CHAPTER XXXIV
Two days later, Lady Vera, amusing herself under the broad oaks of the park with Lady Clive's children, is secretly drawn aside by Hal, the eldest, with a look of importance on his handsome face.
"Come with me, Vera, away from the nurse and children," he says, with a confidential air. "I have something for you."
Always indulgent to children, Lady Vera follows the clasp of the small hand, and is led away to a small summer-house out of range of the keen eyes of Mark and Dot.
"Now you may sit down, Vera," announces eight-year-old Hal, with owlish gravity. "I have something to tell you before I give you what I said I had for you."
Countess Vera sits down obediently. It is a bird's nest, or a blue-bird's egg, or some such treasure of the summer wood, she thinks to herself, with a smile, as the little brown hand goes into his jacket pocket.
"This morning, Vera, I went for a walk with Mark and Dot, and the nurse," he begins. "We went down into the wood a little way, it was so cool and green, and the birds sang so sweetly."
"It is surely a bird's egg," Vera says to herself now, keenly approving her own penetration.
But between the boyish fingers now appears the small corner of a yellow envelope, which somewhat quickens her curiosity.
"I went off to some distance by myself, and climbed a tree to look into a bird's nest. Bessie scolded, but I am too old to be bossed by a nurse, papa says, and so I gave her to understand. Don't you think I am getting too tall to mind what Bessie says, Lady Vera?" throwing back his curly head with dignity.
"Much too tall," Lady Vera admits with demure earnestness. "I should say that you would reach quite to her shoulder."
"Oh, quite," says Hal, in an aggrieved tone. "So, as I was telling you, Vera, I told Bess to mind her own business. Then I climbed into a great tree to look into a bird's nest."
"I hope you did not rob the nest and bring me the spoils, Hal," she begins, reproachfully.
"No, indeed," laughed the lad. "You would not have admired them very much if I had. The nest was pretty, but the five little naked birds in it were quite disgusting, I can tell you. Not a feather had grown on them yet, and their gaping mouths seemed as if they would swallow one. I came down pretty quick, and almost landed on the head of an old woman."
"An old woman," Vera repeats, in surprise.
"Yes, a wrinkled, stooping old hag, gathering sticks in the wood. I gave her a pretty start, I can tell you," cries the boy, laughing at the remembrance.
"Ah, then, it is a souvenir of the old witch you have brought me," says the countess, smiling.
"You have guessed it, Vera. You must be a witch yourself," cries Hal, in high glee with himself and her. "Here it is, a letter with an elegant yellow cover—a begging letter, of course," he adds, with a ludicrous assumption of wisdom.
A start of repulsion goes over Vera as she takes the coarse envelope in her hand.
She holds it unopened in her hand a moment, wondering at her own nervousness.
"Are you afraid to open it, Vera?" laughs the boy. "Let me do it for you, then. The old hag was very mysterious over it, I can tell you. She bade me tell no one of the letter, not even papa and mamma. You see how clever I was, getting you away from Bessie and the children."
Lady Vera has torn the coarse envelope open by this time. A half sheet of paper falls out into her hand. On it is clearly and plainly written these lines:
"If Lady Fairvale would gain possession of the lost memorandum-book, let her come down beyond the lodge-gates, half a mile along the road at dusk this evening. Let her come alone and unwatched, or she will accomplish nothing. One will be in waiting who will restore the memorandum-book, and claim the reward."
Thus it ends. Hal looks curiously at her pale, grave face.
"It was a begging letter, wasn't it?" he inquires.
"She certainly wants something of me. I am not sure if she will get it or not. Hal, promise me not to speak of this to-day to anyone—will you, dear?"
"Mum's the word. I can keep a secret, you bet," answers the eldest-born of the Clives, with dreadful slang, acquired, no doubt, in the stables which he visits daily with his father.
"Thank you, dear, that's a good boy. Now let us go back to Mark and Dot," says Lady Vera, putting her yellow-covered letter in her pocket.
CHAPTER XXXV
"Shall I keep the appointment?" Lady Vera asks herself many times that day.
A certain doubt and dread hovers intangibly in her mind. Will she really obtain the lost memorandum-book, or is it only some trap her enemies have set for her?
She longs to consult Sir Harry and Lady Clive, but the warning of the writer deters her.
"She must come alone and unwatched, or she will accomplish nothing."
Lady Vera has a premonition that her friends would by no means permit her to accede to the writer's demands, yet she decides within herself that there is really no danger in doing so.
Sir Harry Clive's theory of the loss of her book is no doubt correct. Some strolling thief, probably the old hag of Hal's story, has pilfered it for the sake of the golden clasps, and now, attracted by the offered reward, is eager to restore it.
After weighing the matter in her mind all day, she decides to keep the appointment. She is most anxious to recover the lost book again, spurred onward to even more eagerness by her desire to prove to the baronet that her strange story is no dream, as he too evidently persists in believing.
Yet, obeying the "still, small voice," that whispers to the heart of danger, Lady Vera decides to take some few precautions for her safety in case that treachery should assail her.
As evening approaches she incloses the letter of her mysterious correspondent in an envelope, together with a small note, saying that she had gone to meet the writer. She seals it and addresses it to Sir Harry Clive.
A great restlessness comes over Lady Vera as the hour approaches in which she is to meet the unknown possessor of the lost book.
With some trivial excuse to her friends for deserting their company, she retires to her room and summons her faithful Elsie.
Elsie, by the way, has been made happy for life by the settlement upon her by her mistress of a generous marriage portion.
She is engaged to Robert Hill, the gardener, and Lady Vera has taken this method of testifying her gratitude to Elsie by smoothing their path to a speedy marriage.
Now with some little nervousness Lady Vera puts into Elsie's hands the letter addressed to Sir Harry Clive.
"Elsie, I am going out for a little while," she says, with as much calmness and indifference as she can command. "I leave this letter in your keeping. Keep it faithful for one hour. If I return in one hour you may give it back into my hands. If, on the contrary, I fail to be here by that time, you must give it immediately to Sir Harry Clive."
The maid looks at her, a little frightened by the gravity of the charge and by Lady Vera's pale, strange face.
"It will soon be dusk, my lady. It is too late for you to be out alone. If you must go out, take someone with you," urges Elsie.
"Nonsense!" her mistress laughs, reassuringly. "I am not afraid to walk in my own grounds at this hour of the evening; I have done so often before. Do not tell anyone I am out unless the hour elapses before I return. Then you may raise the alarm."
"My lady, I am afraid to let you go like this," objects the maid. "It seems as if you anticipate danger yourself; I am sure it is wrong for you to go."
But Lady Vera at this shows the sterner side of her character, which is seldom turned to her adoring dependants.
"You will obey my orders, Elsie," she answers, haughtily.
"I beg your pardon, my lady," falters Elsie, bursting into tears.
"There, there, Elsie, I did not mean to hurt you," Lady Vera says, melted at once. "But you must not try to hinder me. Give me some light wrapper now to keep the dew off my dress."
Elsie brings a long, dark circular of thin cloth and delivers it to her mistress with many silent forebodings—forebodings destined to be only too sadly realized.
For who can tell how long it will be before the light footsteps of Countess Vera shall echo on the threshold of the palatial home she is leaving so eagerly and secretly, now, to keep her tryst with her mysterious correspondent.
Not Elsie, who weeps so silently, filled with strange, prescient fears.
It is growing dusk indeed as Lady Vera, wrapped in the dark circular, with the hood drawn over her head, flits rapidly along the quiet road.
When at last in the distance she descries the bent and drooping figure of an old woman, she laughs to herself at the vague fears that have troubled her.
"Poor, harmless old rogue," she says to herself, half pityingly. "One need apprehend no danger from her. A few shillings will buy back my lost treasure and make the old creature happy. I was foolish to fear anything. I am very glad I came!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
Leslie Noble's parting threat to the Countess Vera that he would yet claim her for his own, was not by any means the mere momentary ebullition of rage at her cold and scornful rejection of his overtures. He fully meant to keep his word. He was dazzled by her rank, her prestige, and her wondrous beauty had taken his senses captive even before the time when she had declared herself his wife.
To win her he would have dared and risked much. It would be like mating with a queen and reigning as a sovereign, to share the heart, and home and wealth of this beautiful, titled lady.
Up to the hour when he had sought that memorable interview with Lady Vera at Clive House, Leslie Noble had deluded himself with a vain fancy that if he deserted Ivy, and personally solicited Vera to become his wife, she would not refuse.
