Beatrix went swiftly to the pretty dressing-room, where the maid was, busy sewing on a dinner-dress of pink nuns' veiling for her beautiful young mistress. She sunk down upon a chair and looked at Clarice with somber, miserable eyes.
"Oh, Clarice, I shall have to give it all up," she panted. "They suspect me—I am quite sure they do!"
Clarice looked frightened and disturbed, and even reproachful.
"Oh, Miss Gordon, don't say that," she exclaimed. "After all the drilling you've had, a clever, pretty girl like you ought to be able to act your part. But it's just as I told you to-day. You're too timid and nervous."
"Because I am conscious of my guilt," answered the girl, sadly. "I should not be timid and nervous in my own proper character, Clarice. But you know 'conscience makes cowards of us all.' Besides, I am ignorant on many subjects which Beatrix Gordon ought to know well. The people and places they ask me about I know nothing of, and they look surprised. To-day Mrs. Le Roy asked me to play on the piano. When I said I did not know how, I wish you could have seen their faces!"
"That was rather bad. The most of young ladies know how to play on the piano," said Clarice. "But anyhow they couldn't make out a case against you for that. You might have said that you didn't care for music."
"So I did, but the lie almost blistered my lips," said the girl, "for I love music dearly, and when Mr. Le Roy played a beautiful aria I was afraid he would see my delight on my face."
"You must be careful over that. Stick to your text," warned the maid. "If you make them think you don't like music they will not think it strange you cannot play. Was there anything else unpleasant?"
"Yes; Mrs. Le Roy told me I did not at all resemble my mother. Oh, I was so frightened when she began. My heart sprung to my lips!"
"What did you say?" asked Clarice, attentively.
"I told them I resembled my father—that was true at least," answered Beatrix, sighing.
"Well, the game is not lost yet," said Clarice. "Courage, Miss Gordon—hold your own bravely as you can. Remember all that is lost if you fail."
"I try to remember it," sighed the girl. "If it were not forher, Clarice, I should break down, I know I should. It is terrible to be living a lie. Oh, Clarice, do you think she is very happy now?"
"Happy as a queen," said Clarice, enthusiastically: "and she was so good and sweet she deserved it. Oh, you mustn't regret that you made a little sacrifice for her! And is it a sacrifice, after all? Look at this grand, beautiful home, all this luxury around you. Where would you be if my mistress hadn't sent you here?"
Where, indeed? The false Beatrix Gordon shivered as if with ague, her face blanched to a pallid hue. She thought of the homeless outcasts in the horrible streets, of the dark, flowing river, of St. Leon Le Roy's careless words to her that day: "I would throw myself into the river, and so end all!"
"I should not do that unless I were driven to desperation," said the girl to herself with unconscious bravery.
She looked through the window out upon the beautiful grounds.
"It is a lovely home," she said. "I could be very happy here if I had no shadow on my heart. But I cannot forget my sin. I remember always some lines that I have read:
'Some flowers of Eden we still inherit,But the trail of the serpent is over them all.'"
'Some flowers of Eden we still inherit,But the trail of the serpent is over them all.'"
"I would not call it a sin if I were you," said Clarice. "That is too harsh a name. My mistress did not call it so. She said it was only a justifiable counter plot, only a harmless, girl's conspiracy."
"She ought to know best. She is older and wiser than I am," said the girl, with a gleam of hope on her face.
Clarice was very clever for a girl in her situation. As she worked away steadily on the pink dress, she artfully followed up the impression her last words had made:
"For my part I think it is the best joke I ever heard of. I do not pity the Gordons one bit. They deserve to be fooled!" she said. "There was no fault in Miss Gordon's lover, only he was not as rich as she was."
"Poverty is almost a crime in the eyes of the rich—is it not?" asked her mistress thoughtfully.
"Yes," Clarice answered, almost tartly, and she began to hum under her breath:
"'Dollars and dimes, dollars and dimes,An empty pocket is the worst of crimes!'"
"'Dollars and dimes, dollars and dimes,An empty pocket is the worst of crimes!'"
Her young mistress remained gazing thoughtfully from the window, the sad expression of her face hidden by the falling waves of her golden hair. Deep, heavy sighs breathed at intervals over her lips.
Several days passed quietly without anything occurring to frighten our masquerading heroine again. The Le Roys gave no sign of their surprise at anything that occurred. They had, in fact, concluded that a great deal of her oddness and originality arose from the fact of the lover in the case. When she looked sad, as she often did, they concluded she was thinking of him. When St. Leon actually came upon her weeping silently one day he thought it was on account of the separation from our hero.
It vexed him. He did not go away and leave her alone, as his mother would have done. He said to her, sarcastically:
"Are you crying for your mamma, little girl?"
Beatrix flashed him a swift, angry look through her tears, and answered:
"No!"
"At least she has the grace to be honest," he said to himself.
Some curiosity came over him regarding the man who had won the heart of this girl. He would have liked to know his name, and what he looked like, and if he was worthy of the prize he had won.
"Confide in me, Miss Gordon," he said, obeying an impulse he could not himself understand. "Tell me what your trouble is. Perhaps I can help you."
Beatrix shuddered in horror. Ah, if he knew, how little he would be inclined to help her. Rather he would spurn her from the proud gates of Eden.
"You are very kind," she faltered. "I thank you, but it is nothing."
He looked at her a little scornfully.
