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She swept toward the piano with the air of a queen.
“I want you to sit where I can see you, Rex,” she demanded, prettily; “I like to watch your face when I sing you my favorite songs.”
Rex drew his chair up close to the piano, laying his head back dreamily against the crimson cushions. He would not be obliged to talk; for once––just once––he would let his fancies roam where they would. He had often heard Pluma sing before, but never in the way she sung to-night. A low, thrilling, seductive voice full of pleading, passionate tenderness––a voice that whispered of the sweet irresistible power of love, that carried away the hearts of her listeners as a strong current carries a leaflet.
Was it a dream, or was it the night wind breathing the name of Daisy? The tears rose in his eyes, and he started to his feet, pale and trembling with agitation. Suddenly the music ceased.
“I did not think such a simple little melody had power to move you,” she said.
“Is it a new song?” he asked. “I do not remember having heard it before. What is the title of it?”
He did not notice her face had grown slightly pale under the soft, pearly light of the gleaming lamps, as she held the music out toward him.
“It is a pretty title,” she said, in her low, musical voice, “‘Daisies Growing o’er my Darling’s Grave.’”
In the terrible look of agony that swept over his handsome face, Pluma read the secret of his life; the one secret she had dreaded stood as clearly revealed to her as though it had been stamped in glowing letters upon his brow. She would have stood little chance of being Rex’s wife if Daisy Brooks had lived.
Who would have dreamed the beautiful, proud young heiress could have cursed the very memory of the young girl whom she believed to be dead––lying all uncared for in a neglected, lonely grave?
Rex felt sorely disturbed. He never remembered how the remainder of the evening passed. Ah, heavens! how his mind wandered back to that sweet love-dream so cruelly broken. A mist as of tears spread before his eyes, and shut the whole world from him as he glanced out of the window and up at the star-gemmed sky––that was his Daisy’s home.
“I hope my little song has not cast a gloom over you, Rex?” she said, holding out her hands to him as she arose to bid him136good-night––those small white hands upon one of which his engagement-ring glowed with a thousand prismatic hues.
“Why should it?” he asked, attempting to laugh lightly. “I admired it perhaps more than any other I have ever heard you sing.”
Pluma well knew why.
“It was suggested to me by a strange occurrence. Shall I relate it to you, Rex?”
He made some indistinct answer, little dreaming of how wofully the little anecdote would affect him.
“I do not like to bring up old, unpleasant subjects, Rex. But do you remember what the only quarrel we ever had was about, or ratherwhoit was about?”
He looked at her in surprise; he had not the least idea of what she alluded to.
“Do you remember what a romantic interest you once took in our overseer’s niece––the one who eloped with Lester Stanwick from boarding-school––the one whose death we afterward read of? Her name was Daisy––Daisy Brooks.”
If she had suddenly plunged a dagger into his heart with her white jeweled hands he could not have been more cruelly startled. He could have cried aloud with the sharp pain of unutterable anguish that memory brought him. His answer was a bow; he dared not look up lest the haggard pain of his face should betray him.
“Her uncle (he was no relation, I believe, but she called him that) was more fond of her than words can express. I was driving along by an unfrequented road to-day when I came across a strange, pathetic sight. The poor old man was putting the last touches to a plain wooden cross he had just erected under a magnolia-tree, which bore the simple words: ‘To the memory of Daisy Brooks, aged sixteen years.’ Around the cross the grass was thickly sown with daisies.
“‘She does not rest here,’ the old man said, drawing his rough sleeve across his tear-dimmed eyes; ‘but the poor little girl loved this spot best of any.’”
Pluma wondered why Rex took her just then in his arms for the first time and kissed her. He was thanking her in his heart; he could have knelt to her for the kind way she had spoken of Daisy.
A little later he was standing by the open window of his own room in the moonlight.
“My God!” he cried, burying his face in his hands, “this poor John Brooks did what I, her husband, should have done; but it is not too late now. I shall honor your memory, my137darling; I shall have a costly marble monument erected to your memory, bearing the inscription: ‘Sacred to the memory of Daisy, beloved wife of Rex Lyon, aged sixteen years.’ Not Daisy Brooks, but Daisy Lyon. Mother is dead, what can secrecy avail now?”
He would not tell Pluma until the last moment. Straightway he ordered a magnificent monument from Baltimore––one of pure unblemished white, with an angel with drooping wings overlooking the tall white pillar.
When it arrived he meant to take Pluma there, and, reverently kneeling down before her, tell her all the story of his sweet, sad love-dream with his face pressed close against the cold, pulseless marble––tell her of the love-dream which had left him but the ashes of dead hope. He sealed the letter and placed it with the out-going morning mail.
“Darling, how I wish I had not parted from you that night!” he sighed.
How bitterly he regretted he could not live that one brief hour of his past life over again––how differently he would act!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
While Rex was penning his all-important letter in his room, Pluma was walking restlessly to and fro in her boudoir, conning over in her mind the events of the evening.
Rex had asked her to be his wife, but she stood face to face with the truth at last––he did not love her. It was not only a blow of the keenest and cruelest kind to her affection, but it was the cruelest blow her vanity could possibly have received.
To think that she, the wealthy, petted heiress, who counted her admirers by the score, should have tried so hard to win the love of this one man and have failed; that her beauty, her grace, her wit, and her talent had been lavished upon him, and lavished in vain. “Was that simple girl, with her shy, timid, shrinking manner, more lovable than I?” she asked herself, incredulously.
She could not realize it––she, whose name was on the lips of men, who praised her as the queen of beauty, and whom fair women envied as one who had but to will to win.
It seemed to her a cruel mockery of fate that she, who had everything the world could give––beauty and fortune––should ask but this one gift, and that it should be refused her––the love of the man who had asked her to be his wife.
Was it impossible that he should learn to love her?
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She told herself that she should take courage, that she would persevere, that her great love must in time prevail.
“I must never let him find me dull or unhappy,” she thought. “I must carefully hide all traces of pique or annoyance.”
She would do her best to entertain him, and make it the study of her life to win his love.
She watched the stars until they faded from the skies, then buried her face in her pillow, falling into an uneasy slumber, through which a beautiful, flower-like, girlish face floated, and a slight, delicate form knelt at her feet holding her arms out imploringly, sobbing out:
“Do not take him from me––he is my world––I love him!”
And with a heart racked by terrible jealousy, Pluma turned uneasily on her pillow and opened her eyes. The stars were still glimmering in the moonlighted sky.
“Is the face of Daisy Brooks ever to haunt me thus?” she cried out, impatiently. “How was I to know she was to die?” she muttered, excitedly. “I simply meant to have Stanwick abduct her from the seminary that Rex might believe him her lover and turn to me for sympathy. I will not think of it,” she cried; “I am not one to flinch from a course of action I have marked out for myself, no matter what the consequences may be, if I only gain Rex’s love.”
And Pluma, the bride soon to be, turned her flushed face again to the wall to dream again of Daisy Brooks.
She little dreamed Rex, too, was watching the stars, as wakeful as she, thinking of the past.
Then he prayed Heaven to help him, so that no unworthy thought should enter his mind. After that he slept, and one of the most painful days of his life was ended.
The days at Whitestone Hall flew by on rapid wings in a round of gayety. The Hall was crowded with young folks, who were to remain until after the marriage. Dinner parties were followed by May-pole dances out on the green lawns, and by charades and balls in the evening. The old Hall had never echoed with such frolicsome mirth before. Rex plunged into the excitement with strange zest. No one guessed that beneath his winning, careless smile his heart was almost breaking.
One morning Pluma was standing alone on the vine-covered terrace, waiting for Rex, who had gone out to try a beautiful spirited horse that had just been added to the stables of Whitestone Hall. She noticed he had taken the unfrequented road the magnolia-trees shaded. That fact bore no significance,139certainly; still there was a strong feeling of jealousy in her heart as she remembered that little wooden cross he would be obliged to pass. Would he stop there? She could not tell.
“How I love him––and how foolish I am!” she laughed, nervously. “I have no rival, yet I am jealous of his very thoughts, lest they dwell on any one else but myself. I do not see how it is,” she said, thoughtfully, to herself, “why people laugh at love, and think it weakness or a girl’s sentimental folly. Why, it is the strongest of human passions!”
She heard people speak of her approaching marriage as “a grand match”––she heard him spoken of as a wealthy Southerner, and she laughed a proud, happy, rippling laugh. She was marrying Rex for love; she had given him the deepest, truest love of her heart.
Around a bend in the terrace she heard approaching footsteps and the rippling of girlish laughter.
“I can not have five minutes to myself to think,” she said to herself, drawing hastily back behind the thick screen of leaves until they should pass. She did not feel in the humor just then to listen to Miss Raynor’s chatter or pretty Grace Alden’s gossip.
“Of course every one has a right to their own opinion,” Grace was saying, with a toss of her pretty nut-brown curls, “and I, for one, do not believe he cares for her one whit.”
“It is certainly very strange,” responded Miss Raynor, thoughtfully. “Every one can see she is certainly in love with Rex; but I am afraid it is quite a one-sided affair.”
“Yes,” said Grace, laughing shyly, “averyone-sided affair. Why, have you ever noticed them together––how Pluma watches his face and seems to live on his smiles? And as for Rex, he always seems to be looking over her head into the distance, as though he saw something there far more interesting than the face of his bride-to-be. That doesn’t look much like love or a contented lover.”
“If you had seen him this morning you might well say he did not look contented,” replied Miss Raynor, mysteriously. “I was out for a morning ramble, and, feeling a little tired, I sat down on a moss-covered stone to rest. Hearing the approaching clatter of a horse’s hoofs, I looked up and saw Rex Lyon coming leisurely down the road. I could not tell you what prompted me to do it, but I drew quietly back behind the overhanging alder branches that skirted the brook, admiring him all unseen.”
“Oh, dear!” cried Grace, merrily, “this is almost too good to keep. Who would imagine dignified Miss Raynor peeping140admiringly at handsome Rex, screened by the shadows of the alders!”
“Now don’t be ridiculous, Grace, or I shall be tempted not to tell you the most interesting part,” returned Miss Raynor, flushing hotly.
“Oh, that would be too cruel,” cried Grace, who delighted on anything bordering on mystery. “Do tell it.”
“Well,” continued Miss Raynor, dropping her voice to a lower key, “when he was quite opposite me, he suddenly stopped short and quickly dismounted from his horse, and picked up from the roadside a handful of wild flowers.”
“What in the world could he want with them?” cried Grace, incredulously.
“Want with them!” echoed Miss Raynor. “Why, he pressed them to his lips, murmuring passionate, loving words over them. For one brief instant his face was turned toward me, and I saw there were tears standing in his eyes, and there was a look on his face I shall never forget to my dying day. There was such hopeless woe upon it––indeed one might have almost supposed, by the expression of his face, he was waiting for his death-sentence to be pronounced instead of a marriage ceremony, which was to give him the queenly heiress of Whitestone Hall for a bride.”
“Perhaps there is some hidden romance in the life of handsome Rex the world does not know of,” suggested Grace, sagely.
“I hope not,” replied Miss Raynor. “I would hate to be a rival of Pluma Hurlhurst’s. I have often thought, as I watched her with Rex, it must be terrible to worship one person so madly. I have often thought Pluma’s a perilous love.”
“Do not speak so,” cried Grace. “You horrify me. Whenever I see her face I am afraid those words will be ringing in my ears––a perilous love.”
Miss Raynor made some laughing rejoinder which Pluma, white and trembling behind the ivy vines, did not catch, and still discussing the affair, they moved on, leaving Pluma Hurlhurst standing alone, face to face with the truth, which she had hoped against hope was false. Rex, who was so soon to be her husband, was certainly not her lover.
Her keen judgment had told her long ago all this had come about through his mother’s influence.
Every word those careless lips had uttered came back to her heart with a cruel stab.
“Even my guests are noticing his coldness,” she cried, with a hysterical little sob. “They are saying to each other, ‘He141does not love me’––I, who have counted my triumphs by the scores. I have revealed my love in every word, tone and glance, but I can not awaken one sentiment in his proud, cold heart.”
When she remembered the words, “He pressed them to his lips, murmuring passionate, loving words over them,” she almost cried aloud in her fierce, angry passion. She knew, just as well as though she had witnessed him herself, that those wild flowers were daisies, and she knew, too, why he had kissed them so passionately. She saw the sun shining on the trees, the flower-beds were great squares and circles of color, the fountains sparkled in the sunlight, and restless butterflies flitted hither and thither.
For Pluma Hurlhurst, after that hour, the sunshine never had the same light, the flowers the same color, her face the same smile, or her heart the same joyousness.
Never did “good and evil” fight for a human heart as they struggled in that hour in the heart of the beautiful, willful heiress. All the fire, the passion, and recklessness of her nature were aroused.
“I will make him love me or I will die!” she cried, vehemently. “The love I long for shall be mine. I swear it, cost what it may!”
She was almost terribly beautiful to behold, as that war of passion raged within her.
She saw a cloud of dust arising in the distance. She knew it was Rex returning, but no bright flush rose to her cheek as she remembered what Miss Raynor had said of the wild flowers he had so rapturously caressed––he had given a few rank wild flowers the depths of a passionate love which he had never shown to her, whom he had asked to be his wife.
She watched him as he approached nearer and nearer, so handsome, so graceful, so winning, one of his white hands carelessly resting on the spirited animal’s proudly arched, glossy neck, and with the other raising his hat from his brown curls in true courtly cavalier fashion to her, as he saw her standing there, apparently awaiting him on the rose-covered terrace.
He looked so handsome and lovable Pluma might have forgotten her grievance had she not at that moment espied, fastened to the lapel of his coat, a cluster of golden-hearted daisies.
That sight froze the light in her dark, passionate eyes and the welcome that trembled on her scarlet lips.
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He leaped lightly from the saddle, and came quickly forward to meet her, and then drew back with a start.
“What is the matter, Pluma?” he asked, in wonder.
“Nothing,” she replied, keeping her eyes fastened as if fascinated on the offending daisies he wore on his breast.
“I left you an hour ago smiling and happy. I find you white and worn. There are strange lights in your eyes like the slumbrous fire of a volcano; even your voice seems to have lost its tenderness. What is it, Pluma?”
She raised her dark, proud face to his. There was a strange story written on it, but he could not tell what it was.
“It––it is nothing. The day is warm, and I am tired, that is all.”
“You are not like the same Pluma who kissed me when I was going away,” he persisted. “Since I left this house something has come between you and me. What is it, Pluma?”
She looked up to him with a proud gesture that was infinitely charming.
“Is anything likely to come between us?” she asked.
“No; not that I know of,” he answered, growing more and more puzzled.
“Then why imagine it?” she asked.
“Because you are so changed, Pluma,” he said. “I shall never perhaps know the cause of your strange manner toward me, but I shall always feel sure it is something which concerns myself. You look at me as though you were questioning me,” he said. “I wish you would tell me what is on your mind?”
“I do not suppose it could make the least difference,” she answered, passionately. “Yes, I will tell you, what you must have been blind not to notice long ago. Have you not noticed how every one watches us with a peculiar smile on their lips as we come among them; and how their voices sink to a whisper lest we should overhear what they say? What is commented upon by my very guests, and the people all about us? Listen, then, it is this: Rex Lyon does not love the woman he has asked to be his wife. The frosts of Iceland could not be colder than his manner toward her. They say, too, that I have given you the truest and deepest love of my heart, and have received nothing in return. Tell me that it is all false, my darling. You do care for me, do you not, Rex? Tell me,” she implored.
“Good heavens!” cried Rex, almost speechless in consternation; “do they dare say such things? I never thought my conduct could give rise to one reproach, one unkind thought.”
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“Tell me you do care for me, Rex,” she cried. “I have been almost mad with doubt.”
There was something in the lovely face, in the tender, pleading eyes, and quivering, scarlet mouth, that looked as if it were made for kisses––that Rex would have had to have been something more than mortal man to have resisted her pleading with sighs and tears for his love, and refuse it, especially as she had every reason to expect it, as he had asked her to be his wife. There was such a look of unutterable love on her face it fairly bewildered him. The passion in her voice startled him. What was he to do with this impetuous girl? Rex looked as if he felt exceedingly uncomfortable.
He took her in his arms and kissed her mechanically; he knew that was what she wanted and what she expected him to do.
“This must be my answer, dear,” he said, holding her in a close embrace.
In that brief instant she had torn the daisies from the lapel of his coat with her white, jeweled fingers, tossed them to the earth, and stamped her dainty feet upon them, wishing in the depths of her soul she could crush out all remembrance from his heart of the young girl for whose memory this handsome lover of hers wore these wild blossoms on his breast.
As Rex looked down into her face he missed them, and quickly unclasped his arms from around her with a little cry.
Stooping down he instantly recovered his crushed treasures and lifted them reverently in his hand with a sigh.
“I can not say that I admire your taste, Rex,” she said, with a short, hard laugh, that somehow grated harshly on her lover’s ears. “The conservatories are blooming with rare and odorous flowers, yet you choose these obnoxious plants; they are no more or less than a species of weeds. Never wear them again, Rex––I despise them––throw them away, and I will gather you a rare bouquet of white hyacinths and starry jasmine and golden-rod bells.”
The intense quiver in her voice pained him, and he saw her face wore the pallor of death, and her eyes were gleaming like restless fire.
“I will not wear them certainly if you dislike them, Pluma,” he said, gravely, “but I do not care to replace them by any other; daisies are the sweetest flowers on earth for me.”
He did not fasten them on his coat again, but transferred them to his breast-pocket. She bit her scarlet lips in impotent rage.
In the very moment of her supreme triumph and happiness144he had unclasped his arms from about her to pick up the daisies she had crushed with her tiny heel––those daisies which reminded him of that other love that still reigned in his heart a barrier between them.
CHAPTER XXIX.
“I do think it is a perfect shame those horrid Glenn girls are to be invited up here to Rex’s wedding,” cried little Birdie Lyon, hobbling into the room where Mrs. Corliss sat, busily engaged in hemming some new table-linen, and throwing herself down on a low hassock at her feet, and laying down her crutch beside her––“it is perfectly awful.”
“Why,” said Mrs. Corliss, smoothing the nut-brown curls back from the child’s flushed face, “I should think you would be very pleased. They were your neighbors when you were down in Florida, were they not?”
“Yes,” replied the little girl, frowning, “but I don’t like them one bit. Bess and Gertie––that’s the two eldest ones, make me think of those stiff pictures in the gay trailing dresses in the magazines. Eve is nice, but she’s a Tom-boy.”
“A wh––at!” cried Mrs. Corliss.
“She’s a Tom-boy, mamma always said; she romps, and has no manners.”
“They will be your neighbors when you go South again––so I suppose your brother thought of that when he invited them.”
“He never dreamed of it,” cried Birdie; “it was Miss Pluma’s doings.”
“Hush, child, don’t talk so loud,” entreated the old housekeeper; “she might hear you.”
“I don’t care,” cried Birdie. “I don’t like her anyhow, and she knows it. When Rex is around she is as sweet as honey to me, and calls me ‘pretty little dear,’ but when Rex isn’t around she scarcely notices me, and Ihateher––yes, I do.”
Birdie clinched her little hands together venomously, crying out the words in a shrill scream.
“Birdie,” cried Mrs. Corliss, “youmust notsay such hard, cruel things. I have heard you say, over and over again, you liked Mr. Hurlhurst, and you must remember Pluma is his daughter, and she is to be your brother’s wife. You must learn to speak and think kindly of her.”
“I never shall like her,” cried Birdie, defiantly, “and I am sure Mr. Hurlhurst don’t.”
“Birdie!” ejaculated the good lady in a fright, dropping her scissors and spools in consternation; “let me warn you not145to talk so again; if Miss Pluma was to once hear you, you would have a sorry enough time of it all your after life. What put it into your head Mr. Hurlhurst did not like his own daughter?”
“Oh, lots of things,” answered Birdie. “When I tell him how pretty every one says she is, he groans, and says strange things about fatal beauty, which marred all his young life, and ever so many things I can’t understand, and his face grows so hard and so stern I am almost afraid of him.”
“He is thinking of Pluma’s mother,” thought Mrs. Corliss––but she made no answer.
“He likes to talk to me,” pursued the child, rolling the empty spools to and fro with her crutch, “for he pities me because I am lame.”
“Bless your dear little heart,” said Mrs. Corliss, softly stroking the little girl’s curls; “it is seldom poor old master takes to any one as he has to you.”
“Do I look anything like the little child that died?” questioned Birdie.
A low, gasping cry broke from Mrs. Corliss’s lips, and her face grew ashen white. She tried to speak, but the words died away in her throat.
“He talks to me a great deal about her,” continued Birdie, “and he weeps such bitter tears, and has such strange dreams about her. Why, only last night he dreamed a beautiful, golden-haired young girl came to him, holding out her arms, and crying softly: ‘Look at me, father; I am your child. I was never laid to rest beneath the violets, in my young mother’s tomb. Father, I am in sore distress––come to me, father, or I shall die!’ Of course it was only a dream, but it makes poor Mr. Hurlhurst cry so; and what do you think he said?”
The child did not notice the terrible agony on the old housekeeper’s face, or that no answer was vouchsafed her.
“‘My dreams haunt me night and day,’ he cried. ‘To still this wild, fierce throbbing of my heart I must have that grave opened, and gaze once more upon all that remains of my loved and long-lost bride, sweet Evalia and her little child.’ He was––”
Birdie never finished her sentence.
A terrible cry broke from the housekeeper’s livid lips.
“My God!” she cried, hoarsely, “after nearly seventeen years the sin of my silence is about to find me out at last.”
“What is the matter, Mrs. Corliss? Are you ill?” cried the startled child.
A low, despairing sob answered her, as Mrs. Corliss arose146from her seat, took a step or two forward, then fell headlong to the floor in a deep and death-like swoon.
Almost any other child would have been terrified, and alarmed the household.
Birdie was not like other children. She saw a pitcher of ice-water on an adjacent table, which she immediately proceeded to sprinkle on the still, white, wrinkled face; but all her efforts failed to bring the fleeting breath back to the cold, pallid lips.
At last the child became fairly frightened.
“I must go and find Rex or Mr. Hurlhurst,” she cried, grasping her crutch, and limping hurriedly out of the room.
The door leading to Basil Hurlhurst’s apartments stood open––the master of Whitestone Hall sat in his easy-chair, in morning-gown and slippers, deeply immersed in the columns of his account-books.
“Oh, Mr. Hurlhurst,” cried Birdie, her little, white, scared face peering in at the door, “won’t you please come quick? Mrs. Corliss, the housekeeper, has fainted ever so long ago, and I can’t bring her to!”
Basil Hurlhurst hurriedly arose and followed the now thoroughly frightened child quickly to the room where the old housekeeper lay, her hands pressed close to her heart, the look of frozen horror deepening on her face.
Quickly summoning the servants, they raised her from the floor. It was something more than a mere fainting fit. The poor old lady had fallen face downward on the floor, and upon the sharp point of the scissors she had been using, which had entered her body in close proximity to her heart. The wound was certainly a dangerous one. The surgeon, who was quickly summoned, shook his head dubiously.
“The wound is of the most serious nature,” he said. “She can not possibly recover.”
“I regret this sad affair more than I can find words to express,” said Basil Hurlhurst, gravely. “Mrs. Corliss’s whole life almost has been spent at Whitestone Hall. You tell me, doctor, there is no hope. I can scarcely realize it.”
Every care and attention was shown her; but it was long hours before Mrs. Corliss showed signs of returning consciousness, and with her first breath she begged that Basil Hurlhurst might be sent for at once.
He could not understand why she shrunk from him, refusing his proffered hand.
“Tell them all to leave the room,” she whispered. “No one must know what I have to say to you.”
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Wondering a little what she had to say to him, he humored her wishes, sending them all from the room.
“Now, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, kindly drawing his chair up close by the bedside, “what is it? You can speak out without reserve; we are all alone.”
“Is it true that I can not live?” she asked, eagerly scanning his face. “Tell me truthfully, master, is the wound a fatal one?”
“Yes,” he said, sympathetically, “I––I––am afraid it is.”
He saw she was making a violent effort to control her emotions. “Do not speak,” he said, gently; “it distresses you. You need perfect rest and quiet.”
“I shall never rest again until I make atonement for my sin,” she cried, feebly. “Oh, master, you have ever been good and kind to me, but I have sinned against you beyond all hope of pardon. When you hear what I have to say you will curse me. Oh, how can I tell it! Yet I can not sleep in my grave with this burden on my soul.”
He certainly thought she was delirious, this poor, patient, toil-worn soul, speaking so incoherently of sin; she, so tender-hearted––she could not even have hurt a sparrow.
“I can promise you my full pardon, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, soothingly; “no matter on what grounds the grievance may be.”
For a moment she looked at him incredulously.
“You do not know what you say. You do not understand,” she muttered, fixing her fast-dimming eyes strangely upon him.
“Do not give yourself any uneasiness upon that score, Mrs. Corliss,” he said, gently; “try to think of something else. Is there anything you would like to have done for you?”
“Yes,” she replied, in a voice so hoarse and changed he could scarcely recognize it was her who had spoken; “when I tell you all, promise me you will not curse me; for I have sinned against you so bitterly that you will cry out to Heaven asking why I did not die long years ago, that the terrible secret I have kept so long might have been wrung from my lips.”
“Surely her ravings were taking a strange freak,” he thought to himself; “yet he would be patient with her and humor her strange fancy.”
The quiet, gentle expression did not leave his face, and she took courage.
“Master,” she said, clasping her hands nervously together, “would it pain you to speak of the sweet, golden-haired young girl-bride who died on that terrible stormy night nearly seventeen years ago?”
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She saw his care-worn face grow white, and the lines of pain deepen around his mouth.
“That is the most painful of all subjects to me,” he said, slowly. “You know how I have suffered since that terrible night,” he said shudderingly. “The double loss of my sweet young wife and her little babe has nearly driven me mad. I am a changed man, the weight of the cross I have had to bear has crushed me. I live on, but my heart is buried in the grave of my sweet, golden-haired Evalia and her little child. I repeat, it is a painful subject, still I will listen to what you have to say. I believe I owe my life to your careful nursing, when I was stricken with the brain fever that awful time.”
“It would have been better if I had let you die then, rather than live to inflict the blow which my words will give you. Oh, master!” she implored, “I did not know then what I did was a sin. I feared to tell you lest the shock might cost you your life. As time wore on, I grew so deadly frightened I dared not undo the mischief my silence had wrought. Remember, master, when you looked upon me in your bitterest, fiercest moments of agony, what I did was foryoursake; to save your bleeding heart one more pang. I have been a good and faithful woman all my life, faithful to your interests.”
“You have indeed,” he responded, greatly puzzled as to what she could possibly mean.
She tried to raise herself on her elbows, but her strength failed her, and she sunk back exhausted on the pillow.
“Listen, Basil Hurlhurst,” she said, fixing her strangely bright eyes upon his noble, care-worn face; “this is the secret I have carried in this bosom for nearly seventeen years: ‘Your golden-haired young wife died on that terrible stormy night you brought her to Whitestone Hall;’ but listen, Basil, ‘the child did not!’ It was stolen from our midst on the night the fair young mother died.”
CHAPTER XXX.
“My God!” cried Basil Hurlhurst, starting to his feet, pale as death, his eyes fairly burning, and the veins standing out on his forehead like cords, “you do not know what you say, woman! My little child––Evalia’s child and mine––not dead, but stolen on the night its mother died! My God! it can not be; surely you are mad!” he shrieked.
“It is true, master,” she moaned, “true as Heaven.”
“You knew my child, for whom I grieved for seventeen long years, was stolen––not dead––and dared to keep the knowledge149from me?” he cried, passionately, beside himself with rage, agony and fear. “Tell me quickly, then, where I shall find my child!” he cried, breathlessly.
“I do not know, master,” she moaned.
For a few moments Basil Hurlhurst strode up and down the room like a man bereft of reason.
“You will not curse me,” wailed the tremulous voice from the bed; “I have your promise.”
“I can not understand how Heaven could let your lips remain silenced all these long, agonizing years, if your story be true. Why, yourself told me my wife and child had both died on that never-to-be-forgotten night, and were buried in one grave. How could you dare steep your lips with a lie so foul and black? Heaven could have struck you dead while the false words were yet warm on your lips!”
“I dared not tell you, master,” moaned the feeble voice, “lest the shock would kill you; then, after you recovered, I grew afraid of the secret I had dared to keep, and dared not tell you.”
“And yet you knew that somewhere in this cruel world my little child was living––my tender, little fair-haired child––while I, her father, was wearing my life out with the grief of that terrible double loss. Oh, woman, woman, may God forgive you, for I never can, if your words be true.”
“I feared such anger as this; that is why I dared not tell you,” she whispered, faintly. “I appeal to your respect for me in the past to hear me, to your promise of forgiveness to shield me, to your love for the little child to listen calmly while I have strength to speak.”
He saw she was right. His head seemed on fire, and his heart seemed bursting with the acute intensity of his great excitement.
He must listen while she had strength to tell him of his child.
“Go on––go on!” he cried, hoarsely, burying his face in the bed-clothes; “tell me of my child!”
“You remember the terrible storm, master, how the tree moaned, and without against the western wing––where your beautiful young wife lay dead, with the pretty, smiling, blue-eyed babe upon her breast?”
“Yes, yes––go on––you are driving me mad!” he groaned.
“You remember how you fell down senseless by her bedside when we told you the terrible news––the young child-bride was dead?”
She knew, by the quivering of his form, he heard her.
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“As they carried you from the room, master, I thought I saw a woman’s form gliding stealthily on before, through the dark corridors. A blaze of lightning illumined the hall for one brief instant, and I can swear I saw a woman’s face––a white, mocking, gloriously beautiful face––strangely like the face of your first wife, master, Pluma’s mother. I knew it could not be her, for she was lying beneath the sea-waves. It was not a good omen, and I felt sorely afraid and greatly troubled. When I returned to the room from which they had carried you––there lay your fair young wife with a smile on her lips––but the tiny babe that had slumbered on her breast was gone.”
“Oh, God! if you had only told me this years ago,” cried the unhappy father. “Have you any idea who could have taken the child? It could not have been for gain, or I should have heard of it long ago. I did not know I had an enemy in the wide world. You say you saw a woman’s face?” he asked, thoughtfully.
“It was the ghost of your first wife,” asserted the old housekeeper, astutely. “I never saw her face but once; but there was something about it one could not easily forget.”
Basil Hurlhurst was not a superstitious man, yet he felt a strange, unaccountable dread stealing over him at the bare mention of such a thing. It was more than he could endure to hear the name of the wife he had loved, and the wife who slept beneath the wild sea-waves, coupled in one breath––the fair young wife he had idolized, and the dark, sparkling face of the wife who had brought upon him such wretched folly in his youth!
“Have you not some clew to give me?” he cried out in agony––“some way by which I can trace her and learn her fate?”
She shook her head.
“This is unbearable!” he cried, pacing up and down the room like one who had received an unexpected death-blow. “I am bewildered! Merciful Heaven! which way shall I turn? This accounts for my restlessness all these years, when I thought of my child––my restless longing and fanciful dreams! I thought her quietly sleeping on Evalia’s breast. God only knows what my tender little darling has suffered, or in what part of the world she lives, or if she lives at all!”
It had been just one hour since Basil Hurlhurst had entered that room, a placid-faced, gray-haired man. When he left it his hair was white as snow from the terrible ordeal through which he had just passed.
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He scarcely dared hope that he should yet find her––where or how he should find her, if ever.
In the corridor he passed groups of maidens, but he neither saw nor heard them. He was thinking of the child that had been stolen from him in her infancy––the sweet little babe with the large blue eyes and shining rings of golden hair.
He saw Pluma and Rex greeting some new arrivals out on the flower-bordered terrace, but he did not stop until he had reached his own apartments.
He did not send for Pluma, to divulge the wonderful discovery he had made. There was little sympathy or confidence between the father and daughter.
“I can never sleep again until I have some clew to my child!” he cried, frantically wringing his hands.
Hastily he touched the bell-rope.
“Mason,” he said to the servant who answered the summons, “pack my valise at once. I am going to take the first train to Baltimore. You have no time to lose.”
He did not hear the man’s ejaculation of surprise as his eyes fell on the face of the master who stood before him with hair white as snow––so utterly changed in one short hour.
“You couldn’t possibly make the next train, sir; it leaves in a few moments.”
“I tell you youmustmake it!” cried Basil Hurlhurst. “Go and do as I bid you at once! Don’t stand there staring at me; you are losing golden moments. Fly at once, I tell you!”
Poor old Mason was literally astounded. What had come over his kind, courteous master?
“I have nothing that could aid them in the search,” he said to himself, pacing restlessly up and down the room. “Ah! stay!––there is Evalia’s portrait! The little one must look like her mother if she is living yet!”
He went to his writing-desk and drew from a private drawer a little package tied with a faded ribbon, which he carefully untied with trembling fingers.
It was a portrait on ivory of a beautiful, girlish, dimpled face, with shy, upraised blue eyes, a smiling rosebud mouth, soft pink cheeks, and a wealth of rippling, sunny-golden hair.
“She must look like this,” he whispered. “God grant that I may find her!”
“Mr. Rex Lyon says, please may he see you a few moments, sir,” said Mason, popping his black head in at the door.
“No; I do not wish to see any one, and I will not see any one. Have you that satchel packed, I say?”