Some spark of vanity whispered to him that if she had not had some personal interest in him she would not so readily have claimed him as her husband. He knew himself to be handsome, and he fancied that he had only to repudiate Ivy and acknowledge Vera's claim, to gain full possession of the beautiful girl.
But her cold, scornful, insulting repulse had fairly maddened him, and he had sworn an oath to himself, as to her, that he would eventually possess her.
But how to compass that desirable event puzzled him sorely.
By her own free confession she was his wife, but he was perfectly aware that it would be utterly futile to try to claim her before the law. Her friends were too strong and powerful for him to make open war upon her.
He dreaded that the least move of that nature on his part would provoke a suit for bigamy against himself.
No course remained to him, therefore, but "treason and stratagem." He longed to win her, and yet not altogether by brute force. Some fancy came to him of how sweet it would be to have the love of this beautiful girl, from whom he had recoiled in aversion when Mrs. Cleveland had woven that romance about her low-born, drunken father, but who seemed so desirable now, clothed in all the dazzling externals of wealth, rank, lordly birth, and peerless loveliness. So are we all swayed by the extraneous circumstances of worldly prosperity.
Time and again Leslie Noble cursed himself for his wavering and cowardice that fatal night when his weak words of regret had driven his friendless, forlorn little child-bride to desperate suicide. All he had lost by that fatal wavering rushed bitterly over him.
"If I had been true and kind to that poor child as her mother wished me to be, I should have reaped a rich reward for my fidelity when the Earl of Fairvale came to seek his child. Why did I not take her by the hand and calm her trembling fears that night by telling her enemies boldly that she was my wife, and I would not see her insulted? Ah, it was my weak fancy for that shrewish Ivy that ruined all! And how cleverly she and her mother played on my fickle feelings! Curses on them both. Vile wretches! They are not fit to live in the same world that holds my peerless Vera!"
So it came to pass that, fostering the passion he had conceived for Lady Vera, and enraged by her queenly scorn, Leslie Noble conceived nefarious designs for abducting the young countess and bearing her to a place of concealment, where alone and undisturbed, he might plead his cause and peradventure win her heart.
It was the foolish reasoning of a madman, and in truth Leslie Noble was half mad with the violence of his passions, while the bitterness of his disappointment only urged him on to fresh endeavors.
Lady Vera little guessed how her footsteps were dogged and her movements watched by this man whom she so loftily despised. She did not know that when she left London and retired to her country home for greater security from her enemies, that this lover, more ruthless than any foe, had followed her to her own neighborhood, and was playing the spy on her movements, eager to carry out his base design.
She little knew that it was Leslie Noble who had stolen the book from her lap when she fell asleep by the lake that sunny day.
In the advertisement that followed, the crafty wretch saw the accomplishment of his wicked purpose.
It was he who, in the guise of an old woman, had given little Hal that crafty letter for Lady Vera.
It was he who waited now in the cheap and common garb of an old and poverty-stricken crone, to meet the fair young girl who came so innocent and unsuspecting, with almost a smile of triumph on her lips as she thought of meeting Sir Harry Clive with her recovered treasure; thus Leslie Noble waited, like a great, poisonous, black spider weaving his web for his innocent prey.
She comes swiftly along the narrow footpath with a light, graceful step, wrapped in the long, dark circular cloak, and holding up with both hands the sweeping train of the delicate dinner-dress from contact with the dust and the dew.
The deepening twilight enfolds her in its dim, shadowy light, and lends a mysterious aspect to the bent figure of the old hag, who grasps with both hands the head of a thick, knotted stick, while she waits, with eyes bowed sullenly to the ground, for the lady's coming.
"Are you the person who sent for me?" Lady Vera asks, gently, as she comes to a pause opposite this forbidding-looking figure.
The hooded head of the old hag is slowly lifted in the darkness of the falling twilight. The eyes that regard her so intently are shielded by great goggle-glasses.
"Yes, if you are Lady Fairvale," is the answer, in a muffled voice, with a strange croak in it.
"I am Lady Fairvale, and I have brought the reward I offered," the countess answers, anxiously. "Have you the memorandum-book?"
"Yes, I have it," gruffly.
"Then pray let me have it at once," Lady Vera exclaims, with some impatience. "It grows late, and I must hurry back to my waiting guests."
"In a moment, lady," the strange voice says, wheedlingly. "You see, I was afraid to trust you wholly. I suspected treachery, so I hid the book in the hedge a little way back here. Walk on with me a pace, and you shall have it, my lady."
"Go on, I will follow you," answers the girl.
She gathers the trailing skirts of her dress in her hands again, and walks on after the bent form hobbling painfully with the aid of the stick. It is growing very dark.
A cloud has come over the sky. The deep stillness and loneliness of the spot are broken suddenly by the impatient neigh of a horse.
With a start, Lady Vera turns her head. In that moment, two strong arms clasp her as in a vise, her hood is drawn over her face to smother her agonized shrieks, and the old woman, grown suddenly tall and erect, and strong, bears her forcibly to a carriage that has been waiting, hidden behind a hedge.
Her abductor springs in beside her, closes the door, and they are whirled away through the falling night, while a dexterous sprinkle of chloroform reduces the miserable girl to unconsciousness.
Meanwhile, Sir Harry and Lady Clive, repairing to the drawing-room near the dinner-hour, wonder and speculate upon the absence of their hostess.
She is not wont to keep them waiting, but to-day the great dinner-bell clangs twice over, and no swish of silk in the hall, no hastening footsteps announce her coming.
"What can keep Lady Vera?" the lady wonders, aloud. "Usually she is here full half an hour before the time. She is never long at her dressing. I wonder–"
There is a sudden, quick step outside the door, and Sir Harry interrupts her with:
"Here she is now."
The door is opened, but it is only Elsie, the maid, who enters the room. Elsie, with her pretty face all pale with fear, her cheeks wet with tears, in her hand Lady Vera's letter.
"Sir Harry," she utters, in a broken voice, "my lady went out into the grounds an hour ago. She gave me this letter for you in case she did not return within the hour. The time is past, and I have hastened to obey her."
A chill premonition of danger thrills his heart as he breaks the seal. She has written only a few brief lines, but they are startling in their nature.
"I have gone to meet the writer of the inclosed note. If I do not return in an hour you must suspect danger and have search made for me."
That is all. When he has read the contents of the yellow envelope a groan bursts from his lips as he hands it to his wife.
"It is a trap, and she has walked innocently into it, poor girl. Doubtless her foes have murdered her ere this," he exclaims, in deep agitation.
"God forbid," Lady Clive exclaims, bursting into frightened tears.
There is no thought of dinner now. Sir Harry musters the whole force of men-servants, and himself at their head, they sally forth to the rescue of their betrayed mistress.
A beating summer rain has commenced to fall, and the night is pitchy dark, save for the occasional flashes of lightning that flare with blue and lurid fire against the black and stormy sky. They divide into separate forces and search frantically till the day-dawn. But all trace of Countess Vera is swallowed up in the blackness of the stormy, mysterious night.
In the early dawn, a telegram flashes over the wires to Colonel Lockhart in London:
"Come quickly. Vera has been abducted."
CHAPTER XXXVII
In an obscure but respectable street in London, Mrs. Cleveland and Ivy had hidden themselves away in cheap and shabby lodgings, the better to husband the small hoard of money that remained to them of all their departed wealth and grandeur.
"I will never consent to sell my jewels and dresses, never!" the repudiated wife declared, firmly, the ruling passion still strong even in her defeat and disgrace. "For when Leslie finds that Vera will not live with him, and when Mr. Gilmore's lawyers prove her to be the adventuress and impostor that she is, he will return to me, and I shall be his wife again. We will return to America, where no one knows anything of our trouble, and then I shall need my fine dresses and jewels again."
"But what if we come to want in the meantime?" Mrs. Cleveland inquires grimly.
"You may sell your rubies. They are worth a thousand pounds, at least, and the proceeds will keep us comfortable for some time," Ivy answers, with cool insolence.
So, with the dread of selling her beloved rubies before her eyes, Mrs. Cleveland proceeds to practice economy with a vengeance, living in the cheapest style with a view to lengthening to its utmost capacity the check that Leslie Noble had contemptuously thrown them at their last interview.
But the wily widow has her own schemes and plans for the future, though she imparts none of them to Ivy, whose selfishness and insolence have begun to disgust even the wicked and crafty woman who bore her. Ivy always contrived to make herself a despised burden to anyone who had aught to do with her. Even her mother was sensible of that patent fact.
In these days of their disgrace and humiliation, the deserted wife shut herself into her shabby chamber, incessantly bewailing her hard fate, and upbraiding her mother for her long-ago sin which had been the means of bringing down this vengeance on her daughter's head. Not that Ivy regretted the wrong that had broken the hearts of Lawrence and Edith Campbell, but she was exceedingly wroth that the consequences had recoiled upon her own devoted head.
While she nurses her woes in the seclusion of her small, hot chamber, Mrs. Cleveland is maturing her plans for the future in the shabby-genteel parlor where she is interviewing a visitor—no less a person than Raleigh Gilmore.
Mr. Gilmore, after a calm, dispassionate view, does not appear like a man who would honor the title and estates from which he is desirous of ousting the present fair incumbent, Lady Fairvale. He is tall and thin, and stoop-shouldered, with shaggling, gray hair, gray, ferret eyes, and a coarse face on which nature has stamped "villain" too unmistakably for cavil. So much the better for her purpose, the woman thinks to herself as she reads the cunning features like an open book.
The first purport of their interview having been discussed, the visitor proceeds to the second.
"When I received your letter advising me of your ability and willingness to furnish evidence to oust that adventuress from Fairvale and leave me in possession, you hinted at a reward which you should exact in return for your valuable services," he observes, regarding her closely under his shaggy, overhanging, gray eyebrows.
"Yes," she remarks, with a cool, self-possessed bow.
"I should be glad to know the amount of the sum that will compensate your aid," Mr. Gilmore pursues, as eagerly as if he already held the vast wealth of Fairvale within his close, penurious grasp.
A slight, mocking smile glances over the wily widow's handsome, well-preserved face.
"You are a bachelor, I have heard," she answers, in a significant tone.
"Yes; I have never liked women well enough to tie myself to one," Mr. Gilmore retorts, with grim frankness.
The widow tosses her head.
"I am sorry for that," she says, audaciously; "I had hoped you would like my looks, for I must tell you frankly, that the reward I claim is to share your good fortune in toto as your wife."
He stares at her, growing pale in his angry amazement.
"There will be a kind of poetic compensation in such a marriage," Mrs. Cleveland pursues, coolly enjoying his rage. "I loved Lawrence Campbell, but my half-sister stole his heart from me. By rights I should have been his wife, and in course of time, Countess of Fairvale. No reward will satisfy me except to step into Vera Campbell's place and reign absolute sovereign where she has queened it so long. You see I do not offer to take away anything from you, only to share it with you."
"But, Mrs. Cleveland—madam—I have already explained to you that I am prejudiced against women. I do not wish to marry," protests the old bachelor, finding voice after his first surprise.
"So you reject me?" she inquires, with an air of chagrin.
"Yes, decidedly yes," he returns, nervously. "Be pleased to name some other reward."
"I have already explained to you that nothing will satisfy me except to be Countess of Fairvale. I wish to ride rough shod over Vera Campbell's heart, and in no other way could I be revenged so well as in taking her own place. Since you deny me this small grace I decline to help you to the earldom, and all that we have said about it goes for nothing," returns the widow, with the utmost frankness.
Anger almost gets the better of Mr. Gilmore for a moment, but crushing back the words upon his lips, he looks steadily at the speaker in blank silence.
"You do not find me very bad-looking, do you?" she inquires, with an air of unruffled good nature.
"On the contrary, I think you decidedly handsome and well-preserved. I never expected to be courted by so fine-looking a woman. Do you consider me handsome, madam?"
"Not at all. You are abominably ugly," she replies, after a calm scrutiny of his face. "If I marry you, it will not be for any personal merit you possess, only as a stepping-stone to power."
"You are very candid, but since you have the balance of power in your hands, you can afford to speak freely. Madam, I offer you my heart, hand and fortune. Will you accept them?" he exclaims, in grim displeasure.
"Are you in earnest?" she inquires.
"Never more so. You have left me no alternative," he answers, bitterly. "But I warn you, I shall not make a very loving husband."
"Nor I a loving wife. But I accept you as I said just now, as a stepping-stone to power," she replies, with provoking coolness.
He rises to depart.
"It is settled, then," he observes, with forced complaisance. "You will help me to the earldom, and I will pay you by making you my bride. When shall the wedding be?"
"On the day when you take possession of Fairvale's title and estates," she answers, promptly. "Au revoir, my charming bridegroom."