gone away."
"We must send someone over to America to look for him," Lady Vera replies decisively.
"I think you are right. It is the best thing that can be done," he agrees.
Her lawyer is of the same opinion. They decide to send Mr. Sharpe, the efficient detective, to Washington to find the missing sexton of Glenwood.
When Lady Vera has repeated to them Leslie Noble's assertion, that he had written to a friend to keep the sexton out of the way, they strongly suspect that McPherson has been made away with.
Mr. Sharpe is sent on his errand to America, Lady Vera's keen-witted lawyer staves off the impending trial from day to day pending the arrival of her important witness, and all wait in suspense for news from the detective.
Meanwhile, Raleigh Gilmore's case has weakened daily.
The witnesses upon whom he had relied so confidently, Mrs. Cleveland and her daughter, and possibly Leslie Noble, were all unavailable, two being dead, one the incurable inmate of a madhouse.
The tide of fortune was setting against him. Lady Vera's friends began to desert his banner.
Meanwhile, Lady Vera's lover and friends rejoiced in her returning health and strength. She had been so frail and delicatewhen Colonel Lockhart brought her back to them that they were shocked and frightened. They thought she would die. Lady Clive and the faithful maid, Elsie, wept floods of tears over her. Little Hal took a great deal of blame to himself for Lady Vera's abduction.
"Vera, I should never have given you that dreadful old woman's letter if I had known what it was about," he reiterates in her patient ear many times.
"I know that, dear," she always answers, kindly. "No one blames you, Hal, for my misfortune. It was my own willfulness that led me into danger. Had I listened to my faithful Elsie, I should not have gone."
But their fears for her health are soon dissipated. Happiness, love and hope, are potent restorers. The light returns to Lady Vera's eyes, the roundness to her face and form, the color to her cheeks, and the slight shade of thought and sadness around her lovely lips does not detract from her beauty.
No one can tell with what happiness Colonel Lockhart basks in the sunlight of her presence, though when she runs her white fingers through his hair, she wonders at the silver threads that shine in the brown, clustering curls.
"They were not there three months ago," she says to him thoughtfully. "Are you growing old so fast, Philip?"
"I have grown old in sorrow since we parted, dear," he answers, searching her face, gravely. "Shall you love me less for my gray hairs, dearest?"
"No, for they were whitened by your grief for me," she answers, pressing her sweet, shy lips on those silvery tokens of his sorrow.
And now Colonel Lockhart begs her to name an early day for their marriage.
"We have had so many vicissitudes in our courtship, darling, that I can never feel sure of you until you are my wife. Let it be soon, dear," he pleads.
But Lady Vera, blushing her sweetest, answers:
"Not until after the trial is decided, Philip."
But this is just what the handsome soldier is unwilling to do.
"Why wait until after that?" he asks. "Do you mean to throw me over if—all does not go to please you?"
The dark eyes look at him gravely.
"If it goes against me, Philip, would you be willing to wed one whom the world will brand as an impostor?" she asks him, slowly.
"Yes, for I would know the charge was untrue. Oh, Vera, let me make you my own now, while the issue is still in doubt, that you may know that I loved you for yourself alone."
"As if I did not know that already," she answers, looking at him with sweet reproach.
"That the world may know it, too, then," he urges.
He is most anxious that the marriage shall take place before the trial. Then if, as he fears, the trial should go against her, she will be safe in her position as his wife, and none will dare assailher. But he cannot explain this without wounding her sensitive feelings, so he is forced to admit her denial.
"Not until after the trial, Philip."
"And then?" he asks, eagerly.
"As soon as you please," she answers, with tender blushes glowing all over her beautiful face, and then she laughs musically.
"We are setting the day for our marriage, and we are not even engaged," she laughs, in answer to his aggrieved look.
"We are!" he insists.
"We are not," she declares. "We dissolved our engagement several months ago, and since I became free you have not asked me to renew it."
The tender mischief in the lovely, laughing, dark eyes, almost disconcerts the handsome soldier.
"Oh, Vera, I thought of course you knew that I meant it," he says, rather incoherently. "Weareengaged, and we are going to be married, aren't we, dear?"
"If you ask me," she says, with demure mirth, out of the happiness of her heart.
"I ask you now," he answers, laughing too. "Is it yes, Vera?"
She murmurs assent with a pretty assumption of coquetry, and bends her head for her second betrothal kiss, delighting her lover by the child-like gaiety that shows how her spirit is gradually throwing off the depressing influence of grief that has so long surrounded her.
"Then, Vera, I may write to my father, General Lockhart, and ask him to come over to the wedding?" he says, presently.
"What! and thetrousseaunot ready yet?" she laughs.
"Oh, my darling, you will write and order it at once, will you not?" he exclaims.
"I have already ordered it, Colonel Lockhart," she replies, demurely.
"What! before you were engaged?" he retorts, feeling it his turn to tease now.
"I had the prospect of a proposal, sir," she answers, with charming frankness.
"Then I shall write to my father to come over. I would not miss having him see my lovely bride, and I intend that the wedding shall come off as soon as thetrousseauis ready," declares the happy lover.
