WHEN HAPPINESS SEEMED NEAR!
Granny Jenks, after great bustling about and clattering of dishes, sat down at last to copious draughts of strong tea, flavored with whisky.
"Oh, granny, aren't you taking a drop too much?" ventured Liane apprehensively.
"Mind your own business, girl. I'll take as much as I choose! Ay, and pour some down your throat, too, if you don't look out!"
Liane drank her tea in silence, while the old woman went on angrily:
"I want that forty dollars you kept back from me, girl, and I mean to have it, too, or give you a beating!"
This was a frequent threat, so Liane did not pay much heed, she only gazed fixedly at the old hag, and said:
"Granny, suppose I were to go away and leave you forever, do you think you could be happy without me?"
"Humph! And why not, pray?"
Liane sighed, and answered:
"I was just thinking how I have been yourslave, beaten and cuffed like a dog for eighteen years, and I was wondering if in all that time, when I have been so patient and you so cruel, if you had in your heart one spark of love for your miserable grandchild!"
"Eh?" cried granny, staring at her fixedly, while Liane continued:
"Ever since I could toddle I have labored at your bidding, fetching and carrying, with nothing, but scoldings and beatings in return, and not a gleam of sunshine in my poor life. You have not shown me either mercy or pity; you have made my whole life as wretched as possible, and I have sometimes wondered why Heaven has permitted my sufferings to continue so long. Now, I have a strange feeling, as if somehow it was all coming to an end, and I wonder if you will miss me, and regret your unnatural conduct, when I am gone out of your life forever?"
She spoke with such sweet, grave seriousness that the old woman regarded her earnestly, noting, as she had never closely done before, the beauty and sweetness of the young eyes turned upon her with such pathetic solemnity.
"Maybe you mean to run away with some rascal, like your mother!" she sneered at length.
"I was not thinking of any man, or of running away, granny; only, it seems to me, there's a change coming into my life, and I am going out of yours forever!"
"Do you mean you're going to die?"
"No, granny, I mean that I shall be happy, after all these wretched years; that my starved heart will be fed on love and kindness, and I want to tell you now that if Heaven grants me the blessings I look for, I shall leave you that forty dollars as a gift, for then I shall not need it," returned Liane solemnly.
"Better give it here, now; you might forget when your luck comes to you. And—and, you ain't never going to need it after to-night, anyway!" returned granny, with a ghastly grin.
"No, I prefer to wait till to-morrow!" the young girl answered, with a sudden start of fear, for the glare the old woman fixed on her was positively murderous.
She got up, thinking she would go down and see if Lizzie had returned from her work yet; but granny sprang from her chair and adroitly turned the key in the lock, standing with her back against the door.
Liane's eyes flashed with impatience.
"Let me out, granny!" she cried. "This is not fair!"
"Give me that money!" grumbled the hag, with the tone and look of a wild beast.
"I—I—Mrs. Brinkley put it in a savings bank for me!" faltered Liane, bracing herself for defense, for her startled eyes suddenly saw murder in the old woman's face.
She felt all at once as if she would have given worlds to be outside that locked door, away from the deadly peril that menaced her in the beastly eyes of half-drunken granny.
She was not a coward. Yesterday she had faced death bravely for Mrs. Clarke's sake, and would have given her life freely for another's; but this was different.
To be murdered by the old hag who had blasted all her young life, just as her hopes of happiness seemed about to be realized, oh, it was horrible! Unrelenting fate seemed to pursue her to the last.
She drew back with a gasping cry, for the old woman was upon her with the growl of a wild beast and the well-remembered spring of many a former combat, when the weak went down before the strong.
Liane, who had always been too gentle to strikeback before, now realized that she must fight for her life. Granny intended to kill her this time, she felt instinctively, and silently prayed Heaven's aid.
She opened her lips to shriek and alarm the household, but granny's skinny claw closed over her mouth before she could utter a sound, and then a most unequal struggle ensued.
Liane was no match for the old tigress, who scratched, and bit, and tore with fury, finally snatching up a club that she had provided for the occasion, and striking the girl on her head, so that she went down like a log to the floor.
Granny Jenks snarled like a hyena, and stooped down over her mutilated victim.
She lay white and breathless on the floor, her pallid face marked with blood stains, not a breath stirring her young bosom, and the fiend growled viciously:
"Dead as a doornail, and out of my pretty Roma's way forever!"
Suddenly there came the loud shuffling of feet in the hall, and the pounding of eager fists on the locked door.
Granny Jenks started in wild alarm. She realized that the sounds of her struggle had beenheard, and regretted her precipitate onslaught on Liane.
"I should have waited till they were all asleep; but that whisky fired my blood too soon!" she muttered, as, paying no heed to the outside clamor, she dragged the limp body of her lovely victim to the inner room, throwing it on the bed and drawing the covers over it, leaving a part of her face exposed in a natural way, as if she were asleep.
She was running a terrible risk of detection but nothing but bravado could save her now.
She dimmed the light, and returned to the other room, demanding:
"Who is there? What do you want?"
Several angry voices vociferated:
"Let us in! You are beating Liane!"
At that she snarled in rage and threw wide the door, confronting Mrs. Brinkley and her sister, with the two new boarders.
"You must be crazy!" she exclaimed. "I was pounding a nail into the wall to hang my petticoat on, and Liane is asleep in the bedroom. If you don't believe me, go and look!"
They did not believe her, so they tiptoed to the door and peeped inside, and there, indeed, lay thegirl, seeming in the dim half light to be sleeping sweetly and naturally.
"You can wake her if you choose, but she said she was very tired, and hoped I would not disturb her to-night," said artful granny coolly, though in a terrible fright lest she be taken at her word.
They retreated in something like shamefaced confusion, leaving granny mistress of the situation.
"What made you so sure she was beating the girl?" asked Carlos Cisneros of Sophie Nutter, who had raised the alarm.
"I used to know them at Stonecliff, where they lived, and she beat her there, poor thing, so when I heard the noise I thought she was at her old tricks again!" replied Sophie, going back downstairs to the parlor, where she had been looking at Mrs. Brinkley's photographs.
The language teacher followed her, and as he was rather handsome, and knew how to be fascinating with women, he soon gained her confidence, and found out everything she knew about Stonecliff, even to the cause of her leaving Roma Clarke's service. His eyes gleamed with interest as she added earnestly:
"Although I have seen Mr. Devereaux alivesince, and they tell me I was raving crazy that night, still I can never be persuaded that I did not see Miss Clarke push a man over the bluff to his death."
She was astounded when he answered coolly:
"You were not mistaken, but the man was not Devereaux. It was another, who held a dangerous secret of hers, so that she wanted him dead."
Sophie looked at him suspiciously.
"Did you see her push him over the bluff as I did? Ugh! That horrible scene! It comes before me now, as plain as if it was that night!" she shuddered.
She was amazed when he answered:
"I was the man she tried to drown!"
He was secretly delighted that there had been a witness to Roma's crime. It made his hold upon her that much firmer.
He added, in reply to Sophie's gasp of wonder:
"I was saved by a passing yacht, and put in a hospital, where I nearly died from a wound on my head."
Sophie gasped out:
"And—and aren't you going to punish the hussy?"
His eyes flashed, but he answered carelessly:
"Well, not just yet!"
"Shall you ever?"
"Wait and see," he replied. "Can you imagine what brought her into this house to-day?"
"I cannot. I suppose she knew Granny Jenks at Stonecliff; but I am sure she hated sweet Liane, because she carried off the beauty prize over her head."
Carlos Cisneros gleaned all he could from Sophie, but he gave her no further information about himself, content with making a very good impression, indeed, on Sophie's rather susceptible heart.
Meanwhile, upstairs, granny, having locked the door with a stifled oath, dropped down on the rug, and lay for long hours in a drunken stupor, while the dreary night wore on.
Suddenly, as the bells hoarsely clanged four in the morning, granny started broad awake, shivering with cold in the fireless room, and sat up and looked about her, whimpering like a startled child:
"Liane! Liane!"
A sudden comprehension seemed to dawn upon her, and, getting up heavily, she stalked into the inner room.
The dim lamp was burning low, casting eerie shadows about the room, and she walked over to the bed, where she had thrown something the evening before.
The ghastly thing lay there still, just as she had placed it with the coverlid drawn up to the chin, the silent lips fallen apart, the eyes a little open and staring dully, as granny placed her skinny claw over the heart, feeling for a pulsation.
There was none. She had done her work well. Her victim—the victim of eighteen years of most barbarous cruelty—lay pale and motionless before her, the mute lips uttering no reproach for her crime.
The old woman gazed and gazed, as if she could never get done looking, and then her face changed, her lips twitched, she blinked her eyelids nervously, and sank down by the bed, overcome by a sudden and terrible remorse.
"My God! What have I done?" she groaned self-reproachfully.
Far back in granny's life was a time when she had been a better woman. It seemed to return upon her now.
She groped beneath the coverlid for Liane's cold, stiff hand.
"Liane, little angel, I am sorry," she muttered. "I would bring you back if I could! Oh, why did the foul fiend send her here to tempt me to the damnation of this deed? But she is safe now! Roma is safe now! And she has promised that I shall not miss Liane's labor."
A new thought struck her. It would soon be day, and she must hasten to hide the evidence of her crime.
She started up nervously, and busied herself searching Liane for the coveted money, but not finding it, she began other necessary preparations.
It was that dismal hour that comes before the dawn, when she stole through Mrs. Brinkley's dark halls and passed like a shadow through the side door, escaping safely into the street with a shawled and hooded burden that must be safely hidden from the sight of men.
Lightly and softly fell the cold December snow, covering up the footprints of the skulking woman; but they could not blot the dark stain of crime from her black soul.
Dawn came slowly, and broadened into perfectday, and in the Brinkley house the household stirred and went about accustomed tasks. Soon granny's voice went snarling through the open door, calling shrilly downstairs:
"Liane! Liane!"
Lizzie White answered back from the kitchen:
"She is not here!"
Then granny tapped on Miss Nutter's door.
"Is that lazy baggage in here?"
"I have not seen her since last night," answered Sophie, and presently the house rang with granny's cries of anger and distress.
All went in haste to her rooms, and she reported that Liane had certainly run away, as she had many times threatened to do. All her clothes and little trinkets, together with her little hand bag, were missing.
Granny's blended anger and grief were so superbly acted that her simple listeners did not doubt her truth.
Mrs. Brinkley, thinking of the fine presents Liane had received from some unknown admirer, secretly doubted the story the girl had told her, and confided to Lizzie her belief that she had indeed eloped, and would most likely come to a bad end.
A SWORD THRUST IN HIS HEART.
A hopeless love must always evoke pity in a generous mind. Devereaux could not help being touched when he found Roma installed as his sister's guest, and comprehended that it was love for himself that had brought her there.
Men, even the bravest and strongest, are pitiably susceptible to woman's flattery. Roma's persistent love, faithful through all the repulses it had received, was a subtle flattery that touched Devereaux's heart, cruelly wounded by Liane's rejection, and made him think better of himself again.
Roma brought all the batteries of her fascination to bear on her recreant lover that first evening, and he submitted to be amused with charming grace, that thrilled her with renewed hope.
Mrs. Carrington, too, lent her womanly aid to further the little byplay she saw going on between the estranged lovers. She knew that propinquity is a great thing in such a case, and believed that a reconciliation was certain. Of course, she did notknow that Devereaux's heart belonged to Liane, or she would not have been so confident.
Roma telegraphed for her maid the next morning, fully resolved to make the most of her visit, and after breakfast, when she saw Devereaux preparing to go out, in spite of her blandishments, she asked him to call on her mother at the hotel, and tell her that she would be Mrs. Carrington's guest during her short stay.
She was more than ever determined to marry the young millionaire now, and thus make her position in life secure, even if by any untoward accident she should be ousted from her place as the Clarkes' daughter and heiress.
Devereaux promised to do as she asked, and sallied forth, in reality tired of Roma's company, though too polite to show it.
About the middle of the day he called at Mrs. Clarke's hotel to convey Roma's message, and was surprised to find her father there also.
They greeted him most cordially, and Mrs. Clarke exclaimed:
"Is it not tedious, waiting by the hour for a caller who never comes?"
"Do you mean your daughter?" he asked, hastening to deliver Roma's message.
"Then she has not heard of my accident yet?" exclaimed the lady.
"No!" he replied, and with unwonted animation she hastened to pour out the whole story of yesterday.
She did not spare herself in the least, frankly describing her pride and hauteur.
"I will not deny that I was vexed and jealous, and hated her because she had rivaled Roma for the beauty prize," she confessed. "I am ashamed of it now, and bitterly repented after learning her angelic sweetness and nobility of heart."
Devereaux's heart thrilled with joy at these generous praises of lovely Liane, and he listened in eager silence to all Mrs. Clarke had to say, glad, indeed, that she proposed to adopt the girl, but wondering much if Roma would agree to the plan.
"So, then, it is Miss Lester you are awaiting?" he said, with a quickened heart throb.
"Yes; and I think it most strange that she has not kept her promise to come here early this morning. If I knew her address, I should have gone long ago to her house, but, unfortunately I forgot to ask it," sighed Mrs. Clarke, while herhusband listened to everything with a glad, eager face.
"I wrote you, Mr. Clarke, two days ago, sending you her address, which I had myself just discovered," said Devereaux, looking at him.
"That is very strange. I did not receive it."
"Perhaps it had not been delivered when you left home."
"Perhaps so."
"And," pursued Devereaux, with a crimson flush mounting up to his brow at thought of seeing the dearest of his heart again, "if I can serve you in doing so, I will go and bring Miss Lester here to see you. It may be her excessive modesty that keeps her away."
They fairly jumped at his offer, and he hurried away, most eager, indeed, to do them this favor, glad in his heart of this grand opportunity for poor Liane.
Mrs. Clarke looked at her husband, with a half sigh tempering her soft smile.
She exclaimed:
"He is in love with that charming girl! Could you not see it? Alas, for my poor Roma!"
"Roma scarcely deserves our sympathy in the matter. She lost him by her own folly," Mr.Clarke replied impatiently, and the subject was dropped. He did not care to discuss Roma with his heart full of his own dear child.
Meanwhile Devereaux took a carriage to Liane's humble abode, full of a joy he could not repress at thought of seeing Liane again.
But he sighed to himself:
"I shall feel guilty in her presence, because I was indirectly the means of her losing Malcolm Dean! Ah, had she but loved me instead, what happiness would be mine instead of this aching loneliness of heart."
When he alighted at Mrs. Brinkley's door and rang the bell, the small family, excepting a servant, was out, and a neat maid answered the ring.
"Miss Lester?" with a comprehensive grin. "Oh, sir, she beant here! She runned away last night with her beau!" she exclaimed.
It was like a sword thrust quivering in his heart, those sudden words. He grew pale, and stared at her, muttering:
"Impossible!"
"But, sir, it's true as gospel! And her poor granny is in a fine taking over it, too. She says as how Liane was cruel to go off so, and leave her in poverty to end her days in the poorhouse!"
"Where is the old woman? I should like to see her," he said dismally, hoping for some light.
"She's out, sir, looking for the girl, swearing to kill the man as persuaded her off."
"And the family?"
"All out, sir. Mrs. Brinkley went to market, and her sister Lizzie to the store, where she and Liane worked."
Devereaux pressed a dollar into the good-natured servant's hand, and stumbled back to the carriage, almost blind with pain from this sudden stroke of fate.
The servant looked after him with mingled wonder, admiration, and gratitude, and describing him afterward to the family, exclaimed:
"The prettiest man I ever saw in my life—coal-black eyes and hair, straight nose, dimple in his chin, slim, white hands, diamond ring, good clothes, fit to kill! He must 'ave been another of Liane's beaus, for, when I told him she had eloped, he turned white as a corpse, and kind of staggered, like I had hit him in the face. But he didn't forget his company manners, for he bowed like a prince and put a whole silver dollar in my hand as he went back to his carriage."
"That sounds like Jesse Devereaux, MissClarke's lover!" cried Sophie Nutter, and Mrs. Brinkley said quickly:
"Well, Liane knew that man, and was in love with him, but he snubbed her with the proudest bow I ever saw, one day when we passed by his grand home on Commonwealth Avenue."
"So he lives on Commonwealth Avenue!" remarked Carlos Cisneros, with a flash of his somber, black eyes. He was thinking of the house he had followed Roma's carriage to yesterday—the palatial mansion on Commonwealth Avenue.
"So she is there at my rival's house, and she dares to think I will let her marry him! And I have two scores to settle with the handsome Devereaux!" he thought.
Devereaux could scarcely believe the terrible news.
He hoped there might be some mistake, and he determined to go to the store and see if she might not be there.
But there were no pansy-blue eyes smiling over the glove counter, but a pair of sparkling black ones, whose owner smiled.
"Miss Lester? No; she is not here to-day. I cannot tell you anything about her; but there'sher friend, Miss White, you can ask her—Lizzie!"
Lizzie White hurried forward, but she could tell him no more than he had already heard.
She wondered whom the handsome stranger could be, but she was too timid to ask his name, only she thought within herself that he must surely be in love with Liane, he was so pale and disturbed looking.
It seemed to her that he was most loath to accept the theory that the girl had gone away with a lover.
"Is there no possibility she has run away alone to escape her grandmother's cruelty?" he insisted.
Lizzie said she could not tell, she had never heard Liane mention any man's name, but she had been more confidential with her mother.
"Could you—would you—tell me her lover's name?" he pleaded; but Lizzie answered that it would not be right to betray her friend's confidence.
"He was a rich young man, and not likely to marry my poor friend," she added sorrowfully, and after that admission he could extract no more from Lizzie.
With a sad heart he returned to the Clarkes' with his ill news.
Mr. Clarke was terribly excited:
"I will not believe she has gone with any man! I should sooner believe that that old hag has made way with the girl! Give me the address, Devereaux, and I will go and wring the truth from her black heart, if you will stay and cheer my wife while I am gone!" he exclaimed, springing up in passionate excitement.
THE BRIDAL.
Dolly Dorr arrived duly that afternoon at the Devereaux mansion, her little head full of fancies as vain as Roma's—both dreaming of winning the same man.
But when Dolly saw her hero's magnificent home her hopes began to fall a little. She began to comprehend that there were heights she could not reach. Miss Roma would be sure to get him back now—of course, she had come there for that purpose.
Dolly felt as angry and disappointed as was possible to one of her limited brain capacity, but she hid her feelings and tried to attend to her various duties as Roma's maid.
She saw that her mistress was subtly changed since she had left Cliffdene. A harrowing anxiety gleamed in her eyes, and when they were alone Roma was more irritable than she had ever seen her before.
The reason was not far to seek. Jesse Devereaux had returned a while ago with news that nearly drove her mad.
It was the story of her mother's rescue yesterday by Liane Lester, and the consequent resolve to adopt Liane as a daughter.
Roma listened to him with the most fixed attention; she did not move or speak, but sat dumbly with her great, shining eyes fixed on his face, drinking in every word with the most eager attention.
Inwardly she was furious, outwardly calm and interested, and at the last she said, with marvelous sweetness:
"You have almost taken my breath away with surprise. So I am to have a sister to dispute my reign over papa's and mamma's hearts! How shall I bear it?"
He was astonished at the equanimity she displayed. She had a better heart than he had thought.
"So you do not care?" he exclaimed curiously.
"What does it matter whether I care or not? No one loves poor Roma now!" she sighed, with a glance of sad reproach.
The conversation had taken a reproachful turn, and he adroitly changed it.
"But I had not told you all. Your parents' good intentions must come to naught, for the reasonthat Miss Lester went away mysteriously last night, and the cause of her disappearance is supposed to be an elopement."
"Oh! With whom?"
Roma's attempt at surprise was not very successful.
"No one knows," he replied, and she exclaimed:
"How sorry poor mamma will be!"
"And you?" he asked curiously.
Roma had drawn so close to him that she could speak in an undertone. She locked her jeweled fingers nervously together now in her lap, and lifted her great eyes to his, full of piercing reproach, murmuring sadly:
"It does not matter to me either way, Jesse. I have lost interest in everything, now that you have turned against me!"
It was most embarrassing, her pathetic grief, and it touched his manly heart with deepest pity.
"My dear girl, I am sorry you take our estrangement so hardly! Believe me, I have not turned against you, as you think. I am still sincerely your friend," he answered, most kindly.
But the great red-brown eyes searched his face with passion.
"Oh, Jesse, I do not want your friendship! Iwant your love—the love I threw away in the madness of a moment! Give it back to me!" she cried, with outstretched hands pleading to him.
Impulsively he took one of the jeweled hands in his, holding it nervously yet kindly while he said:
"It is cruel kindness to undeceive you, Roma, but I cannot let you go on hoping for what can never be! You never had my heart's love, Roma. It was only an ephemeral fancy that is long since dead. I thought you wished to flirt with me, and I entered into it with languid amusement. Somehow—I never can quite understand how—I drifted into a proposal. I regretted it directly afterward, and realized that my heart was not really interested. You broke our engagement, and I was glad of it. Forgive my frankness and let us be friends!"
But her face dropped into her hands with a choking sob, her whole frame shaking with emotion, and he could only gaze upon her in silent sympathy, feeling himself a brute that he could not give the love she craved.
Roma remained several moments in this attitude of hopeless grief, then, rising with her handkerchief to her eyes, glided slowly past him—soslowly that he might have clasped her in outstretched arms had he chosen.
But he remained mute and motionless, sorrow and sympathy in his heart, but nothing more.
Sobbing forlornly, Roma passed him by, and went to her own room.
There Dolly had an exhibition of her imperious temper, culminating in a threat to slap her face.
Dolly's quick temper flamed up, and she retorted fiercely:
"Slap me if you dare, and I'll leave your service on the spot! Yes, and I'll go and tell Mr. Devereaux the fate of his letter to Liane Lester, too! I—I—wish I hadn't never had anything to do with you, either. I'm sorry I treated sweet Liane so mean! She was a heap nicer than you!"
Roma turned around quickly, holding out a pretty ring with a little diamond in it.
"Don't leave me, Dolly; at least, not yet," she sighed mournfully. "I'm sorry I was cross to you. Forgive me, and let's be friends again. Take this little ring to remember me, for I shall never need it after to-night!"
"What do you mean, Miss Roma?" cried the girl, slipping the ring coquettishly over her finger,but Roma threw herself face downward on a sofa without replying.
Dolly went into another room to arrange the clothes she had brought her mistress, and to admire herself occasionally in a long pier glass, and so the time slipped past, and in the gloaming Roma's voice called faintly:
"Dolly!"
"Yes, miss."
Roma was standing up, very pale, very tragic-looking, by the couch, in her hands a letter and a tiny vial of colored liquid.
"Dolly, you are to take this letter to Mr. Devereaux and ask his sister to come with him to my room. Tell them both I have swallowed poison, and shall be dead in a few minutes!"
Dolly snatched the letter and ran shrieking from the room, while Roma sank back on the couch, her eyes half closed, her face death-white, the vial of poison, half drained, clasped in her fingers.
Devereaux tore open the letter, and read the single line it contained:
"I cannot live without your love! I have taken poison!"
He and Mrs. Carrington almost flew upstairs after hurriedly telephoning for a physician.
They knelt by her couch, reproaching her for her rashness, declaring that they had sent for a physician to save her life.
"It is useless. I will not take an antidote. I am determined to die!" she replied stubbornly, and looked at Devereaux reproachfully, while Lyde caught her hands, exclaiming:
"Oh, Jesse, why couldn't you love her and make up with her, so that she needn't have been driven to this?"
Encouraged by this outburst of sympathy, Roma whispered audibly in her ear:
"If he would only make me his wife, I could die happy!"
"Do you hear?" nodded Lyde to her brother.
"Yes."
"I have dreamed of it so long. I have loved him so well, I cannot be happy even beyond the grave unless I can call him my husband once before I die!" sobbed Roma piteously, and by her labored breathing and spasms of pain it seemed as if each moment must be her last.
"Give her her dying wish lest she haunt you!" whispered the nervous, frightened Lyde.
Roma's sufferings grew so extreme that his reluctance yielded to pity. He bowed assent, and hurried from the room to summon a minister.
The physician entered in haste, but Roma repulsed him.
"Stand back! I will not take an antidote! I am already dying!" she screamed.
He caught the vial from her fingers.
"How much have you taken?"
"The bottle was full—and you see what is left!"
"Then God have mercy on your soul. I am powerless to save you from your own rash act, poor girl, even if you permitted me to try. Why have you done this dreadful thing?"
"A quarrel with my lover!"
"Yes, it is true," sobbed Lyde. "She and Jesse quarreled, and she rashly swallowed the poison."
She added chokingly:
"They—they—are going to be married presently. Please stay to the ceremony."
Jesse Devereaux entered at that moment with a minister.
Roma was moaning in pain, her eyes half closed.
"Can you do nothing, doctor?"
"Alas, no! She must be dead in a few minutes!"
He bent down and took her hand.
"Are you ready, Roma?"
"Oh, yes, yes! Heaven bless you, dear!"
The ceremony began in its simplest form, the minister standing close by the couch to catch the faint responses of the dying girl. They were uttered clearly and audibly, with a faint ring of joy in the accents, very different from Devereaux's low, reluctant tones:
Then the minister said solemnly:
"I pronounce you man and wife!"
BEFORE THE DAWN.
None could envy Edmund Clarke's feelings as he hastened on his way to find out the fate of the fair girl he believed to be his daughter!
He could not credit the story of her elopement.
Harrowing suspicion pointed to the probability that Roma, having found out the truth about herself, had hurried to Boston to have the real heiress put out of the way.
What more likely than that the wicked girl had intercepted Jesse's letter containing Liane's address and made capital of it to further her own evil ends?
The man shuddered as he realized what a fiend he had cherished as his daughter. He realized that it was the old fable of warming a viper in the bosom that stings and wounds the succoring hand.
Roma could never come under his roof again. Her vile attempt on his life and Doctor Jay's precluded such a possibility.
But he groaned aloud as he thought of havingto break all the truth to his frail, delicate wife—unless he should be able to first find Liane and get the proofs of her real parentage.
With a trembling hand he rang Mrs. Brinkley's bell, starting back in surprise when it was answered by no less a person than Sophie Nutter.
"Mr. Clarke!" she faltered, in blended surprise and pleasure.
"Sophie!" he exclaimed, following her into the little parlor, as she said:
"Come in, sir. All the folks are out but me, and I must say I am as much surprised to see you here to-day as I was to see Miss Roma yesterday."
Artful Sophie, she distrusted Roma, and took this method to find out if he knew of his proud daughter's goings-on.
"Roma here yesterday!" he exclaimed, in a voice of agony, feeling all his suspicions confirmed.
"Yes, sir, she was here to see old Mistress Jenks yesterday, and spent an hour with her!" returned Sophie quickly, scenting some sort of a sensation in the air.
She saw him grow pale as death, and he almost groaned:
"Liane? Where was she?"
"At her work, sir, at the store."
"Where is she now?"
"It is thought she has run away with some rich young man, sir. She is missing this morning, and all her clothes gone!"
"The old woman—where is she? I must see her at once!"
"Lordy, sir, the poor old creature ain't here this afternoon. She went out to look for Liane, vowing to kill the fellow that persuaded her away!"
Mr. Clarke had always liked Sophie when she was a member of his household. Her kind, intelligent face invited confidence.
"Do you think that her distress was genuine, or was she playing a part?" he asked, adding: "To be frank with you, Sophie, I have a deep and friendly interest in Liane Lester, and I suspect foul play on the old woman's part."
It needed but this to make Sophie pour out all that she knew of the old hag's cruelties to Liane up to last night, when the sounds of a supposed scuffle had penetrated to her ears, causing the family to intrude on the old woman en masse, to find that granny had only been driving a nail, and that Liane was asleep in bed.
"You saw her asleep?" he asked.
"Yes; we all tiptoed to the door, and she lay peacefully in bed, with the covers drawn up to her chin."
"You are sure that she was breathing?" he asked hoarsely.
"Why, no, sir—but—my God, do you think there could have been anything wrong?" cried Sophie, alarmed by his looks.
He answered in a voice of anguish:
"I suspect that you were looking at the corpse of sweet Liane; I suspect that the noise you heard was old granny beating her to death, and that she has hidden the dead away, and put out a hideous lie to account for her disappearance!"
Sophie was so terrified that she burst into violent weeping.
But Edmund Clarke's face wore the calmness of a terrible despair. He felt now that Liane had been foully murdered, and that nothing remained to him but to take the most complete vengeance on her murderers.
He exclaimed hoarsely:
"Do not weep so bitterly, my good girl; tears will not bring back the dead. All that remains to us now is to take vengeance on her enemies.To do this we must find proofs of their crime. Come with me, and let us search Granny Jenks' room."
It was not hard to break open the locked door, and they went into the gloomy apartments, Sophie opening the window and letting in a flood of light.
Then she saw what had escaped their eyes last night—stains of blood on the bare, uncarpeted floor. In the bedroom, the pillow where Liane's head had rested last night was also marked by red stains that told in their own mute language the story of a terrible crime.
Their horrified eyes met, and he groaned:
"It is as I told you! She was murdered, sweet Liane! Oh, I will take a terrible vengeance for the crime!"
Sophie replied with heartbroken sobbing, and they remained thus several moments, shuddering with horror in the bare, fireless room.
But not a tear dimmed the man's eyes. He was stricken with despair that lay too deep for tears. His heavy eyes wandered about the room, lighting on a small black trunk in a corner.
"If I could only find the proofs!" he muttered, and unhesitatingly broke the lock, scattering the contents out upon the floor.
It was filled with yellowing relics of a bygone day, and he turned them over rapidly, saying to Sophie:
"I am searching for something to prove a suspicion of mine—a suspicion of a deadly wrong!"
She dried her eyes and looked on with womanly curiosity, while he picked up and shook a little red box in the bottom of the trunk.
A dozen or two trinkets and letters fell out on the floor, and he searched them eagerly over, lighting at last on a slender golden necklace belonging to an infant.
He held it with a shaking hand, saying to Sophie:
"See this little clasp forming in small diamonds the word 'Baby'? It belonged to my wife in infancy, and when our little Roma was born she clasped it on her neck."
"And Granny Jenks has stolen it!" she cried indignantly.
"Worse than that! She stole also the child that wore it!" he answered, with a burst of the bitterest despair.
His heart was breaking with its burden of concealed misery, and Sophie's eager, respectfulsympathy drew him on till he could not resist the temptation to tell her all, sure of her sympathy.
It was like reading a novel to Sophie—the story of the lost babe, the spurious one substituted, and all that had happened since to the present moment.
"Oh, my dear sir, I believe you are quite right! Sweet, beautiful Liane was surely your daughter, while as for the other, she never had the ways of a lady, for all her grand bringing up, and she had the same cruel spirit like granny, always wanting to beat any one who displeased her. She slapped my face several times when I was her maid, and maybe you know, sir, that I left her service because I saw her push a man over the cliff one night."
"I have heard it whispered that you fancied something of the kind. My wife said you were crazy," returned Mr. Clarke.
"Crazy—not a bit of it, sir! It was God's holy truth! I can show you the man! He escaped the death she doomed him to, and lives in this very house!" cried Sophie, glad that she could defend herself.
"I should like to see the man!" cried Clarke,who was eager to get all the evidence possible against Roma.
"He will be coming in directly from his school," cried Sophie; and, indeed, at that moment a step was heard in the hall, and the dark, bearded face of the new boarder appeared passing the door.
"Come in!" called Sophie imperatively, and as he obeyed: "Mr. Clarke, this is Carlos Cisneros, the man Miss Roma pushed over the bluff."
Cisneros bowed to the stranger and scowled at the informer.
"Why did you betray my confidence?" he cried threateningly.
"Because I knew you wanted to get your revenge on her, and this man will help you to it."
The two men glared at each other, and Mr. Clarke asked:
"Why did she thirst for your life?"
"I held a dangerous secret of hers, and she believed me dead. When I hunted her down and threatened to betray her, she tried to kill me. She pushed me over the bluff, but I was picked up by a passing yacht, and my life was saved."
"What was that secret?"
"She has promised to pay me richly for keeping it," sullenly answered the man.
"She cannot keep her promise, because she is not my daughter at all, but an adopted one, and, finding out that she has attempted many crimes, I shall cast her off penniless."
"That alters the case. If she cannot pay me for holding my tongue, I'll take my revenge instead," answered Carlos Cisneros, with flashing eyes. "Sir, Roma is my wife. We were married secretly at boarding school. Then she tired of me and went home, while I was ill. When I hunted her down she attempted to murder me!"
Suddenly they were startled by a tigerish snarl of rage.
Granny, creeping catlike along the hall, came suddenly upon the open door, and the group within her room.
She staggered over the threshold, and glared like a tiger in the act of springing.
Mr. Clarke, still holding the shining necklace in his hand, cried bitterly:
"Miserable murderess, you are detected in your crimes! Here is the proof in my hand that you are the fiend that stole my infant daughter from her mother's breast, and made her young life one long torture! Here upon the floor and the bed are the blood stains that prove you murdered mychild last night. My God, I only keep my hands off your throat so that you may tell me what you have done with my precious dead!" his voice ending in a hollow groan.
The detected wretch crept closer to Cisneros, whining:
"Don't let him kill me! I know I deserve it, but don't let him kill me!"
"Tell him the truth, then!" cried Cisneros, who, although not a very good man himself, was astonished at the story he had heard, and felt a keen disgust for the repulsive, whining old creature.
"What is it you want to know?" she muttered, gazing fearfully at Clarke.
"Was not Liane Lester my own child?"
"Yes, I s'pose it's useless to deny it, now that you've found your baby's necklace in my trunk."
"And the girl I adopted as my daughter is your grandchild?"
"Yes—but you'll have to keep her now, and give her all your gold. You won't never find Liane no more!" she muttered, with a cunning leer, as of one demented.
"Tell me why you stole my child!"
"It won't do you any good to find out now. Shewon't never come back any more!" she muttered stubbornly.
He groaned in anguish, but reiterated:
"I insist on having the truth. Answer my question."
"Tell him the truth, you she devil!" growled Cisneros, pinching her arm as she huddled closer to his side.
She whined with pain, but she was mastered; she did not dare persist in her obstinacy.
So she whimpered:
"My daughter Cora stole the baby from your wife's breast, and she loved it so that I daren't take it away, lest she should die. So I let her keep it, and when her own child came she wouldn't never have naught to do with it, but clung to the other one, poor, crazy thing! So I thought I would raise them as twins, but when Doctor Jay sent me to get one from the foundling asylum in its place, the devil tempted me to keep your baby because Cora loved it so, and I put my own grandchild in your wife's arms, hoping you wouldn't find out the truth, and that Cora's child would be a great rich lady. My poor girl went stark mad, and they put her in the crazy asylum for life, but I was ashamed of the disgrace. Itold every one she had run away again to be an actress. And I kept the baby to work for me till it grew a great girl, with a face like an angel, and a heart like an angel, too, but somehow I always hated her, because I had a bad heart!"
"And then your grandchild found out the truth, and came and told you to kill Liane?" cried her accuser.
"How did you know that?" she demanded, shrinking in deadly fear.
"No matter how. You know it is true."
The light of mingled madness and defiance glared out of the woman's eyes. She growled:
"Well, I had to do it when she told me. Roma always would have her way, just like Cora, her mother! I said I hated to do it, the girl was such a lamb; so sweet, so gentle; but you cannot take Roma's place from her now, since Liane's dead: though I hated to do it, she was such a little angel."
Sophie Nutter burst into violent sobbing, Mr. Clarke's lips twitched nervously so that he could not speak, but Cisneros, with flashing eyes, exclaimed:
"So you killed the sweet angel, you fiend from Hades! Well, I hope you will swing for yourdiabolical crimes! A dozen lives like yours would not pay for one like hers! Come, now, we want to know where you hid her body."
She glanced at him resentfully, answering, to his surprise:
"They may hang me if they want to! I don't love my life since I killed Liane! I miss her so, sweet lamb, I miss her so! I thought I hated her, and I used her cruelly, but when she was dead, when I saw the blood on her white face, I loved her! I kissed her little cold hand. I told her I was sorry I had done it, and wished I could bring her back to life! She was good to me, little angel, and I hate Roma because she made me kill her! I told her it was not right to kill her, but she hounded me to it! Now she can keep Liane's place at Cliffdene, but I don't want to see her any more. Cruel, wicked Roma, that made me a murderess!"
She rocked her body miserably to and fro, maundering hoarsely on, while Sophie's vehement sobbing filled the room as she recalled last night, when she had looked her last on Liane's still, white face, cruelly fooled by the old woman's lies.
Mr. Clarke cried, with fierce, despairing anger:
"No more of this paltering, woman! Tell us where to find Liane's body!"
To his joy and amazement, the half-crazed woman answered:
"Roma told me to throw her in the river or the sewer, but she was so sweet I could not do it! I hid her in an old cellar, very dark and cold, and when I begged her to speak to me, she opened her sweet eyes again! Come with me, and I will show you!"
Almost afraid to hope that she spoke the truth, they followed the half-crazed woman to an old unoccupied house several blocks away, and there, indeed, they found Liane, faintly breathing and half frozen, lying on the floor of a cold, dark cellar, half covered with some scraps of carpet that granny had laid over her in her late repentance.
Again Sophie's passionate sobs broke out, echoed dismally by granny, who muttered pleadingly:
"Don't take her from me if she lives; don't give me Roma to live with! I hate her now, the wicked wretch, and I'd rather have my little angel, Liane! I'll never beat her again; no, never! Do you hear me promise, Liane?"
But there was no recognition in the half-openeyes of the poor girl, as they searched their faces, and, pushing granny sharply aside, Edmund Clarke took up his daughter in his arms and bore her back to Mrs. Brinkley's, while Carlos Cisneros was sent in haste for a physician.
Granny, seeming to have no fear of arrest for her dreadful crimes, hovered anxiously about, eager as any to aid in undoing her evil work.
Liane was laid in Sophie's soft white bed, and the girl said tenderly:
"I will nurse her myself, and no one knows better than I how to care for her, for I used to be a nurse in a hospital."
"Keep the old woman out," said Mr. Clarke sternly, and she went back to her own rooms, sobbing like a beaten child.
The doctor was soon on the scene, and he looked very grave, indeed, when he had made his examination.
"It is a serious case," he said. "There has been a severe blow on the head that stunned her, and all her faculties are benumbed. How long this state will last I cannot tell, but I hope I shall bring her around all right."
Mr. Clarke rejoiced exceedingly at even this small ray of hope, and, engaging the doctor to remainuntil his return, set out impatiently to Devereaux's house to tax Roma with her crimes.
He was burning with impatience. He could not wait, he was so eager to tell wicked Roma the truth that all her schemes had failed, and that, by Heaven's good mercy, Liane would be restored to her parents' hearts, while she, the wicked usurper, would be driven out to live with the old hag who had helped her in her nefarious plot against his daughter's life.
He took with him Carlos Cisneros, and, unknown to them both, Granny Jenks followed in their wake, cunningly curious to see how Roma took her downfall.
At nightfall they reached the Devereaux mansion, just a few moments after the ceremony that had made Roma the wife of the young millionaire. Indeed, Lyde and the other two witnesses had just withdrawn from the apartment, on Roma's request to be left alone with her husband.
She looked up at him with shining, love-filled eyes, murmuring:
"Please kneel down by me, Jesse, so that I may put my arms around your neck and die with my head upon your breast."
He pitied the rash girl so much that he could not refuse her anything in her dying hour. He obeyed her wish, and held his arm around her with her bright head on his bosom, expecting every moment to be her last.
But the minutes flew, and Roma showed not a sign of dying. Instead, her breathing was very strong and regular, and she tightened her arms about him, exclaiming:
"Oh, my husband, would you be glad if life could be granted to me now, that I might live, your happy bride?"
"Do not let us dwell on the impossible, Roma," he answered kindly.
"But why impossible, Jesse, dearest? I am not really certain of dying. I do not feel like it now, at all, and perhaps the dose I took was not really sufficient to kill me! Now that I am your wife, it seems as if a new elixir of life is coursing through my veins, and I long to live for your precious sake! Oh, surely you do not wish me to die!"
Here was a dilemma, certainly. Jesse Devereaux, holding the warm, palpitating figure in his arms, did not know how to answer her piteous appeal, and he was saved the necessity, for at the moment the door opened, admitting Lyde, followedby Edmund Clarke, with granny, who had forced herself in, bringing up the rear.
Lyde had told him hurriedly what had happened, and he had asked to see Roma; hence the intrusion.
The bride still clung fondly to her husband, and when they entered, she exclaimed, in strong, natural accents:
"Papa, dear, congratulate us. We are married."
"So I have heard," he replied, with keen sarcasm, adding: "I was told that you were dying, but you do not look much like it. Your cheeks are red, your eyes bright and clear, and your voice does not falter."
Roma actually laughed out softly and triumphantly, saying:
"I have just told my dear husband that I do not feel like dying at all, and that love and happiness have given me a new elixir of life."
Edmund Clarke would have spared exposing her if it had been really her dying hour, but he saw that she had grossly deceived Devereaux, so he returned, with bitter sarcasm:
"As you feel so strong and happy, I have some exciting news to break to you."
"News, papa?" sweetly.
"Do not call me papa," he answered bitterly. "You know well that I am not related to you, and that your discovery of the truth has caused you to attempt the most heinous crimes to keep my real daughter from coming into her birthright. I am here to tell you that your plot to kill Doctor Jay and myself has been discovered. Your attempted murder of Liane Lester came near success, but, happily, she has revived, and Granny Jenks, your wicked grandmother, has confessed that you were substituted in her place, and that Liane is my own child!"
"Heavens!" cried Devereaux, his arms falling from around Roma; but she clung to him, exclaiming passionately:
"I am your wife! No matter what he charges, I am your wife; do not forget that, Jesse!"
"And no doubt you pretended that you had swallowed poison, just to entrap him in your toils!" cried Edmund Clarke scornfully, while Devereaux, looking at her as she clung to him, exclaimed:
"Is this true, Roma?"
Her eyes flashed with defiance as she answered, rising, quickly:
"Yes, it is true. I only swallowed some colored water to frighten you all, and to make you marry me, because I loved you so dearly! You must forgive me, my darling husband, for you cannot alter anything now!"
He recoiled from her touch with loathing, and Mr. Clarke broke in:
"Do not trouble yourself over her words, Jesse, for she has no claim upon you. She has already a living husband—one whom she tried to murder, to put him out of her way, but he is here to testify to the truth of my words."
Through the open door stepped the wronged husband with a manly air, saying to startled Roma:
"Every man's hand is against you but mine, Roma, and even my heart recoils at your wickedness; but I love you still, and if you will repent of your sins and promise to lead a better life, I will take you back, and our old dream of a dramatic life shall be fulfilled."
It was a noble touch in the life of a man who had not been very good, but who was at least Roma's superior in everything, and she could not help but recognize it.
Beaten, foiled, in everything, she turned to the man she had wronged, saying:
"It is worth all the rest to find such a constant heart."
She laughed mirthlessly, mockingly, and left the room, scowling as she passed at Granny Jenks, huddled against the door, holding back her skirts from contact with her granddaughter, while she muttered: "I don't love you any more, and I wish never to see you again. I am going back to Liane."