"I have heard that women cry for nothing," he said. "I suppose it must be true, as I now hear it confirmed by one of the sex."
She seldom saw him except at meals, and a little while in the drawing-room of an evening. The most of his time was spent in the library or out riding and walking. But one day he came to her abruptly.
"I am going up to New York for a few days," he said. "I hope you will make use of my library while I am out of the way."
"Thank you," she said, radiantly.
"If I should see your parents," he continued, "shall I give them any message for you?"
She started, and the crimson rose she was holding fell from her hands. He wondered why she grew so deadly pale, and trembled so. The sudden radiance of a moment ago had all gone from her face.
"Give them my love," she said in a husky voice, "and tell them—tell them that I am greatly enjoying my visit to Eden."
St. Leon came home one afternoon and made his way straight to the library. The thickly carpeted floor gave back no echo to his footfalls, and he stood on the threshold of the room several minutes gazing in at the open door unobserved by the single occupant of the apartment.
As he had shrewdly suspected, his mother's guest had availed herself to the full of his permission to use the library in his absence.
Quite oblivious of his near presence now, Beatrix was curled up in his great easy-chair in a cozy, kittenish attitude, her warm flushed cheek buried in the hollow of one small hand, her dark eyes bent in rapt interest on an open book in her lap. A ray of sunshine stealing through the lace curtains at the window penciled golden bars on her white dress and bright hair, making her look like a picture to whose beauty St. Leon's cultured eyes were by no means oblivious. He hesitated to startle her from her pretty negligent attitude, but as he gazed his mesmeric eyes irresistibly attracted hers. She glanced up and met his dark, burning eyes fixed with a strange inscrutable expression upon her own.
Instantly Beatrix sprung up, the book falling to the floor, a little cry of surprise on her lips, her face paling, a look of inexplicable terror in her dark eyes.
"Am I an ogre that you do me the honor to be frightened at me, Miss Gordon?" he inquired, advancing into the room, a tone of displeasure in his deep, musical voice.
"I—I was not frightened—only startled, sir," said Beatrix, faintly, as she stooped to recover her book.
She laid it upon the table and was about to leave the room when he stopped her with a slight wave of his gloved hand.
"Resume your seat, Miss Gordon. I shall not believe you are not frightened if you run away like this," he said.
She sat down with a gasp and waited. She had been full of vague fears and suspicions regarding his visit to New York. She waited with a beating heart and a pale face for his next words. He would say, with that fine scorn his mobile face was so capable of expressing:
"You are found out in your miserable conspiracy, Laurel Vane. You have come here pretending to be Mr. Gordon's daughter while you covered her elopement with her lover. The true Beatrix Gordonis far away, married to the man she has chosen, in defiance of her parents and friends. Punishment cannot reach her, but you, Laurel Vane, will have to suffer for the outrage you have helped to perpetrate on the Gordons and on us."
While she waited with a sick horror to hear him utter those words, she wondered vaguely what they would do to her for her share in Beatrix Gordon's conspiracy. Could they cast her into prison? She had seen the outside of a penitentiary once. How grim and dark and forbidding it looked with its iron doors and grated windows? Would they shut her up in all her youth and beauty in such a horrible place as that, and for how long? She shuddered as she thought that it might be for life. She had no idea, in her youth and innocence, how far and how long the powerful arm of the law could reach.
But the dreadful words for which she waited while a hand of ice seemed to grip her throat, remained unspoken.
Mr. Le Roy seated himself leisurely and drew off his dark kid gloves. Then he took up the volume she had been reading, and glanced at the title.
"I hope you have enjoyed your monopoly of my library," he said.
"Yes," she answered, faintly.
"And you are sorry I have returned to oust you from its enjoyments—aren't you?" he asked, studying her young face keenly.
"I should be very rude to say so," she answered, gaining courage as the dreadful charge for which she waited was delayed.
"As to that you cannot be ruder than I was in desiring you to stay out of this room while I was at home," he replied, with an air of insincerity. "Will you pardon my selfishness, Miss Gordon, and permit me to remove the embargo?"
She could scarcely believe her ears. His tone was distinctly kind. Had he, then, found out nothing? Was her secret safe yet a little longer?
Seeing that she hesitated, and did not speak, he continued:
"I give youcarte blancheas to the use of this room whether I am absent or present. Will you come here whenever you choose, to read, or write, or study? You will not disturb me, neither shall I disturb you."
"Thank you," she murmured, not yet daring to look at him.
"You thank me, but you do not say you will come," he said. "Will you please to look at me a moment, Miss Gordon? I like to be looked at when I am talking."
With an effort she lifted her long fringed lashes, and forced herself to meet his proud, glittering dark eyes.
"I am a spoiled child. I like to be humored," he said, with a smile that lighted his face into a subtle sweetness that first showed her how dangerously fascinating the master of Eden could be when he willed. "I want you to tell me, Miss Gordon, that you forgive my selfishness the other day, and that you will come to this room as freely as to any other room in the house. You will promise me, will you not? No one ever refusesmeanything!"
"There is nothing to forgive—you had a right"—she said, incoherently. "If there was—and mind, I do not admit there was—I forgive you freely."
"Thank you. And you will come?"
"Sometimes—perhaps," she stammered.
He pulled at his dark mustache impatiently.
"I must have a more definite promise than that," he said. "I am used to having my way about everything."
Though the words were arrogant, the tone was kind. He was thoroughly in earnest. She hesitated. She did not want to be drawn into such a promise, standing too much in awe of the stately master of Eden.
"You will not promise," he said, piqued. "Very well. But you are the first woman who ever refused a request of St. Leon Le Roy's. Your forgiveness was only half hearted."
He was more vexed than she knew. His wonderful condescension had not borne the fruit he expected. He leaned back in his chair with his elbow on the table, and pulled at his dark mustache with his shapely fingers, the costly diamond on his hand flashing luridly.
"What a stubborn little mite it is to refuse to humor me," he thought to himself in displeasure.
While the small object of his displeasure watched the door with longing eyes, yearning to escape from the oppressive dignity of his presence, she felt herself growing crimson under his cold, proud gaze.
"You have not asked me yet if I saw your parents," he said, after some minutes of that oppressive silence.
"It is coming now," thought the small culprit in despair, and she felt guiltily that the color was all fading out of her cheeks under those watchful eyes. She could only stammer, faintly, "Did you?"
To her infinite joy and relief, he answered in the negative.
"No, I did not see them. I called twice, but at both times they were out—once driving in the park, and again attending a reception."
"You do not look sorry, Miss Gordon, although it was purely out of courtesy to you that I went there."
"Indeed, I am very sorry," she murmured, but she could not make her face look so.
His words were so great a relief to her that she could not look disappointed. He did not tell her how disappointed he was. He would not have owned to himself that he had hoped to hear something about that lover from whom they had separated her. He would even have liked to have seen him. It was a new thing for theblasé, world-weary St. Leon Le Roy to feel curious over anything; but he had a great deal of curiosity over the man whom Beatrix Gordon loved.
"I should like to know if he is worthy of her," was his excuse to his own heart.
But he had not seen the Gordons, and he had found out nothing about their daughter's lover.
"If he is good and true and noble I should like to help the child to happiness," he said to himself. "If he is an ignoble fortune-hunter, as they say, I should most decidedly try to forward the Gordons' plot."
And it was rather curious that in his own mind he had quite decided that the unknown young man was a villain of the deepest dye.He pitied Beatrix for having fallen in love with a scamp who was only after her money. But as the days went by a change came over Beatrix that puzzled him.
Some of her shyness, her timidity, her sadness wore off. A look of contentment dawned on the fair face and in the dark eyes. Her cheeks gained color and roundness. She even laughed sometimes, a mellow laugh that was so sweet and glad it thrilled one's heart to hear it. Mrs. Le Roy was puzzled.
"She is certainly not pining for her lover," she said to her son. "At first she was so strange and sad I thought she was breaking her heart over him. But she is so young it is likely that change of scene has driven him completely out of her mind. The Gordons did well to send her here."
The day came when she changed her mind on that latter point.
In her heart Mrs. Le Roy had a secret fancy that the charms of her son had quite blotted out the image of Beatrix's absent lover from her young heart. Not that St. Leon or Beatrix gave her any reason to think so, but the wish was father to the thought. She would have been delighted if these two had fallen in love with each other, for the greatest desire of her heart was to see St. Leon married.
In the private parlor of a neat hotel in a city not very far from New York, the true Beatrix Gordon was sitting one lovely morning awaiting the coming of her husband.
Although Beatrix had deceived and deserted her parents, and foisted an impostor on the aristocratic Le Roys, she looked positively and undeniably happy this bright summer morning. Her lovely blonde face, with its crown of soft golden hair, glowed with love and happiness, and her beauty was enhanced by her becoming morning-dress of soft pale blue with delicate trimmings of rich cream tinted lace.
The door opened suddenly, and Cyril Wentworth, her handsome young husband, entered with a letter in his hand. He kissed his fair young bride, and held the delicate envelope tantalizingly out of reach.
"At last!" cried young Mrs. Wentworth eagerly, and she sprung upon a chair and gayly possessed herself of her letter. "It is from my sweet little Laurel."
She tore it open and ran her eyes quickly over the contents, while her husband watched her expressive face with deep anxiety.
She finished at last, and turned her fond, smiling blue eyes upon Cyril's questioning face.
"All goes well," she said. "They have not discovered my charming little plot yet. Papa and mamma have written, and they are both as well as usual. Clarice answered their letters, and imitated my hand and style so well that they were completely imposed upon."
"Clarice must be a clever maid," said Cyril.
"She is," said Beatrix. "Her education is far above that of her class generally. She was very valuable to me. I hated to part withher, but I was obliged to send her to Eden to keep up appearances, answer mamma's letters, and keep Laurel Vane up to her part."
"And when is this farce to end?" asked Cyril.
"Oh, not for several months yet, if I can help it," answered the pretty bride, looking frightened at the very idea.
"But why keep it up so long? I cannot understand your reluctance to have your parents learn the truth, love. They cannot forbid the bans now, for we are united as fast as Church and State can bind us," said Cyril Wentworth, who had an honest, open nature; and now that he had won his bonny bride, longed to have the whole world hear what a prize he had won.
"I have a secret reason, Cyril, darling," said the fair bride, twining her arms about his neck, and looking up in his face with sweet, shining eyes. "If Laurel plays her part well and I can keep our marriage a secret a few months, some great good fortune will come to us, Cyril. If not—if it is all found out sooner—why, then," with a little contented sigh, "I shall still have you, my dear. Fate cannot take you from me!"
"I am dying of curiosity, darling," laughed Cyril Wentworth.
"No matter. You shall not hear one word till the time is up," answered Beatrix, gayly. "I forbid you to even think of the matter again, sir!"
"Your wishes are my law," answered the lover-husband, in a tone as gay as hers.
"There is one thing that troubles me," she said, presently, running her eyes again over the letter which she still held open in her hand. "Laurel writes me that Mrs. Le Roy's son has returned from his European tour, and is at Eden."
"Why should that trouble you, dearest?" he inquired, tenderly.
"Do you not see that the chances of discovery are doubled, Cyril? Mrs. Le Roy seldom leaves home, and would be far more likely to be imposed upon by our little conspiracy than would her keen-witted son. Laurel writes me that he is keen, critical, brusque. She is afraid of him."
"I have a fancy about this Mr. Le Roy," said Cyril, lightly. "He will fall in love with the pretty little impostor and marry her."
Beatrix looked grave and troubled at this novel suggestion.
"Oh,thatwould never do," she cried. "My little Laurel is as beautiful as a dream, but she is not a fitting mate for St. Leon Le Roy. He is wealthy and aristocratic, and, I have heard, as proud as Lucifer. And she—a drunken journalist's daughter! No, no, that would never do, Cyril. She would not dare! I am not afraid of such a thing. She shall come and live with me and be like my own sister when her stay at Eden is over, and we shall find her a husband more suitable to her than St. Leon Le Roy!"
Two months had passed, and Laurel Vane still remained at Eden, in her character of Mr. Gordon's daughter. The clever conspiracy had not been discovered yet.
Indeed there seemed less chance of this catastrophe than at first. Laurel, with ready adaptability, was beginning to fit herself into herplace. Under Clarice's constant tuitions and admonitions, her shyness and timidity had been somewhat overcome, and a pretty, graceful ease had replaced it. Her beauty had expanded and increased like a flower in the sunshine. As the first restraint of her manner wore off, she developed a rare grace and winning sweetness that, added to her native originality, made her very charming. Mrs. Le Roy, in her stately, quiet way, had grown fond of her guest.
"Although there could not be a greater contrast imagined than exists between Beatrix and her mother, I am inclined to give the palm to the former," she confided to St. Leon. "I was fond of Mrs. Gordon when she was a girl. She was a fair, sweet young girl, but she lacked the charms that distinguish Beatrix. The girl makes me think of some beautiful, timid, wild bird."
"At first you thought her awkward and uncultivated," said St. Leon, carelessly.
"It was mere shyness that has worn off long ago," answered Mrs. Le Roy. "She puzzles me still, but she no longer appears awkward and uncultured. Still I admit that her education has been an unconventional one. She knows little that a girl in her position might be expected to know. On the contrary, she has some attainments not to be looked for. She knows German and Latin and some French, but she has no accomplishments, and she cannot play the piano. She says her father educated her. I take it he is a peculiar person."
"Rather, I should say," St. Leon assents, with his slightly bored air.
"Anyhow, I believe she is perfectly cured of her fancy for that—that person. I have never heard his name yet—have you, St. Leon?"
"Yes; it is Cyril Wentworth."
"A good name. Is it possible that Beatrix told you?" exclaims his mother.
"No; I heard it once, by the merest accident, on one of my trips to New York," St. Leon answers, with bland indifference.
"And—a—ah!—what kind of a man is he, St. Leon? As black as he was painted?"
"By no means—they say even the devil is not that, you know," with a short, dry laugh. "I have even seen the fellow. He is comparatively poor—I should say that that is the worst there is to him."
"Handsome?"
"As Apollo—and better still—young," he answers, with a short, dry laugh that has a ring of bitterness in it.
The mother's heart, quick in instinct, catches the subtle intonation of almost envy in that one concluding word.
She lays her white hand on his shoulder and looks up into the handsome, proud, world-weary face with its cold, curled lips—not pityingly—St. Leon has never borne pity in his life—but with fondest love and admiration.
"As young as you, St. Leon?" she asks, speciously solving his unacknowledged wound.
"Why, mother, how you talk!" he says, not unkindly. "Why, I amold. Thirty five my last birthday, and the crow's-feet, and gray hairs not so far away!"
"Do you care, my son?" she asks him, a little wistfully.
"Care—why should I?" he asks, frowning. "And yet I have no mind to contradict the poet, who says:
"'The loss of youth is sadnessTo all who think or feel—A wound no after gladnessCan ever wholly heal;And yet so many share it,We learn at last to bear it.'"
"'The loss of youth is sadnessTo all who think or feel—A wound no after gladnessCan ever wholly heal;And yet so many share it,We learn at last to bear it.'"
His glance wanders from the window out into the beautiful grounds, where Laurel Vane is wandering, bright-eyed, bright-haired, lovely, in the golden springtime of youth.
"Sweet face, swift eyes, and gleamingSun-gifted mingling hair—Lips like two rose-buds dreamingIn June's fruit-scented air.Life, when her spring days meet her,Hope, when her angels greet her,Is not more calm—nor sweeter,And love is not more fair."
"Sweet face, swift eyes, and gleamingSun-gifted mingling hair—Lips like two rose-buds dreamingIn June's fruit-scented air.Life, when her spring days meet her,Hope, when her angels greet her,Is not more calm—nor sweeter,And love is not more fair."
"After all, there is nothing on earth so beautiful as youth," he says, aloud, his dark eyes following the flutter of that white robe among the trees.
She looks furtively past him and sees Laurel, too, the sunlight shining on the fair young face, her white apron-overskirt heaped high with flowers after her usual fashion, the refrain of a song on her lips that floats back to them in snatches. It is Mrs. Browning's—"The Lady's Yes."
"Yes, I answered you last night,No, this morning, sir, I say—Colors seen by candle-light,Will not look the same by day."When the viols played their best,Lamps above and laughs below,Love me sounded like a jest,Fit for yes, or fit for no."
"Yes, I answered you last night,No, this morning, sir, I say—Colors seen by candle-light,Will not look the same by day.
"When the viols played their best,Lamps above and laughs below,Love me sounded like a jest,Fit for yes, or fit for no."
Mrs. Le Roy laid her delicate hand, all glittering with jewels, on the shoulder of her idolized son.
"St. Leon, you talk of growing old," she said. "My son, does not the flight of time remind you that you are neglecting a duty you owe to yourself?"
He turned to look curiously into her face, and the white figure out among the trees wandered further away, seeking new delights, like the bright-winged butterflies, among the flowers. The echo of her song died in the distance.
"Duty, mother," he said, carelessly. "I did not know that the vocabulary of my life contained that hard word. I thought all I had to do was to 'eat, drink, and'"—sarcastically—"'be merry.'"
"St. Leon, you are but feigning ignorance of my meaning," she said, wistfully. "You understand me."
"Upon my honor, no," he said. "Explain yourself."
"You should marry."
A dark-red flush crept under his olive skin. His slender, straight black brows met in a frown over the proud dark eyes.
"I thought we had dropped that subject ages ago," he said, frigidly.
"Forgive me," pleadingly. "I cannot help but revive it again. St. Leon, when you quoted that epicurean motto, 'eat, drink, and be merry,' you forgot that latter clause, 'for to-morrow wedie.'"
He shrugged his broad shoulders impatiently.
"Well?" he said.
"'For to-morrow wedie,'" she repeated. "And oh, St. Leon, there is no heir to Eden!"
"Quelle importe?" lifting his dark brows with a slight gesture of indifference.
"Oh, my son, do not treat it with indifference," she cried. "You are the last Le Roy of your race. The fine old name will die with you, the wealth of the Le Roys will pass to strangers, unless you marry and leave an heir. I am proud. I cannot bear to have it thus. Oh, St. Leon, choose yourself a wife and me a daughter from among the fair dames of your own land."
Her handsome, haughty old face was transformed with emotion, her dark eyes dim with tears. He turned from the sight of it and looked from the window again, but the slim white figure no longer gleamed among the green trees and the brightparterresof flowers. It had strayed out of sight.
"Where shall I find you a daughter worthy of your love, my lady mother?" he said, lightly, yet with some intangible emotion beneath his tone.
She hesitated, and her glance, too, wandered from the window and came back disappointed.
"St. Leon, what do you think of Beatrix Gordon?" she asked, wistfully.
The dark eyes flashed.
"For shame, mother! Would I steal another man's betrothed?" he said.
Meanwhile, Laurel Vane had strayed carelessly on to the gates of Eden, the light song still lingering on her lips, the light of the day reflected in her eyes and on her face. She was learning to be happy, this beautiful girl over whose unconscious head hung the shadow of long years of sorrow.
She leaned her arm on the rustic gate and looked wonderingly, as she often did, across the dusty carriage-road at the beautiful river.
"Should I ever be coward enough to throw myself into its dark depths, and 'so end all'?" she asked herself, with sudden gravity.
A sudden step, the dark figure of a man looming before her, made her lift her wide, dark eyes. A cry of mingled horror, loathing, and fear burst from her lips.
"Ross Powell!"
If Laurel Vane was thunderstruck at the unexpected sight of the villain who had so deeply insulted her helpless innocence in NewYork, Ross Powell on the other hand was delighted. His bold eyes gleamed with evil joy, his thin lips curled in a mocking smile.
"Miss Vane," he exclaimed, "is it possible that I find you again after all my fruitless search? But I might have known that such an angel would fly to Eden!"
Horror unutterable had seized upon Laurel. The song had died on her lips, the color fled from her face, she stared at her foe with parted lips, from which the breath came in palpitating gasps, while her wide, terrified eyes had the anguished look of some hunted creature.
He had come to betray her, she said to herself. All was ended now. He had found her out. He would tell the Le Roys who she was, and how she had deceived them. She could fancy Mrs. Le Roy's scathing words of condemnation. She could imagine the lightning scorn in St. Leon's proud, cold eyes.
Stifling the moan upon her lips, she cried out in passionate despair:
"Ross Powell, what has brought you here?"
"I might ask you the same question," he returned, coolly. "It certainly never entered my mind that I should find the daughter of Louis Vane a visitor at Eden."
He had spoken unwarily. His words let in a sudden light upon her mind.
He had not traced her here then. Whatever had brought him to Eden it had been some other cause than the denunciation of Beatrix Gordon's plot.
Her heart leaped with hope, then sunk heavily again. He was here, and he would find her out. She could trust to his hate and his desire for vengeance for that.
Obeying a sudden, desperate impulse, she pushed open the gate and stepped out into the road.
"You are right," she said, bitterly. "Do you think that the proud, rich Le Roys would have Laurel Vane for their guest? My errand at Eden is done, Mr. Powell. Let me pass, if you please."
He stood before her, dumbfounded at her coolness, glancing from her pale, agitated face to the flowers she carried in her apron with ostentatious care.
"Your errand," he stammered. "The flowers?"
"Yes," she answered, calmly. "I must take them home. Will you please to stand out of the way, Mr. Powell?"
"One moment," he said, still hindering her way. "Where is your home? Where can I find you?"
Her eyes flashed scornfully upon him.
"What can it matter to you?" she said. "Do you think I would receive you in my home? You, the cowardly insulter of helpless girlhood? Never! I hate you as I hate the slimy, crawling serpent! You have nothing to do with me. Out of my way!"
He caught her fiercely by the arm and hissed:
"I shall find you out! Be sure of that, my incarnation of indignant virtue! And when I do, Laurel Vane, you shall find that the serpent you hate can sting!"
She tried to shake off the brutal grasp of his fingers, but he held her in a grasp of steel and would not let her go.
"You hurt me," she said, desperately. "Release my arm, RossPowell, or I will scream for help. I hear carriage-wheels coming. Whoever it is I will appeal for protection."
The threat had the hoped-for effect. He threw her arm from him with a smothered oath. Laurel pushed quickly past him and walked on down the road. A carriage rattled past, and under cover of the cloud of dust it raised she looked furtively back at her worsted foe. He had entered the gate of Eden and was walking slowly up the graveled path to the house.
"He is really going there," she said, trembling, "and, O Heaven, upon what mission? He is Mr. Gordon's clerk, and he has come upon some errand to Beatrix Gordon. They will send out to search for me, and he will learn the truth. I cannot go back. I am afraid! I must hide myself until he is gone!"
Her trembling limbs would scarcely support her, but she walked on as fast as she could, her mind filled with vague conjectures and dire suspicions.
"Perhaps Mr. Gordon has sent for Beatrix to return home," she thought, despairingly. "Then the conspiracy will all be discovered. I shall be driven away from beautiful Eden."
A pang like a dagger's thrust pierced her heart at the thought. She looked back at the towered and turreted mansion, and the beautiful extensive grounds, with something of that hopeless despair our first mother must have felt on leaving Paradise.
The scent of the flowers she carried filled her with keenest pain.
"Shall I ever dare go back?" she said. "Am I going away for the last time now, with no home, no friends to turn to in my despair—with nothing but these flowers, and—a memory?"
As she plodded slowly along she came to a little private gate in the rustic fence that inclosed Eden. It led into a picturesque, bosky dell, with running streams, leafy shades, cool, green turf, and beds of wild flowers and exquisite ferns. The master of Eden carried the key to this private entrance, often preferring it to the more ostentatious front gate, with its imposing lions keeping grim watch and ward.
Laurel paused and leaned her arms on the low fence, and gazed at the cool light and shade that flickered on the green grass beneath the waving boughs of the trees. The hot, dusty road was disagreeable. She longed to go inside and throw herself down to rest. No one from the house ever came here except St. Leon Le Roy, and he but seldom. It was a favorite haunt of Laurel's, and it struck her now that it would be an excellent hiding-place.
Sighing at its inaccessibility Laurel bowed her head on her hands, and the first thing that caught the sight of her downcast eyes was the glitter of the steel key on the inside of the gate, where Mr. Le Roy had inadvertently left it that morning.
With a cry of joy Laurel slipped her hand through the iron bars of the gate, unlocked it, and entered.
Then she hastened to the remotest retreat on the grounds, a little natural bower, formed by the thick interlacing boughs of the trees and vines that grew thickly and luxuriantly close by a clear meandering stream, rippling on with a pleasant murmur. Laurel threw herself down at the foot of a tree in this sylvan retreat, and leaning her head on her hand, listened pensively to the song of the birdsand the musical murmur of the little streamlet. Her heart beat more calmly in the solitude and stillness that was only broken by the sweet sounds of nature. A little hope flickered feebly to life in her breast.
"Clarice is so clever she will save me, perhaps," she whispered to herself.
In the meantime Ross Powell with his mind full of his rencounter with Laurel, and his passions all aflame with love and hate commingled, wended his way to the stately home of the Le Roys.
It was true as Laurel had conjectured that he had come on business with Beatrix Gordon, but the sudden, exciting meeting with the dead author's daughter had almost driven his employer's business out of his mind. He determined to get through this interview with Miss Gordon as soon as possible, that he might gain time to trace the scornful Laurel to her home.
His disappointment was accordingly great when he was informed that Miss Gordon had gone for a walk. On his polite intimation that he had but an hour to remain Clarice was sent out to bring her mistress in.
Pretty, clever Clarice, having informed herself as to the identity of the visitor, departed on her errand, her quick brain teeming with plans to avoid the threatened exposure.
And Ross Powell waited his little hour, and saw the sunset gleams kindling the waves of the Hudson with gold, and still she came not. Impatience burned to fever-heat in his breast, though he was outwardly calm and deferentially polite to Mrs. Le Roy and her stately son.
The master of Eden inspired him with some little awe. He shrunk from the keen, clear glances of the cynical dark eyes. They seemed to pierce through him and read his shallow, selfish nature to the core. He felt his own littleness by contrast with the calm, proud bearing of St. Leon Le Roy, and resented it with carefully concealed anger.
While he waited for Miss Gordon's coming, he ventured nonchalantly on one leading question.
Could they tell him if there was a young lady staying in the neighborhood named Laurel Vane?
"Laurel Vane—what a sweet, pretty name," said Mrs. Le Roy. "No, I do not believe there is. I have never heard the name before."
"It is possible that she may be occupying some subordinate position—a governess, perhaps," suggested Mr. Powell.
"I do not know, I have never heard of her," said the hostess, carelessly; then, appealing to her son, "Have you, St. Leon?"
And he, in his blindness, answered:
"No."
Ross Powell did not know how to believe them. Had he not met her coming out of their grounds, loaded with their rare flowers? He asked himself what interest these rich people had in deceiving him about Laurel Vane. While he puzzled over the question asudden solution presented itself to his mind. She must be figuring under an assumed name. These rich Le Roys could have had no interest in deceiving him about humble little Laurel Vane.
He did not know how nearly his chance conjecture had hit the mark.
But his suspicions made him all the more eager to get away and seek for her. If she had really been clever enough to hide herself under a fictitious name, she would be all the harder to find. The difficulty only made him more zealous in pursuit.
He assumed an air of polite regret, and began to pave his way to departure.
"I am afraid I cannot await Miss Gordon's return any longer this evening, as I have a friend waiting for me at the hotel," he said. "But indeed there is no real necessity that I should see her at all beyond the pleasure her father would experience in hearing that I had done so. I will call again in the morning, and perhaps find her at home. In the meantime," he drew two letters and a small package from his breast, "I am the bearer of a letter to you, Mrs. Le Roy, and one for Miss Gordon, with this packet and her father's love. I shall be pleased to receive your answer in the morning before I return to New York."
He presented them and bowed himself out, so eager to find Laurel Vane that he gave scarcely a thought to Miss Gordon's defection.
The deepening twilight fell, and still neither Clarice nor her mistress returned.
Mrs. Le Roy began to feel some little anxiety.
"She never stayed out like this before," she said to St. Leon. "Can she have eluded us, and eloped with her lover? I am afraid I have allowed her too much liberty. What do you think, St. Leon?"
There was a gloomy flash in his eyes, but before he could speak Clarice came running in, breathless and eager, with genuine alarm on her face.
"Has he gone?" she gasped.
"An hour ago," said Mrs. Le Roy. "Where is Miss Gordon, Clarice?"
"Oh, Mrs. Le Roy, I cannot find her anywhere," gasped the girl, in a frightened tone.
There was genuine alarm on the maid's pretty, intelligent face. Mrs. Le Roy was startled.
"Have you been all over the grounds? Are you sure you have looked everywhere?" she cried.
"Oh, ma'am, I do not think I have missed a single spot," cried Clarice, wringing her hands. "I have been all over Eden. I have been out into the road, and along the river bank. I am afraid she has thrown herself into the water!"
St. Leon looked at her with his piercing dark eyes.
"Why should she do that?" he asked her, sharply.
"Oh, sir, surely you know she was very unhappy," she faltered.
"About her lover?" asked Mrs. Le Roy.
"Ye—es, madam," faltered the maid, weakly.
St. Leon had crossed to the door. He came back and laid his strong protecting hand gently on his mother's shoulder, and looked down into her troubled face.
"Mother, do not be frightened," he said. "I will find Beatrix for you. Ring for lights, and let Clarice stay here with you. I will search for the child."
The words kindled a gleam of hope in her breast. She did not see how deathly white his own face had grown.
He left her, and went out into the grounds on his self-appointed mission of finding the missing girl. A new moon had risen, piercing the twilight darkness with shafts of mellow light. In its mystic rays the white graveled walks and groups of marble statuary glimmered ghostly pale and wan. Clarice's apprehensive words rang in his ears:
"I am afraid she has thrown herself into the water."
"Not that—oh, not that," he said to himself.
He left the more open grounds and went out into the thick shrubberies. The dew was falling heavily, and the fragrance of flowers was borne on the air. The almost oppressive sweetness of the tube-rose, then at the height of its blooming, stole gently on his senses, but ever afterward it was connected in his mind with a sense of loss and pain.
"Beatrix, Beatrix!" he called ever and anon, in his eager search, but no sweet voice replied, no slender, white-clad form bounded out from among the dark green trees. He felt a strange sense of dreariness in his search for Cyril Wentworth's missing love.
"She was very unhappy—I had begun to forget that," he said to himself. "She had changed so much I thought she was beginning to forget that episode with Cyril Wentworth. Was her apparent indifference only a clever mask? Has she fled with him?"
He crushed something like a bitter execration between his lips at the thought, and went on crashing madly through the shrubbery, and so came out into the quiet dell where Beatrix had hidden that evening in her frantic dread of Ross Powell.
He followed the course of the little singing stream that tried to tell him in its musical murmur, "She is here, she is here," but he was deaf to Nature's voice. His heart's cry drowned it.
"Why am I seeking her here?" he muttered, bitterly. "My mother was right. She has had too much liberty. Cyril Wentworth has stolen her away."
Nay, a sudden lance-like gleam of the silvery moonlight broke through the interlacing boughs of the trees and touched with a pencil of light a little white heap of something huddled under the bowering trees. He went nearer, knelt down, and a cry of joy broke from his stern, mustached lips.
She had not thrown herself into the river, she had not fled with her lover. He had wronged her in his thoughts. She was here. Like a weary child she had flung herself down with her pale cheek pillowed on one round, white arm, and was sleeping deeply, exhaustedly,with the flowers all fallen from her apron and strewed in odorous confusion about her.