Lady Vera does not say him nay. She is very happy in the prospect of a union with her faithful lover. The days glide past like a dream of pleasure, quietly, because as yet she denies herself to callers, but happily, because surrounded by her dearest friends and her adoring lover.
And one day the last sweet rose leaf is added to the brimming cup of Lady Vera's new happiness, which even the thought of Raleigh Gilmore's fell design could not wholly overshadow.
Sir Harry Clive had sent her an urgent request to come into the library to meet a visitor, and only staying a moment to arrange her disordered hair, for she had been in the nursery playing with Lady Nella's children, she obeys him.
Sir Harry takes her hand and draws her forward to the man, neatly clothed in black, who has risen from his chair to meet her.
"I know your face," she cries, instantly. "I have seen you somewhere. It is—oh, can it be Mr. McPherson?"
"ItisJoel McPherson, Lady Vera, at your service," he answers, in honest, hearty tones. "I am glad you remembered me, my lady. I knew you again instantly although you look prettier and happier than you did that morning when your father took you away from Glenwood."
"Oh, then, you can tell me all about that dreadful night," she cries, repressing the shudder that always steals over her at the thought of her living entombment.
"Yes, my lady, that is why I came to England with Mr. Sharpe," he answers, respectfully. "I told your father that day that it was wrong to keep the story of your burial from you. He answered me that he meant to tell you all some day when you grew well and strong again."
"Poor father! He was too tender-hearted to keep that promise," Lady Vera murmurs, dropping into a chair, and hiding her tearful face in her hands.
"You wish to hear how you came to be rescued from your living grave, dear Lady Vera?" says the baronet, anxious to distract her mournful thoughts from her dead father.
"Yes, oh, yes," she murmurs, lifting her head, and looking at Mr. McPherson's grave, kindly face. "You will tell me, will you not, sir?"
"You see it was this way, my lady. On the evening of the day that you were buried, your father went to Mrs. Cleveland's to seek his wife and child. She told him cruelly to seek you both in your graves at Glenwood. He could scarcely believe it. It seemed too horrible to believe, and in the horror with which his enemy's words inspired him, he fell down like one dead at her feet. He came to himself lying out on the pavement with the wild rain and wind beating into his uncovered face. She had cast him out into the street to die like the veriest wretch, unfriended and alone."
"Heartless!" Sir Harry Clive utters, indignantly, while Lady Vera's choking sobs attest the strain upon his feelings.
"Then he came to me," continued Joel McPherson, his kind eyes moist at the remembrance of the earl's despair. "I could only confirm Mrs. Cleveland's story. Both his wife and child were dead. Then a longing came over him to look at the face of the dead wife. He had wronged her living, he said, and he could not rest until he saw her face again. He offered me gold to open the grave, but it was not the bribe, it was the misery on his face that made me yield to his wish."
He pauses, drawing a long breath, and wiping the moisture from his eyes, waits for Lady Vera to grow calmer. The sound of her suppressed sobbing fills the room.
Sir Harry touches her arm gently.
"This is too much for you," he says kindly. "Shall we defer the story's conclusion until you are better, my dear?"
"No, I will be calm," she answers, repressing with an effort the sobs that rise at these reminiscences of the past; "I will not disturb you again. Go on with your story, Mr. McPherson."
"There is little more to tell, my lady," he returns. "I yielded to the earl's wish because, after hearing all his strange story I had not the heart to refuse. But in the haste with which the deed was done, and in the pitch-black, rainy night I made a mistake. Judge of my surprise when on wrenching off the lid of the coffin, and flashing the light of the lantern on the face within, I found that I had disinterred the daughter instead of the mother. It was the happiest mistake of my life, for in a few minutes we found that she was not dead, but simply wrapped in a deep, narcotic sleep," he adds, with emotion.
In a moment he continues:
"Your father, Lady Vera, did not discover the mistake until I explained it to him. He had not seen your mother for sixteen years, and as you greatly resembled her, he fancied that she had retained the fairness of girlhood through all those years, whereas, in reality, she was gray-haired and sadly aged by sorrow. I explained all this to him, and then we took you to my cottage near by, and when you revived, he quieted you by some plausible story that you had been asleep, fearing to shock you too much by the story of your burial while yet alive. He still clung to his fancy of seeing his dead wife's face, so I went back and opened that grave too, but," with a shudder, "it was too late. Death had marred her too sadly. I filled up both graves again, and by your father's wish, my lady, no one ever knew that one was empty. I questioned the wisdom of such a course, but the earl was peremptory, and the little mound remained, while very soon after Mr. Noble erected the monument that told every one that his wife, Vera, was buried beneath, while the truth was that you had gone abroad with your father. The earl, in his joy over your restoration to life, settled a generous little fortune upon me, which has made me independent ever since. He was a good man and true, and I am sorry that he is dead," adds Mr. McPherson, brushing his hand across his eyes.
"And my letter to you—did you ever receive it?" questions Lady Vera.
"Yes, my lady, promptly. And I was making my arrangements to come right over to England and help you, when I was basely kidnapped by some unknown party and held in durance over two months, when, by good luck and constant watchfulness, I effected my escape. I went straight back to Glenwood, and there I found your man, Mr. Sharpe, interrogating the sexton, who now occupied my cottage. He was delighted to find in me the man he was looking for, and I came straight over to England with him. But if you had not sent him after me, Lady Vera, I should have come anyhow as soon as I escaped from my jailers."
Lady Vera, rising impulsively, goes over to press the hand of this kind, true friend in her two soft, white ones.
"God bless you," she murmurs; "I can never thank you enough. And will you swear to all this before a court of justice?"
"Certainly, my Lady Fairvale. That is what I came to England for," Mr. McPherson answers, heartily.
When Raleigh Gilmore's lawyer heard of this new witness in Lady Vera's favor, he declared that his client had no case at all against the defendant. He said it would be useless to bring it into court. They would only be routed ignominiously, for Lady Fairvale's identity was so perfectly established by the note in her father's memorandum-book, and by the sexton of Glenwood's testimony, that there was really nothing to be said against it. Besides, Mr. Gilmore's witnesses were all dead, or worse. So the base conspiracy fell through harmlessly, and there was no trial at all, though Countess Vera's friends were rather eager for it now, foreseeing that victory must perch upon her banner. Raleigh Gilmore retired to his country estate again, soured by his defeat and disgrace, and heartily wishing that he had never been beguiled from its quiet shades by the specious representations of the Widow Cleveland. There was one drop of sweetness in the bitter cup of humiliation pressed to the old bachelor's lips. Marcia Cleveland was dead, and he would not have to marry her as he had promised.
Countess Vera felt no animosity toward the man who had tried to oust her from her rights. She wrote him a kind and pitying letter, in which she offered him generous pecuniary assistance if he required it, and freely forgave him the part he had acted.
To this sweet and womanly offer, Mr. Gilmore replied gruffly and rudely that he neither asked nor needed aid from the usurper of his rights, and had no desire for her forgiveness.
After this, Lady Vera tacitly dropped him, and he figured no more in the pages of her romantic life-history, which thereafter flowed serenely in the unclouded sunshine of happiness.
The wedding—Colonel Lockhart's and Countess Vera's—when it came off, was a very grand affair indeed. General Lockhart, than whom there was no more gallant or distinguished an officer in America, came over to England to attend the nuptials, and by his handsome appearance and widespread fame, added prestige to the grand occasion.
Sir Harry Clive gave away the bride, and little Dot, his daughter, was one of the bride's-maids. Lady Clive declared that she had never been so happy in her life as in the hour when Lady Vera was married to her darling brother.
People said afterward that they were the handsomest couple ever married in London. Colonel Lockhart was so grandly handsome, Lady Vera so dazzlingly fair. Her bridal dress was a marvel of richness and beauty.
Hertrousseauwas all that could be desired by a woman's heart.The bridal gifts were numerous and costly. The countess was so much admired, and her sad and romantic story had excited such interest and sympathy that her friends vied with each other in the beauty and richness of their gifts, as if desirous to add in every way to the pleasure of her bridal-hour.
Colonel Lockhart scarcely knew what to give his bride, her gifts were so varied and so costly, but he studied out a design of his own, and had the jeweler reproduce it. It was a beautiful locket, containing his own picture. The setting on the carved back was a perfect crimson rose, formed of magnificent rubies.
"In memory of the rose whose message failed that night when I went back to America," he said, with a smile, as he placed it in her hand.
She sighed and smiled as memory brought back that night with its hopes, and fears, and crowning failure. She remembered the song and the rose, and how both had failed to carry their story to his wounded heart. Then she opened the locket, and forgot all else in the sight of her husband's handsome, happy face beaming out upon her.
"Oh, how I thank you, Philip," she cried, rapturously. "It is beautiful."
"The picture or the locket?" he asks, laughing, yet inwardly deeply moved.
"Both," she answers, pressing the crimson flower of her lips upon the pictured face. "This shall always be my dearest jewel!"
Countess Vera's bridal tour was to the United States. Her husband was thoroughly patriotic, and desired to rid her mind of the prejudice she had taken against her native land, owing to the trials of her early youth.
They traveled leisurely and pleasantly all over their own native country, mixed in society, and viewed everything dispassionately, until the lovely countess owned that she had erred in disliking America and Americans.
"Yet I have nobly atoned for my early mistake by taking an American for my husband," she always declares, when Colonel Lockhart twits her with her early aversion.
One day they found themselves in the beautiful city of Washington, and Lady Vera expressed a wish to visit her mother's grave.
It was a lovely day in spring, sweet with the breath of early flowers, when they strolled through the whispering shades of Glenwood to seek the quiet grave where Mrs. Campbell's broken heart had found rest and peace. The turf was springing green and freshly above the low mound, and fragrant violets and tender daisies starred the ground. On the marble cross at the head of the grave was carved her name and age, and one passionate plaint from her husband's bleeding and remorseful heart: