CHAPTER XXVII.
Louise Barry went away from that meeting with Mrs. Laurens with a heart burning with secret wrath and jealousy.
“Am I going to be foiled like this, betrayed like this by that chit of a girl?” she muttered gloomily.
Her prospects did indeed look dark, for if Molly should tell what she knew and get any one to believe her, Louise’s fortune for which she had schemed and plotted would be ruined.
“Aunt Thalia would certainly drive me away from her forever if she found out about John Keith and the deception I practiced to gain her fortune,” she thought, fearfully, and her wrath against Molly grew and strengthened with every hour.
“I could kill her—the little mar-plot! Why did she marry Cecil Laurens? All would have gone well but for that!” she muttered, clinching her hands angrily again as she had done when Molly’s helpless fingers lay between them.
When she reached the Langham where she and old Mrs. Barry had luxurious apartments, she went at once and told her aunt the same garbled story she had told Mrs. Laurens about her summary ejectment from The Acacias.
The old lady was furious.
“She ought to be hung—that Molly Trueheart!” she exclaimed, viciously, and Louise answered, with equal venom:
“Yes, but instead of being punished for her sin theyare going to shield her from disgrace and drive poor Cecil Laurens into a new entanglement with her for the sake of a scruple of honor.”
“It shall not be. It is the wish of my heart that Cecil should marry you. Wemustprevent this sacrifice!” Mrs. Barry stormed.
“But how, Aunt Thalia?”
“Send for that John Keith wherever he is, Louise. I’ll bribe him to take her away before they push Cecil into a second marriage!”
Louise grew pale as ashes, and clinched her hands tightly together in her lap.
“Well, what do you say to my plan, eh, why don’t you speak?” demanded the grim old lady, sharply.
“It—will—not—answer. He is at the other side of the world. I should not know where to send for him, and I am quite sure he would refuse to have any more to do with his faithless wife,” Louise answered, slowly, with averted face.
“The little baggage! I should not blame him!” snapped Mrs. Barry, her seamed and wrinkled face working with anger. She went on, impatiently: “Well, then we must think of some other plan. That marriage must never take place.”
“No, they must be kept apart. We must think of something else,” Louise answered, but it was easier proposing plans than carrying them out. Fate, that had played poor Molly so many ill turns in her brief life, seemed relenting a little now.
None of the plans which the plotters proposed to each other could be carried out, for Cecil Laurens did not come home with Doctor Charley, although he was daily and hourly expected, and Louise was unable to gain an entrance into The Acacias, although she calleddaily and tried to send in her card to Cecil’s mother.
The servants, mindful of Phebe’s threat, always shut the door in her face and refused to take cards or messages.
“Young Mrs. Laurens is lying ill, and the family receive no visitors,” was what she heard daily, and old Mrs. Barry, when she called one day, fared no better.
“She must really be sick,” Louise said, when her aunt returned from the fruitless attempt, and she added to herself with a guilty blush: “I hope she will die!”
To the faithful Phebe, who hung anxiously over the sick-bed, it seemed as if this wish would come true, for Molly was very ill after she recovered from the swoon into which she had fallen from sheer terror of her foe. A physician had to be summoned at once, and he pronounced the patient in a dangerous condition, and charged Phebe to be very careful lest by the slightest neglect that young life should be lost.
Phebe carried out his orders with patient, unswerving devotion, knowing well that in this dark hour she was the sufferer’s only friend.
And indeed she had to fight for this position, and hold it in the teeth of the elder Mrs. Laurens’ grim displeasure, for Louise’s artful tale had so wrought upon that lady’s feelings that she immediately sought out Phebe and told her to take her discharge with a mouth’s wages instead of the customary warning.
“Indeed, then, mem, with all due respect to your gray hair, I can’t take my discharge from anybody but Mr. Cecil himself. He it was that engaged me, mem, and I promised him I’d be a faithful servant to my young mistress, so how could I desert her now in hertrouble, when every one has gone against her and she hasn’t a friend but me?” expostulated Phebe.
“You are impertinent, woman!” Mrs. Laurens exclaimed, with a frown.
“I’m sorry you think so, mem; I don’t mean to be so, but I can’t desert my mistress now.”
“I shall engage a sick-nurse,” Mrs. Laurens said loftily.
“I beg your pardon, mem, but you couldn’t find a better sick-nurse than me anywhere, if Idosay it myself,” said Molly’s stanch friend sturdily; and so she held her situation in the teeth of all opposition.
It was not an enviable task she had either, for all the care of the invalid devolved upon her and the physician; Mrs. Laurens only making two short calls daily, morning and evening—calls that never exceeded five minutes in duration, and which did the sick girl more harm than good, for she was so frightened by the lady’s cold words and frigid looks, that they sent her into shivering fits that lasted long after the ceremonious calls were over.
“She is a cold-hearted, cruel woman, and makes you worse whenever she comes. I’ll never let her in again if you’ll give me leave to keep her out, my dear!” exclaimed the indignant maid.
But Molly cried out in terror that not for worlds would she treat Cecil’s mother with such indignity.
“I can not blame her for being angry with me. I deserve it all for my treachery and it is very good of her to stay here, as you say she does, to keep my secret from the world,” she sighed, in sad humility and remorse. “So let her come when she will, Phebe, and never tell her how her cold looks frighten me and make me worse.”