He bent his dark head low over the golden one—perhaps to listen if she slept—some murmured words fell from his lips. They sounded like "My darling," but it must have been the wind sighing in the leaves above them, or, perchance, the musical ripple of the little streamlet. St. Leon Le Roy was too proud and cold for such a weakness.
But he did not awake her at once. He bent over her softly, and the shapely hand with its costly diamond flashing in the moonlight, moved gently over the waving ripples of golden hair in mute caress as though she had been a child.
How still and pale she lay. The white radiance of the moonlight made her look so cold and white it thrilled him with a strange terror.
"What if it were death?" he muttered, darkly, with a shiver. "Death? Well," with a sudden, baleful fierceness, "what then? Better death than surrender her to Cyril Wentworth!"
And a red-hot flame of jealousy tore his heart asunder like the keen blade of a dagger.
He gazed for a moment in almost sullen satisfaction on the white, sleeping face, then suddenly his mood changed. Something like fear and dread came into his eyes.
"Am I mad?" he asked himself, with a bitter self-reproach in his voice, and he shook her gently, while almost unconsciously he called her name aloud:
"Beatrix—darling!"
With a start she opened her eyes. She saw him bending over her with an inscrutable expression upon his face. It was frowning, fierce, almost bitterly angry. Yet all the summer night around her, her languid pulses, and her beating heart, seemed to thrill and echo to one sweet, fierce whisper. "Darling!" Had she dreamed it? Was it but the figment of her slumbering brain?
As she struggled up she put out her hands to shut out the sight of his face that seemed to frown darkly upon her. A cry broke from her lips, full of fear and deprecation.
"Do not be angry. Do not scold me!" she wailed. "I am very sorry—I—I will go away!"
"She is not half awake—she is dreaming," he said to himself, and he touched her again, gently. "Wake up, Miss Gordon," he said; "you are dreaming. I am not going to scold you, although you have given us all a terrible scare falling asleep in the grounds at this hour of the evening."
The somber, black eyes stared at him affrightedly. She did not comprehend him yet.
"Oh, Mr. Le Roy, has he told you all?" she cried, clasping her small hands tightly in the agony of her excitement. "Do you hate me, despise me? Must I go away, all alone," with a shudder, "into the dark, dark night?"
"Still dreaming," said St. Leon Le Roy to himself, and with a sudden impulse of pity he bent down, put his arms about the small white figure, and lifted her up to her feet. Then holding her gentlyin the clasp of one arm, he said, like one soothing a frightened child:
"You have been asleep, Miss Gordon, and your dreams were wild. Rouse yourself now, and come into the house with me. My mother is greatly frightened at your absence!"
"Frightened," she repeated, a little vaguely, and nestling unconsciously nearer to the warm, strong arm that held her.
"Yes, you have been missing several hours, and we have all had a great fright about you. Clarice searched for you several hours, but I had the happiness of finding you," he said, gently.
"And—nothing has happened? You are not angry?" she asked, the mists beginning to clear from her brain.
"Nothing has happened, except that a gentleman came to see you and went away disappointed. I am not angry, yet I ought to be, seeing what a fright you gave me. Only think of me, Miss Gordon, rushing about the garden with my mind full of 'dire imaginings,' and finding you asleep on the grass like a tired baby. What a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous!"
She began to comprehend all and drew herself, with a blush, from the arm that still held her gently.
"Pardon me. You were half asleep and I held you to keep you from falling," he said, with cool dignity. "Shall we return to the house now? My mother is in great suspense."
"I am very sorry," she began, penitently, as she moved on quietly by his side. "I did not mean to frighten any one. You—you were very kind to come and look for me."
In her heart she was secretly singing pæans of gladness. She was not discovered yet. Her clever move that evening had thrown her enemy off his guard. Trying to keep the tremor out of her voice, she asked with apparent carelessness:
"Who was my visitor, Mr. Le Roy?"
"Whom do you imagine?" he responded.
"Was—was it Mr. Wentworth?" she inquired, with artless innocence and something in her voice that he interpreted as hope and longing.
"Do you suppose that Mr. Wentworth would be admitted inside the doors of Eden?" he inquired, with grim anger.
"Why not?" said she, timidly.
"You must know that we have our instructions from your mother," he answered, stiffly.
Laurel decided that it would be in keeping with her character of Beatrix Gordon to argue the point a little with Mr. Le Roy.
"Do you not think that mamma is a little harsh, Mr. Le Roy?" she ventured, timidly. "Mr. Wentworth is good and noble and handsome. His only fault is that he is poor."
"Therefore, he is no mate for you," St. Leon answered, almost savagely.
"But why?" she persisted, longing to hear his opinion on the subject.
"You are almost too young to understand these questions, Miss Gordon, but it ought to be perfectly obvious to you that the wealthy well-born daughter of Mr. Gordon should not descend to a simpleclerk without connections, without money, and without prospects," he answered, almost brusquely.
"Must one take no account of love?" she asked, timidly.
"Unequal marriages seldom result happily, Miss Gordon," he said, his voice full of underlying bitterness.
"You would have the rich to always wed the rich then?" she said, smothering a long, deep, bitter sigh as she awaited his answer.
"Other things being equal—yes," he responded, cruelly, and for a time they walked on silently through the moonlit paths with the thick shrubberies casting fantastic shadows along their way. St. Leon was in a savage mood, Laurel in a bitter one. She was silently recalling her maid's favorite song: