A shudder passed through her once more at the recollection of these things. And there arose a question of awful import. Would it come again? Now was the third attempt--the fateful third! Would she again be baffled, and by _that_? She feared no human foe; but this horror was something which she could never again encounter and live. And there came the terror over her that she might once again see this.
She was alone amidst her terrors. It was growing late. In the great room the dimness was deepening, and the furniture looked ghostly at the farther end of the apartment. It was not long since Obed had gone, but the time seemed to her interminable. It seemed to her as though she were all alone in the great house. She struggled with her fancies, and sat looking at the door fixedly, and with a certain awful expectation in her eyes.
Then, as she looked, a thrill flashed through all her being. For there, slowly and noiselessly, a figure entered--a figure which she knew too well. Robed in white it was; the face was pale and white as the dress; the hair was thick and ebon black, and hung down loosely; the dress clung closely. Was it the drip of the sea-wave--was it the wet clothing that thus clung to the figure which had once more come from the dark ocean depths to avenge her own cause? There, in very deed, stood the shape of horror--
"her garments
Clinging like cerements,
While the wave constantly
Dripped from her clothing."
It was _she_. It was the one who had been sent down to death beneath the waters, but who now returned for the last time, no longer to warn or to baffle, but to change from victim to avenger!
The anguish of that moment was greater fur than all the agonies which Hilda had ever known. Her heart stopped beating; all life seemed to ebb away from the terror of that presence. Wildly there arose a thought of flight; but she was spellbound, her limbs were paralyzed, and the dark, luminous eyes of the horror enchained her own gaze. Suddenly she made a convulsive effort, mechanically, and sprung to her feet, her hands clutching one another in a kind of spasm, and her brain reeling beneath such thoughts as make men mad. In that deep agony a groan burst from her, but she spoke not a word as she stood there rooted to the spot.
As for Zillah herself, she, on entering, had seen Hilda, had recognized her, and was stricken dumb with amazement. That amazement made her stop and regard her, with wild, staring eyes, in utter silence. There had been only one thought in her mind, and that was to see who it could possibly be that dared to come here with the pretense of being "Lord Chetwynde's wife." In her eagerness she had come down in a rather negligé costume, and entering the room she found herself thus face to face with Hilda. At that sight a thousand thoughts flashed at once into her mind. In a moment she had divined the whole extent of Hilda's perfidy. Now she could understand fully the reason why Hilda had betrayed her; why she had formed so carefully contrived and so elaborate a plot, which had been carried out so patiently and so remorselessly. That sight of Hilda showed her, too, what must have been the height and the depth and the full extent of the plot against her young, undefended life--its cruelty, and the baseness of its motive. It was to take her place that Hilda had betrayed her. Out of such a motive had arisen such foul ingratitude and such deadly crime. Yet in her generous heart, while her mind understood this much, and her judgment condemned this vile traitor, the old habit of tenderness awakened at the sight of the familiar face, once so dear. Dearly had she loved her, fondly had she trusted her; both love and faith had been outraged, and the friend had doomed to death the unsuspecting friend; yet now even this last wrong could not destroy the old love, and her thoughts were less of vengeance than of sad reproach. Involuntarily a cry escaped her.
"Oh, Hilda! Hilda!" she exclaimed, in a voice of anguish, "how could you betray your Zillah!"
To Hilda's excited and almost maddened fancy these words seemed like reproaches flung out by the dead--the preliminaries to that awful doom which the dead was about to pronounce or to inflict. She trembled in dread anticipation, and in a hoarse, unnatural voice, and in scarce audible words, gasped out,
"What do you want?"
For a few moments Zillah said not a word, though those few moments seemed like hours to Hilda. Then, with a sudden impulse, she advanced toward her. Her impulse was one of pity and kindliness. She could not help seeing the anguish of Hilda. For a moment she forgot all but this, and a vague desire to assure her of forgiveness arose within her. But that movement of hers was terrible to Hilda. It was the advance of the wrathful avenger of blood, the irresistible punisher of wrong; the advent of a frightful thing, whose presence was horror, whose approach was death. With a wild shriek of mortal fear she flung up her arms, as if to shut out that awful sight, or to avert that terrible fate, and then, as though the last vestige of strength had left her utterly, she staggered back, and sank down, shuddering and gasping for breath, into her chair, and sat there with her eyes fixed on Zillah, and expressing an intensity of fear and apprehension which could not be mistaken. Zillah saw it. She stopped in wonder, and thus wondering, she stood regarding her in silence.
But at this moment footsteps were heard, and Obed Chute entered, followed by Lord Chetwynde.
Obed had but one thought in his mind, and that was to unravel this mystery as soon as possible; for the presence of such an inexplicable mystery as this made him feel uncomfortable and humiliated. Until this was explained in some way he knew that he would be able to find rest neither by night nor by day. He was, therefore, resolved to press things forward, in hopes of getting some clew at least to the labyrinth in which his mind was wandering. He therefore took Lord Chetwynde by the arm and drew him up toward Hilda, so that he stood between her and Zillah.
"Now," he said, abruptly, turning to Hilda, "I have brought the man you wish to see. Here he is before you, face to face. Look at him and answer me. Is this man your husband?"
These words stung Zillah to the soul. In an instant all pity and all tenderness toward Hilda vanished utterly. All her baseness arose before her, unredeemed by any further thought of former love or of her present misery. She sprang forward, her eyes flashing, her hands clenched, her whole frame trembling, and all her soul on fire, as it kindled with the fury of her passionate indignation.
"_Her_ husband!" she exclaimed, with infinite passion and unutterable contempt--"_her_ husband! Say, Mr. Chute, do you know who it is that you see before you? I will tell you. Behold, Sir, the woman who betrayed me; the false friend who sought my life, and, in return for the love and confidence of years, tried to cast me, her friend, to death. This, Sir, is the woman whom you have been so long seeking, herself--the paramour of that wretch, Gualtier--my betrayer and my assassin--_Hilda Krieff_."
These words were flung forth like lava-fire, scorching and blighting in their hot and intense hate. Her whole face and manner and tone had changed. From that gentle girl who, as Miss Lorton, had been never else than sweet and soft and tender and mournful, she was now transformed to a wrathful and pitiless avenger, a baleful fury, beautiful, yet terrific; one inspired by love stronger than death, and jealousy as cruel as the grave; one who was now pitiless and remorseless; one whose soul was animated by the one feeling only of instant and implacable vengeance. The fierceness of that inexorable wrath glowed in her burning eyes, and in the rigid outstretched arm with which she pointed toward Hilda. In this moment of her fervid passion her Indian nature was all revealed in its hot, tempestuous, unreasoning fury; and the Zillah of this scene was that same Zillah who, years before, had turned away from the bedside of her dying father to utter those maledictions, those taunts, and those bitter insults, which Lord Chetwynde so well remembered.
Yet to Hilda at that instant these words, with all their fury and inexorable hate, came like balm and sweetness--like the gentle utterances of peace and calm. They roused her up at last from that great and unendurable horror into which she had fallen; they brought back her vanished strength; they restored her to herself. For they showed her this one thing plainly, and this above all things, that it was not the dead who stood thus before her, but the living! Had her former suspense been delayed a few moments more she would have died in her agony; but now the horror had vanished; the one before her bore no longer the terrors of the unseen, but became an ordinary living being. It was Zillah herself, not in death as an apparition, but in life as a woman. She cared nothing for the hate and the vengeance, nothing for the insult and the scorn. She cared nothing for the mystery that enshrouded Zillah, nor was it of any consequence to her then how she had been saved. Enough was it that Zillah was really alive. At this she revived. Her weakness left her. She drew a long breath, and all the vigor of her strong soul returned.
But on the others the effect of Zillah's words was overwhelming. Obed Chute started back in amazement at this revelation, and looked wonderingly upon this woman, who had but lately been winning his sympathy as an injured wife; and he marveled greatly how this delicate, this beautiful and high-bred lady, could, by any possibility, be identified with that atrocious monster whose image had always existed in his mind as the natural form of Zillah's traitorous friend.
On Lord Chetwynde the effect of all this, though equally great, was different. One look at Hilda in her first consternation and horror, and another at Zillah in her burning passion, had been enough. As Zillah finished, he caught her outstretched hand as it was pointing toward Hilda, and there rushed through all his being a rapture beyond words, as a dim perception of the truth came to his mind.
"Oh, my darling!" he cried, "say it again. Can this be possible? Is _she_, then, an impostor? Have I, indeed, been blinded and deceived all this time by her?"
Zillah tore her hand away from his grasp. In that moment of fury there came to her a thousand jealous fears to distract her. The thought that he had been so far deceived as to actually believe this woman his wife was intolerable. There was a wrathful cloud upon her brow as she turned her eyes to look at him, and in those eyes there was a glance, hard, stern, and cold, such as might befit an outraged and injured wife. But as she thus turned to look at him the glance that met hers was one before which her fury subsided. It was a glance upon which she could not look and cherish hate, or even coldness; for she saw in his face a wild rapture, and in his eyes a gleam of exultant joy, while the flushed cheeks and the ecstatic smile showed how deeply and how truly he loved her. On that face there was no cloud of shame, no trace of embarrassment, no sign of any consciousness of acts that might awaken her displeasure. There was nothing there but that old tenderness which she had once or twice seen on the face of Windham--a tenderness which was all for her. And she knew by that sign that Guy was Windham; and being Windham, he was hers, and hers alone. At this all her hardness, and all her anger, and all the fury of her passion were dispelled as quickly as they had arisen, and a great calm, full and deep, came over all her being. He loved her! That was enough. The fears which had tormented her since Mrs. Hart's revelation, the fury which had arisen but a few moments ago at the dark promptings of jealousy, were now all dispelled, and she saw in Lord Chetwynde her own Windham.
Quickly and swiftly had these thoughts and feelings come and gone; but in that moment, when Zillah's attention was diverted to Lord Chetwynde, Hilda gained more of her self-command. All was lost; but still, even in her despair, she found a fresh strength. Here all were her enemies; she was in their power and at their mercy; her very life was now at their disposal; they could wreak on her, if they chose, a full and ample vengeance; yet the thought of all this only strengthened her the more, for that which deepened her despair only intensified her hate. And so it was that at this last moment, when all was lost, with her enemies thus before her, the occasion only served to stimulate her. Her strength had returned; she summoned up all her energies, and stood grandly at bay. She rose to her feet and confronted them all--defiant, haughty, and vindictive--and brought against them all the unconquerable pride of her strong and stubborn nature.
"Tell me again," said Obed Chute, "what name was it that you gave this woman?"
"I am Zillah, daughter of General Pomeroy, and this woman is Hilda Krieff," was the reply.
"Hilda--Hilda--Hilda Krieff! Hilda Krieff!" said Obed Chute. "My good Lord!"
But Hilda did not notice this, nor any thing else.
"Well," she said, in a cold and bitter tone, "it seems that I've lost the game. Amen. Perhaps it's just as well. And so you're alive, after all, are you, Zillah, and not in the sea? Gualtier, then, deceived me. That also is, after all, just as well."
"Wretched woman," said Lord Chetwynde, solemnly, "Gualtier did not deceive you. He did his work. It was I who saved her from death. In any case, you have the stain of murder on your soul."
"Perhaps I have, my lord," said Hilda, coolly, "and other stains also, all of which make it highly inappropriate for me to be your wife. You will, however, have no objection to my congratulating you on the charming being you have gained, and to whom you have addressed such very passionate vows."
"This woman," said Lord Chetwynde, "hardly deserves to be treated with ordinary civility. At any rate, she is not fit for _you_," he added, in a low voice, to Zillah; "and you are too agitated for further excitement. Shall I lead you away?"
"Not yet," said Zillah, "till I have asked one question. Hilda Krieff," she continued, "answer me one thing, and answer me truly. What was it that made you seek my death? Will you answer?"
"With pleasure," said Hilda, mockingly. "Because I hated you."
"Hated me!"
"Yes, hated you always, intensely, bitterly, passionately."
"And why? What had I ever done?"
"Nothing. The reason of my hate was in other things. I will tell you. Because I was your father's daughter, and you supplanted me."
"You! Impossible!"
"I will tell you. In my childhood he was fond of me. I was taken to India at an early age. After you were born he forgot all about me. Once I was playing, and he talked to me with his old affection. I had a locket around my neck with this name on it--'_Hilda Pomeroy_.' He happened to look at it, and read the name. 'Ah,' said he, 'that is a better name than Hilda Krieff. My child, I wish you could wear that name.' I wanted him to tell me what he meant, but he wouldn't. At another time he spoke of you as being my 'little sister.' He frequently called me daughter. At last I found some old papers of my mother's, when I saw that her name was Hilda Pomeroy, and then I understood it all. She was his first wife, though I believe now that they were not married. He, of course, deceived her, and though she thought she was his wife, yet her child could not take his name. I asked him this, but he refused to explain, and warned me never to mention the subject. This only showed me still more plainly the miserable truth.
"Years passed. I found myself driven out from my father's affections. You were the world to him. I, his eldest daughter, was nothing. You were his heiress. Good God! woman, do you think I could help hating one who calmly appropriated every thing that ought to be mine?"
"Now you know about as much as you need know. I began years ago to plan against you, and kept it up with never-failing patience. It was the only pleasure I had in life. I won't go into particulars. I'll only say that nearly all your troubles came through my management. From time to time hereafter you will gradually remember various things, and think with tender regret upon your loving Hilda.
"At last things were all ripe, and I slipped away. I got you out of the way also, and I frankly avow that I never expected to have the pleasure of seeing you again. I also hoped that Lord Chetwynde would not come back from India. But he came, and there is where I broke down. That is all I have to say."
Hilda stopped, and looked defiantly at them.
"Young woman," said Obed Chute, in calm, measured tones, "you are very aggravating. It is well that you have generous people to deal with. I don't know but that I ought to take you now and hand you over to the police, to be lodged in the same cell with your friend Gualtier; but--"
"Gualtier!" groaned Hilda. "What?"
"Yes, Gualtier. I caught him yesterday, and handed him over to the police."
Hilda looked around wildly, and with a deeper despair in her heart.
"You," continued Obed, "are much worse than he. In this business he was only your tool. But you're a woman, and are, therefore, sacred. You are safe. It would be better, however, and much more becoming in you, to refrain from that aggravating way of speaking which you have just used. But there is one question which I wish to ask, and then our interview will terminate:
"You say you believe yourself to be the elder daughter of General Pomeroy?"
"Yes."
"Do you know your mother's maiden name?"
"Yes. Hilda Krieff."
"Did she ever tell you about her marriage?"
"I was too young when she died."
"Did you ever see any record of her marriage?"
"No."
"You know nothing definite about it, then?"
"No."
"Well, then, allow me to inform you that you are as much astray here as you were in that other thing. This Hilda Krieff was the wife of Pemberton Pomeroy--married after his elopement business. He took her name. You were their daughter. I saw you once or twice when visiting him. You were then a baby. Neville Pomeroy took charge of your mother and you after your father's death. These are the facts of the case."
"What is all this?" cried Zillah, eagerly, as she heard these names. "Do _you_ know about papa?"
"This lady came here with some questions about a cipher writing which she had misunderstood, and I explained it all. She thought the General was guilty, but I explained that he was the best fellow that ever lived. It's too long to tell now. I'll explain it all to you to-morrow."
"Oh, thank God!" murmured Zillah.
"What! _you_ couldn't have believed it?" cried Obed Chute.
"Never! never!" said Zillah; "though _she_ tried hard to make me."
Hilda had no more to say. The news about Gualtier, and the truth as to her parentage, were fresh shocks, and already her strength began to give way. Her spirit could not long be kept up to that height of audacity to which she had raised it. Beneath all was the blackness of her despair, in which was not one ray of hope.
She rose in silence. Obed accompanied her to her carriage, which was yet waiting there. Soon the wheels rattled over the gravel, and Hilda drove toward Florence.
Obed walked out and sauntered through the grounds. There was a twinkle in his eye. He walked on and on, till he reached a place in the depths of the woods far away from the villa.
Then he gave utterance to his feelings.
How?
Did he clench his fists, curse Heaven, weep, and rave?
Not he; not Obed.
He burst forth into peals of stentorian laughter.
"Oh, dear!" he screamed. "Oh, creation! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh, Lord! making love on the sly! getting spooney! taking romantic walks! reading poetry! and all to his own wife! Oh, ho, ho! Ha, ha, ha, ha! And he stole off with her at the masquerade, and made a 'passionate declaration'--to his--good thunder!--_his wife_! _his own wife_! Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! I'll never get over this!"
He certainly did not get over it for at least two hours.
He had at last fully comprehended the whole thing. Now the true state of mind between the quondam Windham and Miss Lorton became evident. Now he began to suspect how desperately they had been in love. A thousand little incidents occurred to his memory, and each one brought on a fresh explosion. Even his own proposal to Zillah was remembered. He wondered whether Windham had proposed also, and been rejected. This only was needed to his mind to complete the joke.
For two hours the servants at the villa heard singular noises in the woods, and passers-by heard with awe the same mysterious sounds. It was Obed enjoying the "joke." It was not until quite late that he had fully exhausted it.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING.
Meanwhile Lord Chetwynde and Zillah were left together. A few hours before they had been sitting in this same room, alone, when Mrs. Hart entered. Since then what wonders had taken place! What an overturn to life! What an opening into unlooked-for happiness! For a few moments they stood looking at one another, not yet able to realize the full weight of the happiness that had come so suddenly. And as they looked, each could read in the face of the other all the soul of each, which was made manifest, and the full, unrestrained expression of the longing which each had felt.
Lord Chetwynde folded her in his arms.
"What is all this?" he said, in a low voice. "What can it mean? I can not yet believe it; can you? What, my darling, are we not to have our stolen interviews any more? Have we no longer our great secret to keep? Are you really mine? I don't understand, but I'm content to hold you in my arms. Oh, my wife!"
Zillah murmured some inaudible protest, but her own bewilderment had not yet passed away. In that moment the first thought was that her own Windham was at last all her own in very truth.
"And are you sure," she said at last, "that you have got over your abhorrence of me?"
Lord Chetwynde did not understand this question, but considering it a joke, he responded in the customary manner.
"But what possible means could have induced you to leave Chetwynde Castle at all?" he asked; for, as he had not yet heard her story, he was all in the dark.
"Because you wrote that hideous, that horrible letter," said Zillah; and as the memory of that letter came to her she made an effort to draw away from his embrace. But the effort was fruitless.
"Hideous letter! What letter?"
"The last one."
"My darling, I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you remember how you reviled me?"
"I didn't; I don't understand."
"You called me a Hindu, and an imp."
"Good Heavens! what do you mean?"
"But you do not hate me now, do you? Tell me, and tell me truly, are you sure that your abhorrence has all passed away?"
"Abhorrence!"
"Ah! you need not fear to confess it now. You did abhor me, you know."
"On my honor, I do not know what you are talking about, my own darling. I never wrote about you except with respect; and that, too, in spite of those awful, cutting, sneering letters which you wrote for years, and that last one, written after my father's death."
"Heavens! what do you mean?" cried Zillah, aghast. "I sent letters to you regularly, but I never wrote any thing but affectionate words."
"Affectionate words! I never received a letter that was not a sneer or an insult. I came home under an assumed name, thinking that I would visit Chetwynde unknown, to see what sort of a person this was who had treated me so. I changed my intention, however, and went there in my own name. I found that woman there--an impostor. How was I to know that? But I hated her from the outset."
"Ah," said Zillah, "you were then full of memories of Inez Cameron."
This thought had suddenly stung her, and, forgetting the Windham of Marseilles, she flung it out.
"Of what? Inez? What is that?" asked Lord Chetwynde, in a puzzle.
"Inez Cameron."
"Inez Cameron! Who is Inez Cameron?"
"Inez Cameron," said Zillah, wondering--"that fair companion of so many evenings, about whom you wrote in such impassioned language--whose image you said was ever in your heart."
"In the name of Heaven," cried Lord Chetwynde, "what is it that you mean? Who is she?"
"Captain Cameron's sister," said Zillah.
"Captain Cameron's sister?"
"Yes."
"Captain Cameron has no sister. I never saw any one named Inez Cameron. I never mentioned such a name in any letter, and I never had any image in my heart except yours, my darling."
"Why, what does it all mean?"
"It means this," said Lord Chetwynde, "that we have for years been the victims of some dark plot, whose depths we have not yet even imagined, and whose subtle workings we have not yet begun to trace. Here we are, my darling, asking questions of one another whose meaning we can not imagine, and making charges which neither of us understand. You speak of some letter which I wrote containing statements that I never thought of. You mention some Inez Cameron, a lady whom I never heard of before. You say also that you never wrote those letters which imbittered my life so much."