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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Baronet's Bride, by May Agnes Fleming
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Baronet's Bride
+
+Author: May Agnes Fleming
+
+Release Date: March 10, 2005  [eBook #15317]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BARONET'S BRIDE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+THE BARONET'S BRIDE
+
+Or, A Woman's Vengeance
+
+by
+
+MAY AGNES FLEMING
+
+Author of _Lady Evelyn_, _Queen of the Isle_, _Who Wins?_,
+_Estella's Husband_, _The Heiress of Glendower_, etc.
+
+New York
+The New York Book Company
+
+1910
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  ALL'S WELL.
+
+  The clouds, which rise with thunder, slake
+    Our thirsty souls with rain;
+  The blow most dreaded falls to break
+    From off our limbs a chain;
+  And wrongs of man to man but make
+    The love of God more plain.
+  As through the shadowy lens of even
+  The eye looks farthest into heaven
+  On gleams of star and depths of blue
+  The glaring sunshine never knew!
+
+        JOHN G. WHITTIER.
+
+
+
+
+  SHADOW.
+
+  It falls before, it follows behind,
+    Darkest still when the day is bright;
+  No light without the shadow we find,
+    And never shadow without the light.
+
+  From our shadow we cannot flee away;
+    It walks when we walk, it runs when we run;
+  But it tells which way to look for the sun;
+    We may turn our backs on it any day.
+
+  Ever mingle the sight and shade
+    That make this human world so dear;
+  Sorrow of joy is ever made,
+    And what were a hope without a fear?
+
+  A morning shadow o'er youth is cast,
+    Warning from pleasure's dazzling snare;
+  A shadow lengthening across the past,
+    Fixes our fondest memories there.
+
+  One shadow there is, so dark, so drear,
+    So broad we see not the brightness round it;
+  Yet 'tis but the dark side of the sphere
+    Moving into the light unbounded.
+
+          ISA CRAIG-KNOX.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE BARONET'S BRIDE.
+
+"And there is danger of death--for mother and child?"
+
+"Well, no, Sir Jasper--no, sir; no certain danger, you know; but in
+these protracted cases it can do no harm, Sir Jasper, for the clergyman
+to be here.  He may not be needed but your good lady is very weak, I am
+sorry to say, Sir Jasper Kingsland."
+
+"I will send for the clergyman," Sir Jasper Kingsland said.  "Do your
+best, Doctor Godroy, and for God's sake let me know the worst or best
+as soon as may be.  This suspense is horrible."
+
+Doctor Parker Godroy looked sympathetically at him through his
+gold-bowed spectacles.
+
+"I will do my best, Sir Jasper," he said, gravely.  "The result is in
+the hands of the Great Dispenser of life and death.  Send for the
+clergyman, and wait and hope."
+
+He quitted the library as he spoke.  Sir Jasper Kingsland seized the
+bell and rang a shrill peal.
+
+"Ride to the village--ride for your life!" he said, imperatively, to
+the servant who answered, "and fetch the Reverend Cyrus Green here at
+once."
+
+The man bowed and departed, and Sir Jasper Kingsland, Baronet, of
+Kingsland Court, was alone--alone in the gloomy grandeur of the vast
+library; alone with his thoughts and the wailing midnight storm.
+
+A little toy time-piece of buhl on the stone mantel chimed musically
+its story of the hour, and Sir Jasper Kingsland lifted his gloomy eyes
+for a moment at the sound.  A tall, spare middle-aged man, handsome
+once--handsome still, some people said--with iron-gray hair and a
+proud, patrician face.
+
+"Twelve," his dry lips whispered to themselves--"midnight, and for
+three hours I have endured this maddening agony of suspense!  Another
+day is given to the world, and before its close all I love best may be
+cold and stark in death!  Oh, my God! have mercy, and spare her!"
+
+He lifted his clasped hands in passionate appeal.  There was a picture
+opposite--a gem of Raphael's--the Man of Sorrows fainting under the
+weight of the cross, and the fire's shine playing upon it seemed to
+light the pallid features with a derisive smile.
+
+"The mercy you showed to others, the same shall be shown to you.  Tiger
+heart, you were merciless in the days gone by.  Let your black, bad
+heart break, as you have broken others!"
+
+No voice had sounded, yet he was answered.  Conscience had spoken in
+trumpet-tones, and with a hollow groan the baronet turned away and
+began pacing up and down.
+
+It was a large and spacious apartment, this library of Kingsland Court,
+dimly lighted now by the flickering wood-fire and the mellow glow of a
+branch of wax-lights.  Huge book-cases filled to overflowing lined the
+four walls, and pictures precious as their weight in rubies looked
+duskily down from their heavy frames.  Busts and bronzes stood on
+brackets and surmounted doors; a thick, rich carpet of moss-green,
+sprinkled with oak leaves and acorns, muffled the tread; voluminous
+draperies of dark green shrouded the tall, narrow windows.  The massive
+chairs and tables, fifty years old at least, were spindle-legged and
+rich in carving, upholstered in green velvet and quaintly embroidered,
+by hands moldered to dust long ago.  Everything was old and grand, and
+full of storied interest.  And there, on the wall, was the crest of the
+house--the uplifted hand grasping a dagger--and the motto, in old
+Norman French, "Strike once, and strike well."
+
+It is a very fine thing to be a baronet--a Kingsland of Kingsland, with
+fifteen thousand a year, and the finest old house in the county; but if
+Death will stalk grimly over your threshold and snatch away the life
+you love more than your own, then even that glory is not omniscient.
+For this wintery midnight, while Sir Jasper Kingsland walks moodily up
+and down--up and down--Lady Kingsland, in the chamber above, lies ill
+unto death.
+
+An hour passes--the clock in the turret and the buhl toy on the stone
+mantel toll solemnly one.  The embers drop monotonously through the
+grate--a dog bays deeply somewhere in the quadrangle below--the wailing
+wind of coming morning sighs lamentingly through the tossing
+copper-beeches, and the roar of the surf afar off comes ever and anon
+like distant thunder.  The house is silent as the tomb--so horribly
+silent that the cold drops start out on the face of the tortured man.
+Who knows?  Death has been on the threshold of that upper chamber all
+night, waiting for his prey.  This awful hush may be the paean that
+proclaims that he is master!
+
+A tap at the door.  The baronet paused in his stride and turned his
+bloodshot eyes that way.  His very voice was hollow and unnatural as he
+said:
+
+"Come in."
+
+A servant entered--the same who had gone his errand.
+
+"The Reverend Cyrus Green is here, sir.  Shall I show him up?"
+
+"Yes--no--I cannot see him.  Show him into the drawing-room until he is
+needed."
+
+"He will not be needed," said a voice at his elbow, and Doctor Parker
+Godroy came briskly forward.  "My dear Sir Jasper, allow me to
+congratulate you!  All is well, thank Heaven, and--it is a son!"
+
+Sir Jasper Kingsland sunk into a seat, thrilling from head to foot,
+turning sick and faint in the sudden revulsion from despair to hope.
+
+"Saved?" he said, in a gasping whisper.  "_Both_?"
+
+"Both, my dear Sir Jasper!" the doctor responded, cordially.  "Your
+good lady is very much prostrated--exhausted--but that was to be looked
+for, you know; and the baby--ah! the finest boy I have had the pleasure
+of presenting to an admiring world within ten years.  Come and see
+them!"
+
+"May I?" the baronet cried, starting to his feet.
+
+"Certainly, my dear Sir Jasper--most certainly.  There is nothing in
+the world to hinder--only be a little cautious, you know.  Our good
+lady must be kept composed and quiet, and left to sleep; and you will
+just take one peep and go.  We won't need the Reverend Cyrus."
+
+He led the way from the library, rubbing his hands as your brisk little
+physicians do, up a grand stair-way where you might have driven a coach
+and four, and into a lofty and most magnificently furnished bed-chamber.
+
+"Quiet, now--quiet," the doctor whispered, warningly.  "Excite her, and
+I won't be answerable for the result."
+
+Sir Jasper Kingsland replied with a rapid gesture, and walked forward
+to the bed.  His own face was perfectly colorless, and his lips were
+twitching with intense suppressed feeling.  He bent above the still
+form.
+
+"Olivia," he said, "my darling, my darling!"
+
+The heavy eyelids fluttered and lifted, and a pair of haggard, dark
+eyes gazed up at him.  A wan smile parted those pallid lips.
+
+"Dear Jasper!  I knew you would come.  Have you seen the baby?  It is a
+boy."
+
+"My own, I have thought only of you.  My poor pale wife, how awfully
+death-like you look!"
+
+"But I am not going to die--Doctor Godroy says so," smiling gently.
+"And now you must go, for I cannot talk.  Only kiss me first, and look
+at the baby."
+
+Her voice was the merest whisper.  He pressed his lips passionately to
+the white face and rose up.  Nurse and baby sat in state by the fire,
+and a slender girl of fifteen years knelt beside them, and gazed in a
+sort of rapture at the infant prodigy.
+
+"Look, papa--look? The loveliest little thing, and nurse says the very
+picture of you!"
+
+Not very lovely, certainly; but Sir Jasper Kingsland's eyes lighted
+with pride and joy as he looked.  For was it not a boy?  Had he not at
+last, after weary, weary waiting, the desire of his heart--a son to
+inherit the estate and perpetuate the ancient name?
+
+"It is so sweet, papa!" Miss Mildred whispered, her small, rather
+sickly face quite radiant; "and its eyes are the image of yours.  He's
+asleep now, you know, and you can't see them.  And look at the dear,
+darling little hands and fingers and feet, and the speck of a nose and
+the dot of a mouth!  Oh papa! isn't it splendid to have a baby in the
+house?"
+
+"Very splendid," said papa, relaxing into a smile.  "A fine little
+fellow, nurse!  There, cover him up again and let him sleep.  We must
+take extra care of the heir of Kingsland Court.  And Mildred, child,
+you should be in bed.  One o'clock is no hour for little girls to be
+out of their nests."
+
+"Oh, papa! as if I could sleep and not see the baby!"
+
+"Well, you have seen it, and now run away to your room.  Mamma and baby
+both want to sleep, and nurse doesn't need you, I am sure."
+
+"That I don't," said nurse, "nor the doctor, either.  So run away, Miss
+Milly, and go to sleep yourself.  The baby will be here, all safe for
+you, in the morning."
+
+The little girl--a flaxen-haired, pretty-featured child--kissed the
+baby, kissed papa, and dutifully departed.  Sir Jasper followed her out
+of the room, down the stairs, and back into the library, with the face
+of a man who has just been reprieved from sudden death.  As he
+re-entered the library, he paused and started a step back, gazing
+fixedly at one of the windows.  The heavy curtain had been partially
+drawn back, and a white, spectral face was glued to the glass, glaring
+in.
+
+"Who have we here?" said the baronet to himself; "that face can belong
+to no one in the house."
+
+He walked straight to the window--the face never moved.  A hand was
+raised and tapped on the glass.  A voice outside spoke:
+
+"For Heaven's sake, open and let me in, before I perish in this bitter
+storm."
+
+Sir Jasper Kingsland opened the window and flung it wide.
+
+"Enter! whoever you are," he said.  "No one shall ask in vain at
+Kingsland, this happy night."
+
+He stepped back, and, all covered with snow, the midnight intruder
+entered and stood before him.  And Sir Jasper Kingsland saw the
+strangest-looking creature he had ever beheld in the whole course of
+his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ACHMET THE ASTROLOGER.
+
+An old man, yet tall and upright, wearing a trailing cloak of dull
+black, long gray hair flowing over the shoulders, and tight to the
+scalp a skull-cap of black velvet.  A patriarchal board, abundant and
+silver-white, streamed down his breast, and out of a dull, white face,
+seamed and wrinkled, looked a pair of eyes piercing and black.
+
+Sir Jasper took a stop backward, and regarded this singular apparition
+in wonder.  The old man folded his arms across his bosom--and made him
+a profound Oriental salaam.
+
+"The Lord of Kingsland gazes in amaze at the uninvited stranger.  And
+yet I think destiny has sent me hither."
+
+"Who are you?" the baronet demanded.  "What jugglery is this?  Are you
+dressed for an Eastern dervish in a melodrama, and have you come here
+to play a practical joke?  I am afraid I can not appreciate the humor
+of the masquerade.  Who are you?" sternly.
+
+"Men call me Achmet the Astrologer."
+
+"An astrologer?  Humph! your black art, it seems, could not protect you
+from a January storm," retorted Sir Jasper, with a cynical sneer.  "But
+come in--come in.  Astrologer or demon, or whatever you are, you look
+too old a man to be abroad such a night, when we would not turn an
+enemy's dog from the house.  The doors of Kingsland are never closed to
+the tired wayfarer, and of all nights in the year they should not he
+closed to-night."
+
+"When an heir is born to an ancient name and a princely inheritance,
+you speak rightly, my Lord of Kingsland."
+
+"How say you?  What do you know of the events of this night, Sir
+Astrologer?"
+
+"Much, Sir Jasper Kingsland, and for the very reason you
+deride--because I am an astrologer.  I read the stars, and I lift the
+veil of the future, and, lo! I behold your life years before you have
+lived it!"
+
+Sir Jasper Kingsland laughed a cynical, unbelieving laugh.
+
+"You jeer at me, you scoff at my words," murmured the old man, in soft,
+steady tones, "and yet there was no one to tell me on my way here that
+a son and heir had been born to the house of Kingsland within the past
+hour."
+
+He lifted his arm and pointed to the clock, his dark eyes fixed upon
+the baronet's changing face.
+
+"You deride the power I profess, yet every day you quote your English
+poet, and believe him when he says: 'There are more things in heaven
+and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.'  But I am accustomed
+to derision, and it does not offend me.  Let me prove my power, so that
+even the most resolute skeptic dare doubt no longer.  Judge of my skill
+to read the future by my ability in reading the past.  I have come
+here--I have taken a long journey to look into the future of your
+new-born son.  Before I begin, let me look into the past of his father.
+Sir Jasper Kingsland, let me read your palm."
+
+But Sir Jasper drew back.
+
+"You have taken a long journey to look into the future of my son?
+Pray, what is my son to you?"
+
+"That is my secret, Sir Jasper, and my secrets I keep.  Come, hold
+forth your hand, and test my skill."
+
+"Why should I?  Even if you can bring before me my past life, of what
+use will it be, since I must know all better than you?"
+
+"My power to read the past may prove my power to read the future."
+
+"Nay, you may easily know the past, without magical skill.  Many
+thanks, my venerable friend, but I will not put your necromancy to the
+test."
+
+"Is Sir Jasper Kingsland afraid?" he said.  "Surely not, for he comes
+of a daring race.  And yet it seems like it."
+
+"By Heaven! if a younger man had spoken those words I would have hurled
+him by the throat from yonder window.  Be careful of your words, old
+man, else even your hoary hairs may fail to save you."
+
+Once more the astrologer bent servilely.
+
+"I cry your mercy, my haughty Lord of Kingsland.  It shall be as you
+say.  I will depart as I came.  I will not serve you nor your new-born
+son, since you refuse to be served.  I will depart at once.  I fear no
+earthly storm.  Good-night, Sir Jasper Kingsland.  Look to the heir of
+your house yourself.  When 'angels unaware' visit you again, treat them
+better than you have treated me."
+
+With a gesture indescribably grand and kingly, the silver-haired old
+man turned to go, folding his long cloak about him.  But the voice of
+the baronet called him back.
+
+"Stay," he said.  "You speak of serving my son.  What danger threatens
+his infant life that you can avert?"
+
+"I know of none.  I have not cast the horoscope yet."
+
+"Then you wish to do so?"
+
+"With your good permission.  I have taken a long journey for that very
+purpose, Sir Jasper."
+
+"Then you shall," the baronet cried, yielding to a swift impulse--"you
+shall cast his horoscope.  If it can avert no evil, it can, at least,
+cause none.  But, first, there is no action without its ruling motive.
+What are me or mine to you, to make you take a long and toilsome
+journey on our account?"
+
+The old man paused, drawn up to his fullest height, imposing as a new
+King Lear, his deep, dark eyes glowing with inward fire.
+
+"I will tell you," he said.  "Years ago, Sir Jasper, when you were a
+young man, you did an honor and a service to one I dearly love; that I
+have never forgotten and never will forget!  You have ceased to
+remember it years ago, no doubt; but I never have, nor ever will until
+my dying day."
+
+"A service! an honor!  What could it have been?  I recollect nothing of
+it."
+
+"I expected as much; but my memory is a good one.  It is stamped on my
+heart forever.  Great men like Sir Jasper Kingsland, grandees of the
+land, forget these little things.  I owe you a long debt, Sir Jasper,
+and I will pay it to the uttermost farthing, so help me God!"
+
+His black eyes blazed, his low voice rose, his arm uplifted fiercely
+for an instant in dire menace.  Then, quick as lightning flashes, all
+was transformed.  The eyes were bent upon the carpet, the arms folded,
+the voice sunk, soft and servile.
+
+"Forgive me!" he murmured.  "In my gratitude I forget myself.  But you
+have my motive in coming here--the desire to repay you; to look into
+the future of your son; to see the evils that may threaten his youth
+and manhood, and to place you on your guard against them.  'Forwarned
+is fore-armed,' you know.  Do not doubt my power.  In far-off Oriental
+lands, under the golden stars of Syria, I learned the lore of the wise
+men of the East.  I learned to read the stars as you Englishmen read
+your printed books.  Believe and trust, and let me cast the horoscope
+of your son."
+
+"First let me test your vaunted power.  Show me my past, before you
+show me my son's future."
+
+He held forth his hand with a cynical smile,
+
+"As you will.  Past and future are alike to me--save that the past is
+easier to read.  Ah! a palm seamed and crossed and marked with troubled
+lines.  Forty years have not gone and left no trace behind--"
+
+"Forty years!" interrupted Sir Jasper, with sneering emphasis.  "Pray
+do not bungle in the very beginning."
+
+"I bungle not," answered Achmet, sternly.  "Forty years ago, on the
+third of next month, you, Jasper Southdown Kingsland, were born beneath
+this very roof."
+
+"Right!" he said.  "You know my age.  But go on."
+
+"Your boyhood you passed here--quiet, eventless years--with a
+commonplace mother and a dull, proud father.  At ten, your mother went
+to her grave.  At twelve, the late Sir Noel followed her.  At thirteen,
+you, a lonely orphan, were removed from this house to London in the
+charge of a guardian that you hated.  Am I not right?"
+
+"You are.  Pray go on."
+
+"At fourteen, you went to Rugby to school.  From that time until you
+attained your majority your life passed in public schools and
+universities, harmlessly and monotonously enough.  At twenty-one, you
+left Cambridge, and started to make the grand tour.  You were tolerably
+clever; you were young and handsome, and heir to a noble inheritance.
+Your life was to be the life of a great and good man--a benefactor to
+the human race.  Your memory was to be a magnificent memento for a
+whole world to honor.  Your dreams were wild, vague, and impracticable,
+and ended in--nothing."
+
+Sir Jasper Kingsland listened and stared like a man in a dream.  Achmet
+the Astrologer continued to read the palm with a fixed, stony face.
+
+"And now the lines are crossed, and the trouble begins.  As usual, a
+woman is at the bottom of it.  Sir Jasper Kingsland is in love."
+
+There was a pause.  The baronet winced a little.
+
+"It is in Spain--glowing, gorgeous Spain--and she is one of its
+loveliest children.  The oranges and pomegranates scent the burning
+air, the vineyards glow in the tropic sun, and golden summer forever
+reigns.  But the glowing southern sun is not more brilliant than the
+Spanish gypsy's flashing black eyes, nor the pomegranate blossoms half
+so ripe and red as her cheeks.  She is Zenith, the Zingara, and you
+love her!"
+
+"In the fiend's name!" Sir Jasper Kingsland cried, "what jugglery is
+this?"
+
+"One moment more, my Lord of Kingsland," he said, "and I have done.
+Let me see how your love-dream ends.  Ah! the old, old story.  Surely I
+might have known.  She is beautiful as the angels above, and as
+innocent, and she loves you with a mad abandon that is worse than
+idolatry--as only women ever love.  And you?  You are grand and noble,
+a milor Inglese, and you take her love--her crazy worship--as a
+demi-god might, with uplifted grace, as your birthright; and she is
+your pretty toy of an hour.  And then careless and happy, you are gone.
+Sunny Spain, with its olives and its vineyards, its pomegranates and
+its Zenith the Gitana, is left far behind, and you are roaming, happy
+and free, through La Belle France.  And lo! Zenith the forsaken lies
+prone upon the ground, and goes stark mad for the day-god she has lost.
+There, Sir Jasper Kingsland! the record is a black one.  I wish to read
+no more."
+
+He flung the baronet's hand away, and once more his eyes glowed like
+the orbs of a demon.  But Sir Jasper Kingsland, pale as a dead man, saw
+it not.
+
+"Are you man or devil?" he said, in an awe-struck tone.  "No living
+mortal knows what you have told me this night."
+
+Achmet the Astrologer smiled--a dire, dark smile.
+
+"Man, in league with the dark potentate you have named, if you like.
+Whatever I am, I have truthfully told you the past, as I will
+truthfully tell your son's future."
+
+"By palmistry?"
+
+"No, by the stars.  And behold!" drawing aside the curtain, "yonder
+they shine!"
+
+"Take me to an upper room," the astrologer exclaimed, in an inspired
+tone, "and leave me.  Destiny is propitious.  The fate that ruled your
+son's birth has set forth the shining stars for Achmet to read.  Lead
+on!"
+
+Like a man in a dreamy swoon, Sir Jasper Kingsland obeyed.  He led the
+astrologer up the grand sweeping staircases--up and up, to the very top
+of the house--to the lofty, lonely battlements.  Cloudless spread the
+wide night sky; countless and brilliant shone the stars; peaceful and
+majestic slept, the purple sea; spotless white gleamed the snowy earth.
+A weird, witching scene.
+
+"Leave me," said the astrologer, "and watch and wait.  When the first
+little pink cloud of sunrise blushes in the sky, come to me.  My task
+will have ended."
+
+He waved him away with a regal motion.  He stood there gazing at the
+stars, as a king looking upon his subjects.  And the haughty baronet,
+without a word, turned and left him.
+
+The endless hours wore on--two, three, and four--and still the baronet
+watched and waited, and looked for the coming of dawn.  Faintly the
+silver light broke in the Orient, rosy flushed the first red ray.  Sir
+Jasper mounted to the battlements, still like a man in a dazed dream.
+
+Achmet the Astrologer turned slowly round.  The pale, frosty sunrise
+had blanched his ever-white face with a livid hue of death.  In one
+hand he held a folded paper, in the other a pencil.  He had been
+writing.
+
+"Have you done?" the baronet asked.
+
+"I am done.  Your son's fate is here."
+
+He touched the paper.
+
+"Is that for me?" he asked, shrinking palpably from it even while he
+spoke.
+
+"This is for you."  The astrologer handed him the paper as he spoke.
+"It is for you to read--to do with after as you see fit.  I have but
+one word to say: not I, but a mightier power traced the words you will
+read--your son's irrevocable fate.  Don't hope to shirk it.  My task is
+ended, and I go.  Farewell!"
+
+"No, no," the baronet cried; "not so!  Remain and breakfast here.  The
+morning is but just breaking."
+
+"And before yonder sun is above the horizon I will be far away.  No,
+Sir Jasper Kingsland, I break no bread under your roof.  I have done my
+work, and depart forever.  Look to your son!"
+
+He spoke the last words slowly, with a tigerish glare of hate leaping
+out of his eyes, with deadly menace in every syllable.  Then he was
+gone down the winding stair-way like a black ghost, and so out and away.
+
+Sir Jasper Kingsland took the folded paper and sought his room.  There
+in the pale day-dawn he tore it open.  One side was covered with
+cabalistic characters, Eastern symbols, curious marks and
+hieroglyphics.  The other side was written in French, in long, clear,
+legible characters.  There was a heading: "Horoscope of the Heir of
+Kingsland."  Sir Jasper sat down and began to read.
+
+Nearly an hour after, a servant, entering to replenish the faded fire,
+fled out of the room and startled the household with his shrieks.  Two
+or three domestics rushed in.  There lay Sir Jasper Kingsland prone on
+his face on the floor, stiff and stark as a dead man.  A paper,
+unintelligible to all, was clutched tightly as a death grip in his
+hand.  Reading that crumpled paper, the strong man had fallen there
+flat on the floor in a dead swoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE HUT ON THE HEATH.
+
+Far away from the lofty, battlemented ancestral home of Sir Jasper
+Kingsland--straight to the seashore went Achmet the Astrologer.  A long
+strip of bleak marshland spreading down the hill-side and sloping to
+the sea, arid and dry in the summer-time--sloppy and sodden now--that
+was his destination.  It was called Hunsden's Heath--a forlorn and
+desolate spot, dotted over with cottages of the most wretched kind.  To
+one of these wretched hovels, standing nearest the sea and far removed
+from the rest, Achmet swiftly made his way.
+
+The sun was high in the heavens; the sea lay all a-glitter beneath it.
+The astrologer had got over the ground at a swift, swinging stride, and
+he had walked five miles at least; but he paused now, with little sign
+of fatigue in his strange white face.  Folding his arms over his
+breast, he surveyed the shining sky, the glittering sea, with a slow,
+dreamy smile.
+
+"The sun shines and the sea sparkles on the natal day of the heir of
+Kingsland," he said to himself; "but for all that it is a fatal day to
+him.  'The sins of the father shall be visited on the children even to
+the third and fourth generation,' saith the Book Christians believe in.
+Christians!" he laughed a harsh, strident laugh.  "Sir Jasper Kingsland
+is a Christian!  The religion that produces such men must be a glorious
+one.  He was a Christian when he perjured himself and broke her heart.
+'Tis well.  As a Christian he can not object to the vengeance
+Christianity teaches."
+
+He turned away, approached the lonely hut, and tapped thrice--sharp
+staccato knocks--at the door.  The third one was answered.  The door
+swung back, and a dark damsel looked out.
+
+"Is it thee, Pietro?"
+
+"It is I, Zara."
+
+He stepped in as he spoke, closed the door, took her face between his
+hands, and kissed both brown cheeks.  The girl's dark face lighted up
+into the splendor of absolute beauty as she returned his caress.
+
+"And how is it with thee, my Zara, and thy little one?"
+
+"It is well.  And thyself, Pietro?"
+
+"Very well.  And the mother?"
+
+"Ah, the mother!  Poor mother!  She lies as you saw her last--as you
+will always see her in this lower world--dead in life!  And he"--the
+girl Zara's eyes lighted fiercely up--"didst see him, Pietro?"
+
+"I have seen him, spoken to him, told him the past, and terrified him
+for the future.  There is a son, Zara--a new-born son."
+
+"Dog and son of a dog!" Zara cried, furiously.  "May curses light upon
+him in the hour of his birth, and upon all who bear his hated name!
+Say, Pietro, why didst thou not strangle the little viper as you would
+any other poisonous reptile?"
+
+"My Zara, I did not even see him.  He lies cradled in rose leaves, no
+doubt, and the singing of the west wind is not sweet enough for his
+lullaby.  No profane eye must rest on this sacred treasure fresh from
+the hands of the gods!  Is he not the heir of Kingsland?  But Achmet
+the Astrologer has cast his horoscope, and Achmet, and Zara, his wife,
+wilt see that the starry destiny is fulfilled.  Shall we not?"
+
+"If I only had him here," Zara cried, clawing the air with her two
+hands, "I would throttle the baby snake, and fling him dead in his
+father's face.  And that father!  Oh, burning alive would be far too
+merciful for him!"
+
+Achmet smiled, and drew her long black braids caressingly through his
+fingers.
+
+"You know how to hate, and you will teach our little one.  Yes, the
+fate I have foretold shall come to pass, and the son of Sir Jasper will
+live to curse the day of his birth.  And now I will remove my disguise,
+and wash and breakfast, for I feel the calls of hunger."
+
+The lower apartment of the hut on the heath was the very picture of
+abject poverty and dreary desolation.  The earthen floor was broken and
+rough; the sunlight came sifting through the chinks in the broken
+walls.  A smoky fire of wet driftwood smoldered, under a pot on the
+crook.  There was neither table nor chairs.  A straw pallet with a
+wretched coverlet lay in one corner; a few broken stools were scattered
+around; a few articles of clothing hung on the wall.  That was all.
+
+"The little one sleeps," the man said, casting a swift glance over at
+the pallet.  "Our pretty baby, Zara.  Ah, if Sir Jasper Kingsland loves
+his first-born son as we love our child, or half so well, we are almost
+avenged already!"
+
+"He had need to love it better than his first-born daughter!" Zara
+said, fiercely.  "The lion loves its whelp, the tiger its cub; but he,
+less human than the brutes, casts off his offspring in the hour of its
+birth!"
+
+"Meaning yourself, my Zara?" the man said, with his slow, soft smile.
+"What would you have, degraded daughter of a degraded mother--his toy
+of an hour?  And there is another daughter--a fair-haired, insipid
+nonentity of a dozen years, no more like our beautiful one here than a
+farthing rush-light is like the stars of heaven."
+
+He drew down the tattered quilt, and gazed with shining eyes of love
+and admiration at the sleeping face of a child, a baby girl of scarce
+two years, the cherub face rosy with sleep, smiling in her dreams; the
+long, silky black lashes sweeping the flushed cheek; the abundant,
+feathery, jet-black curls floating loosely about--an exquisite picture
+of blooming, healthful, beautiful childhood.
+
+Zara came to where the man knelt.
+
+"My beautiful one! my rosebud!" she murmured.  "Pietro, the sun shines
+on nothing half so lovely in this lower world!"
+
+"And yet the black, bad blood of the Gitana flows in her veins, too.
+She is a Spanish gypsy, as her mother and grandmother before her.  Nay,
+not her mother, since the blue blood of all the Kingsland's flows in
+her veins."
+
+"Never!" cried Zara, her eyes ablaze.  "If I thought one drop of that
+man's bitter blood throbbed in my heart, the first knife I met should
+let it forth.  Look at me!" she wildly cried, "look at me,
+Pietro--Zara, your wife!  Have I one look of him or his abhorred
+English race?"
+
+"My Zara, no!  You are Sir Jasper Kingsland's daughter, but there is no
+look of the great Sir Jasper in your gypsy face, nor in the face of our
+darling, either.  She is all our own!"
+
+"I would strangle her in her cradle, dearly as I love her, else!" the
+woman said, her passionate face aflame.  "Pietro, my blood is like
+liquid fire when I think of him and my mother's wrongs."
+
+"Wait, Zara--wait.  The wheel will turn and our time come.  And now for
+breakfast!"
+
+She whipped off the pot, removed the lid, and a savory gush of steam
+filled the room.  The man Pietro laughed.
+
+"Our poached hare smells appetizing.  Keep the choicest morsel for the
+mother, Zara, and tell her I will be with her presently.  There!
+Achmet the Astrologer lies in a heap."
+
+He had deftly taken off his flowing cloak, his long, silvery beard and
+hair, and flung them together in a corner, and now he stood in the
+center of the room, a stalwart young fellow of thirty or thereabouts,
+with great Spanish eyes and profuse curling hair of an inky blackness.
+
+"Let me but wash this white enamel off my face," he said, giving
+himself a shake, "and Pietro is himself again.  Sir Jasper would hardly
+recognize Achmet, I fancy, if he saw him now."
+
+He walked to a shelf on which was placed a wash-bowl and towel, and
+plunged his face and head into the cold water.  Five minutes' vigorous
+splashing and rubbing, and he emerged, his pallid face brown as a
+berry, his black hair in a snarl of crisp curls.
+
+"And now to satisfy the inner man," he said, walking over to the pot,
+seizing a wooden spoon, and drawing up a cricket.  "My tramp of last
+night and this morning has made me famously hungry, Zara."
+
+"And the hare soup is good," said Zara.  "While you breakfast, Pietro,
+I will go to mother.  Come up when you finish."
+
+A steep stair-way that was like a ladder led to the loft.  Zara
+ascended this with agile fleetness, and the late astrologer was left
+alone at his very unmagician-like work of scraping the pot with a
+wooden spoon.  Once or twice, as the fancy crossed him of the contrast
+between Achmet, the Astrologer reading the stars, and Pietro the tramp
+scraping the bones of the stolen hare, he laughed grimly to himself.
+
+"And the world is made up of just such contrasts," he thought, "and
+Pietro at his homely breakfast is more to be dreaded than Achmet
+casting the horoscope.  Ah!  Sir Jasper Kingsland, it is a very fine
+thing to be a baronet with fifteen thousand pounds a year, a noble
+ancestral seat, a wife you love, and a son you adore.  And yet Pietro,
+the vagabond tramp--the sunburned gypsy, with stolen hares to eat, and
+rags to wear, and a hut to lodge in--would not exchange places with you
+this bright March day.  We have sworn vendetta to you and all of your
+blood, and we will keep our vow!"
+
+His swarthy face darkened with passionate vindictiveness as he arose.
+
+"'As a man sows so shall he reap,'" he muttered between his clinched
+teeth, setting his face toward Kingsland Court.  "You, my Lord of
+Kingsland, have sown the wind.  You shall learn what it is to reap the
+whirlwind!"
+
+"Pietro!  Pietro!" crowed a little voice, gleefully.  "Papa Pietro!
+take Sunbeam!"
+
+The little sleeper in the bed had sat up, her bright, dark face
+sparkling, two little dimpled arms outstretched.
+
+The man turned, his vindictive face growing radiant.
+
+"Papa Pietro's darling! his life! his angel!  And how does the little
+Sunbeam?"
+
+He caught her up, covering her face with kisses.
+
+"My love! my life! my darling!  When Pietro is dead, and Zara is old
+and feeble, and Zenith dust and ashes, you will live, my radiant angel,
+my black-eyed beauty, to perpetuate the malediction.  When his son is a
+man, you will be a woman, with all a woman's subtle power and more than
+a woman's beauty, and you will be his curse, and his bane, and his
+blight, as his father has been ours!  Will you not, my little Sunbeam?"
+
+"Yes, papa--yes, papa!" lisped the little one.
+
+"Pietro!" called his wife, "if you have done breakfast, come up.
+Mother is awake and would see you."
+
+"Coming, _carissima_!"
+
+He kissed the baby girl, placed her on the pallet, and sprung lightly
+up the steep stair.
+
+The loft was just a shade less wretched than the apartment below.
+There was a bed on the floor, more decently covered, two broken chairs,
+a table with some medicine bottles and cups, and a white curtain on the
+one poor window.
+
+On the bed lay a woman, over whom Pietro bent reverently the moment he
+entered the room.  It was the wreck of a woman who, in the days gone
+by, must have been gloriously beautiful; who was beautiful still,
+despite the ravages years, sickness, and poverty had wrought.
+
+The eyes that blazed brilliant and black were the eyes of Zara--the
+eyes of the baby Sunbeam below--and this woman was the mother of one,
+the grandmother of the other.
+
+Pietro knelt by the pallet and tenderly kissed one transparent hand.
+The great black eyes turned upon him wild and wide.
+
+"Thou hast seen him, Pietro?" in a breathless sort of way.  "Zara says
+so."
+
+"I have seen him, my mother; I have spoken to him.  I spent hours with
+Sir Jasper Kingsland last night."
+
+"Thou didst?"  Her words came pantingly, while passion throbbed in
+every line of her face.  "And there is a son--an heir?"
+
+"There is."
+
+She snatched her hand away and threw up her withered arms with a
+vindictive shriek.
+
+"And I lie here, a helpless log, and he triumphs!  I, Zenith, the Queen
+of the Tribe--I, once beautiful and powerful, happy and free!  I lie
+here, a withered hulk, what he has made me!  And a son and heir is born
+to him!"
+
+As if the thought had goaded her to madness, she leaped up in bed,
+tossing her gaunt arms and shrieking madly:
+
+"Take me to him--take me to him!  Zara!  Pietro!  Take me to him, if ye
+are children of mine, that I may hurl my burning curse upon him and his
+son before I die!"
+
+She fell back with an impotent scream, and the man Pietro caught her in
+his arms.  Quivering and convulsed, she writhed in an epileptic fit.
+
+"She will kill herself yet," Pietro said.  "Hand me the drops, Zara."
+
+Zara poured something out of a bottle into a cup, and Pietro held it to
+the sick woman's livid lips.
+
+She choked and swallowed, and, as if by magic, lay still in his arms.
+Very tenderly he laid her back on the bed.
+
+"She will sleep now, Zara," he said.  "Let us go."
+
+They descended the stairs.  Down below, the man laid his hands on his
+wife's shoulders and looked into her face.
+
+"Watch her, Zara," he said, "for she is mad, and the very first
+opportunity she will make her escape and seek out Sir Jasper Kingsland;
+and that is the very last thing I want.  So watch your mother well."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+AN UNINVITED GUEST.
+
+Sir Jasper Kingsland stood moodily alone.  He was in the library,
+standing by the window--that very window through which, one stormy
+night scarcely a month before, he had admitted Achmet the Astrologer.
+He stood there with a face of such dark gloom that all the brightness
+of the sunlit April day could not cast one enlivening gleam.
+
+He stood there scowling darkly upon it all, so lost in his own somber
+thoughts that he did not hear the library door open, nor the soft
+rustle of a woman's dress as she halted on the threshold.
+
+A fair and stately lady, with a proud, colorless face lighted up with
+pale-blue eyes, and with bands of pale flaxen hair pushed away under a
+dainty lace cap--a lady who looked scarce thirty, although almost ten
+years older, unmistakably handsome, unmistakably proud.  It was Olivia,
+Lady Kingsland.
+
+"Alone, Sir Jasper!" a musical voice said.  "May I come in, or do you
+prefer solitude and your own thoughts?"
+
+The sweet voice--soft and low, as a lady's voice should be--broke the
+somber spell that bound him.  He wheeled round, his dark, moody face
+lighting up at sight of her, as all the glorious morning sunshine never
+could have lighted it.  That one radiant look would have told you how
+he loved his wife.
+
+"You, Olivia?" he cried, advancing.  "Surely this is a surprise!  My
+dearest, is it quite prudent in you to leave your room?"
+
+He took the slender, white-robed figure in his arms, and kissed her as
+tenderly as a bridegroom of a week might have done.  Lady Kingsland
+laughed a soft, tinkling little laugh.
+
+"A month is quite long enough to be a prisoner, Jasper, even although a
+prisoner of state.  And on my boy's christening fete--the son and heir
+I have desired so long--ah, surely a weaker mother than I might essay
+to quit her room."
+
+The moody darkness, like a palpable frown, swept over the baronet's
+face again at her words.
+
+"Is he dressed?" he asked.
+
+"He is dressed and asleep, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon, his
+godmother and godfather, are hovering over the crib like twin guardian
+angels.  And Mildred sits _en grande tenue_ on her cricket, in a
+speechless trance of delight, and nurse rustles about in her new silk
+gown and white lace cap with an air of importance and self-complacency
+almost indescribable.  The domestic picture only wants papa and mamma
+to make it complete."
+
+She laughed as she spoke, a little sarcastically; but Sir Jasper's
+attempt even to smile was a ghastly failure.
+
+Lady Kingsland folded both her hands on his shoulder, and looked up in
+his face with anxious, searching eyes.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+The baronet laughed uneasily.
+
+"What is what?"
+
+"This gloom, this depression, this dark, mysterious moodiness.  Jasper,
+what has changed you of late?"
+
+"Mysterious moodiness! changed me of late!  Nonsense, Olivia!  I don't
+know what you mean."
+
+Again he strove to laugh, and again it was a wretched failure.
+
+Lady Kingsland's light-blue eyes never left his face.
+
+"I think you do, Jasper.  Since the night of our boy's birth you have
+been another man.  What is it?"
+
+A spasm crossed the baronet's face; his lips twitched convulsively; his
+face slowly changed to a gray, ashen pallor.
+
+"What is it?" the lady slowly reiterated.  "Surely my husband, after
+all these years, has no secrets from me?"
+
+The tender reproach of her tone, of her eyes, stung the husband, who
+loved her, to the quick.
+
+"For God's sake, Olivia, don't ask me!" he cried passionately.  "It
+would be sheerest nonsense in your eyes, I know.  You would but laugh
+at what half drives me mad!"
+
+Jasper!"
+
+"Don't look at me with that reproachful face, Olivia!  It is true.  You
+would look upon it as sheerest folly, I tell you, and laugh at me for a
+credulous fool."
+
+"No," said Lady Kingsland, quietly, and a little coldly.  "You know me
+better.  I could never laugh at what gives my husband pain."
+
+"Pain!  I have lived in torment ever since, and yet--who knows?--it may
+be absurdest jugglery.  But he told me the past so truly--my very
+thoughts!  And no one could know what happened in Spain so many years
+ago!  Oh, I must believe it--I can not help it--and that belief will
+drive me mad!"
+
+Lady Kingsland stood looking and listening, in pale wonder.
+
+"I don't understand a word of this," she said, slowly.  "Will you tell
+me, Sir Jasper, or am I to understand you have secrets your wife may
+not share?"
+
+"My own dear wife," he said--"my best beloved--Heaven knows, if I have
+one secret from you, I keep it that I may save you sorrow.  Not one
+cloud should ever darken the sunshine of your sky, if I had my way.
+You are right--I have a secret--a secret of horror, and dread, and
+dismay--a terrible secret that sears my brain and burns my heart!
+Olivia, my darling, its very horror prevents my telling it to you!"
+
+"Does it concern our boy?" she asked, quickly.
+
+"Yes!" with a groan.  "Now you can understand its full terror.  It
+menaces the son I love more than life.  I thought to keep it from you;
+I tried to appear unchanged; but it seems I have failed miserably."
+
+"And you will not tell me what this secret is?"
+
+"I dare not!  I would not have you suffer as I suffer."
+
+"A moment ago you said I would laugh at it and you.  Your terms are
+inconsistent, Sir Jasper."
+
+"Spare me, Olivia!--I scarce know what I say--and do not be angry."
+
+She drew her hands coldly and haughtily away from his grasp.  She was a
+thoroughly proud woman, and his secrecy stung her.
+
+"I am not angry, Sir Jasper.  Keep your secret, if you will.  I was
+foolish enough to fancy I had right to know of any danger that menaces
+my baby, but it appears I was mistaken.  In half an hour the carriages
+will start for the church.  You will find us all in the nursery."
+
+She was sweeping proudly away in silent anger, but the baronet strode
+after her and caught her arm.
+
+"You will know this!" he said, huskily.  "Olivia, Olivia! you are cruel
+to yourself and to me, but you shall hear--part, at least.  I warn you,
+however, you will be no happier for knowing."
+
+"Go on," she said, steadily.
+
+He turned from her, walked to the window, and kept his back to her
+while he spoke.
+
+"You have no faith in fortune-tellers, clairvoyants, astrologers, and
+the like, have you, Olivia?"
+
+"Most certainly not!"
+
+"Then what I have to say will scarcely trouble you as it troubles
+me--for I believe; and the prediction of an astrologer has ruined my
+peace for the past month."
+
+"Is that all?  The mountain in labor has brought forth a mouse.  My
+dear Sir Jasper, how can you be so simply credulous?"
+
+"I knew you would laugh," said Sir Jasper, moodily; "I said so.  But
+laugh if you can.  I believe!"
+
+"Was the prediction very terrible, then?" asked his wife, with a smile.
+"Pray tell me all about it."
+
+"It was terrible," her husband replied, sternly.  "The living horror it
+has cast over me might have told you that.  Listen, Olivia!  On that
+night of our baby boy's birth, after I left you and came here, I stood
+by this window and saw a spectral face gleaming through the glass.  It
+was the face of a man--a belated wayfarer--who adjured me, in the
+Savior's name, to let him in."
+
+"Well, you let him in, I suppose?"
+
+"I let him in--a strange-looking object, Olivia, like no creature I
+ever saw before, with flowing beard and hair silver-white--"
+
+"False, no doubt."
+
+"He wore a long, disguising cloak and a skull-cap," went on Sir Jasper,
+"and his face was blanched to a dull dead white.  He would have looked
+like a resuscitated corpse, only for a pair of burning black eyes."
+
+"Quite a startling apparition!  Melodramatic in the extreme!  And this
+singular being--what was he?  Clairvoyant, astrologer, what?"
+
+"Astrologer--an Eastern astrologer--Achmet by name."
+
+"And who, probably, never was further than London in his life-time.  A
+well-got-up charlatan, no doubt."
+
+"Charlatan he may have been; Englishman he was not.  His face, his
+speech, convinced me of that.  And, Olivia, charlatan or no, he told me
+my past life as truly as I knew it myself."
+
+Lady Kingsland listened with a quiet smile.
+
+"No doubt he has been talking to the good people of the village and to
+the servants in the house."
+
+"Neither the people of the village nor the servants of the house know
+aught of what he told me.  He showed me what transpired twenty years
+ago.
+
+"Twenty years ago?"
+
+"Yes, when I was fresh from Cambridge, and making my first tour.
+Events that occurred in Spain--that no one under heaven save myself can
+know of--he told me."
+
+"That was strange!"
+
+"Olivia, it was astounding--incomprehensible!  I should never have
+credited one word he said but for that.  He told me the past as I know
+it myself.  Events that transpired in a far foreign land a score of
+years ago, known, as I thought, to no creature under heaven, he told me
+of as if they had transpired yesterday.  The very thoughts that I
+thought in that by-gone time he revealed as if my heart lay open before
+him.  How, then, could I doubt?  If he could lift the veil of the
+irrevocable past, why not be able to lift the veil of the mysterious
+future?  He took the hour of our child's birth and ascended to the
+battlements, and there, alone with the stars of heaven, he cast his
+horoscope.  Olivia, men in all ages have believed in this power of
+astrology, and I believe as firmly as I believe in Heaven."
+
+Lady Kingsland listened, and that quiet smile of half amusement, half
+contempt never left her lips.
+
+"And the horoscope proved a horrorscope, no doubt," she said, the smile
+deepening.  "You paid your astrologer handsomely, I presume, Sir
+Jasper?"
+
+"I gave him nothing.  He would take nothing--not even a cup of water.
+Of his own free will he cast the horoscope, and, without reward of any
+kind, went his way when he had done."
+
+"What did you say the name was?"
+
+"Achmet the Astrologer."
+
+"Melodramatic again!  And now, Sir Jasper, what awful fate betides our
+boy?"
+
+"Ask me not!  You do not believe.  What the astrologer foretold I shall
+tell no one."
+
+"The carriage waits, my lady," a servant said, entering.  "Lady Helen
+bade me remind you, my lady, it is time to start for church."
+
+Lady Kingsland hastily glanced at her watch.
+
+"Why, so it is!  I had nearly forgotten.  Come, Sir Jasper, and forget
+your fears on this happy day."
+
+She led him from the room.  Baby, in its christening-robes, slept in
+nurse's arms, and Lady Helen and Mr. Carlyon stood impatiently waiting.
+
+"We will certainly be late!" Lady Helen, who was god-mamma, said,
+fussily.  "Had we not better depart at once, Sir Jasper?"
+
+"I am quite at your ladyship's service.  We will not delay an instant
+longer.  Proceed, nurse."
+
+Nurse, with her precious burden, went before.  Sir Jasper drew Lady
+Helen's arm within his own, and Mr. Carlyon followed with little
+Mildred Kingsland.
+
+Lady Kingsland watched the carriage out of sight, and then went slowly
+and thoughtfully back to her room.
+
+"How extremely foolish and weak of Sir Jasper," she was thinking, "to
+pay the slightest attention to the canting nonsense of these
+fortune-telling impostors!  If I had been in his place I would have had
+him horsewhipped from my gates for his pains.  I must find out what
+this terrible prediction was and laugh it out of my husband's mind."
+
+Meantime the carriage rolled down the long avenue, under the majestic
+copper-beeches, through the lofty gates, and along the bright sunlit
+road leading to the village.
+
+In stole and surplice, within the village church, the Reverend Cyrus
+Green, Rector of Stonehaven, stood by the baptismal font, waiting to
+baptize the heir of all the Kingslands.
+
+Stately, Sir Jasper Kingsland strode up the aisle, with Lady Helen upon
+his arm.  No trace of the trouble within showed in his pale face as he
+heard his son baptized Everard Jasper Carew Kingsland.
+
+The ceremony was over.  Nurse took the infant baronet again; Lady Helen
+adjusted her mantle, and the Reverend Cyrus Green was blandly offering
+his congratulations to the greatest man in the parish, when a sudden
+commotion at the door startled all.  Some one striving to enter, and
+some other one refusing admission.
+
+"Let me in, I tell you!" cried a shrill, piercing voice--the voice of
+an angry woman.  "Stand aside, woman!  I will see Sir Jasper Kingsland."
+
+With the last ringing words the intruder burst past the pew-opener, and
+rushed wildly into the church.  A weird and unearthly figure--like one
+of Macbeth's witches--with streaming black hair floating over a long,
+red cloak, and two black eyes of flame.  All recoiled as the spectral
+figure rushed up like a mad thing and confronted Sir Jasper Kingsland.
+
+"At last!" she shrilly cried, in a voice that pierced even to the
+gaping listeners without--"at last, Sir Jasper Kingsland!  At last we
+meet again!"
+
+There was a horrible cry as the baronet started back, putting up both
+hands, with a look of unutterable horror.
+
+"Good God!  Zenith!"
+
+"Yes, Zenith!" shrieked the woman; "Zenith, the beautiful, once!
+Zenith, the hag, the crone, the madwoman, now!  Look at me well, Sir
+Jasper Kingsland--for the ruin is your own handiwork!"
+
+He stood like a man paralyzed--speechless, stunned--his face the livid
+hue of death.
+
+The wretched woman stood before him with streaming hair, blazing eyes,
+and uplifted arm, a very incarnate fury.
+
+"Look at me well!" she fiercely shrieked, tossing her locks of old off
+her fiery face.  "Am I like the Zenith of twenty years ago--young and
+beautiful, and bright enough even for the fastidious Englishman to
+love?  Look at me now--ugly and old, wrinkled and wretched, deserted
+and despised--and tell me if I have not greater reason to hate you than
+ever woman had to hate man?"
+
+She tossed her arms aloft with a madwoman's shriek--crying out her
+words in a long, wild scream.
+
+"I hate you--I hate you!  Villain! dastard! perjured wretch!  I hate
+you, and I curse you, here in the church you call holy!  I curse you
+with a ruined woman's curse, and hot and scathing may it burn on your
+head and on the heads of your children's children!"
+
+The last horrible words aroused the listeners from their petrified
+trance.  The Reverend Cyrus Green lifted up his voice in a tone of
+command:
+
+"This woman is mad!  She is a furious lunatic!  Dawson!  Humphreys!
+come here and secure her!"
+
+"The child! the child!" she cried, with a screech of demoniac delight;
+"the spawn of the viper is within my grasp!"
+
+One plunge forward and the infant heir was in her arms, held high
+aloft.  One second later, and its blood and brains would have
+bespattered the stone floor, but Mr. Carlyon sprung forward and
+wrenched it from her grasp.
+
+The two men summoned by the clergyman closed upon her and held her
+fast; her frantic shrieks rang to the roof.  Then suddenly, all ceased,
+and, foaming and livid, she fell between them in a fit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ZENITH'S MALEDICTION.
+
+A dead pause of blank consternation; the faces around a sight to see;
+horror and wonder in every countenance--most of all in the countenance
+of Sir Jasper Kingsland.
+
+The clergyman was the first to speak.
+
+"The woman is stark mad," he said.  "We must see about this.  Such
+violent lunatics must not be allowed to go at large.  Here, Humphreys,
+do you and Dawson lift her up and carry her to my house.  It is the
+nearest, and she can be properly attended to there."
+
+"You know her, Sir Jasper, do you not?" asked Lady Helen, with quick
+womanly intuition.
+
+"Know her?" Sir Jasper replied, "know Zenith?  Great Heaven!  I thought
+she was dead."
+
+The Reverend Cyrus Green and Lady Helen exchanged glances.  Mr. Carlyon
+looked in sharp surprise at the speaker.
+
+"Then she is not mad, after all!  I thought she mistook you for some
+one else.  If you know her, you have the best right to deal with her.
+Shall these men take her to Kingsland Court?"
+
+"Not for ten thousand worlds!" Sir Jasper cried, impetuously.  "The
+woman is nothing--less than nothing--to me.  I knew her once, years
+ago.  I thought her dead and buried; hence the shock her sudden
+entrance gave me.  A lunatic asylum is the proper place for such as
+she.  Let Mr. Green send her there, and the sooner the better."
+
+The Reverend Cyrus Green looked with grave, suspicious eyes for a
+moment at the leaden face of the speaker.
+
+"There is wrong and mystery about this," he thought--"a dark mystery of
+guilt.  This woman is mad, but her wrongs have driven her mad, and you,
+Sir Jasper Kingsland, are her wronger."
+
+"It shall be as you say, Sir Jasper," he said, aloud; "that is, if I
+find this poor creature has no friends.  Are you aware whether she has
+any?"
+
+"I tell you I know nothing of her!" the baronet cried, with fierce
+impatience.  "What should I know of such a wretch as that?"
+
+"More than you dare tell, Sir Jasper Kingsland!" cried a high, ringing
+voice, as a young woman rushed impetuously into the church and up the
+aisle.  "Coward and liar!  False, perjured wretch!  You are too
+white-livered a hound even to tell the truth!  What should you know of
+such a wretch as that, forsooth!  Double-dyed traitor and dastard!
+Look me in the face and tell me you don't know her!"
+
+Every one shrunk in terror and dismay; Sir Jasper stood as a man might
+stand suddenly struck by lightning.  And if looks were lightning, the
+blazing eyes of the young woman might have blasted him where he stood.
+A tall and handsome young woman, with black eyes of fire, streaming,
+raven hair, and a brown gypsy face.
+
+"Who are you, in mercy's name?" cried the Reverend Cyrus Green.
+
+"I am the daughter of this wretch, as your baronet yonder is pleased to
+call my mad mother.  Yes, Mr. Green, she is my mother.  If you want to
+know who my father is, you had better ask Sir Jasper Kingsland!"
+
+"It is false!" the baronet cried, "I know nothing of you or your
+father.  I never set eyes on you before."
+
+"Wait, wait, wait!" the Reverend Cyrus Green cried, imploringly.  "For
+Heaven's sake, young woman, don't make a scene before all these
+listeners.  We will have your mother conveyed into the vestry until she
+recovers; and if she ever recovers, no time is to be lost in attending
+to her.  Sir Jasper, I think the child had better be sent home
+immediately.  My lady will wonder at the delay."
+
+A faint wail from the infant lying in the nurse's arms seconded the
+suggestion.  That feeble cry and the mention of his wife acted as a
+magic spell upon the baronet.
+
+"Your mad intruders have startled us into forgetting everything else.
+Proceed, nurse.  Lady Helen, take my arm.  Mr. Carlyon, see to Mildred.
+The child looks frightened to death, and little wonder!"
+
+"Little, indeed!" sighed Lady Helen.  "I shall not recover from the
+shock for a month.  It was like a scene in a melodrama--like a chapter
+of a sensation novel.  And you know that dreadful creature, Sir Jasper?"
+
+"I used to know her," the baronet said, with emphasis, "so many years
+ago that I had almost forgotten she ever existed.  She was always more
+or less mad, I fancy, and it seems hereditary.  Her daughter--if
+daughter she be--seems as distraught as her mother."
+
+"And her name, Sir Jasper?  You called her by some name, I think."
+
+"Zenith, I suppose.  To tell the truth, Lady Helen, the woman is
+neither more nor less than a gypsy fortune-teller crazed by a
+villainous life and villainous liquor.  But, for the sake of the days
+gone by, when she was young and pretty and told my fortune, I think I
+will go back and see what Mr. Green intends doing with her.  Such crazy
+vagrants should not be allowed to go at large."
+
+The light tone was a ghastly failure, and the smile but a death's-head
+grin.  He placed Lady Helen in the carriage--Mr. Carlyon assisted the
+nurse and little Mildred.  Then Sir Jasper gave the order, "Home," and
+the stately carriage of the Kingslands, with its emblazoned crest,
+whirled away in a cloud of dust.  For an instant he stood looking after
+it.
+
+"Curses on it!" he muttered between set teeth.  "After all these years,
+are those dead doings to be flung in my face?  I thought her dead and
+gone; and lo! in the hour of my triumph she rises as if from the grave
+to confound me.  Her daughter, too!  I never knew she had a child!
+Good heavens! how these wild oats we sow in youth flourish and multiply
+with their bitter, bad fruit!"
+
+He turned and strode into the vestry.  On the floor the miserable woman
+lay, her eyes closed, her jaw fallen.  By her side, supporting her
+head, the younger woman knelt, holding a glass of water to her lips.
+The Reverend Cyrus Green stood gravely looking on.
+
+"Is she dead?" Sir Jasper asked, in a hard voice.
+
+It was to the clergyman he spoke, but the girl looked fiercely up, her
+tones like a serpent's hiss.
+
+"Not dead, Sir Jasper Kingsland!  No thanks to you for it!
+Murderer--as much a murderer as if you had cut her throat--look on her,
+and be proud of the ruin you have wrought!"
+
+"Silence, woman!" Mr. Green ordered, imperiously.  "We will have none
+of your mad recriminations here.  She is not dead, Sir Jasper, but she
+is dying, I think.  This young woman wishes to remove her--whither, I
+know not--but it is simply impossible.  That unfortunate creature will
+not be alive when to-morrow dawns."
+
+"What do you propose doing with her?" the baronet asked, steadily.
+
+"We will convey her to the sexton's house--it is very near.  I have
+sent Dawson for a stretcher; he and Humphreys will carry her.  This
+young woman declines to give her name, or tell who she is, or where she
+lives."
+
+"Where I live is no affair of yours, if I can not take my mother
+there," the young woman answered, sullenly.  "Who I am, you know.  I
+told you I am this woman's daughter."
+
+"And a gypsy, I take it?" said Mr. Green.
+
+"You guess well, sir, but only half the truth.  Half gypsy I am, and
+half gentlewoman.  A mongrel, I suppose, that makes; and yet it is well
+to have good blood in one's veins, even on the father's side."
+
+There was a sneering emphasis in her words, and the snaky black eyes
+gleamed like daggers on the baronet.
+
+But that proud face was set and rigid as stone now.  He returned her
+look with a haughty stare.
+
+"It is a pity the whipping-post has been abolished," he said, harshly.
+"Your impertinence makes you a fit subject for it, mistress!  Take care
+we don't commit you to prison as a public vagrant, and teach that
+tongue of yours a little civility when addressing your betters."
+
+"My betters!" the girl hissed, in a fierce, sibilant whisper.  "Why,
+yes, I suppose a daughter should look upon a father in that light.  As
+to the whipping-post and prison, try it at your peril!  Try it, if you
+dare, Sir Jasper."
+
+Before he could speak the door opened, and Dawson entered with the
+stretcher.
+
+"Lay her upon it and remove her at once," the rector said.  "Here,
+Humphreys, this side.  Gently, my men--gently.  Be very careful on the
+way."
+
+The two men placed the seemingly lifeless form of Zenith on the
+stretcher and bore her carefully away.
+
+The daughter Zara followed.
+
+"She will not live until to-morrow morning," the rector said; "and it
+is better so, poor soul!  She is evidently hopelessly insane."
+
+"And the daughter appears but little better.  By the way, Mr. Green,
+Lady Kingsland desires me to fetch you back to dinner."
+
+The rector bowed.
+
+"Her ladyship is very good.  Has your carriage gone?  I will order out
+the pony-phaeton, if you like."
+
+Ten minutes later the two gentlemen were bowling along the pleasant
+country road leading to the Court.  It was a very silent drive, for the
+baronet sat moodily staring at vacancy, his mouth set in hard, wordless
+pain.
+
+"They will tell Olivia," he was thinking, gloomily.  "What will she say
+to all this?"
+
+But his fears seemed groundless.  Lady Kingsland treated the matter
+with cool indifference.  To be sure, she had not heard quite all.  A
+madwoman had burst into the church, had terrified Lady Helen pretty
+nearly to death with her crazy language, and had tried to tear away the
+baby.  That was the discreet story my lady heard, and which she was
+disposed to treat with calm surprise.  Baby was safe, and it had ended
+in nothing; the madwoman was being properly cared for.  Lady Kingsland
+quietly dismissed the incident altogether before the end of dinner.
+
+The hours of the evening wore on--very long hours to the lord of
+Kingsland Court, seated at the head of his table, dispensing his
+hospitalities and trying to listen to the long stories of Mr. Carlyon
+and the rector.
+
+It was worse in the drawing-room, with the lights and the music, and
+his stately wife at the piano, and Lady Helen at his side, prattling
+with little Mildred over a pile of engravings.  All the time, in a
+half-distracted sort of way, his thoughts were wandering to the
+sexton's cottage and the woman dying therein--the woman he had thought
+dead years ago--dying there in desolation and misery--and here the
+hours seemed strung on roses.
+
+It was all over at last.  The guests were gone, the baby baronet slept
+in his crib, and Lady Kingsland had gone to her chamber.  But Sir
+Jasper lingered still--wandering up and down the long drawing-room like
+a restless ghost.
+
+A clock on the mantel chimed twelve.  Ere its last chime had sounded a
+sleepy valet stood in the doorway.
+
+"A messenger for you, Sir Jasper--sent by the Reverend Mr. Green.
+Here--come in."
+
+Thus invoked, Mr. Dawson entered, pulling his forelock.
+
+"Parson, he sent me, zur.  She be a-doying, she be."
+
+He knew instantly who the man meant.
+
+"And she wishes to see me?"
+
+"She calls for you all the time, zur.  She be a-doying uncommon hard.
+Parson bid me come and tell 'ee."
+
+"Very well, my man," the baronet said.  "That will do.  I will go at
+once.  Thomas, order my horse, and fetch my riding-cloak and gloves."
+
+The valet stared in astonishment, but went to obey.  It was something
+altogether without precedent, this queer proceeding on the part of his
+master, and, taken in connection with that other odd event in church,
+looked remarkably suspicious.
+
+The night was dark and starless, and the wind blew raw and bleak as the
+baronet dashed down the avenue and out into the high-road.  He almost
+wondered at himself for complying with the dying woman's desire, but
+some inward impulse beyond his control seemed driving him on.
+
+He rode rapidly, and a quarter of an hour brought him to the sexton's
+cottage.  A feeble light glimmered from the window out into the
+blackness of the night.  A moment later and he stood within, in the
+presence of the dying.
+
+The Reverend Cyrus Green sat by the table, a Bible in his hand.
+Kneeling by the bedside, her face ghastly white, her burning black eyes
+dry and tearless, was the young woman.  And like a dead woman already,
+stretched on the bed, lay Zenith.
+
+But she was not dead.  At the sound of the opening door, at the sound
+of his entrance, she opened her eyes, dulling fast in death, and fixed
+them on Sir Jasper.
+
+"I knew you would come," she said, in a husky whisper.  "You dare not
+stay away!  The spirit of the dying Zenith drove you here in spite of
+yourself.  Come nearer--nearer!  Sir Jasper Kingsland, don't hover
+aloof.  Once you could never be near enough.  Ah, I was young and fair
+then!  I'm old and ugly now.  Come nearer, for I can not speak aloud,
+and listen.  Do you know why I have sent for you?"
+
+He had approached the bedside.  She caught his hand and held it in a
+vise-like clutch.
+
+"No," he said, recoiling.
+
+"To give you my dying malediction--to curse you with my latest breath!
+I hate you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, falsest of all mankind! and if the
+dead can return and torment the living, then do you beware of me!"
+
+She spoke in panting gasps, the death-rattle sounding in her skinny
+throat.  Shocked and scandalized, the rector interposed:
+
+"My good woman, don't--for pity's sake, don't say such horrible things!"
+
+But she never heeded him.
+
+"I hate you!" she said, with a last effort.  "I die hating you, and I
+curse you with a dying woman's curse!  May your life be a life of
+torment and misery and remorse!  May your son's life be blighted and
+ruined!  May he become an outcast among men!  May sin and shame follow
+him forever, and all of his abhorred race!"
+
+Her voice died away.  She glared helplessly up from the pillow.  A
+deep, stern, terrible "Amen!" came from her daughter's lips; then, with
+a spasm, she half leaped from the bed, and fell back with a gurgling
+cry--dead!
+
+"She is gone!" said the rector, with a shudder.  "Heaven have mercy on
+her sinful soul!"
+
+The baronet staggered back from the bed.
+
+"I never saw a more horrible sight!" continued the Reverend Cyrus.  "I
+never heard such horrible words!  No wonder it has unmanned you, Sir
+Jasper.  Pray sit down and drink this."
+
+He held out a glass of water.  Sir Jasper seized and drank it, his
+brain reeling.
+
+With stoical calm, Zara had arisen and closed the dead woman's eyes,
+folded the hands, straightened the stiffening limbs, and composed the
+humble covering.  She had no tears, she uttered no cry--her face was
+stern as stone.
+
+"Better stay in this ghastly place no longer, Sir Jasper," the rector
+suggested.  "You look completely overcome.  I will see that everything
+is properly done.  We will bury her to-morrow."
+
+As a man walks in a dreadful dream, Sir Jasper arose, quitted the room,
+mounted his horse, and rode away.
+
+One dark, menacing glance Zara shot after him; then she sat stonily
+down by her dead.  All that night, all next day, Zara kept her post,
+neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping.  Dry and tearless, the
+burning black eyes fixed themselves on the dead face, and never left it.
+
+When they put the dead woman in the rude board coffin, she offered no
+resistance.  Calmly she watched them screw the lid down--calmly she saw
+them raise it on their shoulders and bear it away.  Without a word or
+tear she arose, folded her cloak about her, and followed them to the
+church-yard.
+
+One by one the stragglers departed, and Zara was left alone by the
+new-made grave.  No, not quite alone, for through the bleak twilight
+fluttered the tall, dark figure of a man toward her.  She lifted her
+gloomy eyes and recognized him.
+
+"You come, Sir Jasper," she said, slowly, "to see the last of your
+work.  You come to gloat over your dead victim, and exult that she is
+out of your way.  But I tell you to beware!  Zenith in her grave will
+be a thousand times more terrible to you than Zenith ever was alive!"
+
+The baronet looked at her with a darkly troubled face.
+
+"Why do you hate me so?" he said.  "Whatever wrong I did her, I never
+wronged you."
+
+"You have done me deadly wrong!  My mother's wrongs are mine, and here,
+by her grave, I vow vengeance on you and yours!  Her dying legacy to me
+was her hatred of you, and I will pay the old debt with double
+interest, my noble, haughty, titled father!"
+
+She turned with the last words and sped away like an evil spirit,
+vanishing in the gloom among the graves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+TWO DYING BEQUESTS.
+
+This midsummer night was sultry and still.  The darkness was like the
+darkness of Egypt, lighted every now and then by a vivid Hash of
+lightning, from what quarter of the heavens no man knew.  The inky sky
+was invisible--no breath of air stirred the terrible calm.  The
+midsummer night was full of dark and deadly menace.
+
+Hours ago a fierce and wrathful sunset had burned itself out on a
+brassy sky.  The sun, a lurid ball of fire, had sunk in billows of
+blood-red cloud, and pitch blackness had fallen upon earth and sky and
+sea.  Everything above and below breathed of speedy tempest, but the
+midnight was drawing near, and the storm had not yet burst.
+
+And on this black June night Sir Jasper Kingsland lay on his stately
+bed, dying.
+
+The lofty chamber was but dimly lighted.  It was a grand, vast room,
+paneled in black oak, hung with somber draperies, and carpeted in rich
+dark Brussels.
+
+Three wax candles made white spots of light in the solemn gloom; a
+wood-fire burned or rather smoldered, in the wide hearth, for the vast
+rooms were chilly even in midsummer; but neither fire-light nor
+candle-light could illumine the ghostly depths of the chamber.  Shadows
+crouched like evil things in the dusky corners, and round the bed, only
+darker shadows among the rest, knelt the dying man's family--wife and
+daughter and son.  And hovering aloof, with pale, anxious faces, stood
+the rector, the Reverend Cyrus Green, and Doctor Parker Godroy.
+
+The last hope was over, the last prayer had been said, the last faint
+breaths uttered between the dying lips.  With the tide going out on the
+shore below, the baronet's life was ebbing.
+
+"Olivia!"
+
+Lady Kingsland, kneeling in tearless grief by her husband's side, bent
+over him to catch the faint whisper.
+
+"My dearest, I am here.  What is it?"
+
+"Where is Everard?"
+
+Everard Kingsland, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, handsome boy, lifted his
+head from the opposite side.  It was a handsome, high-bred face--the
+ancestral face of all the Kingslands--that of this twelve-year-old boy.
+
+"Here, papa!"
+
+"My boy! my boy! whom I have loved so well--whom I have shielded so
+tenderly.  My precious, only son, I must leave you at last!"
+
+The boy stifled a sob as he bent and kissed the ice-cold face.  Young
+as he was, he had the gravity and self-repression of manhood already.
+
+"I have loved you better than my own life," the faint, whispering voice
+went on.  "I would have died to save you an hour of pain.  I have kept
+the one secret of my life well--a secret that has blighted it before
+its time--but I can not face the dread unknown and bear my secret with
+me.  On my death-bed I must tell all, and my darling boy must bear the
+blow."
+
+Everard Kingsland listened to his father's huskily murmured words in
+boyish wonderment.  What secret was he talking of?  He glanced across
+at his mother, and saw her pale cheeks suddenly flushed and her calm
+eyes kindling.
+
+"No living soul has ever heard from me what I must tell you to-night,
+my Everard--not even your mother.  Do not leave me, Olivia.  You, too,
+must know all that you may guard your son--that you may pity and
+forgive me.  Perhaps I have erred in keeping any secret from you, but
+the truth was too horrible to tell.  There have been times when the
+thought of it nearly drove me mad.  How, then, could I tell the wife I
+loved--the son I idolized--this cruel and shameful thing?"
+
+The youthful Everard looked simply bewildered--Lady Kingsland excited,
+expectant, flushed.
+
+She gently wiped the clammy brow and held a reviving cordial to the
+livid lips.
+
+"My dearest, do not agitate yourself," she said.  "We will listen to
+all you have to say, and love you none the less, let it be what it
+will."
+
+"My own dear wife! half the secret you know already.  You remember the
+astrologer--the prediction?"
+
+"Surely.  You have never been the same man since that fatal night.  It
+is of the prediction you would speak?"
+
+"It is.  I must tell my son.  I must warn him of the unutterable horror
+to come.  Oh, my boy! my boy! what will become of you when you learn
+your horrible doom?"
+
+"Papa," the lad said, softly, but growing very white, "I don't
+understand--what horror? what doom?  Tell me, and see how I will bear
+it.  I am a Kingsland, you know, and the son of a daring race."
+
+"That is my brave boy!  Send them out of the room, Olivia--priest,
+doctor, Mildred, and all--then come close to me, close, close, for my
+voice is failing--and listen."
+
+Lady Kingsland arose--fair and stately still as twelve years before,
+and eminently self-sustained in this trying hour.  In half a minute she
+had turned out rector, physician, and daughter, and knelt again by that
+bed of death.
+
+"The first part of my story, Olivia," began the dying man, "belongs to
+you.  Years before I knew you, when I was a young, hot-headed, rashly
+impulsive boy, traveling in Spain, I fell in with a gang of wandering
+gypsies.  I had been robbed and wounded by mountain brigands; those
+gypsies found me, took me to their tents, cared for me, cured me.  But
+long after I was well I lingered with them, for the fairest thing the
+sun shone on was my black-eyed nurse, Zenith.  We were both so young
+and so fiery-blooded, so--Ah! what need to go over the old, old
+grounds?  There was one hour of mad, brief bliss, parting and
+forgetfulness.  I forgot.  Life was a long, idle summer holiday to me.
+But she never forgot--never forgave!  You remember the woman, Olivia,
+who burst into the church on the day of our boy's christening--the
+woman who died in the sexton's house?  That woman was Zenith--old and
+withered, and maddened by her wrongs--that woman who died cursing me
+and mine.  A girl, dark and fierce, and terrible as herself, stood by
+her to the last, lingered at her grave to vow deathless revenge--her
+daughter and mine!"
+
+The faint voice ceased an instant.  The fluttering spirit rallied, and
+resumed:
+
+"I have reason to know that daughter was married.  I have reason to
+know she had a child--whether boy or girl I can not tell.  To that
+child the inheritance of hatred and revenge will fall; that child, some
+inward prescience tells me, will wreak deep and awful vengeance for the
+past.  Beware of the grandchild of Zenith, the gypsy--beware, Olivia,
+for yourself and your son!"
+
+"Is this all?" Olivia said, in a constrained, hard voice.
+
+"All I have to say to you--the rest is for Everard.  My son, on the
+night of your birth an Eastern astrologer came to this house and cast
+your horoscope.  He gave that horoscope to me at day-dawn and departed,
+and from that hour to this I have neither seen nor heard of him.
+Before reading your future in the stars he looked into my palm and told
+me the past--told me the story of Zenith and her wrongs--told me what
+no one under heaven but myself knew.  My boy, the revelation of that
+night has blighted my life--broken my heart!  The unutterable horror of
+your future has brought my gray hairs to the grave.  Oh, my son! what
+will become of you when I am gone?"
+
+"What was it, papa?" the lad asked.  "What has the future in store for
+me?"
+
+A convulsive spasm distorted the livid face; the eye-balls rolled, the
+death-rattle sounded.  With a smothered cry of terror Lady Kingsland
+lifted the agonized head in her arms.
+
+"Quick, Jasper--the horoscope!  Where?"
+
+"My safe--study--secret spring--at back!  Oh, God, have mercy--"
+
+The clock struck sharply--twelve.  A vivid blaze of lambent lightning
+lighted the room; the awful death-rattle sounded once more.
+
+"Beware of Zenith's grandchild!"
+
+He spoke the words aloud, clear and distinct, and never spoke again.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Many miles away from Kingsland Court, that same sultry, oppressive
+midsummer night a little third-rate theater on the Surrey side of
+London was crowded to overflowing.  There was a grand spectacular
+drama, full of transformation scenes, fairies, demons, spirits of air,
+fire, and water; a brazen orchestra blowing forth, and steam, and
+orange-peel, and suffocation generally.
+
+Foremost among all the fairies and nymphs, noted for the shortness of
+her filmy skirts, the supple beauty of her shapely limbs, her
+incomparable dancing, and her dark, bright beauty, flashed La Sylphine
+before the foot-lights.
+
+The best _danseuse_ in the kingdom, and the prettiest, and invested
+with a magic halo of romance, La Sylphine shone like a meteor among
+lesser stars, and brought down thunders of applause every time she
+appeared.
+
+The little feet twinkled and flashed; the long, dark waves of hair
+floated in a shining banner behind her to the tiny waist; the pale,
+upraised face--the eyes ablaze like black stars!  Oh, surely La
+Sylphine was the loveliest thing, that hot June night, the gas-light
+shone on!
+
+The fairy spectacle was over--the green drop-curtain fell.  La Sylphine
+had smiled and dipped and kissed hands to thundering bravos for the
+last time that night, and now, behind the scenes, was rapidly
+exchanging the spangles and gossamer of fairydom for the shabby and
+faded merino shawl and dingy straw hat of every-day life.
+
+"You danced better than ever to-night, Miss Monti," a tall demon in
+tail and horns said, sauntering up to her.  "Them there pretty feet of
+your'n will make your fortune yet, and beat Fanny Ellsler!"
+
+"Not to mention her pretty face," said a brother fiend, removing his
+mask.  "Her fortune's made already, if she's a mind to take it.
+There's a gay young city swell a-waiting at the wings to see you home,
+Miss Monti."
+
+"Is it Maynard, the banker's son?" she asked.
+
+The second demon nodded.
+
+"Then I must escape by the side entrance.  When he gets tired waiting,
+Mr. Smithers, give him La Sylphine's compliments, and let him go."
+
+She glided past the demons down a dark and winding staircase, and out
+into the noisy, lighted street.
+
+The girl paused an instant under a street-lamp--she was only a
+girl--fifteen or sixteen at most, though very tall, with a bright,
+fearless look--then drawing her shawl closely round her, she flitted
+rapidly away.
+
+The innumerable city clocks tolled heavily--eleven.  The night was
+pitch-dark; the sheet-lightning blazed across the blackness, and now
+and then a big drop fell.  Still the girl sped on until she reached her
+destination.
+
+It was the poorest and vilest quarter of the great city--among reeking
+smells, and horrible sounds, and disgusting sights.  The house she
+entered was tottering to decay--a dreadful den by day and by night,
+thronged with the very scum of the London streets.  Up and up a long
+stair-way she flew, paused at a door on the third landing, opened it,
+and went in.
+
+It was a miserable room--all one could have expected from the street
+and the house.  There was a black grate, one or two broken chairs, a
+battered table, and a wretched bed in the corner.  On the bed a
+woman--the ghastly skeleton of a woman--lay dying.
+
+The entrance of La Sylphine aroused the woman from the stupor into
+which she had fallen.  She opened her spectral eyes and looked eagerly
+around.
+
+"My Sunbeam! is it thou?"
+
+"It is I, mother--at last.  I could come no sooner.  The ballet was
+very long to-night."
+
+"And my Sunbeam was bravoed, and encored, and crowned with flowers, was
+she not?"
+
+"Yes, mother; but never mind that.  How are you tonight?"
+
+"Dying, my own."
+
+The _danseuse_ fell on her knees with a shrill, sharp cry.
+
+"No, mother--no, no!  Not dying!  Very ill, very weak, very low, but
+not dying.  Oh, not dying!"
+
+"Dying, my daughter!" the sick woman said.  "I count my life by minutes
+now; I heard the city clocks strike eleven; I counted the strokes, for,
+my Sunbeam, it is the last hour thy mother will ever hear on earth."
+
+The ballet-dancer covered her face, with a low, despairing cry.  The
+dying mother, with a painful effort, lifted her own skeleton hand and
+removed those of the girl.
+
+"Weep not, but listen, _carissima_.  I have much to say to thee before
+I go; I feared to die before you came; and even in my grave I could not
+rest with the words I must say unsaid.  I have a legacy to leave thee,
+my daughter."
+
+"A legacy?"
+
+The girl opened her great black eyes in wide surprise.
+
+"Even so.  Not of lands, or houses, or gold, or honors, but something a
+thousand-fold greater--an inheritance of hatred and revenge!"
+
+"My mother!"
+
+"Listen to me, my daughter, and my dying malediction be upon thee if
+thou fulfillest not the trust.  Thou hast heard the name of Kingsland?"
+
+"Ay, often; from my father ere he died--from thee, since.  Was it not
+his last command to me--this hatred of their evil race?  Did I not
+promise him on his death-bed, four years ago?  Does my mother think I
+forget?"
+
+"That is my brave daughter.  You know the cruel story of treachery and
+wrong done thy grandmother, Zenith--you know the prediction your father
+made to my father, Sir Jasper Kingsland, on the night of his son's
+birth.  Be it thine, my brave daughter, to see that prediction
+fulfilled."
+
+"You ask a terrible thing, my mother," she said, slowly; but I can
+refuse you nothing, and I abhor them all.  I promise--the prediction
+shall be fulfilled!"
+
+"My own! my own!  That son is a boy of twelve now--be it yours to find
+him, and work the retribution of the gods.  Your grandmother, your
+father, your mother, look to you from their graves for vengeance.  Woe
+to you if you fail!"
+
+"I shall not fail!" the girl said, solemnly.  "I can die, but I can not
+break a promise.  Vengeance shall fall, fierce and terrible, upon the
+heir of Kingsland, and mine shall be the hand to inflict it.  I swear
+it by your death-bed, mother, and I will keep my oath!"
+
+The mother pressed her hand.  The film of death was in her eyes.  She
+strove to speak; there was a quick, dreadful convulsion, then an awful
+calm.
+
+Within the same hour, with miles between them, Sir Jasper Kingsland and
+Zara, his outcast daughter, died.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The dawn of another day crept silently over the Devon hill-tops as Lady
+Kingsland arose from her husband's deathbed.
+
+White, and stark, and rigid, the late lord of Kingsland Court lay in
+the awful majesty of death.
+
+The doctor, the rector, the nurse, sat, pale and somber watchers, in
+the death-room.  More than an hour before the youthful baronet had been
+sent to his room, worn out with his night's watching.
+
+It was the Reverend Cyrus Green who urged my lady now to follow him.
+
+"You look utterly exhausted, my dear Lady Kingsland," he said.  "Pray
+retire and endeavor to sleep.  You are not able to endure such fatigue."
+
+"I am worn out," she said.  "I believe I will lie down, but I feel as
+though I should never sleep again."
+
+She quitted the room, but not to seek her own.  Outside the
+death-chamber she paused an instant, and her face lighted suddenly.
+
+"Now is my time," she said, under her breath.  "A few hours more and it
+may be too late.  His safe, he said--the secret spring!"
+
+She flitted away, pallid and guilty looking, into Sir Jasper's study.
+It was deserted, of course, and there in the corner stood the grim iron
+safe.
+
+"Now for the secrets of the dead!  No fortune-telling jugglery shall
+blight my darling boy's life while I can help it.  He is as
+superstitious as his father."
+
+With considerable difficulty she opened the safe, pulled forth drawer
+after drawer, until the grim iron back was exposed.
+
+"The secret spring is here," she muttered.  "Surely, surely, I can find
+it."
+
+For many minutes she searched in vain; then her glance fell on a tiny
+steel knob inserted in a corner.  She pressed this with all her might,
+confident of success.
+
+Nor was she deceived; the knob moved, the iron slid slowly back,
+disclosing a tiny hidden drawer.
+
+Lady Kingsland barely repressed a cry as she saw the paper, and by its
+side something wrapped in silver tissue.  Greedily she snatched both
+out, pressed back the knob, locked the safe, stole out of the study and
+up to her own room.
+
+Panting with her haste, my lady sunk into a seat, with her treasures
+eagerly clutched.  A moment recovered her; then she took up the little
+parcel wrapped in the silver paper.
+
+"He said nothing of this," she thought.  "What can it be?"
+
+She tore off the wrapping.  As it fell to the floor, a long tress of
+silky black hair fell with it, and she held in her hand a miniature
+painted on ivory.  A girlish face of exquisite beauty, dusky as the
+face of an Indian queen, looked up at her, fresh and bright as thirty
+years before.  No need to look at the words on the reverse--"My
+peerless Zenith"--to know who it was; the wife's jealousy told her at
+the first glance.
+
+"And all these years he has kept this," she said, between her set
+teeth, "while he pretended he loved only me!  'My peerless Zenith!'
+Yes, she is beautiful as the fabled houris of the Mussulman's paradise.
+Well, I will keep it in my turn.  Who knows what end it may serve yet?"
+
+She picked up the tress of hair, and enveloped all in the silver paper
+once more.  Then she lifted the folded document, and looked darkly at
+the superscription:
+
+    "Horoscope of the Heir of Kingsland."
+
+"Which the heir of Kingsland shall never see," she said, grimly
+unfolding it.  "Now for this mighty secret."
+
+She just glanced at the mystic symbols, the cabalistic signs and
+figures, and turned to the other side.  There, beautifully written, in
+long, clear letters, she saw her son's fate.
+
+The morning wore on--noon came; the house was as still as a tomb.
+Rosine, my lady's maid, with a cup of tea, ventured to tap at her
+ladyship's door.  There was no response.
+
+"She sleeps," thought Rosine, and turned the handle.
+
+But at the threshold she paused in wild alarm.  No, my lady did not
+sleep.  She sat in her chair, upright and ghastly as a galvanized
+corpse, a written paper closely clutched in her hand, and a look of
+white horror frozen on her face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+AFTER TEN YEARS.
+
+"I have said it, and I mean it; they ought to know me well enough by
+this time, Godsoe.  I'd transport every man of them, the poaching
+scoundrels, if I could!  Tell that villain Dick Darkly that the first
+time I catch him at his old tricks he shall follow the brother he makes
+such a howling about, and share his fate."
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland was the speaker.  He stood with one hand, white
+and shapely as a lady's, resting on the glossy neck of his bay horse,
+his fair, handsome face, flushed with anger, turned upon his gamekeeper.
+
+Peter Godsoe, the sturdy gamekeeper, standing before his young master,
+hat in hand, looked up deprecatingly.
+
+"He takes it very hard, Sir Everard, that you sent his brother to
+Worrel Jail.  His missis was sick, and two of the children had the
+measles, and Will Darkly he'd been out o' work, and they was poor as
+poor.  So he turns to and snares the rabbits, and--"
+
+"Godsoe, are you trying to excuse this convicted poacher?  Is that what
+you stopped me here to say?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Everard; I only wanted to warn you--to put you
+on your guard--"
+
+"To warn me--to put me on my guard?  What do you mean?  Has that
+villainous poacher dared to threaten me?"
+
+"Not in my hearing, sir; but others say so.  And he's a dark,
+vindictive brute; and he swore a solemn oath, they say, when his
+brother went to Worrel Jail, to be revenged upon you.  And so, Sir
+Everard, begging your pardon for the freedom, I thought as how you was
+likely to be out late to-night, coming home from my lord's, and as
+Brithlow Wood is lonesome and dark--"
+
+"That will do, Godsoe!" the young baronet interrupted, haughtily.  "You
+mean well, I dare say, and I overlook your presumption this time; but
+never proffer advice to me again.  As for Darkly, he had better keep
+out of my way.  I'll horsewhip him the first time I see him, and send
+him to make acquaintance with the horse-pond afterward."
+
+He vaulted lightly into the saddle as he spoke.
+
+The brawny gamekeeper stood gazing after him as he ambled down the
+leafy avenue.
+
+"His father's son," he said; "the proudest gentleman in Devonshire, and
+the most headstrong.  You'll horsewhip Dick Darkly, Sir Everard!  Why,
+he could take you with one hand by the waist-band, and lay you low in
+the kennel any day he liked!  And he'll do it, too!" muttered Godsoe,
+turning slowly away.  "You won't be warned, and you won't take
+precaution, and you won't condescend to be afeard, and you'll come to
+grief afore you know it."
+
+The misty autumn twilight lay like a veil of silver blue over the
+peaceful English landscape; a cool breeze swept up from the sea over
+the golden downs and distant hills, and as Sir Everard rode along
+through the village, the cloud left his face, and a tender, dreamy look
+came in its place.
+
+"She will be present, of course," he thought.  "I wonder if I shall
+find her as I left her last?  She is not the kind that play fast and
+loose, my stately, uplifted Lady Louise.  How queenly she looked at the
+reception last night in those velvet robes and the Carteret
+diamonds!--'queen rose of the rose-bud garden of girls.'  She is my
+elder by three round years at least, but she is stately as a princess,
+and at twenty-five preserves the ripe bloom of eighteen.  She is all
+that is gracious when we meet, and my mother has set her heart upon the
+match.  I have half a mind to propose this very night."
+
+She was an earl's daughter, this stately Lady Louise, but so very
+impoverished an earl that the young Devonshire baronet, with his
+ancient name and his long rent-roll, was a most desirably brilliant
+match.
+
+She was down on a visit to her brother, Lord Carteret, and had made a
+dead set at Sir Everard Kingsland from the hour she had met him first.
+He was on his way to Lord Carteret's now.  There was a dinner-party,
+and he was an honored guest; and Lady Louise was brilliant, in the
+family diamonds and old point lace, once more.
+
+She was in the drawing-room when he entered--her stately head regally
+uplifted in the midst of a group of less magnificent demoiselles--a
+statuesque blonde, with abundant ringlets of flaxen lightness, eyes of
+turquoise blue, and a determined mouth and chin.
+
+Sir Everard paid his respects to his host and hostess, and sought her
+side at once.
+
+"Almost late," she said, with a brilliant, welcoming smile, giving him
+her dainty little hand; "and George Grosvenor has been looking this
+way, and pulling his mustache and blushing redder than the carnations
+in his button-hole.  He wants to take me in to dinner, poor fellow, and
+he hasn't the courage to do it."
+
+"With your kind permission, Lady Louise, I will save him the trouble,"
+answered Sir Everard Kingsland.  "Grosvenor is not singular in his
+wish, but I never gave him credit for so much good taste before."
+
+"Mr. Grosvenor is more at home in the hunting-field than the
+drawing-room, I fancy.  Apropos, Sir Everard, I ride to the meet
+to-morrow.  Of course you will be present on your 'bonny bay' to
+display your prowess?"
+
+"Of course--a fox-hunt is to me a foretaste of celestial bliss.  With a
+first-rate horse, a crack pack of hounds, a 'good scent,' and a fine
+morning, a man is tempted to wish life could last forever.  And you are
+only going to ride to the meet, then, Lady Louise?"
+
+"Yes; I never followed the hounds, I don't know the country and I can't
+ride to points.  Besides, I am not really Amazonian enough to fancy a
+scamper across the country, flying fences and risking my precious neck."
+
+"I must own that, to me, a lady never looks less attractive than in a
+hunting-field, among yelping hounds, and shouts, and cheers, and cords
+and tops, and scarlet coats."
+
+"That comes of being a poet and an artist; and Sir Everard Kingsland is
+accused of being both.  You want to fancy us all angels, and you can
+not reconcile an angelic being with a side-saddle and a hard gallop.
+Now, I don't own to being anything in the Di Vernon line myself, and I
+don't wish to be; but I do think a pretty girl never looks half so
+pretty as when well mounted.  You should have seen Harrie Hunsden, as I
+saw her the other day, and you would surely recant your heresy about
+ladies and horse-flesh."
+
+"Is Harrie Hunsden a lady?"
+
+"Certainly.  Don't you know her?  She is Captain Hunsden's only
+daughter--Hunsden, of Hunsden Hall, one of your oldest Devon families.
+You'll find them duly chronicled in Burke and Debrett.  Miss Hunsden is
+scarcely eighteen, but she has been over the world--from Quebec to
+Gibraltar--from Halifax to Calcutta.  Two years of her life she passed
+at a New York boarding-school, of which city her mother was a native."
+
+"Indeed!" Sir Everard said, just lifting his eyebrows.  "And Miss
+Hunsden rides well?"
+
+"Like Di Vernon's self."
+
+"Is your Miss Hunsden pretty? and shall we see her at the meet
+to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes to both questions; and more than at the meet, I fancy.  She and
+her thorough-bred, Whirlwind, will lead you all.  Her scarlet habit and
+'red roan steed' are as well known in the country as the duke's hounds,
+and her bright eyes and dashing style have taken by storm the hearts of
+half the fox-hunting squires of Devonshire."
+
+She laughed a little maliciously.  Truth to tell, not being quite sure
+that her game was safely wired, and dreading this Amazonian Miss
+Hunsden as a prospective rival, she was nothing loath to prejudice the
+fastidious young baronet beforehand, even while seeming to praise her.
+
+"I am surprised that you have not heard of her," she said.  "Sir
+Harcourt Helford and Mr. Cholmondeley actually fought a duel about her,
+and it ended in her telling them to their faces they were a pair of
+idiots, and flatly refusing both.  'The Hunsden' is the toast of the
+country."
+
+Sir Everard shuddered.
+
+"From all such the gods deliver us!  You honor Miss Hunsden with your
+deepest interest, I think, Lady Louise?
+
+"Yes, she is such an oddity.  Her wandering life, I presume, accounts
+for it; but she is altogether unlike any girl I ever know.  I am
+certain," with a little malicious glance, "she will be your style, Sir
+Everard."
+
+"And as I don't in the least know what my style is, perhaps you may be
+right."
+
+Lady Louise bit her lip--it was a rebuff, she fancied, for her
+detraction.  And then Lady Carteret gave that mysterious signal, and
+the ladies rose and swept away in billows of silk to the drawing-room,
+and the gentlemen had the talk to themselves "across the walnuts and
+the wine."
+
+To one gentleman present the interim before rejoining the ladies was
+unmitigatedly dull, even though the talk ran on his favorite
+topics---horse-flesh and hunting.  He was in love, he thought
+complacently, and Lady Louise's eyes had sparkled to-day and her smiles
+had flashed their bewildering brightness upon him more radiantly than
+ever before.
+
+"How pleased my mother will be!" Sir Everard thought.  "I will ask Lady
+Louise this very night.  An earl's daughter--though a bankrupt--is a
+fitting mate for a Kingsland."
+
+Lady Louise sat at the piano, the soft light falling full on her pale,
+statuesque face, and making an aureole around her fair, shapely head.
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland crossed over and stood beside her, and Lord and
+Lady Carteret exchanged significant glances, and smiled.
+
+It was a very desirable thing, indeed; they had brought Louise down for
+no other earthly reason; and Louise was playing her cards, and playing
+them well.
+
+If Sir Everard had one taste stronger than another it was his taste for
+music, and Lady Louise held him spell-bound now.  She played, and her
+fingers seemed inspired; she sung, and few non-professionals sung like
+that.
+
+The chain of brittle glass that bound the captive beside her grew
+stronger.  A wife who could bewitch the hours away with such music as
+this would be no undesirable possession for a _blase_ man.  He stooped
+over her as she arose from the piano at last.
+
+"Come out on the balcony," he said.  "The night is lovely, and the good
+people yonder are altogether engrossed in their cards and their
+small-talk."
+
+Without a word she stepped with him from the open French window out
+into the starlit night.
+
+What is it that Byron says about solitude, and moonlight, and youth?  A
+dangerous combination, truly; and so Sir Everard Kingsland found,
+standing side by side with this pale daughter of a hundred earls.  But
+the irrevocable words were not destined to be spoken, for just then
+George Grosvenor, goaded to jealous desperation, stalked out through
+the open casement and joined them.
+
+The midnight moon was sailing up to the zenith as Sir Everard rode
+home.  His road was a lonely one through Brithlow Wood, which shortened
+his journey by over a mile; but his thoughts were pleasant ones, and he
+hummed, as he rode, the songs Lady Louise had sung.
+
+"Confound that muff, Grosvenor!" he thought.  "If it had not been for
+his impertinent intrusion, the matter would have been safely settled by
+this time--and settled pleasantly too, I take it; for, without being a
+conceited noodle, I really think Lady Louise will say yes.  Ah! what's
+this?"
+
+For out of the starlit darkness, from among the trees, started up a
+giant black figure, and his horse was grasped by the bridle and hurled
+back upon his haunches.
+
+"You villain," the young man dauntlessly cried, "let go my bridle-rein!
+Who are you?  What do you want?"
+
+"I'm Dick Darkly," answered a deep, gruff voice, "and I want your
+heart's blood!"
+
+"You poaching scoundrel!" exclaimed Sir Everard, quick as lightning
+raising his riding-whip and slashing the aggressor across the face.
+"Let go my horse's head."
+
+With a cry that was like the roar of a wild beast the man sprung hack.
+The next instant, with a horrible oath, he had seized the young man and
+torn him out of the saddle.
+
+"I'll tear you limb from limb for that blow, by heavens!" Dick Darkly
+shouted.  "If I hadn't meant to kill you before, I would kill you for
+that cut of your whip.  I've waited for you, Sir Everard Kingsland!  I
+swore revenge, and revenge I'll have!  I'll kill you this night, if
+they hang me for it to-morrow!"
+
+He held his victim in a grip of iron, from which he struggled madly to
+get free, while the horse, with a shrill neigh of terror, started off
+riderless.
+
+"I swore I'd kill you, Sir Everard Kingsland," Dick Darkly growled,
+"when you put my poor brother in Worrel Jail for snaring the miserable
+rabbits to keep his sick wife and children from starving.  I swore it,
+and I'll keep my oath.  You told your gamekeeper this very day you
+would lash me like a dog, and duck me after.  Aha, Sir Everard!
+Where's the horse-whip and the horse-pond now?"
+
+"Here!" shouted the young baronet; and with a mighty effort he freed
+his arms, and raising the whip, slashed Dick Darkly for the second time
+across the face.  "You murdering villain, you shall swing for this!"
+
+With a blind roar of pain and rage, the murderer closed with his
+victim.  They grappled, and rolled over and over in each other's arms.
+
+Panting and speechless, the death-struggle went on; but Sir Everard was
+no match for the burly giant.  With a savage cry, the huge poacher
+thrust his hand into his belt, and a long, blue-bladed knife gleamed in
+the moon's rays.
+
+"At last!" he panted.  "I'll have your heart's blood, as I swore I'd
+have it!"
+
+He lifted the knife.  Sir Everard Kingsland tried to gasp one last
+brief prayer in that supreme moment.
+
+"Help!" he cried, with a last wild struggle--"help! help! murder!"
+
+There was a rustling in the trees and some one sprung out.  The last
+word was lost in the sharp report of a pistol, and with a scream of
+agony, Dick Darkly dropped his knife and fell backward on the grass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG MAN.
+
+The baronet leaped to his feet, and stood face to face with his
+preserver.  The giant trees, towering up until they seemed to pierce
+the sky, half shut out the moonlight, but yet Sir Everard could see
+that it was a slender stripling who stood before him, a slouched hat
+pulled far over his eyes.
+
+"I owe you my life," he cried, grasping the youth's hand.  "An instant
+later, and I would have been in eternity.  How shall I ever thank you?"
+
+"Don't make the attempt," replied the lad, coolly.  "It was the merest
+chance-work in the world that sent me here to-night."
+
+"Don't call it chance, my boy.  It was Providence sent you to save a
+life."
+
+"Providence may have wished to save your life, and was not particular
+as to the means.  Let us look to this fellow.  I hope my shot has not
+killed him outright."
+
+They both stooped over the fallen giant.  Dick Darkly lay on his face,
+groaning dismally, the blood pumping from his chest with every breath.
+
+"It's an ugly-looking hole," said Sir Everard.  "Two inches lower, and
+it would have gone straight through his heart.  As it is, it will put a
+stop to his assassinating proclivities for awhile, I fancy.  Lie still,
+you matchless scoundrel, while I try and stop this flow of blood."
+
+He knelt beside the groaning man and endeavored to stanch the red
+gushing with his handkerchief.  The youth stood by, gazing calmly on.
+
+"What do you mean to do with him?" he asked.
+
+"Send some of my people to take him to his home, and as soon as he is
+sufficiently recovered to stand his trial for attempted murder--"
+
+"For God's sake, Sir Everard!" faintly moaned the wounded man.
+
+"Ah, you audacious villain, you can supplicate now!  If I let you off
+this time, my life would not be worth an hour's purchase."
+
+"What did he call you?" asked the boy, with sudden, sharp anxiety in
+his tone.  "Whose life have I saved?"
+
+"I am Sir Everard Kingsland, of Kingsland Court," the baronet answered.
+"And you are--who?"
+
+"Sir Everard Kingsland!  And I have saved your life!"
+
+"For which Heaven be praised!  It is a very pleasant world, this, and I
+have no desire just yet to leave it.  Pray tell me the name of my
+preserver!"
+
+"Never mind my name; it is of no consequence who I am.  I have a long
+journey before me; I am very weary and footsore, and it is time I was
+on my way."
+
+"Weary and footsore?" repeated the baronet.  "Nay--then all the more
+need we should not part.  Come home with me and rest--to-night, at
+least.  I owe you a heavy debt, and I should like to pay a little of
+it."
+
+"You owe me nothing!" His eyes gleamed under his hat and his teeth
+clinched as he spoke.  "Nothing, Sir Everard Kingsland!  Let us say
+good-bye.  I must reach Worrel by sunrise."
+
+"And so you shall.  The fleetest steed in my stables shall carry you.
+But come to Kingsland and rest for the night.  If you will not accept
+my thanks, accept at least the shelter of my roof."
+
+The boy seemed to hesitate.
+
+The baronet look advantage of that momentary hesitation and drew his
+arm through his own.  There was not a prouder man in wide England, but
+this unknown lad had saved his life, and Sir Everard was only
+two-and-twenty, and full of generous impulses.
+
+"Come," he said, "don't be obstinate.  You own to being footsore and
+weary.  Kingsland is very near, and a night's rest will do you good."
+
+"Thanks!  I accept your kind hospitality, Sir Everard, on two
+conditions."
+
+"On any conditions you choose, _mon ami_.  What are they?"
+
+"That no one shall know it but yourself, and that I may depart before
+day-dawn."
+
+"I dislike that last condition very much; but it must be as you say.
+Sleep in safety, most mysterious youth; no one shall know you are under
+my roof, and I will come and wake you myself at the first peep of day.
+Will that do?"
+
+"Admirably.  You are very kind to take all this trouble for a nameless
+tramp, Sir Everard."
+
+"Am I?  Even when the nameless tramp saved my life?"--yet Sir Everard
+winced a little while saying it.  "And that reminds me, we must hasten,
+if yonder fallen villain is to recover from his wound.  His condition
+is not an enviable one at this moment."
+
+"How did it happen?" the boy asked.
+
+And the young baronet repeated the story of Dick Darkly's provocation
+and vow of revenge.
+
+As he concluded they passed through the stately gates, up the majestic
+sweep of drive, to the imposing old mansion.
+
+"Home!" Sir Everard said, gayly.  "Solitude and darkness reign, you
+see.  The family have long since retired, and we can pass to our
+respective dormitories unseen and unheard."
+
+The boy looked up with his brilliant, glowing eyes.  But he did not
+speak.  In silence he followed Sir Everard in, up the noble marble
+stair-way, along richly carpeted, softly lighted corridors, and into a
+stately chamber.
+
+"You will sleep here," Sir Everard said.  "My room is near, and I am a
+light sleeper.  To-morrow morning at five I will rouse you.  Until then
+adieu, and pleasant dreams."
+
+He swung out and closed the door, and not once had he seen the face of
+his guest.  That guest stood in the center of the handsome chamber, and
+gazed around.
+
+"At last!" he hisses between his set white teeth--"at last, after two
+years' weary waiting!  At last, oh! my mother, the time has come for me
+to keep my vow!"
+
+He raised one arm with a tragic gesture, removed the slouched hat, and
+stood uncovered in the tranquil half light.
+
+The face was wonderfully handsome, of gypsy darkness, and the eyes
+shone like black stars; but a scarlet handkerchief was bound tightly
+around his head, and concealed every vestige of hair.  With a slow
+smile creeping round his mouth, the boy took his handkerchief off.
+
+"To-morrow he will come and call me, but to-morrow I shall not leave
+Kingsland Court.  No, my dear young baronet, I have not saved your life
+for nothing!  I shall have the honor of remaining your guest for some
+time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MISS SYBILLA SILVER
+
+Meantime Sir Everard had aroused his valet and a brace of tall footmen,
+and dispatched them to the aid of the wounded man in the wood.  And
+then he sought his own chamber, and, after an hour or two of aimless
+tossing, dropped into an uneasy sleep.
+
+And sleeping, Sir Everard had a singular dream.  He was walking through
+Brithlow Wood with Lady Louise on his arm, the moonlight sifting
+through the tall trees as he had seen it last.  Suddenly, with a rustle
+and a hiss, a huge green serpent glided out, reared itself up, and
+glared at them with eyes of deadly menace.  And somehow, though he had
+not yet seen the lad's face, he knew the hissing serpent and the
+preserver of his life were one and the same.  With horrible hisses the
+monster encircled him.  Its fetid breath was in his face, its deadly
+fangs ready to strike his death-blow, and, with a suffocating cry, Sir
+Everard a-woke from his nightmare and started up in bed.
+
+"Good heavens! such a night of horrors, waking and sleeping!  A most
+ungrateful dream, truly!  It is time I awoke my unknown preserver."
+
+The mysterious youth lay fast asleep upon the bed, dressed as he had
+left him, with the exception of the slouched hat and the red cotton
+handkerchief.  They lay on the carpet; and over the pillows, and over
+the coarse velveteen jacket streamed such a wealth of blue-black hair
+as the baronet in all his life never before beheld.
+
+"Powers above!" Sir Everard gasped, in his utter amaze, "what can this
+mean?"
+
+He advanced with bated breath, bent over and gazed at the sleeper's
+face.  One look, and his flashing first suspicion was a certainty.
+This dark, youthful, faultlessly beautiful face was a woman's face.  A
+girl in velveteen shooting-jacket and pantaloons, handsome as some
+dusky Indian princess, lay asleep before him.
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland, in the last stage of bewilderment and amaze,
+retreated precipitately and shut the door.
+
+The instant the chamber door closed the mysterious young man raised
+himself on his elbow, very wide awake, his handsome face lighted with a
+triumphant smile.
+
+"So," he said, "step the second has been taken, and Sir Everard has
+discovered the sex of his preserver.  As he is too delicate to disturb
+a slumbering lady in disguise, the slumbering lady must disturb him!"
+
+He--or rather she--leaped lightly off the bed, picked up the scarlet
+bandanna, twisted scientifically the abundant black hair, bound it up
+with the handkerchief, and crushed down over all the slouched hat.
+Then, with the handsome face overshadowed, and all expression screwed
+out of it, she opened the door, and saw, as she expected, the young
+baronet in the passage.
+
+He stopped at once at sight of her.  He had been walking up and down,
+with an exceedingly surprised and perplexed face; and now he stood with
+his great, Saxon-blue eyes piercingly fixed upon the young person in
+velveteen, whose jacket and trousers told one story, and whose
+streaming dark hair told quite another.
+
+"It is past sunrise, Sir Everard," his preserver began, with a
+reproachful glance, "and you have broken your promise.  You said you
+would awake me."
+
+"I beg your pardon," retorted Sir Everard, quietly; "I have broken no
+promise.  I came to your room ten minutes ago to arouse you, as I said
+I would.  I knocked thrice, and received no reply.  Then I entered.
+You must excuse me for doing so.  How was I to know I was entertaining
+angels unaware?"
+
+With a low cry of consternation his hearer's hands flew up and covered
+his face, to hide the blushes that were not there.
+
+"Your red handkerchief and hat do you good service in your masquerade,
+mademoiselle.  I confess I should never suspect a lady in that suit of
+velveteen."
+
+With a sudden theatrical abandon the "lady in velveteen" flung herself
+on her knees at his feet.
+
+"Forgive me!" she cried, holding up her clasped hands.  "Have pity on
+me!  Don't reveal my secret, for Heaven's sake."
+
+"Forgive you!" repeated Sir Everard, hastily.  "What have I to forgive?
+Pray get up; there is no reason you should kneel and supplicate pity
+from me."
+
+He raised her imperatively.  Her head dropped in womanly confusion,
+and, hiding her face, she sobbed.
+
+"What must you think?  How dreadful it must look!  But, oh, Sir
+Everard! if you only knew!"
+
+"I should like to know, I confess.  Come here in this window recess and
+tell me, won't you?  Come, look up, and don't cry so.  Tell me who you
+are."
+
+"I am Sybilla Silver, and I have run away from home, and I will die
+sooner than ever go back!"
+
+She looked up with a passionate outbreak, and Sir Everard saw the
+splendor of a pair of flashing Spanish eyes.
+
+"I shall not send you back, depend upon it.  Why did you run away, Miss
+Silver?"
+
+"Do you really wish to know?" she asked.  "Oh, Sir Everard Kingsland,
+will you indeed be my friend?"
+
+"Your true and faithful friend, my poor girl!" he answered, moved by
+the piteous appeal.  "Surely I could hardly be less to one who so
+bravely saved my life."
+
+"Ah! that was nothing.  I lay no claim on that.  Serve me as you would
+serve any friendless girl in distress; and you are brave and generous
+and noble, I know."
+
+"You 'do me proud,' mademoiselle.  Suppose you cease complimenting, and
+begin at the beginning.  Who are your friends, and why did you leave
+them, and where have you run away from?"
+
+"From Yorkshire, Sir Everard--yes, all the way from Yorkshire in this
+disguise.  Ah! it seems very bold and unwomanly, does it not?  But my
+uncle was such a tyrant, and I had no appeal.  I am an orphan, Sir
+Everard.  My father and mother have been dead since my earliest
+recollection, and this uncle, my sole earthly relative, has been my
+guardian and tormentor.  I can not tell you how cruelly he has treated
+me.  I have been immured in a desolate old country-house, without
+friends or companions of my own age or sex, and left to drag on a
+useless and aimless life.  My poor father left me a scant inheritance;
+but, such as it is, my uncle set his greedy heart upon adding it to his
+own.  To do this, he determined upon marrying me to his only son.  My
+cousin William was his father over again--meaner, more cruel and crafty
+and cold-blooded, if possible--and utterly abhorred by me.  I would
+sooner have died ten thousand deaths than marry such a sordid, hateful
+wretch!  But marry him I surely must have done, if I remained in their
+power.  So I fled.  With inconceivable trouble and maneuvering.  I
+obtained this suit of clothes.  If I fled undisguised, I knew I would
+certainly be pursued, overtaken, and brought back.  In the dead of
+night I opened my chamber window and made my escape.  I took a loaded
+pistol of my uncle's with me; I knew how to use it, and I felt safe
+with such a protector.  My old nurse lived in Plymouth with her
+daughter, and to her I meant to go.  I had a little money with me, and
+made good my escape.  My disguise saved me from suspicion and insult.
+Last night, on my way to Worrel, I heard your cry for help, and my
+pistol stood me in good stead, for the first time.  There, Sir Everard,
+you know all.  I hate and despise myself for the dress I wear, but
+surely there is some excuse to be made for me."
+
+The Spanish eyes, swimming in tears, were raised imploringly to his,
+and Sir Everard was two-and-twenty, and very susceptible to a beautiful
+woman's tears.
+
+"Very much excuse, my poor girl," he said, warmly.  "I am the last on
+earth to blame you for flying from a detested marriage.  But there is
+no need to wear this disguise longer, surely?"
+
+"No; no need.  But I have had no opportunity of changing it; and if I
+do not succeed in finding my nurse at Plymouth, I don't know what will
+become of me."
+
+"Have you not her address?"
+
+"No; neither have I heard from her in a long, long time.  She lived in
+Plymouth years ago with her married daughter, but we never
+corresponded; and whether she is there now, or whether indeed she is
+living at all, I do not know.  I caught at the hope as the drowning
+catch at straws."
+
+Sir Everard looked at her in that thoughtful pause.  How beautiful she
+was in her dark, glowing girlhood--how friendless, how desolate in the
+world.
+
+"It would be the wildest of wild-goose chases, then," he said, "knowing
+as little of your nurse's whereabouts as you do, to seek her in
+Plymouth now.  Write first, or advertise in the local journals.  If she
+is still resident there, that will fetch her."
+
+"Write! advertise!" Sybilla Silver repeated, with unspeakable
+mournfulness; "from whence, Sir Everard?"
+
+"From here," answered the baronet, decidedly.  "You shall not leave
+here until you find your friends.  And you shall not wear this odious
+disguise an hour longer.  Go back to your chamber and wait."
+
+"What an egregious muff he is!" she said to herself, contemptuously.
+"There is no cleverness in fooling such an imbecile as that.  I am
+going on velvet so far; I only hope my lady may be as easily dealt with
+as my lady's only son."
+
+My lady's only son went straight to a door down the corridor, quite at
+the other extremity, and opened it.
+
+It was a lady's dressing-room evidently.  Laid out, all ready for wear,
+was a lady's morning toilet complete, and without more ado Sir Everard
+confiscated the whole concern.  At the white cashmere robe alone he
+caviled.
+
+"This is too gay; I must find a more sober garment.  All the
+maid-servants in the house would recognize this immediately."
+
+He went to one of the closets, searched there, and presently reappeared
+with a black silk dress.  Rolling all up in a heap, he started at once
+with his prize, laughing inwardly at the figure he cut.
+
+"If Lady Louise saw me now, or my lady mother, either, for that matter!
+What will Mildred and her maid say, I wonder, when they find burglars
+have been at work, and her matutinal toilet stolen?"
+
+He bore the bundle straight to the chamber of his pretty runaway, and
+tapped at the door.  It was discreetly opened an inch or two.
+
+"Here are some clothes.  When you are dressed, come out.  I will wait
+in the passage."
+
+"Thank yon," Miss Silver's soft voice said.
+
+The young person whose adventures were so highly sensational doffed her
+velveteens and donned the dainty garments of Miss Mildred Kingsland.
+
+All the things were beautifully made and embroidered, marked with the
+initials "M. K.," and adorned with the Kingsland crest.
+
+"Miss Mildred Kingsland must be tall and slender, since her dress fits
+me so well.  Ah, what a change even a black silk dress makes in one's
+appearance!  He admired me--I saw he did, in jacket and
+pantiloons--what will be do, then, in this?  Will he fall in love with
+me, I wonder?"
+
+One parting peep in the glass, and she opened the door and stepped out
+before Sir Everard Kingsland, a dazzling vision of beauty.
+
+He stood and gazed.  Could he believe his eyes?  Was this
+superb-looking woman with the flowing curls, the dark, bright beauty
+and imperial mien, the lad in velveteen who had shot the poacher last
+night?  Why, Cleopatra might have looked like that, in the height of
+her regal splendor, or Queen Semiramis, in the glorious days that were
+gone.
+
+"This is indeed a transformation," he said, coming forward.  "Your
+disguise was perfect.  I should never have known you for the youth I
+parted from ten minutes ago."
+
+"I can never thank you sufficiently, Sir Everard.  Ah, if you knew how
+I abhorred myself in that hateful disguise!  Nothing earthly will ever
+induce me to put it on again."
+
+"I trust not," he said, gravely; "let us hope it may never be
+necessary.  You are safe here, Miss Silver, from the tyranny of your
+uncle and cousin.  The friendless and unprotected shall never be turned
+from Kingsland Court."
+
+She took his hand and lifted it to her lips, and once more the luminous
+eyes were swimming in tears.
+
+"I would thank you if I could, Sir Everard," the sweet voice murmured:
+"but you overpower me!  Your goodness is beyond thanks."
+
+A footstep on the marble stair made itself unpleasantly audible at this
+interesting crisis.  Miss Silver dropped the baronet's hand with a wild
+instinct of flight in her great black eyes.
+
+"Return to your room," Sir Everard whispered.  "Lock the door, and
+remain there until I apprise my mother of your presence here and
+prepare her to receive you.  Quick!  I don't want these prying prigs of
+servants to find you here."
+
+She vanished like a flash.
+
+Sir Everard walked down-stairs, and passed his own valet sleepily
+ascending.
+
+"I beg your parding, Sir Heverard," said the valet; "but we was all
+very anxious about you.  Sir Galahad came galloping home riderless,
+and--"
+
+"That will do, Edward.  You did not disturb Lady Kingsland?"
+
+"No, Sir Heverard."
+
+Sir Everard passed abruptly on and sought the stables at once.  Sir
+Galahad was there, undergoing his morning toilet, and greeted his
+master with a loud neigh of delight.
+
+The young baronet dawdled away the lagging morning hours, smoking
+endless cigars under the waving trees, and waiting for the time when my
+lady should be visible.  She rarely rose before noon, but to-day she
+deigned to get up at nine.  Sir Everard flung away his last cigar, and
+went bounding up the grand stairs three at a time.
+
+Lady Kingsland sat breakfasting in her boudoir with her daughter--a
+charming little bijou of a room, all filigree work, and fluted walls,
+delicious little Greuze paintings, and flowers and perfume--and Lady
+Kingsland, in an exquisitely becoming robe de matin, at five-and-fifty
+looked fair and handsome, and scarce middle-aged yet.  Time, that deals
+so gallantly with these blonde beauties, had just thinned the fair hair
+at the parting, and planted dainty crow's-feet about the patrician
+mouth, but left no thread of silver under the pretty Parisian lace cap.
+
+Mildred Kingsland, opposite her mother, scarcely bore her thirty years
+so gracefully.  She had had her little romance, and it had been
+incontinently nipped in the bud by imperious mamma, and she had
+dutifully yielded, with the pain sharp in her heart all the same.  But
+he was poor, and Mildred was weak, and so Lady Kingsland's only
+daughter glided uncomplainingly into old-maidenhood.
+
+My lady glanced over her shoulder, and greeted her son with a bright,
+loving smile.  He was her darling and her pride--her earthly idol--the
+last of the Kingslands.
+
+"Good-morning, Everard!  I thought you would have done Mildred and
+myself the honor of breakfasting with us.  Perhaps it is not too late
+yet.  May I offer you a cup of chocolate?"
+
+"Not at all too late, mother mine.  I accept your offer and your
+chocolate on the spot.  Milly, good-morning!  You are white as your
+dress!  What is the matter?"
+
+"Mildred is fading away to a shadow of late," his mother said.  "I must
+take her to the sea-shore for change."
+
+"When?" asked Sir Everard.
+
+"Let me see.  Ah! when you are married, I think.  What time did you
+come home last night, and how is Lady Louise?"
+
+"Lady Louise is very well.  My good mother"--half laughing--"are you
+very anxious for a daughter-in-law at Kingsland to quarrel with?"
+
+"I shall not quarrel with Lady Louise."
+
+"Then, willy-nilly, it must be Lord Carteret's daughter, and no other?"
+
+"Everard," his mother said, earnestly, "you know I have set my heart on
+seeing Lady Louise your wife; and she loves you, I know.  And you, my
+darling Everard--you will not disappoint me?"
+
+"I should be an ungrateful wretch if I did!  Rest easy, _ma mere_--Lady
+Louise shall become Lady Kingsland, or the fault shall not be mine.  I
+believed I should have asked the momentous little question last night
+but for that interloper, George Grosvenor!"
+
+"Ah! jealous, of course.  He is always _de trop_, that great, stupid
+George," my lady said.  "And was the dinner-party agreeable; and what
+time did you get home?"
+
+"The dinner-party was delightful, and I came home shortly after
+midnight.  What time Sir Galahad arrived I can't say--half an hour
+before I did, at least."
+
+Lady Kingsland looked inquiringly.
+
+"Did you not ride Sir Galahad?"
+
+"Yes, until I was torn from the saddle!  My dear mother, I met with an
+adventure last night, and you had like never to see your precious son
+again."
+
+"Everard!"
+
+"Quite true.  But for the direct interposition of Providence, in the
+shape of a handsome lad in velveteen, who shot my assailant, I would be
+lying now in Brithlow Wood yonder, as dead as any Kingsland in the
+family vault."
+
+And then, while Lady Kingsland gazed at him breathlessly, Sir Everard
+related his midnight adventure.
+
+"Good heavens!" my lady cried, clasping him in her arms.  "Oh, to think
+what might have happened!  My boy--my boy!"
+
+"Very true, mother; but a miss is as good as a mile, you know.
+Poetical justice befell my assailant; and here I am safe and sound,
+sipping chocolate."
+
+"And the preserver of your life, Everard--where is he?"
+
+"Upstairs, waiting like patience on a monument; and by the same token,
+fasting all this time!  But it isn't a he, _ma mere_; it's a she."
+
+"What?"
+
+Sir Everard laughed.
+
+"Such a mystified face, mother!  Oh; it's highly sensational and
+melodramatic, I promise you!  Sit down and hear the sequel."
+
+And then, eloquently and persuasively, Sir Everard repeated Miss
+Sybilla Silver's extraordinary story, and Lady Kingsland was properly
+shocked.
+
+"Disguised herself in men's clothes!  My dear Everard, what a dreadful
+creature she must be!"
+
+"Not at all dreadful, mother.  She is as sensitive and womanly a young
+lady as ever I saw in my life.  And, she's a very pretty girl, too."
+
+Lady Kingsland looked suspiciously at her son.  She highly disapproved
+of pretty girls where he was concerned; but the handsome face was frank
+and open as the day.
+
+"Now don't be suspicious, Lady Kingsland.  I'm not going to fall in
+love with Miss Sybilla Silver, I give you my word and honor.  She saved
+my life, remember.  May I not fetch her here?"
+
+"What! in men's clothes, and before your sister?  Everard, how dare
+you?"
+
+Sir Everard broke into a peal of boyish laughter that made the room
+ring.
+
+"I don't believe she's in men's clothes!" exclaimed Mildred, suddenly.
+"Honorine told me robbers must have been in my dressing-room last
+night--half my things were stolen.  I understand it now--Everard was
+the robber."
+
+"I am going for her, mother.  Remember she is friendless, and that she
+saved your son's life."
+
+He quitted the room with the last word.  That claim, he knew, was one
+his mother would never repudiate.
+
+"Oh!" she said, lying back in her chair pale and faint, "to think what
+might have happened!"
+
+As she spoke her son re-entered the room, and by his side a young
+lady--so stately, so majestic in her dark beauty, that involuntarily
+the mother and daughter arose.
+
+"My mother, this young lady saved my life.  Try and thank her for me.
+Lady Kingsland, Miss Silver."
+
+Surely some subtle power of fascination invested this dark daughter of
+the earth.  The liquid dark eyes lifted themselves in mute appeal to
+the great lady's face, and then the proudest woman in England opened
+her arms with a sudden impulse and took the outcast to her bosom.
+
+"I can never thank you," she murmured.  "The service you have rendered
+me is beyond all words."
+
+An hour later Sybilla went slowly back to her room.  She had
+breakfasted _tete-a-tete_ with my lady and her daughter, while Sir
+Everard, in scarlet coat and cord and tops, had mounted his bonny bay
+and ridden off to Lady Louise and the fox-hunt, and to his fate, though
+he knew it not.
+
+"Really, Mildred," my lady said, "a most delightful young person,
+truly.  Do you know, if she does not succeed in finding her friends I
+should like to retain her as a companion?"
+
+In her own room Sybilla Silver stood before the glass, and she smiled
+back at her own image.
+
+"So, my lady," she said, "you walk into the trap with your eyes open,
+too--you who are old enough to know better?  My handsome face and black
+eyes and smooth tongue stand me in their usual good stead.  And I saved
+Sir Everard Kingsland's life!  Poor fools!  A thousand times better for
+you all if I had let that midnight assassin shoot him down like a dog!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A SHAFT FROM CUPID'S QUIVER.
+
+It was fully ten o'clock, and the hunting-party were ready to start,
+when Sir Everard Kingsland joined them, looking handsome and happy as a
+young prince in his very becoming hunting costume.
+
+Of course the young baronet's first look was for Lady Louise--he
+scarcely glanced at the rest.  She was just being assisted into the
+saddle by the devoted George Grosvenor, but she turned to Sir Everard
+and graciously held out her gauntleted hand.
+
+"Once more," she said, "almost late.  Laggard!  I shall quarrel with
+you one of these days if you do not learn to be more punctual."
+
+"You will never have to reproach me again," he said.  "Had I known you
+would have honored my absence by a thought, you should not have had to
+reproach me now."
+
+"Very pretty, indeed, Sir Everard.  But don't waste your time paying
+compliments this morning.  Thanks, Mr. Grosvenor; that will do.  For
+whom are you looking, Sir Everard?  Lady Carteret?  Oh, she is going to
+see as much of the fun as she can from the carriage, with some other
+ladies.  Miss Hunsden and myself are the only ones who intend to ride.
+By the way, I hope Sir Galahad will uphold his master's reputation
+to-day.  He must do his very best, or Whirlwind will beat him."
+
+At that instant a red-coated young gentleman joined them, in an evident
+state of excitement.
+
+"I say, Kingsland, who's that girl on the splendid roan?  She sits
+superbly, and is stunningly handsome besides.  I beg your pardon, Lady
+Louise--perhaps you know."
+
+"Lord Ernest Strathmore is excited on the subject.  That young lady is
+Miss Harriet Hunsden.  Don't lose your head, my lord.  One gentleman
+possesses that heart, and all the rest of you may sigh in vain."
+
+"Indeed!  And who is the fortunate possessor?"
+
+"Captain Hunsden, her father."
+
+At the first mention of her name Sir Everard Kingsland had turned
+sharply around and beheld--his fate.  But he did not know it.  He only
+saw a handsome, spirited-looking girl, sitting a magnificent roan horse
+as easily as if it had been an arm-chair, and talking animatedly to a
+stalwart soldierly man with white hair and mustache.
+
+As he glanced away from his prolonged stare he met the piercing gaze of
+Lady Louise's turquoise-blue eyes.
+
+"_Et tu, Brute_?" she cried gayly.  "Oh, my prophetic soul!  Did I not
+warn you, Sir Everard?  Did I not foretell that the dashing damsel in
+the scarlet habit would play the mischief with your fox-hunting hearts?
+No, no! never deny the soft impeachment!  But I tell you, as I told
+Lord Ernest, it is of no use.  She is but seventeen, and 'ower young to
+marry yet.'"
+
+Before Sir Everard could retort, the cry of "Here they come!"
+proclaimed the arrival of the hounds.
+
+The hounds were put into the gorse, and the red-coats began to move out
+of the field into the lane, Sir Everard and Lady Louise with them.
+
+A loud "Halloo!" rang through the air; the hounds came with a rushing
+roar over a fence.
+
+"There he is!" cried a chorus of voices, as the fox flew over the
+ground.
+
+And at the same instant Whirlwind tore by like its namesake, with the
+handsome girl upright as a dart.  Away went Sir Galahad, side by side
+with the roan.  Lady Louise and her sedate nag were left hopelessly
+behind.
+
+On and on like the wind Whirlwind flew the fences, and Miss Hunsden sat
+in her saddle like a queen on her throne.
+
+The young baronet, even in the fierce heat of the hunt, could see the
+beautiful glowing face, the flashing gray eyes, and the lances of light
+flickering in the gold-brown hair.  Side by side Sir Galahad and
+Whirlwind darted to the end of the fourth inclosure.
+
+Then came a change--a wall of black, heavy thorn rose ahead, which no
+one was mad enough to face.
+
+The baronet pulled his bay violently to the right and looked to see the
+dashing huntress follow.  But, no; the blood of Miss Hunsden and the
+"red-roan steed" was up, and straight they went at that awful pace.
+
+"For God's sake, Miss Hunsden!" cried the voice of Lord Ernest
+Strathmore, "don't try that!"
+
+But he might as well have spoken to the cataract of Niagara.  With a
+tremendous rush Whirlwind charged the place.  There was a horrible
+crash--another--and a plunge downward.
+
+Sir Everard turned sick with horror; but Whirlwind settled into his
+stride, and the girl recovered her balance in the very instant, and
+away again like the wind.
+
+"Splendidly done, by Jove!" cried Lord Ernest.  "I never saw a lady
+ride before like that in all my life."
+
+Sir Everard dashed on.  His horse was on his mettle; but, do what he
+would, the slender, girlish figure, and superb roan kept ahead.
+Whirlwind took hedges and ditches before him, disdaining to turn to the
+right or left, and after a sharp run of an hour, Miss Hunsden had the
+glory and happiness of being one of the few up at the finish in time to
+see the fox, quite dead, held over the huntsman's head, with the hounds
+hanging expectant around.
+
+Every eye turned upon the heroine of the hour, and loud were the
+canticles chanted in her honor.  The master of the hounds himself rode
+up, all aglow with admiration.
+
+"Miss Hunsden," he said, "I never in all my life saw a lady ride as you
+rode to-day.  There are not half a dozen men in Devonshire who would
+have faced those fences as you did.  I sincerely hope you will
+frequently honor our field by your presence and matchless riding."
+
+Miss Hunsden bowed easily and smiled.
+
+And then her father came up, his soldierly old face aglow.
+
+"Harrie, my dear, I am proud of you!  You led us all to-day.  I
+wouldn't have taken that nasty place myself, and I didn't believe even
+Whirlwind could do it."
+
+Then George Grosvenor and Lord Ernest and the rest of the men crowded
+around, and compliments poured in in a deluge.
+
+Sir Everard held himself aloof--disgusted, nauseated--or so he told
+himself.
+
+"Such an unwomanly exhibition!  Such a daring, masculine leap!  And see
+how she sits and smiles on those empty-headed fox-hunters, like an
+Amazonian queen in her court!  How different from Lady Louise!  And
+yet! good heavens! how royally beautiful she is!"
+
+"Alone, Kingsland?" exclaimed a voice at his elbow; and glancing around
+he saw Lord Carteret.  "What do you think of our pretty Di Vernon?  You
+don't often see a lady ride like that.  Why don't you pay your
+respects?  Don't know her, eh?  Come alone; I'll present you."
+
+Sir Everard's heart gave a sudden plunge, quite unaccountably.  Without
+a word he rode up to where the gray-eyed enchantress held her magic
+circle.
+
+"Harrie, my dear," said the elderly nobleman, "I bring a worshiper who
+hovers aloof and gazes in speechless admiration.  Let me present my
+young friend, Sir Everard Kingsland, Miss Hunsden."
+
+Sir Everard took off his hat, and bent to his saddle-bow.
+
+"Sir Everard Kingsland!" cried Captain Hunsden, cordially.  "Son of my
+old friend, Sir Jasper, I'll be sworn!  My dear boy, how are you?  I
+knew your father well.  We were at Rugby together, and sworn
+companions.  Harrie, this is the son of my oldest friend."
+
+"Papa's friends are all mine!"
+
+The voice was clear and sweet as the beaming eyes.  She held out her
+hand with a frank grace, and Sir Everard took it, its light touch
+thrilling to the core of his heart.
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland rode back to Carteret Park beside the Indian
+officer and his daughter as a man might ride in a trance.  Surely
+within an hour the whole world had been changed!  He rode on air
+instead of solid soil, and the sunshine of heaven was not half so
+brilliant as Harriet Hunsden's smile.
+
+"Confess now, Sir Everard," she said, "you were shocked and
+scandalized.  I saw it in your face.  Oh, don't deny it, and don't tell
+polite fibs!  I always shock people, and rather enjoy it than
+otherwise."
+
+"Harriet!" her father said, reprovingly.  "She is a spoiled madcap, Sir
+Everard, and I am afraid the fault is mine.  She has been everywhere
+with me in her seventeen years of life--freezing amid the snows of
+Canada and grilling alive under the broiling sun of India.  And the
+result is--what you see."
+
+"The result is--perfection!"
+
+"Papa," Miss Hunsden said, turning her sparkling face to her father,
+"for Sir Everard's sake, pray change the subject.  If you talk of me,
+he will feel in duty bound to pay compliments; and really, after such a
+fast run, it is too much to expect of any man.  There!  I see Lady
+Louise across the brook yonder.  I will leave you gentlemen to
+cultivate one another.  _Allons, messieurs_!"
+
+One fleeting, backward glance of the bewitching face, a saucy smile and
+a wave of the hand, and Whirlwind had leaped across the brook and
+ambled on beside the sober charger of Lady Louise.
+
+"Every one has been talking of your riding, Miss Hunsden," Lady Louise
+said.  "I am nearly beside myself with envy.  Lord Ernest Strathmore
+says you are the most graceful equestrienne he ever saw."
+
+"His lordship is very good.  I wish I could return the compliment, but
+his chestnut balked shamefully, and came home dead beat!"
+
+Lord Ernest was within hearing distance of the clear, girlish voice,
+but he only laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"As you are strong, be merciful, Miss Hunsden.  We can't all perform
+miracles on horseback, you know.  I came an awful cropper at that ugly
+hedge, to be sure, and your red horse went over me like a blaze of
+lightning!  You owe me some atonement, and--of course you are going to
+the ball to-night?"
+
+"Of course!  I like balls even better than hunting."
+
+"And she dances better than she rides," put in her father, coming up.
+
+"She is perfection in everything she undertakes, I am certain," Lord
+Ernest said, "and for that atonement I speak of, Miss Hunsden, I claim
+the first waltz."
+
+They rode together to Carteret Park.  Sir Everard had the privilege of
+assisting her to dismount.
+
+"You must be fatigued, Miss Hunsden," he said.  "With a ball in
+prospective, after your hard gallop, I should recommend a long rest."
+
+"Sir Everard, I don't know the meaning of that word 'fatigue.'  I never
+was tired in my life, and I am ready for the ball to-night, and a
+steeple-chase to-morrow."
+
+She tripped off as she spoke, with a mischievous glance.  She wanted to
+shock him, and she succeeded.
+
+"Poor girl!" he thought, as he slowly turned homeward, "she is really
+dreadful.  She never had a mother, I suppose, and wandering over the
+world with her father has made her a perfect savage.  She is truly to
+be pitied--so exceedingly beautiful as she is, too!"
+
+Sir Everard certainly was very sorry for that hoidenish Miss Hunsden.
+He thought of her while dressing for dinner, and he talked of her all
+through that meal "more in sorrow than in anger."
+
+Sybilla Silver, quite like one of the family already, listened with
+greedy ears and eager black eyes.
+
+"You ought to call, mother," the baronet said, "you and Mildred.
+Common politeness requires it, Captain Hunsden was my father's most
+intimate friend, and this wild girl stands sadly in need of some
+matronly adviser."
+
+"I remember Captain Hunsden," Lady Kingsland said, thoughtfully, "and I
+remember this girl, too, when she was a child of three or four years.
+He was a very handsome man, I recollect, and he married away in Canada
+or the United States.  There was some mystery about that
+marriage--something vague and unpleasant--no one knew what.  She ought
+to be pretty, this daughter."
+
+"Pretty!" Sir Everard exclaimed; "she is beautiful as an angel!  I
+never saw such eyes or such a smile in the whole course of my life."
+
+"Indeed!" his mother said, coldly--"indeed!  Not even excepting Lady
+Louise's?"
+
+"Oh, Lady Louise is altogether different!  I didn't mean any
+comparison.  But you will see her to-night at Lady Carteret's ball, and
+can judge for yourself.  She is a mere child--sixteen or seventeen, I
+believe."
+
+"And Lady Louise is five-and-twenty," said Mildred, with awful accuracy.
+
+"She does not look twenty!" exclaimed my lady, sharply.  "There are few
+young ladies nowadays half so elegant and graceful as Lady Louise."
+
+Miss Silver's large black eyes glided from one to the other with a
+sinister smile in their shining depths.  Her soft voice broke in at
+this jarring juncture and sweetly turned the disturbed current of
+conversation, and Sir Everard understood, and gave her a grateful
+glance.
+
+The young baronet had gone to many balls in his lifetime, but never had
+he been so painfully particular before.  He drove Edward, his valet, to
+the verge of madness with his whims, and left off at last in sheer
+desperation and altogether dissatisfied with the result.
+
+"I look like a guy, I know," he muttered, angrily, "and that pert
+little Hunsden is just the sort of girl to make satirical comments on a
+man if his neck-tie is awry or his hair unbecoming.  Not that I care
+what she says; but one hates to feel he is a laughing-stock."
+
+The ball-room was brilliant with lights, and music, and flowers, and
+diamonds, and beautiful faces, and magnificent toilets when the
+Kingsland party entered.
+
+Lady Carteret, in velvet robes, stood receiving her guests.  Lady
+Louise, with white azaleas in her hair and dress, stood stately and
+graceful, looking from tip to toe what she was the descendant of a race
+of "highly-wed, highly-fed, highly-bred" aristocrats.
+
+But at neither of them Sir Everard glanced twice.  His eyes wandered
+around and lighted at last on a divinity in a cloud of misty white,
+crowned with dark-green ivy leaves aglitter with diamond drops.
+
+While he gazed, Lord Ernest Strathmore came up, said something, and
+whirled her off in the waltz.  Away they flew.  Lord Ernest waltzed to
+perfection, and she--a French woman or a fairy only could float like
+that.
+
+A fierce, jealous pang griped his heart; a second, and they were out of
+sight.  Sir Everard roused himself from his trance and went up to his
+hostess to pay his respects.
+
+"Ah!" Lady Carteret said, a little spitefully, "the spell is broken at
+last!  There was no mistaking that look, Sir Everard!  My dear Lady
+Kingsland"--laughing, but malicious still--"take care of your son.  I'm
+afraid he's going to fall in love."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"FOR LOVE WILL STILL BE LORD OF ALL."
+
+My Lady Carteret's ball was a brilliant success, and, fairest where all
+were fair, Harrie Hunsden shone down all competitors.  As she floated
+down the long ball-room on the arm of Lord Ernest, light as a
+swimming-sprite, a hundred admiring male eyes followed, and a hundred
+fair patrician bosoms throbbed with bitterest envy.
+
+"The little Hunsden is in full feather to-night," lisped George
+Grosvenor, coming up with his adored Lady Louise on his arm.  "There is
+nothing half so beautiful in the room, with one exception.  And only
+look at Kingsland!  Oh, he's done for, to a dead certainty!"
+
+Sir Everard started up rather confusedly.  He had been leaning against
+a pillar, gazing after the divinity in the ivy crown, with his heart in
+his eyes, and Lady Louise was the last person in the universe he had
+been thinking of.
+
+"We are losing our waltz, Mr. Grosvenor," she said, frigidly, "and we
+are disturbing Sir Everard Kingsland.  The 'Guards' Waltz' is a great
+deal too delightful to be missed."
+
+"I fancied the first waltz was to be mine, Lady Louise," Sir Everard
+said, with an awful sense of guilt.
+
+Lady Louise's blue eyes flashed fire.
+
+"With Miss Hunsden, perhaps--certainly not with me.  Come, Mr.
+Grosvenor."
+
+It was the first spiteful shaft Lady Louise had ever condescended to
+launch, and she bit her lip angrily an instant after, as George whirled
+her away.
+
+"Idiot that I am," she thought, "to show him I can stoop to be
+piqued--to show him I can be jealous--to show him I care for him like
+this!  He will get to fancy I love him next, and he--he has had neither
+eyes nor ears for any one else since he saw Harrie Hunsden this
+morning."
+
+A sharp, quick pain pierced the proud breast of the earl's daughter,
+for she did love him, and she knew it--as much as it was in her
+lymphatic nature to love at all.
+
+"I will never forgive him--never!" her white teeth clinched.  "The
+dastard--to play the devoted to me, and then desert me at the first
+sight of a madcap on horseback.  I will never stoop to say one civil
+word to him again."
+
+Lady Louise kept her vow.  Sir Everard, penitent and remorseful, strove
+to make his peace in vain.
+
+Lord Carteret's daughter listened icily, sent barbed shafts tipped with
+poison from her tongue in reply, danced with him once, and steadily
+refused to dance again.
+
+Sir Everard gave it up and went in search of Miss Hunsden, and was
+accepted by that young lady for a redowa.
+
+"I thought you would have asked me ages ago," said Harrie, with
+delicious frankness.  "I saw you were a good dancer, and that is more
+than I can say for any other gentleman present, except Lord Ernest.
+Ah, Lord Ernest can waltz!  It is the height of ball-room bliss to be
+his partner.  But you stayed away to quarrel with Lady Louise, I
+suppose?"
+
+"I have not been quarreling with Lady Louise," replied, Sir Everard,
+feeling guiltily conscious all the same.
+
+"No?  It looked like it, then.  She snubs you in the most merciless
+manner, and you--oh, what a penitent face you wore the last time you
+approached her!  I thought she was a great deal too uplifted for
+flirting, but what do you call that with George Grosvenor?"
+
+"George Grosvenor is a very old friend.  Here is our redowa, Miss
+Hunsden.  Never mind Lady Louise."
+
+His arm encircled her waist, and away they flew.  Sir Everard could
+dance as well as Lord Ernest, and quite as many admiring eyes followed
+him and the bright little belle of the ball.  Mr. Grosvenor pulled his
+tawny mustache with inward delight.
+
+"Handsome couple, eh, Carteret?" he said to his host; "it is an evident
+case of spoons there.  Well, the boy is only two-and-twenty, and at
+that age we all lost our heads easily."
+
+Two angry red spots, quite foreign to her usual complexion, burned on
+Lady Louise's fair cheeks.  She turned abruptly away and left the
+gentlemen.
+
+"Little Harrie is pretty enough to excuse an older man losing his
+head," Lord Carteret answered; "but it would not suit Lady Kingsland's
+book at all.  The Hunsden is poorer than a church-mouse, and though of
+one of our best old-country families, the pedigree bears no proportion
+to my lady's pride.  A duke's daughter, in her estimation, would be
+none too good for her darling son."
+
+Mr. Grosvenor smiled satirically.
+
+"She is a wonderful woman--my lady--but I fancy she is matched at last.
+If Kingsland sets his heart on this latest fancy, all the powers of
+earth and Hades will not move him.  Do you recollect that little affair
+of Miss Kingsland and poor Douglas of the --th?  My lady put a stop to
+that, and he was shot, poor fellow, before Balaklava.  But the son and
+heir is quite another story.  Apropos, I must ask little Mildred to
+dance.  _Adio_, Carteret!"
+
+The ball whirled on--the hours went by like bright, swift flashes, and,
+from the moment of the redowa, to Sir Everard Kingsland it was one
+brief, intoxicating dream of delirium.  My Lady Kingsland's maternal
+frowns, my Lady Louise's imperial scorn--all were forgotten.  She was a
+madcap and a hoiden--a wild, hare-brained, fox-hunting Amazon--all that
+was shocking and unwomanly, but, at the same time, all that was bright,
+beautiful, entrancing, irresistible.  His golden-haired ideal, with the
+azure eyes and seraphic smile was forgotten, and this gray-eyed
+enchantress, robed in white, crowned with ivy, dancing desperately the
+whole night long, set brain and heart reeling in the mad tarantella of
+love.
+
+It was over at last.  The gray and dismal dawn of the November morning
+stole chilly through the curtained casements.  A half-blown rose from
+Miss Hunsden's bouquet bloomed in Sir Everard's button-hole, and it was
+Sir Everard's blissful privilege to fold Miss Hunsden's furred mantle
+around those pearly shoulders.
+
+The bleak morning breeze blew her perfumed hair across his eyes, as she
+leaned on his arm and he handed her into the carriage.
+
+"We shall expect to see you at Hunsden Hall," the Indian officer said,
+heartily.  "Your father's son, Sir Everard, will ever be a most welcome
+guest."
+
+"Yes," said Harrie, coquettishly; "come and inquire how my health is
+after dancing all night.  Etiquette demands that much, and I'm a great
+stickler for etiquette."
+
+"Sir Everard would never have discovered it, I am certain, my dear, if
+you had not told him."
+
+"A thousand thanks!  I shall only be too delighted to avail myself of
+both invitations."
+
+Sir Everard went home to Kingsland Court as he never had gone home
+before.  The whole world was _couleur de rose_--the bleak November
+morning and the desolate high-road--sweeter, brighter than the Elysian
+Fields.
+
+How beautiful she was! how the starry eyes had flashed!  how the rosy
+lips had smiled!  Half the men at the ball were in love with her, he
+knew; and she--she had danced twice with him, all night, for once with
+any one else.
+
+It was a very silent drive.  Lady Kingsland sat back among her wraps in
+displeased silence; Mildred never talked much, and the young baronet
+was lost in blissful ecstasy a great deal too deep for words.  He could
+not even see his mother was angry--he never gave one poor thought to
+Lady Louise.  The whole world was bounded by Harriet Hunsden.
+
+Sybilla Silver was up and waiting.  A bright fire, a cheery cup of tea,
+and a smiling face greeted her ladyship.
+
+"Really, Miss Silver," she said, languidly, "this is very thoughtful of
+you.  Where is my maid?"
+
+"Asleep, my lady.  Pray let me fulfill her duties this once.  I hope
+you enjoyed the ball?"
+
+"I never enjoyed a ball less in my life.  Pray make haste--I am in no
+mood for talking."
+
+Sybilla's swift, deft fingers disrobed the moody lady, loosened the
+elaborate structure of hair, brushed it out, and all the while she sat
+frowning angrily at the fire.
+
+"There was a young lady at the hall--a Miss Hunsden," she said, at
+last, breaking out in spite of herself--"and the exhibition she made
+was perfectly disgraceful.  Miss Silver, if you see my son before I get
+up to-day, tell him I wish particularly for his company at breakfast."
+
+"Yes, my lady," Miss Silver said, docilely; and my lady did not see the
+smile that faded with the words.
+
+She understood it perfectly.  Sir Everard had broken from the maternal
+apron-string, deserted the standard of Lady Louise, and gone over to
+"bold, odious" Miss Hunsden.
+
+Sybilla dutifully delivered the message the first time she met the
+baronet.  A groom was holding Sir Galahad, and his master was just
+vaulting into the saddle.  He turned away from the dark face and sweet
+voice.
+
+"It is impossible this morning," he said.  "Tell Lady Kingsland I shall
+meet her at dinner."
+
+He rode away as he spoke, with the sudden consciousness that it was the
+first time he and that devoted mother had ever clashed.  Thinking of
+her, he thought of her favorite.
+
+"She wants to read me a tirade, I suppose, about her pet, Lady Louise,"
+he said to himself.  "They would badger me into marrying her if they
+could.  I never cared two straws for the daughter of Earl Carteret; she
+is frightfully _passee_, and she's three years older than I am.  I am
+glad I did not commit myself to please my mother."
+
+Sir Everard reached Hunsden Hall in time for luncheon.  The old place
+looked deserted and ruined.  The half-pay Indian officer's poverty was
+visible everywhere--in the time-worn furniture, the neglected grounds,
+the empty stables, and the meager staff of old-time servants.
+
+"Captain Hunsden is so poor that he will be glad to marry his daughter
+to the first rich man who asks her.  The Hunsden estate is strictly
+entailed to the next male heir; he has only his pay, and she will be
+left literally a beggar at his death."
+
+His eyes flashed triumphantly at the thought.  Harrie Hunsden stood in
+the sunshine on the lawn, with half a score of dogs, big and little,
+bouncing around her, more lovely, it seemed to the infatuated young
+baronet, in her simple home-dress, than ever.  No trace of yesterday's
+fatiguing hunt, or last night's fatiguing dancing, was visible in that
+radiant face.
+
+But just at that instant Captain Hunsden advanced to meet him, with
+Lord Ernest Strathmore by his side.
+
+"What brings that idiot here?" Sir Everard thought.  "How absurdly
+early he must have ridden over!"
+
+He turned to Miss Hunsden and uttered the polite common-place proper
+for the occasion.
+
+"I told you I never was fatigued," the young lady said, playing with
+her dogs, and sublimely at her ease.  "I am ready for a second hunt
+to-day, and a ball to-night, and a picnic the day after.  I should have
+been a boy.  It's perfectly absurd, my being a ridiculous girl, when I
+feel as if I could lead a forlorn hope, or, like Alexander, conquer a
+world.  Come to luncheon."
+
+"Conquer a world--come to luncheon?  A pretty brace of subjects!" said
+her father.
+
+"Miss Hunsden is quite capable of conquering a world without having
+been born anything so horrid as a boy," said Lord Ernest.  "There are
+bloodless conquests, wherein the conquerors of the world are conquered
+themselves."
+
+The baronet scowled.  Miss Hunsden retorted saucily.  She and Lord
+Ernest kept up a brilliant wordy war.
+
+He sat like a silent fool--like an imbecile, he said to himself,
+glowering malignantly.  He was madly in love, and he was furiously
+jealous.  What business had this ginger-whiskered young lordling
+interloping here?  And how disgustingly self-assured and at home he
+was!  He tried to talk to the captain, but it was a miserable failure.
+
+It was a relief when a servant entered with the mailbag.
+
+"The mail reaches us late," Captain Hunsden said, as he opened it.  "I
+like my letters with my breakfast."
+
+"Any for me, papa?" Harriet asked.
+
+"One--from your governess in Paris, I think--and half a dozen for me."
+
+He glanced carelessly at the superscriptions as he laid them down.  But
+as he took the last he uttered a low cry; his face turned livid: he
+stared at it as if it had turned into a death's-head in his hand.
+
+"Oh, papa--"
+
+She stopped in a sort of breathless affright.
+
+Captain Hunsden rose up.  He made no apology.  He walked to a window
+and tore open his letter with passionate haste.
+
+His daughter still stood--pale, breathless.
+
+Suddenly, with a hoarse, dreadful cry, he flung the letter from him,
+staggered blindly, and fell down in a fit.
+
+A girl's shrill scream pierced the air.  She sprung forward, thrust the
+letter into her bosom, knelt beside her father, and lifted his head.
+His face was dark purple, the blood oozed in trickling streams from his
+mouth and nostrils.
+
+All was confusion.  They bore him to his room; a servant was dispatched
+in mad haste for a doctor.  Harriet bent over him, white as death.  The
+two young men waited, pale, alarmed, confounded.
+
+It was an hour before the doctor came--another before he left the sick
+man's room.  As he departed, Harriet Hunsden glided into the apartment
+where the young men waited, white as a spirit.
+
+"He is out of danger; he is asleep.  Pray leave us now.  To-morrow he
+will be himself again."
+
+It was quite evident that she was used to these attacks.  The young men
+bowed respectfully and departed.
+
+Sir Everard was in little humor, as he went slowly and moodily
+homeward, for his mother's lecture.
+
+"There is some secret in Captain Hunsden's life," he thought, "and his
+daughter shares it.  Some secret, perhaps, of shame and disgrace--some
+bar sinister in their shield; and, good heavens!  I am mad enough to
+love her--I, a Kingsland, of Kingsland, whose name and escutcheon are
+without a blot!  What do I know of her antecedents or his?  My mother
+spoke of some mystery in his past life; and there is a look of settled
+gloom in his face that nothing seems able to remove.  Lord Ernest
+Strathmore, too--he must come to complicate matters.  She is the most
+glorious creature the sun shines on; and if I don't ask her to be my
+wife, she will be my Lady Strathmore before the moon wanes!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+MISS HUNSDEN SAYS "NO."
+
+Sir Everard found his mother primed and loaded; but she nursed her
+wrath throughout dinner, and it was not until they were in the
+drawing-room alone that she went off.  He was so moodily _distrait_ all
+through the meal that he never saw the volcano smoldering, and the
+Vesuvian eruption took him altogether by surprise.
+
+"Your conduct has been disgraceful!" Lady Kingsland passionately
+cried--"unworthy of a man of honor!  You pay Lady Louise every
+attention; you make love to her in the most _prononce_ manner, and at
+the eleventh hour you desert her for this forward little barbarian."
+
+Sir Everard opened his eyes in cool surprise.
+
+"My dear mother, you mistake," he said, with perfect _sang froid_.
+"Lady Louise made love to me!"
+
+"Everard!"
+
+Her voice absolutely choked with rage.
+
+"It sounds conceited and foppish, I know," pursued the young gentleman;
+"but you force me to it in self-defense.  I never made love to Lady
+Louise, as Lady Louise can tell you, if you choose to ask."
+
+"You never asked her in so many words, perhaps, to be your wife.  Short
+of that, you have left nothing undone."
+
+Sir Everard thought of the dinner-party, of the moonlit balcony, of
+George Grosvenor, and was guiltily silent.
+
+"Providence must have sent him," he thought, "to save me in the last
+supreme moment.  Pledged to Lady Louise, and madly in love with Harriet
+Hunsden, I should blow out my brains before sunset!"
+
+"You are silent," pursued his mother.  "Your guilty conscience will not
+let you answer.  You told me yourself, only two days ago, that but for
+George Grosvenor you would have asked her to be your wife."
+
+"Quite true," responded her son: "but who knows what a day may bring
+forth?  Two days ago I was willing to marry Lady Louise--to ask her, at
+least.  Now, not all the wealth of the Indies, not the crown of the
+world could tempt me."
+
+"Good heavens!" cried my lady, goaded to the end of her patience; "only
+hear him!  Do you mean to tell me, you absurd, mad-headed boy, that in
+one day you have fallen hopelessly in love with this hare-brained,
+masculine Harriet Hunsden?"
+
+"I tell you nothing of the sort, madame; the inference is your own.
+But this I will say--I would rather marry Harriet Hunsden than any
+other woman under heaven!  Let Lady Louise take George Grosvenor.  He
+is in love with her, which I never was; and he has an earl's coronet in
+prospective, which I have not.  As for me, I have done with this
+subject at once and forever.  Even to you, my mother, I can not
+delegate my choice of a wife."
+
+"I will never receive Harriet Hunsden!" Lady Kingsland passionately
+cried.
+
+"Perhaps you will never have the opportunity.  She may prefer to become
+mistress of Strathmore Castle.  Lord Ernest is her most devoted adorer.
+I have not asked her yet.  The chances are a thousand to one she will
+refuse when I do."
+
+His mother laughed scornfully, but her eyes were ablaze.
+
+"You mean to ask her, then?"
+
+"Most assuredly."
+
+She laughed again--a bitter, mirthless laugh.
+
+"We go fast, my friend!  And you have hardly known this divinity
+four-and-twenty hours."
+
+"Love is not a plant of slow growth.  Like Jonah's gourd, it springs
+up, fully matured, in an hour."
+
+"Does it?  My son is better versed in amatory floriculture than I am.
+But before you ask Miss Hunsden to become Lady Kingsland, had you not
+better inquire who her mother was?"
+
+The baronet thought of the letter, and turned very pale.
+
+"Her mother?  I do not understand.  What of her mother?"
+
+"Only this"--Lady Kingsland arose as she spoke, her face deathly white,
+her pale eyes glittering--"the mother is a myth and a mystery.  Report
+says Captain Hunsden was married in America--no one knows where--and
+America is a wide place.  No one ever saw the wife; no one ever heard
+Miss Hunsden speak of her mother; no one ever heard of that mother's
+death.  I leave Sir Everard Kingsland to draw his own inferences."
+
+She swept from the room with a mighty rustle of silk.  A dark figure
+crouching on the rug, with its ear to the keyhole, barely had time to
+whisk behind a tall Indian cabinet as the door opened.
+
+It was Miss Sybilla Silver, who was already asserting her prerogative
+as amateur lady's-maid.
+
+My lady shut herself up in her own room for the remainder of the
+evening, too angry and mortified for words to tell.  It was the first
+quarrel she and her idolized son ever had, and the disappointment of
+all her ambitious hopes left her miserable enough.
+
+But scarcely so miserable as Sir Everard.  To be hopelessly in love on
+such short notice was bad enough; to have the dread of a rejection
+hanging over him was worse; but to have this dark mystery looming
+horribly in the horizon was worst of all.
+
+His mother's insinuations alone would not have disturbed him; but those
+insinuations, taken in unison with Captain Hunsden's mysterious illness
+of the morning, drove him nearly wild.
+
+"And I dare not even ask," he thought, "or set my doubts at rest.  Any
+inquiry from me, before proposing, would be impertinent; and after
+proposing they would be too late.  But one thing I am certain of--if I
+lose Harrie Hunsden, I shall go mad!"
+
+While he tore up and down like a caged tiger, the door softly opened
+and his sister looked in.
+
+"Alone, Everard?" she said, timidly, "I thought mamma was with you."
+
+"Mamma has just gone to her room in a blessed temper," answered her
+brother, savagely.  "Come in Milly, and help me in this horrible
+scrape, if you can."
+
+"Is it something about--Miss Hunsden?" hesitatingly.  "I thought mamma
+looked displeased at dinner."
+
+"Displeased!" exclaimed the young man, with a short laugh; "that is a
+mild way of putting it.  Mamma is inclined to play the Grand Mogul in
+my case as she did with you and poor Fred Douglas."
+
+"Oh, brother!"
+
+"Forgive me, Milly.  I'm a brute and you're an angel, if there ever was
+one on earth!  But I've been hectored and lectured, and badgered and
+bothered until I'm fairly beside myself.  She wants me to marry Lady
+Louise, and I won't marry Lady Louise if she was the last woman alive.
+Milly, who was Miss Hunsden's mother?"
+
+"Her mother?  I'm sure I don't know.  I was quite a little girl when
+Captain Hunsden was here before, and Harrie was a pretty little
+curly-haired fairy of three years.  I remember her so well.  Captain
+Hunsden dined here once or twice, and I recollect perfectly how gloomy
+and morose his manner was.  I was quite frightened at him.  You were at
+Eton then, you know."
+
+"I know!" impatiently.  "I wish to Heaven I had not been.  Boy as I
+was, I should have learned something.  Did you never hear the cause of
+the captain's gloom?"
+
+"No; papa and mamma knew nothing, and Captain Hunsden kept his own
+secrets.  They had heard of his marriage some four or five years
+before--a low marriage, it was rumored--an actress, or something
+equally objectionable.  Little Harrie knew nothing--at three years it
+was hardly likely; but she never prattled of her mother as children of
+that age usually do.  There is some mystery about Captain Hunsden's
+wife, and--pardon me--if you like Miss Hunsden, you ought to have it
+cleared up."
+
+Everard laughed--a harsh, strident laugh.
+
+"If I like Miss Hunsden, my dear little non-committal Milly.  Am I to
+go to Hunsden Hall and say to its master, 'Look here, Captain Hunsden,
+give me proofs of your marriage--tell me all about your mysterious
+wife.  You have a very handsome, high-spirited daughter, but before I
+commit myself by falling in love with her, I want to make sure there
+was no tarnish on the late Mrs. Hunsden's wedding-ring.'  Captain
+Harold Hunsden is a proud man.  How do you think he will like the style
+of that?"
+
+Mildred stood silent, looking distressed.
+
+"I wish I had married Lady Louise a month ago, and gone out of the
+country!" he burst out, vehemently.  "I wish I had never seen this
+girl.  She is everything that is objectionable--a half-civilized
+madcap--shrouded in mystery and poverty--danced over the world in a
+baggage-wagon.  I have quarreled with my mother for the first time on
+her account.  But I love her--I love her with all my heart--and I shall
+go mad or shoot myself if I don't make her my wife!"
+
+He flung himself impetuously, face downward, on the sofa.  Mildred
+stood pallid and scared in the middle of the floor.  Once he lifted his
+head and looked at her.
+
+"Go away, Milly!" he said, hoarsely.  "I'm a savage to frighten you so!
+Leave me; I shall be better alone."
+
+And Mildred, not knowing what else to do, went.
+
+Next morning, hours before Lady Kingsland was out of bed, Lady
+Kingsland's son was galloping over the breezy hills and golden downs.
+An hour's hard run, and he made straight for Hunsden Hall.
+
+Miss Hunsden was taking a constitutional up and down the terrace
+overlooking the sea, with three big dogs.  She turned round at Sir
+Everard's approach and greeted him quite cordially.
+
+"Papa is so much better this morning," she said, "that he is coming
+down to breakfast.  He is subject to these attacks, and they never last
+long.  Any exciting news overthrows him altogether."
+
+"That letter contained exciting news, then?" Sir Everard could not help
+saying.
+
+"I presume so--I did not read it.  How placid the sea looks this
+morning, aglitter in the sunlight.  And yet I have been in the middle
+of the Atlantic when the waves ran mountains high."
+
+"You are quite a heroine, Miss Hunsden, and a wonderful traveler for a
+seventeen-year-old young lady.  You see, I know your age; but at
+seventeen a young lady does not mind, I believe.  How long have you
+been in England this time?"
+
+He spoke with careless adroitness; Miss Hunsden answered, frankly
+enough:
+
+"Five months.  You were abroad, I think, at the time."
+
+"Yes.  And now you have come for good, I hope--as if Miss Hunsden could
+come for anything else."
+
+"It all depends on papa's health," replied Harriet, quietly ignoring
+the compliment.  "I should like to stay, I confess.  I am very, very
+fond of England."
+
+"Of course--as you should be of your native place."  He was firing
+nearer the target.
+
+"England is not my native place," said Harriet, calmly.  "I was born at
+Gibraltar."
+
+"At Gibraltar!  You surprise me.  Of course your mother was not a
+native of Gibraltar?"
+
+"Of course not.  My mother was an American--born and bred and married
+in New York."
+
+"I suppose you scarcely remember her?"
+
+"Scarcely," the young lady repeated, dryly; "since I never saw her."
+
+"Indeed!  She died then--"
+
+"At my birth--yes.  And now, Sir Everard"--the bright, clear eyes
+flashed suddenly full upon him--"is the catechism almost at an end?"
+
+He absolutely recoiled.  If ever guilt was written on a human face, it
+was readily written on his.
+
+"Ah!" Miss Hunsden said, scornfully, "you thought I couldn't find you
+out--you thought I couldn't see your drift.  Have a better opinion of
+my powers of penetration next time, Sir Everard.  My poor father,
+impoverished in purse, broken in health, sensitive in spirit, chooses
+to hide his wounds--chooses not to wear his heart on his sleeve for the
+Devonshire daws to peck at--chooses never to speak of his lost
+wife--and, lo! all the gossips of the country are agape for the news.
+She was an actress, was she not, Sir Everard?  And when I ride across
+the country, at the heels of the hounds, it is only the spangles, and
+glitter, and theater glare breaking out again.  I could despise it in
+others, but I did think better things of the son of my father's oldest
+friend!  Good-morning, Sir Everard."
+
+She turned proudly away.
+
+"Stay, Harriet--Miss Hunsden!  Stop--for pity's sake, stop and hear me!
+I have been presuming--impertinent.  I have deserved your rebuke."
+
+"You have," she said, haughtily.
+
+"But I asked those questions because the nameless insinuations I heard
+drove me mad--because I love you, I worship you, with all my heart and
+soul."
+
+Like an impetuous torrent the words burst out.  He actually flung
+himself on his knees before her.
+
+"My beautiful, queenly, glorious Harriet!  I love you as man never
+loved woman before!"
+
+Miss Hunsden stood aghast, staring, absolutely confounded.  For one
+instant she stood thus; then all was forgotten in her sense of the
+ludicrous.  She leaned against a tree, and set up a shout of laughter
+long and clear.
+
+"Oh, good gracious!" cried Miss Hunsden, as soon as she was able to
+speak; "who ever heard the like of this?  Sir Everard Kingsland, get
+up.  I forgive you everything for this superhuman joke.  I haven't had
+such a laugh for a month.  For goodness' sake get up, and don't be a
+goose!"
+
+The young baronet sprung to his feet, furious with mortification and
+rage.
+
+"Miss Hunsden--"
+
+"Oh, don't!" cried Harriet, in a second paroxysm.  "Don't make me
+rupture an artery.  Love me?--worship me?  Why, you ridiculous thing!
+you haven't known me two days altogether!"
+
+He turned away without speaking a word.
+
+"And then you're engaged to Lady Louise!  Every one says so, and I am
+sure it looks like it."
+
+"I am not engaged to Lady Louise."
+
+He said those words huskily, and he could say no more.
+
+Miss Hunsden tried to look grave, but her mouth twitched.  The sense of
+the ludicrous overcame her sense of decorum, and again she laughed
+until the tears stood in her eyes.
+
+"Oh, I shall die!" in a faint whisper.  "My sides ache.  I beg your
+pardon, Sir Everard; but indeed I can not help it.  It is so funny!"
+
+"So I perceive.  Good-morning, Miss Hunsden."
+
+"And now you are angry.  Why, Sir Everard!" catching for the first time
+a glimpse of his deathly white face, "I didn't think you felt like
+this.  Oh!  I beg your pardon with all my heart for laughing.  I
+believe I should laugh on the scaffold.  It's dreadfully vulgar, but it
+was born with me, I'm afraid.  Did I gallop right into your heart's
+best affections at the fox-hunt?  Why, I thought I shocked you
+dreadfully.  I know I tried to.  Won't you shake hands, Sir Everard,
+and part friends?"
+
+"Miss Hunsden will always find me her friend if she ever needs one.
+Farewell!"
+
+Again he was turning away.  He would not touch the proffered palm.  He
+was so deathly white, and his voice shook so, that the hot tears rushed
+into the impetuous Harrie's eyes.
+
+"I am so sorry," she said, with the simple humility of a little child.
+"Please forgive me, Sir Everard.  I know it was horrid of me to laugh;
+but you don't really care for me, you know.  You only think you do; and
+I--oh! I'm only a flighty little girl of seventeen, and I don't love
+anybody in the world but papa, and I never mean to be married--at
+least, not for ages to come.  Do forgive me."
+
+He bowed low, but he would neither answer nor take her hand.  He was
+far too deeply hurt.
+
+Before she could speak again he was gone.
+
+"And he's as mad as a hatter!" said Harrie, ruefully.  "Oh, dear, dear!
+what torments men are, and what a bore falling in love is!  And I liked
+him, too, better than any of them, and thought we were going to be
+brothers in arms--Damon and--what's his name?--and all that sort of
+thing!  It's of no use my ever hoping for a friend.  I shall never have
+one in this lower world, for just so sure as I get to like a person,
+that person must go and fall in love with me, and then we quarrel and
+part.  It's hard."
+
+Miss Hunsden sighed deeply, and went into the house.  And Sir Everard
+rode home as if the fiend was after him--like a man gone mad--flung the
+reins of the foaming horse to the astounded groom, rushed up to his
+room and locked himself in, and declined his luncheon and his dinner.
+
+When he came down to breakfast next morning, with a white, wild face,
+and livid rings round his eyes, he electrified the family by his abrupt
+announcement:
+
+"I start for Constantinople to-morrow.  From thence I shall make a tour
+of the East.  I will not return to England for the next three years."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+LYING IN BRITHLOW WOOD.
+
+A thunderbolt falling at your feet from a cloudless summer sky must be
+rather astounding in its unexpectedness, but no thunderbolt ever
+created half the consternation Sir Everard's fierce announcement did.
+
+"Going away!" his mother murmured--"going to Constantinople.  My dear
+Everard, you don't mean it?"
+
+"Don't I?" he said, fiercely.  "Don't I look as if I meant it?"
+
+"But what has happened?  Oh, Everard, what does all this mean?"
+
+"It means, mother, that I am a mad, desperate and reckless man; that I
+don't care whether I ever return to England again or not."
+
+Lady Kingsland's own imperious spirit began to rise.  Her cheeks
+flushed and her eyes flashed.
+
+"It means you are a headstrong, selfish, cruel boy!  You don't care an
+iota what pain you inflict on others, if you are thwarted ever so
+slightly yourself.  I have indulged you from your childhood.  You have
+never known one unsatisfied wish it was in my power to gratify, and
+this is my reward!"
+
+He sat in sullen silence.  He felt the reproach keenly in its simple
+truth; but his heart was too sore, the pain too bitter, to let him
+yield.
+
+"You promise me obedience in the dearest wish of my heart," her
+ladyship went on, heedless of the presence of Mildred and Sybilla, "and
+you break that promise at the first sight of a wild young hoiden in a
+hunting-field.  It is on her account you frighten me to death in this
+heartless manner, because I refuse my consent to your consummating your
+own disgrace."
+
+"My disgrace?  Take care, mother!"
+
+"Do you dare speak in that tone to me?"  She rose up from the table,
+livid with passion.  "I repeat it, Sir Everard Kingsland--your
+disgrace!  Mystery shrouds this girl's birth and her father's
+marriage--if he ever was married--and where there is mystery there is
+guilt."
+
+"A sweeping assertion!" the baronet said, with concentrated scorn; "but
+in the present instance, my good mother, a little out of place.  The
+mystery is of your own making.  The late Mrs. Harold Hunsden was a
+native of New York.  There she was married--there she died at her
+daughter's birth.  Captain Hunsden cherishes her memory all too deeply
+to make it the town talk, hence all the county is up agape inventing
+slander.  I hope you are satisfied?"
+
+Lady Kingsland stood still, gazing at him in surprise.
+
+"Who told you all this?" she asked.
+
+"She who had the best right to know--the slandered woman's daughter."
+
+"Indeed--indeed!" slowly and searchingly.  "You have been talking to
+her, then?  And your whole heart is really set on this matter, Everard?"
+
+She came a step nearer; her voice softened; she laid one slender hand,
+with infinite tenderness, on his shoulder.
+
+"What does it matter?" he retorted, impatiently.  "For Heaven's sake,
+let me alone, mother!"
+
+"My boy, if you really love this wild girl so much, if your whole heart
+is set on her, I must withdraw my objections.  I can refuse my darling
+nothing.  Woo Harriet Hunsden, wed her, and bring her here.  I will try
+and receive her kindly for your sake."
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland shook off the fair, white, caressing hand, and
+rose to his feet, with a harsh, strident laugh.  "You are very good, my
+mother, but it is a little too late.  Miss Hunsden did me the honor to
+refuse me yesterday."
+
+"Refuse you?"
+
+"Even so--incredible as it sounds!  You see this little barbarian is
+not so keenly alive to the magnificent honor of an alliance with the
+house of Kingsland as some others are, and she said No plumply when I
+asked her to be my wife."
+
+Again that harsh, jarring laugh rang out, and with the last word he
+strode from the room, closing the door with an emphatic bang.
+
+Lady Kingsland sunk down in the nearest chair, perfectly overcome.
+Sybilla Silver raised her tea-cup, and hid a malicious smile there.
+
+"Refused him!" my lady murmured, helplessly.  "Mildred, did you hear
+what he said?"
+
+"Yes, mamma," Mildred replied, in distress.  "She is a very proud
+girl--Harriet Hunsden."
+
+"Proud!  Good heavens!" my lady sprung to her feet, goaded by the word.
+"The wretched little pauper! the uneducated, uncivilized, horrible
+little wretch!  What business has she with pride--with nothing under
+the sun to be proud of?  Refuse my son!  Oh, she must be mad, or a
+fool, or both!  I will never forgive her as long as I live; nor him,
+either, for asking her!"
+
+With which my lady flung out of the apartment, in a towering rage, and
+went up to her room and fell into hysterics and the arms of her maid on
+the spot.
+
+It was a day of distress at Kingsland Court--gloom and despair reigned.
+Lady Kingsland, shut up in her own apartments, would not be
+comforted--and Sir Everard, busied with his preparations, was doggedly
+determined to carry out his designs.  Sybilla was the only one who
+enjoyed the situation.
+
+As she stood in the front portico, early in the afternoon, humming an
+opera tune, a servant wearing the Hunsden livery rode up to her and
+delivered a twisted note.
+
+"For Sir Everard," said the man, and rode away.
+
+Miss Silver took it, looked at it with one of her curious little
+smiles, thought a moment, turned, and carried it straight to my lady.
+My lady examined it with angry eyes.
+
+"From Miss Hunsden," she said, contemptuously.  "She repents her hasty
+decision, no doubt, and sends to tell him so.  Bold, designing
+creature!  Find Sir Everard's valet, Miss Silver, and give it to him."
+
+Sir Everard was in his dressing-room, and his pale face flushed deep
+red as he received the note.  He tore it open and literally devoured
+the contents.
+
+
+DEAR SIR EVERARD,--Please, please, please forgive me!  Oh, I am so
+sorry I laughed and made you angry!  But indeed I thought you only
+meant it as a joke.  Two days is such a little while to be acquainted
+before proposing, you know.  Won't you come to see us again?  Papa has
+asked for you several times.  Pray pardon me.  You would if you knew
+how penitent I am.
+
+    Yours remorsefully,
+        HARRIE HUNSDEN.
+
+Hunsden Hall, Nov. 15th, 18--.
+
+
+He read the piteous, childish little letter over and over again until
+his face glowed.  Hope planted her shining foot once more on the
+baronet's heart.
+
+"I will go at once," he said, hiding the little note very near his
+heart.  "Common courtesy requires me to say farewell before I start for
+Constantinople.  And the captain likes me, and his influence is
+all-powerful with her, and who knows--"
+
+He did not finish the mental sentence.  He rapidly completed his
+toilet, ordered his horse, and set off hot foot.
+
+Of course, all the short cuts came in requisition.  The path through
+Brithlow Wood was the path he took, going at full gallop.  Lost in a
+deliciously hopeful reverie, he was half-way through, when a hollow
+groan from the wayside smote his ear.
+
+"For God's sake, help a dying man!"
+
+The baronet stared around aghast.  Right before him, under the trees,
+lay the prostrate figure of a fallen man.  To leap off his horse, to
+bend over him, was but the work of an instant.  Judge of his dismay
+when he beheld the livid, discolored face of Captain Hunsden.
+
+"Great Heaven!  Captain Hunsden!  What horrible accident is this?"
+
+"Sir Everard," he murmured, in a thick, choking tone, "go--tell
+Harrie--poor Harrie--"
+
+His voice died away.
+
+"Were you thrown from your horse?  Were you waylaid?" asked the young
+man, thinking of his own recent adventure.
+
+"One of those apoplectic attacks.  I was thrown.  Tell Harrie--"
+
+Again the thick, guttural accents failed.
+
+Sir Everard raised his head, and knelt for a moment bewildered.  How
+should he leave him here alone while he went in search of a conveyance?
+
+Just then, as if sent by Providence, the Reverend Cyrus Green, in his
+chaise, drove into the woodland path.
+
+"Heaven be praised!" cried the baronet.  "I was wondering what I should
+do.  A dreadful accident has happened, Mr. Green.  Captain Hunsden has
+had a fall, and is very ill."
+
+The rector got out, in consternation, and bent above the prostrate man.
+The captain's face had turned a dull, livid hue, his eyes had closed,
+his breathing came hoarse and thick.
+
+"Very ill, indeed," said the clergyman,--"so ill that I fear he will
+never be better.  Let us place him in the chaise, Sir Everard.  I will
+drive slowly, and do you ride on to Hunsden Hall to prepare his
+daughter for the shock."
+
+The Indian officer was a stalwart, powerful man.  It was the utmost
+their united strength could do to lift him into the chaise.
+
+"Ride--ride for your life!" the rector said, "and dispatch a servant
+for the family doctor.  I fear the result of this fall will be fatal."
+
+He needed no second bidding; he was off like the wind.  Sir Galahad
+sprung over the ground, and reached Hunsden in an incredibly short
+time.  A flying figure, in wild alarm, came down the avenue to meet him.
+
+"Oh, Sir Everard!" Harrie panted, in affright, "where is papa?  He left
+to go to Kingsland Court, and Starlight has come galloping back
+riderless.  Something awful has happened, I know!"
+
+His man's heart burned within him.  He wanted to catch her in his arms,
+to hold her there forever--to shield her from all the world and all
+worldly sorrow.
+
+Something of what he felt must have shone in his ardent eyes.  Hers
+dropped, and a bright, virginal blush dyed for the first time cheek and
+brow.  He vaulted off his horse and stood uncovered before her.
+
+"Dear Miss Hunsden," he said, gently, "there has been an accident.  I
+am sorry to be the bearer of ill news, but don't be alarmed--all may
+yet be well."
+
+"Papa," she barely gasped.
+
+"He has met with an accident--a second apoplectic fit.  I found him
+lying in Brithlow Wood.  He had fallen from his horse.  Mr. Green is
+fetching him here in his chaise.  They will arrive presently.  You had
+better have his room prepared, and I--will I ride for your physician
+myself?"
+
+She leaned against a tree, sick and faint.  He made a step toward her,
+but she rallied and motioned him off.
+
+"No," she said, "let me be!  Don't go, Sir Everard--remain here.  I
+will send a servant for the doctor.  Oh, I dreaded this!  I warned him
+when he left this afternoon, but he wanted to see you so much."
+
+She left him and hurried into the house, dispatched a man for the
+doctor, and prepared her father's room.
+
+In fifteen minutes the doctor's pony-chaise drove up.  He and the
+baronet and the butler assisted the stricken and insensible man up to
+his room, and laid him upon the bed from which he was never more to
+rise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE CAPTAIN'S LAST NIGHT.
+
+A young crescent moon rose in the bleak sky; on the shore the
+flood-tide beat its hoarse refrain, and in his chamber Harold Godfrey
+Hunsden lay dying.
+
+They knew it--the silent watchers in that somber room--his daughter,
+and all.  She knelt by the bedside, her face hidden, still, tearless,
+stunned.  Sir Everard, the doctor, the rector, silent and sad, stood
+around.
+
+The dying man had been aroused to full consciousness at last.  One hand
+feebly rested on his daughter's stricken young head, the other lay
+motionless on the counterpane.  His dulled eyes went aimlessly
+wandering.
+
+"Doctor!"
+
+The old physician bent over him.
+
+"How long?" he paused--"how long can I last?"
+
+"My dear friend--"
+
+"How long?  Quick! the truth! how long?"
+
+"Until to-morrow."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The hand lying on Harrie's dark curls lay more heavily perhaps--that
+was all.
+
+"Is there anything you wish? anything you want done? any person you
+would like to see?"
+
+"Yes," the dying man answered, "yes, Sir Everard Kingsland."
+
+"Sir Everard Kingsland is here."
+
+He motioned the baronet to approach.
+
+Sir Everard bent over him.
+
+"Send them away," said the sick man.  "Both.  I want to speak to you
+alone."
+
+Ho delivered the message, and the rector and doctor went into the
+passage to wait.
+
+"Come closer," the captain said, and the young baronet knelt by the
+bedside, opposite Harrie, "and tell the truth to a dying man.  Harrie,
+my darling, are you listening?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+She lifted her pale young face, rigid in tearless despair.
+
+"My own dear girl, I am going to leave a little sooner than I thought.
+I knew my death would be soon and sudden, but I did not expect it so
+soon, so awfully sudden as this!"  His lips twitched spasmodically, and
+there was a brief pause.  "I had hoped not to leave you alone and
+friendless in the world, penniless and unprotected.  I hoped to live to
+see you the wife of some good man, but it is not to be.  God wills for
+the best, my darling, and to Him I leave you."
+
+A dry, choking sob was the girl's answer.  Her eyes were burning and
+bright.  The captain turned to the impatient, expectant young baronet.
+
+"Sir Everard Kingsland," he said, with a painful effort, "you are the
+son of my old and much-valued friend; therefore I speak.  My near
+approach to eternity lifts me above the minor considerations of time.
+Yesterday morning, from yonder window, I saw you on the terrace with my
+daughter."
+
+The baronet grasped his hand, his face flushed, his eyes aglow.  Oh,
+surely, the hour of his reward had come!
+
+"You made her an offer of your hand and heart?"
+
+"Which she refused," the young man said, with a glance of unutterable
+reproach.  "Yes, sir; and I love her with my whole heart!"
+
+"I thought so," very faintly.  "Why did you refuse, Harrie?"
+
+"Oh, papa!  Why are we talking of this now?"
+
+"Because I am going to leave you, my daughter.  Because I would not
+leave you alone.  Why did you refuse Sir Everard?"
+
+"Papa, I--I only knew him such a little while."
+
+"And that is all?  You don't dislike him, do you?"
+
+"No-o, papa."
+
+"And you don't like any one else better?"
+
+"Papa, you know I don't."
+
+"My own spotless darling!  And you will let Sir Everard love you, and
+be your true and tender husband?"
+
+"Oh, papa, don't!"
+
+She flung herself down with a vehement cry.  But Sir Everard turned his
+radiant, hopeful, impassioned face upon the Indian officer.
+
+"For God's sake, plead my cause, sir!  She will listen to you.  I love
+her with all my heart and soul.  I will be miserable for life without
+her."
+
+"You hear, Harrie?  This vehement young wooer--make him happy.  Make me
+happy by saying 'Yes.'"
+
+She looked up with the wild glance of a stag at bay.  For one moment
+her frantic idea was flight.
+
+"My love--my life!"  Sir Everard caught both her hands across the bed,
+and his voice was hoarse with its concentrated emotion.  "You don't
+know how I love you.  If you refuse I shall go mad.  I will be the
+truest, the tenderest husband ever man was to woman."
+
+"I am dying, Harrie," her father said, sadly, "and you will be all
+alone in this big, bad world.  But if your heart says 'No,' my own best
+beloved, to my old friend's son, then never hesitate to refuse.  In all
+my life I never thwarted you.  On my death-bed I will not begin."
+
+"What shall I do?" she cried.  "What shall I do?"
+
+"_Consent_!" her lover whispered.
+
+"Consent!"  Her father's anxious eyes spoke the word eloquently.
+
+She looked from one to the other--the dying father, the handsome,
+hopeful, impetuous young lover.  Some faint thrill in her heart
+answered his.  Girls like daring lovers.
+
+She drew her hands out of his clasp, hesitated a moment, while that
+lovely, sensitive blush came and went, then gave them suddenly back of
+her own accord.
+
+He grasped them tight, with an inarticulate cry of ecstasy.  For worlds
+he could not have spoken.  The dying face looked unutterably relieved.
+
+"That means 'Yes,' Harrie?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+He joined their hands, looking earnestly at the young man.
+
+"She is yours, Kingsland.  May God deal with you, as you deal with my
+orphan child!"
+
+"Amen!"
+
+Solemnly Sir Everard Kingsland pronounced his own condemnation with the
+word.  Awfully came back the memory of that adjuration in the terrible
+days to come.
+
+"She is very young," said Captain Hunsden, after a pause--"too young to
+marry.  You must wait a year."
+
+"A year!"
+
+Sir Everard repeated the word in consternation, as if it had been a
+century.
+
+"Yes," said the captain, firmly.  "A year is not too long, and she will
+only be eighteen then.  Let her return to her old _pension_ in Paris.
+She sadly needs the help of a finishing school, my poor little girl!
+My will is made.  The little I leave will suffice for her wants.  Mr.
+Green is her guardian--he understands my wishes.  Oh, my lad! you will
+be very good to my friendless little Harrie!  She will have but you in
+the wide world."
+
+"I swear it, Captain Hunsden!  It will be my bliss and my honor to make
+her my happy wife."
+
+"I believe you.  And now go--go both, and leave me alone, for I am very
+tired."
+
+Sir Everard arose, but Harrie grasped her father's cold hand in terror.
+
+"No, no, papa!  I will not leave you.  Let me stay.  I will be very
+quiet--I shall not disturb you."
+
+"As you like, my dear.  She will call you, Kingsland, by and by."
+
+The young man left the room.  Then Harriet lifted a pale, reproachful
+face to her father.
+
+"Papa, how could you?"
+
+"My dear, you are not sorry?  You will love this young man very dearly,
+and he loves you."
+
+"But his mother, Lady Kingsland, detests me.  And, I want to enter no
+man's house unwelcome."
+
+"My dear, don't be hasty.  How do you know Lady Kingsland detests you?
+That is impossible, I think.  She will be a kind mother to my little
+motherless girl.  Ah, pitiful Heaven! that agony is to come yet!"
+
+A spasm of pain convulsed his features, his brows knit, his eyes
+gleamed.
+
+"Harrie," he said, hoarsely, grasping her hands, "I have a secret to
+tell you--a horrible secret of guilt and disgrace!  It has blighted my
+life, blasted every hope, turned the whole world into a black and
+festering mass of corruption!  And, oh! worst of all, you must bear
+it--your life must be darkened, too.  But not until the grave has
+closed over me.  My child, look here."
+
+He drew out, with a painful effort, something from beneath his pillow
+and handed it to her.  It was a letter, addressed to herself, and
+tightly sealed.
+
+"My secret is there," he whispered--"the secret it would blister my
+lips to tell you.  When you are safe with Madame Beaufort, in Paris,
+open and read this--not before.  You promise, Harrie?"
+
+"Anything, papa--everything!"  She hid it away in her bosom.  "And now
+try to sleep; you are talking a great deal too much."
+
+"Sing for me, then."
+
+She obeyed the strange request--he had always loved to hear her sing.
+She commenced a plaintive little song, and before it was finished he
+was asleep.
+
+All night long she watched by his bedside.  Now he slept, now he woke
+up fitfully, now he fell into a lethargic repose.  The doctor and Sir
+Everard kept watch in an adjoining chamber, within sight of that
+girlish form.
+
+Once, in the small hours, the sick man looked at her clearly, and spoke
+aloud:
+
+"Wake me at day-dawn, Harrie."
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+And then he slept again.  The slow hours dragged away--morning was
+near.  She walked to the window, drew the curtain and looked out.
+Dimly the pearly light was creeping over the sky, lighting the purple,
+sleeping sea, brightening and brightening with every passing second.
+
+She would not disobey him.  She left the window and bent over the bed.
+How still he lay!
+
+"Papa," she said, kissing him softly, "day is dawning."
+
+But the captain never moved nor spoke.  And then Harriet Hunsden knew
+the everlasting day had dawned for him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE DEAD MAN'S SECRET.
+
+It was a very stately ceremonial that which passed through the gates of
+Hunsden Hall, to lay Harold Godfrey Hunsden's ashes with those of many
+scores of Hunsdens who had gone before.
+
+The heir at law---an impoverished London swell--was there in sables and
+sweeping hat-band, exulting inwardly that the old chap had gone at last,
+and "the king had got his own again."
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland was there, conspicuous and interesting in his new
+capacity of betrothed to the dead man's daughter.
+
+And the dead man's daughter herself, in trailing crape and sables,
+deathly pale and still, was likewise there, cold and rigid almost as the
+corpse itself.
+
+For she had never shed a tear since that awful moment when, with a wild,
+wailing cry of orphanage, she had flung herself down on the dead breast
+as the new day dawned.
+
+The day of the funeral was one of ghostly gloom.  The November wind
+swept icily over the sea with a dreary wail of winter; the cold rain
+beat its melancholy drip, drip; sky and earth and sea were all blurred
+in a clammy mist.
+
+White and wild, Harriet Hunsden hung on her lover's arm while the
+Reverend Cyrus Green solemnly read the touching burial service, and
+Harold Hunsden was laid to sleep the everlasting sleep.
+
+And then she was going back to the desolate old home--oh, so horribly
+desolate now!  She looked at his empty chamber, at his vacant chair, at
+his forsaken bed.  Her face worked; with a long, anguished cry she flung
+herself on her lover's breast and wept the rushing, passionate tears of
+seventeen that keep youthful hearts from breaking.
+
+He held her there as reverently, as tenderly as that dead father might
+have done, letting her cry her fill, smoothing the glossy hair, kissing
+the slender hands, calling her by names never to be forgotten.
+
+"My darling--my darling! my bride--my wife!"
+
+She lifted her face at last and looked at him as she never had looked at
+mortal man before.  In that moment he had his infinite reward.  She
+loved him as only these strong-hearted, passionate women can love--once
+and forever.
+
+"Love me, Everard," she whispered, holding him close.  "I have no one in
+the world now but you."
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+That night Harrie Hunsden left the old home forever.  The Reverend Cyrus
+drove her to the rectory in the rainy twilight, and still her lover sat
+by her side, as it was his blissful privilege to sit.  She clung to him
+now, in her new desolation, as she might never have learned to cling in
+happier times.
+
+The rector's wife received the young girl with open arms, and embraced
+her with motherly heartiness.
+
+"My poor, pale darling!" she said, kissing the cold cheeks.  "You must
+stay with us until your lost roses come back."
+
+But Harriet shook her head.
+
+"I will go to France at once, please," she said, mournfully.  "Madame
+Beaufort was always good to me, and it was his last wish."
+
+Her voice choked.  She turned away her head.
+
+"It shall be as you say, my dear.  But who is to take you?"
+
+"Mrs. Hilliard, and--I think--Sir Everard Kingsland."
+
+Mrs. Hilliard had been housekeeper at Hunsden Hall, and was a distant
+relative of the family.  Under the new dynasty she was leaving, and had
+proffered her services to escort her young mistress to Paris.
+
+The Reverend Cyrus, who hated crossing the channel, had closed with the
+offer at once, and Sir Everard was to play protector.
+
+One week Miss Hunsden remained at the rectory, fortunately so busied by
+her preparations for departure that no time was left for brooding over
+her bereavement.
+
+And then, in spite of that great trouble, there was a sweet, new-born
+bliss flooding her heart.
+
+How good he was to her--her handsome young lover--how solicitous, how
+tender, how devoted!  She could lay her hand shyly on his shoulder, in
+these calm twilights, and nestle down in his arms, and feel that life
+held something unutterably sweet and blissful for her still.
+
+As for Everard, he lived at the rectory.  He rode home every night, and
+he mostly breakfasted at the Court; but to all intents and purposes he
+dwelt at the parsonage.
+
+"Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also"; and my lady, now
+that things were settled, and the journey to Constantinople postponed
+indefinitely, had sunk into a state of sulky displeasure, and was
+satirical, and scornful, and contemptuous, and stately, and altogether
+exquisitely disagreeable.
+
+Lady Louise had left Devonshire, and gone back to shine brilliantly in
+London society once more.
+
+Miss Hunsden went to France with the portly old house-keeper and the
+devoted young baronet.  Mme. Beaufort received her ex-pupil with very
+French effusion.
+
+"Ah, my angel! so pale, so sad, so beautiful!  I am distracted at the
+appearance!  But we will restore you.  The change, the associations--all
+will be well in time."
+
+The lonely young creature clung to her lover with passionate abandon.
+
+"Don't go back just yet, Everard," she implored.  "Let me get used to
+being alone.  When you are with me I am content, but when you go, and I
+am all alone among these strangers--"
+
+But he needed no pleading--he loved her entirely, devotedly.  He
+promised anything--everything!  He would remain in Paris the whole year
+of probation, if she wished, that he might see her at least every week.
+
+She let him go at last, and stole away in the dusky gloaming to her
+allotted little room.  She locked the door, sat down by the table, laid
+her face on her folded arms, and wet them with her raining tears.
+
+"I loved him so!" she thought--"my precious father!  Oh, it was hard to
+let him go!"
+
+She cried until she could literally cry no longer.  Then she arose.  It
+was quite dark now, and she lighted her lamp.
+
+"I will read his letter," she said to herself--"the letter he left for
+me.  I will learn this terrible secret that blighted his life."
+
+There was her writing-case on the table.  She opened it and took out the
+letter.  She looked sadly at the superscription a moment, then opened it
+and began to read.
+
+"It will be like his voice speaking to me from the grave," she thought.
+"My own devoted father!"
+
+Half an hour passed.  The letter was long and closely written, and the
+girl read it slowly from beginning to end.
+
+It dropped in her lap.  She sat there, staring straight before her, with
+a fixed, vacant stare.  Then she arose slowly, placed it in the
+writing-case, put her hand to her head confusedly, and turned with a
+bewildered look.
+
+Her face flushed dark red; the room was reeling, the walls rocking
+dizzily.  She made a step forward with both hands blindly outstretched,
+and fell headlong to the floor.
+
+Next morning Sir Everard Kingsland, descending to his hotel breakfast,
+found a sealed note beside his plate.  He opened it, and saw it was from
+the directress of the _Pensionnat des Demoiselles_.
+
+
+MONSIEUR,--It is with regret I inform you Mademoiselle Hunsden is very
+ill.  When you left her last evening she ascended to her room at once.
+An hour after, sitting in an apartment underneath, I heard a heavy fall.
+I ran up at once.  Mademoiselle lay on the floor in a dead swoon.  I
+rang the bell; I raised her; I sent for the doctor.  It was a very long
+swoon--it was very difficult to restore her.  Mademoiselle was very ill
+all night--out of herself--delirious.  The doctor fears for the brain.
+Ah, _mon Dieu_! it is very sad--it is deplorable!  We all weep for the
+poor Mademoiselle Hunsden.  I am, monsieur, with profoundest sentiments
+of sorrow and pity,                    MARIE JUSTINE CELESTE BEAUFORT.
+
+
+The young baronet waited for no breakfast.  He seized his hat, tore out
+of the hotel, sprung into a fiacre, and was whirled at once to the
+_pension_.
+
+Madame came to him to the parlor, her lace handkerchief to her eyes.
+Mademoiselle was very ill.  Monsieur could not see her, of course, but
+he must not despair.
+
+Doctor Pillule had hopes.  She was so young, so strong; but the shock of
+her father's death must have been preying on her mind.  Madame's
+sympathy was inexpressible.
+
+Harriet lay ill for many days--delirious often, murmuring things
+pitiably small, calling on her father, on her lover--sometimes on her
+horses and dogs.  The physician was skillful, and life won the battle.
+But it was a weary time before they let her descend to the parlor to see
+that impatient lover of hers.
+
+It was very near Christmas, and there was snow on the ground, when she
+came slowly down one evening to see him.  He sat alone in the prime
+salon, where the porcelain stove stood, with its handful of fire,
+looking gloomily out at the feathery flakes whirling through the leaden
+twilight.  He turned round as she glided in, so unlike herself, so like
+a spirit, that his heart stood still.
+
+"My love! my love!"
+
+It was all he could say.  He took her in his arms, so worn, so wasted,
+so sad; wan as the fluttering snow without.  All his man's heart
+overflowed with infinite love and pity as he held that frail form in his
+strong clasp.
+
+"Dear Everard, I have been so ill and so lonely; I wanted you so much!"
+
+He drew her to him as if he would never let her go again.
+
+"If I could only be with you always, my darling.  It is cruel to keep us
+apart for a year."
+
+"It was poor papa's wish, Everard."
+
+Presently madame came in, and there were lights, and bustle, and
+separation.  Mme. Hunsden must not remain too long, must not excite
+herself.  Monsieur must go away, and come again to-morrow.
+
+"I will let her see you every day, poor, homesick child, until she is
+well enough to go into the _classe_ and commence her studies.  Then, not
+so often.  But monsieur will be gone long before that!"
+
+"No," Sir Everard said, distinctly.  "I remain in Paris for the winter.
+I trust to madame's kind heart to permit me to see Miss Hunsden often."
+
+"Often!  Ah, _mon Dieu_! how you English are impetuous! so--how do you
+call him?--unreasonable!  Monsieur may see mademoiselle in the salon
+every Saturday afternoon--not oftener."
+
+"It is better so, Everard.  I want to study--Heaven knows I need it! and
+your frequent visits would distract me.  Let once a week suffice."
+
+Sir Everard yielded to the inevitable with the best grace possible.  He
+took his leave, raising Harriet's hand to his lips.
+
+Harrie lingered by the window for a moment, looking wistfully after the
+slender figure, and slow, graceful walk.
+
+"If he only knew!" she murmured.  "If he only knew the terrible secret
+that struck me down that night!  But I dare not tell--I dare not, even
+if that voice from the dead had not forbidden me.  I love him so
+dearly--so dearly!  Ah, pitiful Lord! let him never know!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE BARONET'S BRIDE.
+
+The winter months wore by.  Spring came, and still that most devoted of
+lovers, Sir Everard Kingsland, lingered in Paris, near his gray-eyed
+divinity.  His life was no dull one in the gayest capital of Europe.
+He had hosts of friends, the purse of Fortunatus, the youth and beauty
+of a demi-god.  Brilliant Parisian belles, flashing in ancestral
+diamonds, with the blue blood of the old _regime_ in their delicate
+veins, showered their brightest smiles, their most entrancing glances,
+upon the handsome young Englishman in vain.  His loyal heart never
+swerved in its allegiance to his gray-eyed queen--the love-light that
+lighted her dear face, the warm, welcoming kiss of her cherry lips,
+were worth a hundred Parisian belles with their ducal coats of arms.
+"Faithful and true" was the motto on his seal; faithful and true in
+every word and thought--true as the needle to the North Star--was he to
+the lady of his love.
+
+The weeks went swiftly and pleasantly enough; but his red-letter day
+was the Saturday afternoon that brought him to his darling.  And she,
+buried among her dry-as-dust school-books and classic lore--how she
+looked forward to the weekly day of grace no words of mine can tell.
+
+But with the first bright days of April came a change.  He was going
+back to England, he told her, one Saturday afternoon, as they sat,
+lover-like, side by side, in the prim salon.  She gave a low cry at the
+words, and looked at him with wild, wide eyes.
+
+"Going to England!  Going to leave me!"
+
+"My dearest, it is for your sake I go, and I will be gone but a little
+while.  The end of next October our long year of waiting ends, and
+before the Christmas snow flies, my darling must be all my own.  It is
+to prepare for our marriage I go."
+
+She hid her glowing face on his shoulder.
+
+"I would make Kingsland Court a very Paradise, if I could, for my
+bright little queen.  As I can not make it quite Paradise, I will do
+what I can."
+
+"Any place is my Paradise so that you are there, Everard!"
+
+"Landscape gardeners and upholsterers shall wave their magic wands and
+work their nineteenth century miracles," he said, presently, reverting
+to his project.  "My dear girl's future home shall be a very bower of
+delights.  And, besides, I want to see my mother.  She feels herself a
+little slighted, I am afraid, after this winter's absence."
+
+"Ah, your mother!" with a little sigh.  "Will she ever like me, do yon
+think, Everard?  Her letter was so cold, so formal, so chilling!"
+
+For this high-stepping young lady who had ridden at the fox-hunt with
+reckless daring, who was so regally uplifted and imperious, had grown
+very humble in her new love.
+
+Harrie had written to my lady an humble, girlish, appealing little
+letter, and had received the coldest of polite replies with the "bloody
+hand" and the Kingsland crest emblazoned proudly, and the motto of the
+house in good old Norman French, "Strike once, and strike well."
+
+Since then there had been no correspondence.  Miss Hunsden was too
+proud to sue for her favor, and Sir Everard loved her too sensitively
+to expose her to a possible rebuff.
+
+My lady was unutterably offended by her son's desertion of a whole
+winter.  She was nothing to him now.  This bold, masculine girl with
+the horrible boy's name was his all in all now.
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland met with a very cold reception from his lady
+mother upon his return to Devonshire.  She listened in still disdain to
+his glowing accounts of the marvels the summer would work in the grand
+old place.
+
+"And all this for the penniless daughter of a half-pay captain; and
+Lady Louise might have been his wife."
+
+Sir Everard ran heedlessly on.
+
+"You and Milly shall retain your old rooms, of course," he said, "and
+have them altered or not, just as you choose.  Harrie's room shall be
+in the south wing--she likes a sunny, southern prospect--and the winter
+and summer drawing-rooms must be completely refurnished; and the
+conservatory has been sadly neglected of late, and the oak paneling in
+the dining-room wants touching up.  Hadn't you better give all the
+orders for your own apartments yourself?  The others I will attend to."
+
+"My orders are already given," Lady Kingsland said, with frigid
+hauteur.  "My jointure house is to be fitted up.  Before you return
+from your honey-moon I will have quitted Kingsland Court with my
+daughter.  Permit Mildred and me to retain our present apartments
+unaltered until that time; then the future Lady Kingsland can have the
+old rooms disfigured with as much gilding and stucco and ormolu as she
+pleases."
+
+The young man's fair face blackened with an angry scowl as he listened
+to the taunting, spiteful speech.  But he restrained himself.
+
+"There is no necessity for your withdrawal from your old home.  If you
+leave, it will be against my wish.  Neither my wife nor I could ever
+desire such a step."
+
+"Your wife!  Does she take state upon herself already?  To you and your
+wife, Sir Everard Kingsland, I return my humble thanks, but even
+Kingsland Court is not large enough for two mistresses.  I will never
+stand aside and see the pauper daughter of the half-pay captain rule
+where I ruled once."
+
+She swept majestically out of the room as she launched her last
+smarting shaft, leaving her son with face of suppressed rage, to
+recover his temper as best he might.
+
+"He will never ask me again," she thought.  "I know his nature too
+well."
+
+And he did not.  He went about his work with stern determination, never
+consulting her, never asking advice, or informing her of any
+project--always deferential, always studiously polite.
+
+There was one person, however, at the Court who made up, by the warmth
+of her greeting and the fervor of her sympathy, for any lack on his
+mother's part.  It was Miss Sybilla Silver who somehow had grown to be
+as much a fixture there as the marble and bronze statues.
+
+She had written to find her friends in Plymouth, or she said so, and
+failed, and she had managed to make herself so useful to my lady that
+my lady was very glad to keep her.  She could make caps like a Parisian
+milliner; she could dress her exquisitely; she could read for hours in
+the sweetest and clearest of voices, without one yawn, the dullest of
+dull High Church novels.  She could answer notes and sing like a siren,
+and she could embroider _prie-dieu_ chairs and table-covers, and
+slippers and handkerchiefs, and darn point lace like Fairy Fingers
+herself.
+
+She was a treasure, this ex-lad in velveteen, and my lady counted it a
+lucky day that brought her to Kingsland.  But Miss Sybilla belonged to
+my lady's son, and not to my lady.  To the young lord of Kingsland her
+allegiance was due, and at his bidding she was ready, at a moment's
+notice, to desert the female standard.
+
+Sir Everard, who took a kindly interest in the dashing damsel with the
+coal-black hair and eyes, who had shot the poacher, put the question
+plump one day:
+
+"My mother and sister leave before the end of the year, Sybilla.  Will
+you desert me, too?"
+
+"Never, Sir Everard!  I will never desert you while you wish me to
+stay."
+
+"I should like it, I confess.  It will be horribly dreary for my bride
+to come home to a house where there is no one to welcome her but the
+servants.  If my mother can spare you, Sybilla, I wish you would stay."
+
+As once before, she lifted his hand to her lips.
+
+"Sybilla belongs to you, Sir Everard!  Command, and she will obey."
+
+He laughed, but he also reddened as he drew his hand hastily away.
+
+"Oh, pooh! don't be melodramatic!  There is no question of commanding
+and obeying about it.  You are free to do as you please.  If you choose
+to remain, give Lady Kingsland proper notice.  If you prefer to go,
+why, I must look out for some one to take your place.  Don't be in a
+hurry--there's plenty of time to decide."
+
+He swung on and left her.
+
+"Plenty of time to decide," she repeated, with a smile curling her thin
+lips.  "My good Sir Everard, I decided long ago!  Marry your
+fox-hunting bride--bring her home.  Sybilla Silver will be here to
+welcome her, never fear!"
+
+The baronet stayed three weeks in England--then returned impatiently to
+Paris.  Of course the rapture of the meeting more than repaid the pain
+of parting.
+
+She was growing more beautiful every day, the infatuated young man
+thought, over her books; and the sun of France shone on nothing half so
+lovely as this tall, slender damsel, in her gray school uniform and
+prim, black silk apron.
+
+The summer went.  Sir Everard was back and forth across the Channel,
+like an insane human pendulum, and the work went bravely on!  Kingsland
+was being transformed--the landscape gardeners and the London
+upholsterers had _carte blanche_, and it was the story of Aladdin's
+Palace over again.  Sir Everard rubbed his golden lamp, and, lo! mighty
+genii rose up and worked wonders.
+
+September came--the miracles ceased.  Even money and men could do no
+more.  October came.
+
+Sir Everard's year of probation was expired.  The Reverend Cyrus Green
+overcame heroically his horror of seasickness and steamers, and went to
+Paris in person for his ward.  As plain Miss Hunsden, without a
+shilling to bless herself with, the Reverend Cyrus would not by any
+means have thought this extreme step necessary; but for the future Lady
+Kingsland to travel alone was not for an instant to be thought of.  So
+he went, and the first week of November he brought her home.
+
+Miss Hunsden--taller, more stately, more beautiful than ever--was very
+still and sad, this first anniversary of her father's death.  Lady
+Kingsland, when she and Mildred called--for they did, of course--was
+rather impressed by the stately girl in mourning, whose fair, proud
+face and calm, gray eyes met hers so unflinchingly.  It was "Greek
+meets Greek" here; neither would yield an inch.
+
+The wedding was to take place early in December--Sir Everard would not
+wait, and Harrie seemed to have no will left but his.  Once she had
+feebly uttered some remonstrances, but he had imperatively cut her
+short.
+
+So this young tyrant had everything his own way.  The preparations were
+hurried on with amazing haste; the day was named, the bride-maids and
+guests bidden.
+
+Miss Hunsden's young lady friends were few and far between, and Mildred
+Kingsland and the rector's sister and twelve-year-old daughter were to
+comprise the whole list.
+
+The wedding-day dawned--a sullen, overcast, threatening December day.
+A watery sun looked out of a lowering sky, and then retreated
+altogether, and a leaden dullness overspread the whole firmament.  An
+icy wind curdled your blood and tweaked your nose, and feathery
+snowflakes whirled drearily through the opaque gloom.
+
+The church was full, and silks rustled and bright eyes flashed
+inquisitively, and people wondered who that tall, foreign-looking
+person beside my lady might be.
+
+It was Sybilla Silver, gorgeous in golden silk, with her black eyes
+lighted with cruel, inward exultation, and who glared almost fiercely
+upon the beautiful bride.
+
+My lady, magnificent in her superb disdain of all these childish
+proceedings, stood by and acknowledged in her heart of hearts that if
+beauty and grace be any excuse for folly, her son had those excuses.
+
+Lovely as a vision, with her pure, pale, passionless face, her clear,
+sweet eyes, Harriet Hunsden swept up the aisle in her rich bridal
+robes, her floating lace, and virginal orange-blossoms.
+
+The bridegroom's eyes kindled with admiration and pride as he took his
+place by her side, he looking as noble and gallant a gentleman as
+England could boast.
+
+It was over--she was his wife!  They had registered their names, they
+drove back to the rectory, the congratulations offered, the breakfast
+eaten, the toast drunk.  She was upstairs dressing for her journey; the
+carriage and the bridegroom were waiting impatiently below.
+
+Mrs. Green hovered about her with matronly solicitude, and at the last
+moment Harriet flung herself impetuously upon her neck and broke out
+into hysterical crying.
+
+"Forgive me!" she sobbed.  "Oh, Mrs. Green, I never had a mother!"
+
+Then she drew down her veil and ran out of the room before the good
+woman could speak.  Sir Everard was waiting in the hall.  He drew her
+hand under his arm and hurried her away.  Mrs. Green got down-stairs
+only in time to see her in the carriage.
+
+Then the bridegroom sprung lightly in beside her, the carriage door
+closed, the horses started, and the happy pair were off.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Sybilla Silver went back to the Court alone.  My lady, in sullen
+dignity, took her daughter and went straight to her jointure house at
+the other extremity of the village.
+
+She stood in the confer of a lengthy suite of apartments--the new Lady
+Kingsland's--opening one into the other in a long vista of splendor.
+She took a portrait out of her breast and gazed at it with brightly
+glittering eyes.
+
+"A whole year has passed, my mother," she said, slowly, "and nothing
+has been done.  But Sybilla will keep her oath.  Sir Jasper Kingsland's
+only son shall meet his doom.  It is through her I will strike; that
+blow will be doubly bitter.  Before this day twelvemonth these two
+shall part more horribly than man and wife ever parted before!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+MR. PARMALEE'S LITTLE MYSTERY.
+
+Kingsland Court had from time immemorial been one of the show-places of
+the county, Thursday being always set apart as the visitors' day.
+
+The portly old housekeeper used to play cicerone, but the portly old
+housekeeper, growing portlier and older every day, got in time quite
+unable to waddle up and down and pant out gasping explanations to the
+strangers.
+
+So Miss Sybilla Silver, with her usual good nature, came to the rescue,
+got the history of the old house, and the old pictures, and cabinets,
+and curiosities, and suits of armor and things by heart, and took Mrs.
+Comfit's place.
+
+The first Thursday after the marriage of Sir Everard there came
+sauntering up to the Court, in the course of the afternoon, a tall
+young gentleman, smoking a cigar, and with his hands thrust deep in his
+trousers pockets.
+
+He was not only tall, but uncommonly tall, uncommonly lanky and
+loose-boned, and his clothes had the general air of being thrown on
+with a pitchfork.
+
+He wore a redundance of jewelry, in the shape of a couple of yards of
+watch-chain, a huge seal ring on each little finger, and a flaring
+diamond breastpin of doubtful quality.
+
+His clothes were light, his hair was light, his eyes were light.  He
+was utterly devoid of hirsute appendages, and withal he was tolerably
+good-looking and unmistakably wide awake.
+
+He threw away his cigar as he reached the house, and astonished the
+understrapper who admitted him by presenting his card with a
+flourishing bow.
+
+"Jest give that to the boss, my man," said this personage, coolly.  "I
+understand you allow strangers to explore this old castle of your'n,
+and I've come quite a piece for that express purpose."
+
+The footman gazed at him, then at the card, and then sought out Miss
+Silver.
+
+"Blessed if it isn't that 'Merican that's stopping at the Vine, and
+that asked so many questions about Sir Everard and my lady, of Dawson,
+last night," he said.
+
+Sybilla took the card curiously.  It was a _bona-fide_ piece of
+pasteboard, printed all over in little, stumpy capitals:
+
+  GEORGE WASHINGTON PARMALEE,
+      PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST,
+      No. 1060 BROADWAY,
+           UPSTAIRS.
+
+
+Miss Silver laughed.
+
+"The gentleman wants to see the house, does he?  Of course he must see
+it, then, Higgins.  And he was asking questions of Dawson last night at
+the inn?"
+
+"'Eaps of questions, Miss Silver, as bold as brass, all about Sir
+Everard and my lady--our young lady, you know.  Shall I fetch him up?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+There chanced to be no other visitor at the Court, and Sybilla received
+Mr. Parmalee with infinite smiles and condescension.
+
+"Beg your pardon, miss," he said, politely; "sorry to put you to so
+much trouble, but I calculated on seeing this old pile before I left
+these parts, and as they told me down at the tavern this was the day--"
+
+"It is not the slightest trouble, I assure you," Miss Silver
+interposed.  "I am only too happy to have a stranger come and break the
+quiet monotony of our life here.  And, besides, it affords me double
+pleasure to make the acquaintance of an American--a people I intensely
+admire.  You are the first I ever had the happiness of meeting."
+
+"Want to know!" said Mr. Parmalee, in a tone betokening no earthly
+emotion whatever.  "It's odd, too.  Plenty folks round our section come
+across; but I suppose they didn't happen along down here.  Splendid
+place this; fine growing land all round; but I see most of it is let
+run wild.  If all that there timber was cut down and the stumps burned
+out and the ground turned into pasture, you hain't no idea what an
+improvement it would be.  But you Britishers don't go in for progress
+and that sort of thing.  This old castle, now--it's two hundred years
+old, I'll be bound!"
+
+"More than that--twice as old.  Will you come and look at the pictures
+now?  Being an artist, of course you will like to see the pictures
+first."
+
+Mr. Parmalee followed the young lady to the long picture-gallery, his
+hands still in his pockets, whistling softly to himself, and eying
+everything.
+
+"Must have cost a sight of money, all these fixings," he remarked.  "I
+know how them statues and busts reckons up.  This here baronet must be
+a powerful rich man?"
+
+"He is," said Miss Silver, quietly.
+
+"Beg your pardon, miss, but air you one of the family?"
+
+"No, sir.  I am lady Kingsland's companion."
+
+"Oh, a domestic!" said Mr. Parmalee, as if to himself.  "Who'd a'
+thought it?  Lady Kingsland's companion?  Which of 'em?  There's two,
+ain't there?"
+
+"Sir Everard's mother has left Kingsland Court.  I am companion to Sir
+Everard's wife."
+
+"Ah! jest so!  Got married lately, didn't he!  Might I ask your name,
+miss?"
+
+"I am Sybilla Silver."
+
+"Thanky," said Mr. Parmalee, with a satisfied nod.  "So much easier
+getting along when you know a person's name.  Married a Miss Hunsden,
+didn't he--the baronet?"
+
+"Yes.  Miss Harriet Hunsden."
+
+"That's her.  Lived with her pa, an old officer in the army, didn't
+she?  Used to be over there in America?"
+
+"Yes.  Did you know her?"
+
+"Wa-al, no," replied Mr. Parmalee, with a queer sidelong look at the
+lady; "I can't say I did.  They told me down to the tavern all about
+it.  Handsome young lady, wasn't she?  One of your tall-stepping,
+high-mettled sort?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And her pa's dead, and he left her nothing?  Was poor as a
+church-mouse, that old officer, wasn't he?"
+
+"Captain Hunsden had only his pay."
+
+"And they've gone off on a bridal tower?  Now when do you expect them
+back?"
+
+"In a month.  Are you particularly desirous of seeing Sir Everard or
+Lady Kingsland?" asked Sybilla, suddenly and sharply.
+
+"Well, yes," he said, slowly, "I am.  I'm collecting photographic views
+of all your principal buildings over here, and I'm going to ask Sir
+Everard to let me take this place, inside and out.  These rooms are the
+most scrumptious concerns I've seen lately, and the Fifth Avenue Hotel
+is some pumpkins, too.  Oh, these are the pictures, are they?  What a
+jolly lot!"
+
+Mr. Parmalee became immediately absorbed by the hosts of dead-and-gone
+Kingslands looking down from the oak-paneled walls.  Miss Silver
+fluently gave him names, and dates, and histories.
+
+"Seems to me," said Mr. Parmalee, "those old fellows didn't die in
+their beds--many of 'em.  What with battles, and duels, and high
+treason, and sich, they all came to unpleasant ends.  Where's the
+present Kingsland's?"
+
+"Sir Everard's portrait is in the library."
+
+"And her ladyship--his wife?"
+
+"We have no picture of Lady Kingsland as yet."
+
+Mr. Parmalee's inscrutable face told nothing--whether he was
+disappointed or not.  He followed Miss Silver all over the house, saw
+everything worth seeing, and took the "hull concern," as he expressed
+it, as a matter of course.
+
+"Should like to come again," said Mr. Parmalee.  "A fellow couldn't see
+all that's worth seeing round here in less than a month.  Might I step
+up again to-morrow, Miss Silver?"
+
+Miss Silver shook her head.
+
+"I'm afraid not.  Thursday is visitors' day, and I dare not infringe
+the rules.  You may come every Thursday while you stay, and meantime
+the gardeners will show you over the grounds whenever you desire.  How
+long do you remain, Mr. Parmalee?"
+
+"That's oncertain," replied the artist, cautiously.  "Perhaps not long,
+perhaps longer.  I'm much obliged to you, miss, for all the bother I've
+made you."
+
+"Not at all," said Sybilla, politely.  "I shall be happy at any time to
+give you any information in my power."
+
+"Thanky.  Good-evening."
+
+The tall American swung off with long strides.  The young lady watched
+him out of sight.
+
+"There is more in this than meets the eye," she thought.  "That man
+knows something of Harriet--Lady Kingsland.  I'll cultivate him for my
+lady's sake."
+
+After that Mr. Parmalee and Miss Silver met frequently.  In her walks
+to the village it got to be the regular thing for the American to
+become her escort.
+
+He was rather clever at pencil-drawing, and made numerous sketches of
+the house, and took the likenesses of all the servants.  He even set up
+a photographic place down in the village, and announced himself ready
+to "take" the whole population at "half a dollar" a head.
+
+"There's nothing like making hay while the sun shines," remarked Mr.
+Parmalee to himself.  "I may as well do a little stroke of business, to
+keep my hand in, while I wait for my lady.  There ain't no telling how
+this little speculation of mine may turn out, after all."
+
+So the weeks went by, and every Thursday found the American exploring
+the house.  He was a curious study to Sybilla as he went along, his
+hands invariably in his pockets, his hat pushed to the back of his
+head, whistling softly and meditatively.
+
+Every day she became more convinced he knew something of Harrie
+Hunsden's American antecedents, and every day she grew more gracious.
+But if Mr. Parmalee had his secrets, he knew how to keep them.
+
+"Can he ever have been a lover of hers in New York?" Sybilla asked
+herself.  "I know she was there two years at school."
+
+But it seemed improbable.  Harrie could not have been over thirteen or
+fourteen at the time.
+
+The honey-moon month passed--the January day that was to bring the
+happy pair home arrived.  In the golden sunset of a glorious winter day
+the carriage rolled up the avenue, and Sir Everard handed Lady
+Kingsland out.
+
+The long line of servants were drawn up in the hall, with Mrs. Comfit
+and Miss Silver at their head.  High and happy as a young prince, Sir
+Everard strode in among them, with his bride on his arm.  And
+she--Sybilla Silver--set her teeth as she looked at her, so gloriously
+radiant in her wedded bliss.
+
+Mr. Parmalee, lounging among the trees, caught one glimpse of that
+exquisite face as it flashed by.
+
+"By George! ain't she a stunner?  Not a bit like t'other one, with her
+black eyes and tarry hair.  I've seen quadroon girls, down South,
+whiter than Miss Silver.  And, what's more, she isn't a bit like--like
+the lady in London, that she'd ought to look like."
+
+Sybilla saw very little of Sir Everard or his bride that evening.  But
+the next morning, at breakfast, she broached the subject of Mr.
+Parmalee.
+
+"Wants to take photographic views of the place, does he?" said Sir
+Everard, carelessly.  "Is he too timid to speak for himself, Sybilla?"
+
+"Mr. Parmalee is not in the least bashful.  He merely labors under the
+delusion that a petition proffered by me can not fail."
+
+"Oh, the fellow is welcome!" the baronet said, indifferently.  "Let him
+amuse himself, by all means.  If the views are good, I will have some
+myself."
+
+Mr. Parmalee presented himself in the course of the day.
+
+Sir Everard received him politely in the library.
+
+"Most assuredly, Mr.--oh, Parmalee.  Take the views, of course.  I am
+glad you admire Kingsland.  You have been making some sketches already,
+Miss Silver tells me."
+
+Miss Silver herself had ushered the gentleman in, and now stood
+lingeringly by the door-way.  My lady sat watching the ceaseless rain
+with indolent eyes, holding a novel in her lap, and looking very serene
+and handsome.
+
+"Well, yes," Mr. Parmalee admitted, glancing modestly at the plethoric
+portfolio he carried under his arm.  "Would your lordship mind taking a
+look at them?  I've got some uncommon neat views of our American
+scenery, too--Mammoth Cave, Niagry Falls, White Mountains, and so on.
+Might help to pass a rainy afternoon."
+
+"Very true, Mr. Parmalee; it might.  Let us see your American views,
+then.  Taken by yourself, I presume?"
+
+"Yes, sir!" responded the artist, with emphasis.  "Every one of 'em;
+and done justice to.  Look a-here!"
+
+He opened his portfolio and spread his "views" out.
+
+Lady Kingsland arose with languid grace and crossed over.  Her husband
+seated her beside him with a loving smile.  Her back was partly turned
+to the American, whom she had met without the faintest shade of
+recognition.
+
+Sybilla Silver, eager and expectant of she knew not what, lingered and
+looked likewise.
+
+The "views" were really very good, and there was an abundance of
+them--White Mountain and Hudson River scenery, Niagara, Nahant,
+Southern and Western scenes.  Then he produced photographic portraits
+of all the American celebrities--presidents, statesmen, authors,
+actors, and artists.
+
+Mr. Parmalee watched her from under intent brows as she took them
+daintily up in her slender, jeweled fingers one by one.
+
+"I have a few portraits here," he said, after a pause, "painted on
+ivory, of American ladies remarkable for their beauty.  Here they are."
+
+He took out five, presenting them one by one to Sir Everard.  He had
+not presumed to address Lady Kingsland directly.  The first was a
+little Southern quadroon; the second a bright-looking young squaw.
+
+"These are your American ladies, are they?  Pretty enough to be ladies,
+certainly.  Look, Harrie!  Isn't that Indian face exquisite?"
+
+He passed them to his wife.  The third was an actress, the fourth a
+_danseuse_.  All were beautiful.  With the last in his hand, Mr.
+Parmalee paused, and the first change Sybilla had ever seen cross his
+face crossed it then.
+
+"This one I prize most of all," he said, speaking slowly and
+distinctly, and looking furtively at my lady.  "This lady's story was
+the saddest story I ever beard."
+
+Sybilla looked eagerly across the baronet's shoulder for a second.  It
+was a lovely face, pure and child-like, with great, innocent blue eyes
+and wavy brown hair--the face of a girl of sixteen.
+
+"It is very pretty," the baronet said, carelessly, and passed it to his
+wife.
+
+Lady Kingsland took it quite carelessly.  The next instant she had
+turned sharply around and looked Mr. Parmalee full in the face.
+
+The American had evidently expected it, for he had glanced away
+abruptly, and begun hustling his pictures back into his portfolio.
+Sybilla could see he was flushed dark red.  She turned to my lady.  She
+was deathly pale.
+
+"Did you paint those portraits, too?" she asked, speaking for the first
+time.
+
+"No, marm--my lady, I mean.  I collected these as curiosities.  One of
+'em--the one you're looking at--was given me by the original herself."
+
+The picture dropped from my lady's hand as if it had been red-hot.  Mr.
+Parmalee bounded forward and picked it up with imperturbable _sang
+froid_.
+
+"I value this most of all my collection.  I know the lady well.  I
+wouldn't lose it for any amount of money."
+
+My lady arose abruptly and walked to the window, and the hue of her
+face was the hue of death.  Sybilla Silver's glittering eyes went from
+face to face.
+
+"I reckon I'll be going now," Mr. Parmalee remarked.  "The rain seems
+to hold up a little.  I'll be along to-morrow, Sir Everard, to take
+those views.  Much obliged to you for your kindness.  Good-day."
+
+He glanced furtively at the stately woman by the window, standing still
+as if turning to stone.  But she neither looked nor moved nor spoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+IN THE PICTURE-GALLERY.
+
+Mr. Parmalee, true to his promise, presented himself at the earliest
+admissible hour next day with all the apparatus of his art.
+
+So early was it, indeed, that Sybilla was just pouring out the baronet's
+first cup of tea, while he leisurely opened the letters the morning mail
+had brought.
+
+Lady Kingsland complained of a bad headache, her husband said, and would
+not leave her room until dinner.
+
+Sir Everard made this announcement, quietly opening his letters.
+Sybilla looked at him with gleaming eyes.  The time had come for her to
+begin to lay her train.
+
+My lady had ascended to her room immediately upon the departure of the
+American, the preceding day, and had been invisible ever since.  That
+convenient feminine excuse, headache, had accounted for it, but Sybilla
+Silver knew better.  She had expected her to breakfast this morning, and
+she began to think Mr. Parmalee's little mystery was more of a mystery
+than even she had dreamed.  The man's arrival gave her her cue.
+
+"Our American friend is a devotee of art, it seems," she said, with a
+light laugh.  "He lets no grass grow under his feet.  I had no easy task
+to restrain his artistic ardor during your absence.  I never knew such
+an inquisitive person, either; he did nothing but ask questions."
+
+"A national trait," Sir Everard responded, with a shrug.  "Americans are
+all inquisitive, which accounts for their go-aheadativeness, I dare say."
+
+"Mr. Parmalee's questions took a very narrow range; they only comprised
+one subject--you and my lady."
+
+The young baronet looked up in haughty amaze.
+
+"His curiosity on this subject was insatiable; your most minute
+biography would not have satisfied him.  About Lady Kingsland
+particularly--in point of fact, I thought he must have known her in New
+York, his questions were so pointed, and I asked him so directly."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"Oh, he said no," replied Sybilla, lightly, "but in such a manner as led
+me to infer yes.  However, it was evident, yesterday, that my lady had
+never set eyes on him before; but I did fancy, for an instant, she
+somehow recognized that picture."
+
+"What picture?" asked the baronet, sharply.
+
+"That last portrait he showed her," Miss Silver answered.  "Yet that may
+have been only fancy, too."
+
+"Then, Miss Silver, have the goodness to indulge in no more such
+fancies.  I don't care to hear your suspicions and surmises, and I don't
+choose to have my wife so minutely watched.  As for this too inquisitive
+Yankee, he had better cease his questions, if he wishes to quit England
+with sound bones!"
+
+He arose angrily from the table, swept his letters together, and left
+the room.  But his face wore a deep-red flush, and, his bent brows never
+relaxed.  The first poisonous suspicion had entered his mind, and the
+calm of perfect trust would never reign there again.
+
+Sybilla gazed after him with her dark, evil smile.
+
+"Fume and fret as you please, my dear Sir Everard, but this is only
+sowing the first seed.  I shall watch your wife, and I will tell you my
+suspicions and my fancies, and you will listen in spite of your uplifted
+sublimity now.  Jealousy is ingrained in your nature, though you do not
+know it, and a very little breath will fan the tiny coal into an
+inextinguishable flame."
+
+She arose, rang the bell for the servant to clear the table, shook out
+her black silk robe, and went, with a smile on her handsome face, to do
+the fascinating to Mr. Parmalee.
+
+She found that cautious gentleman busily arranging his implements in the
+picture-gallery, preparatory to taking sundry views of the noble room.
+He nodded gravely to the young lady, and went steadfastly on with his
+work.
+
+"You certainly lose no time, Mr. Parmalee," Miss Silver said.  "I was
+remarking to Sir Everard at breakfast that you were a perfect devotee of
+art."
+
+"How does the baronet find himself this morning?" he asked.
+
+"As usual--well."
+
+"And her ladyship?" very carelessly.
+
+"Her ladyship is not well.  I'm afraid your pretty pictures disagreed
+with her, Mr. Parmalee."
+
+"Hey?" said the artist, with a sharp, suspicious stare.
+
+"She was perfectly well until you showed them to her.  She has been ill
+ever since.  One must draw one's own inference."
+
+Mr. Parmalee busied himself some five minutes in profound silence.
+Then--
+
+"Where is she to-day?  Ain't she about?"
+
+"No.  I told you she was ill.  She complained of headache after you left
+yesterday, and went up to her own room.  I have not seen her since."
+
+Mr. Parmalee began to whistle a negro melody, and still went
+industriously on with his work.
+
+"I don't think nothing of that," he remarked, after a prolonged pause.
+"Fine ladies all have headaches.  Knowed heaps of 'em to home--all had
+it.  You have yourself sometimes, I guess."
+
+"No," said Sybilla; "I'm not a fine lady.  I have no time to sham
+headaches, and I have no secrets to let loose.  I am only a fine lady's
+companion, and all the world is free to know my history."
+
+And then Miss Silver looked at Mr. Parmalee, and Mr. Parmalee looked at
+Miss Silver, with the air of two accomplished duelists waiting for the
+word.
+
+"He's as sharp as a razor," thought the lady, "and as shy as a
+partridge.  Half measures won't do with him.  I must fight him on his
+own ground."
+
+"By jingo! she's as keen as a catamount!" thought the gentleman, in a
+burst of admiration.  "She'll be a credit to the man that marries her.
+What a pity she don't belong down to Maine.  She's a sight too cute for
+a born Britisher."
+
+There was a long pause.  Miss Silver and Mr. Parmalee looked each other
+full in the eye without winking.  All at once the gentleman burst out
+laughing.
+
+"Get out!" said Mr. Parmalee.  "Go 'long--do!  You're too smart for this
+world--you are, by gosh! Miss Sybilla Silver."
+
+"Almost smart enough for a Yankee, Mr. Parmalee, and wonderfully good at
+guessing."
+
+"Yes?  And what have you guessed this time?"
+
+"That you have Lady Kingsland's secret; that that portrait--the last of
+the five--is the clew.  That you hold the baronet's bride in the hollow
+of your hand!"
+
+She spoke the last words close to his ear, in a fierce, sibilant
+whisper.  The American actually recoiled.
+
+"Go 'long!" repeated Mr. Parmalee.  "Don't you go whistling in a
+fellow's ear like that, Miss S.; it tickles.  Got any more to say?"
+
+"Only this: that you had better make a friend of me, Mr. Parmalee."
+
+"And if I don't, Miss S.?  If I prefer to do as we do in euchre, 'go it
+alone'--what then?"
+
+"Then!" cried Sybilla, with a blaze of her black eyes, "I'll take the
+game out of your hands.  I'll foil you with your own weapons.  I never
+failed yet.  I'll not fail now.  I'm a match for a dozen such as you!"
+
+"I believe, in my soul, you are!" exclaimed the artist, in a burst of
+admiring enthusiasm.  "You're the real grit, and no mistake.  I do
+admire spunky girls--I do, by jingo!  I always thought if I married and
+fetched a Mrs. George Washington Parmalee down to Maine, she'd have to
+be something more than common.  And you're not common, Miss S.--not by a
+long chalk!  I never met your match in my life."
+
+"No?" said Sybilla, "not even 'down to Maine?'"
+
+"No, by George! and we raise the smartest kind of girls there.  Now,
+Miss Silver, supposing we go partners in this here concern, would you be
+willing to go partners with a fellow for life?  I never thought to marry
+an English woman, but I'll marry you to-morrow, if you'll have me.  What
+d'ye say?  Is it a go?"
+
+"You don't mean it, Mr. Parmalee?" as soon as she could speak.
+
+"I do!" said Mr. Parmalee, with emphasis.  "Laugh, if you like.  It's
+kind of sudden, I suppose, but I've had a hankering after you this some
+time.  You're a right smart kind of girl, and jest my style, and I like
+you tip-top.  The way you can roll up them black eyes of yours at a
+fellow is a caution to rattlesnakes.  Say, is it a go?"
+
+Sybilla turned away.  Her dark cheeks reddened.  There was a moment's
+hesitation, then she turned back and extended her hand.
+
+"You are not very romantic, Mr. Parmalee.  You don't ask me for my love,
+or any of that sentimental nonsense," with a laugh.  "And you really
+mean it--you really mean to make Lady Kingsland's poor companion your
+wife?"
+
+"Never meant anything more in my life.  It is a go, then?"
+
+"I will marry you, Mr. Parmalee, if you desire it."
+
+"And you won't go back on a fellow?" asked Mr. Parmalee, suspiciously.
+"You're not fooling me just to get at this secret, are you?"
+
+Sybilla drew away her hand with an offended air.
+
+"Think better of me, Mr. Parmalee!  I may be shrewd enough to guess at
+your secret without being base enough to tell a deliberate lie to know
+it.  I could find it out by easier means."
+
+"I don't know about that," said the artist, coolly.  "It ain't likely
+Lady Kingsland would tell you, and you couldn't get it out of me, you
+know, if you was twice as clever, unless I chose.  But I want you to
+help me.  A man always gets along better in these little underhand
+matters when he's got a woman going partners with him.  I want to see my
+lady.  I want to send her a note all unbeknown to the baronet."
+
+"I'll deliver it," said Sybilla, "and if she chooses to see you, I will
+manage that Sir Everard will not intrude."
+
+"She'll see me fast enough.  I thought she'd want to see me herself
+before this, but it appears she's inclined to hold out; so I'll drop her
+a hint in writing.  If the mountain won't come to what's-his-name--you
+know what I mean, Miss Silver.  I suppose I may call you Sybilla now?"
+
+"Oh, undoubtedly, Mr. Parmalee!  But for the present don't you
+think--just to keep people's tongues quiet, you know--had we not better
+keep this little private compact to ourselves?  I don't want the
+gossiping servants of the house to gossip in the kitchen about you and
+me."
+
+"Just as you please.  I don't care a darn for their gossiping, though.
+And now about that little note.  I want to see my lady before I explain
+things to you, you know."
+
+"And why?  You don't intend to tell her I am to be taken into your
+confidence, I suppose?"
+
+"Not much!" said Mr. Parmalee, emphatically.  "Never you mind, Sybilla.
+Before you become Mrs. P., you'll know it all safe enough.  I'll write
+it at once."
+
+He took a stumpy lead-pencil from his pocket, tore a leaf out of his
+pocket-book, and wrote these words:
+
+MY LADY,--You knew the picture, and I know your secret.  Should like to
+see you, if convenient, soon.  That person is in London waiting to hear
+from me.
+
+    Your most obedient,
+        G. W. PARMALEE.
+
+The photographer handed the scrawl to Sybilla.
+
+"Read it."
+
+"Well?" she said, taking it all in at a glance.
+
+"Give her this.  She'll see me before I leave this house, or I'm much
+mistaken.  She's a very proud lady, this baronet's bride; but for all
+that she'll obey G. W. Parmalee's orders, or he'll know the reason why."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+MISS SILVER PLAYS HER FIRST CARD.
+
+It was all very well for Sir Everard Kingsland to ride his high horse
+in the presence of Miss Sybilla Silver, and superbly rebuke her
+suspicions of his wife, but her words had planted their sting,
+nevertheless.
+
+He loved his beautiful, imperious, gray-eyed wife with so absorbing and
+intense a love that the faintest doubt of her was torture inexpressible.
+
+"I remember it all now," he said to himself, setting his teeth; "she
+was agitated at sight of that picture.  She turned, with the strangest
+look in her face I ever saw there, to the American, and rose abruptly
+from the table immediately after.  She has not been herself since; she
+has not once left her room.  Is she afraid of meeting that man?  Is
+there any secret in her life that he shares?  What do I know of her
+past life, save that she has been over the world with her father?  Good
+Heaven! if she and this man should have a secret between them, after
+all!"
+
+The cold drops actually stood on his brow at the thought.  The fierce,
+indomitable pride of his haughty race and the man's own inward jealousy
+made the bare suspicion agony.  But a moment after, and with a sudden
+impulse of generous love, he recoiled from his own thoughts.
+
+"I am a wretch," he thought, "a traitor to the best and most beautiful
+of brides, to harbor such an unworthy idea!  What! shall I doubt my
+darling girl because Sybilla Silver thinks she recognized that
+portrait, or because an inquisitive stranger chooses to ask questions?
+No!  I could stake my life on her perfect truth--my own dear wife."
+
+Impulsively he turned to go; at once he must seek her, and set every
+doubt at rest.  He ascended rapidly to her room and softly tapped at
+the door.  There was no answer.  He knocked again; still no response.
+He turned the handle and went in.
+
+She was asleep.  Lying on a sofa, among a heap of pillows, arrayed in a
+white dressing-gown, her profuse dark hair all loose and disordered,
+Lady Kingsland lay, so profoundly sleeping that her husband's knocking
+had not disturbed her.  Her face was as white as her robe, and her
+eyelashes were wet, as though she had cried herself to sleep like a
+child.
+
+"My love! my darling!"  He knelt beside her and kissed her
+passionately.  "And to think that for one second I was base enough to
+doubt you!  My beautiful, innocent darling, slumbering here, like a
+very child!  No earthly power shall ever sunder you and me!"
+
+A pair of deriding black eyes flashed upon him through the partly open
+door--a pair of greedy ears drank in the softly murmured words.
+Sybilla Silver, hastening along with the artist's little note, had
+caught sight of the baronet entering his wife's room.  She tapped
+discreetly at the door, with the twisted note held conspicuously in her
+hand.
+
+Sir Everard arose and opened it, and Miss Silver's sudden recoil was
+the perfection of confusion and surprise.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Everard.  My lady is--is she not here?"
+
+"Lady Kingsland is asleep.  Do you wish to deliver that note?"
+
+With a second gesture of seeming confusion, Sybilla hid the hand which
+held it in the folds of her dress.
+
+"Yes--no--it doesn't matter.  It can wait, I dare say.  He didn't
+mention being in a hurry."
+
+"He!  Of whom are you speaking, Sybilla?"
+
+"I--I chanced to pass through the picture-gallery five minutes ago, Sir
+Everard, and Mr. Parmalee asked me to do him the favor of handing this
+note to my lady."
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland's face was the face of a man utterly confounded.
+
+"Mr. Parmalee asked you to deliver that note to Lady Kingsland?" he
+slowly repeated.  "What under heaven can he have to write to my lady
+about?"
+
+"I really don't know, Sir Everard," rejoined Sybilla, "I only know he
+asked me to deliver it.  He had been looking for my lady's maid, I
+fancy, in vain.  It is probably something about his tiresome pictures.
+Will you please to take it, Sir Everard, or shall I wait until my lady
+awakes?"
+
+"You may leave it."
+
+He spoke the words mechanically, quite stunned by the overwhelming fact
+that this audacious photographic person dared to write to his wife.
+Miss Silver passed him, placed the twisted paper on one of the inlaid
+tables, and left the room with a triumphant light in her deriding-black
+eyes.
+
+"I have trumped my first trick," Sybilla thought, as she walked away,
+"and I fancy the game will be all my own shortly.  Sir Everard will
+open and read Mr. Parmalee's little _billet-doux_ the instant he is
+alone."
+
+But just here Sybilla was mistaken.  Sir Everard did not open the
+tempting twisted note.  He glanced at it once as it lay on the table,
+but he made no attempt to take it.
+
+"She will show it to me when she awakes," he said, with compressed
+lips, "and then I will have this impertinent Yankee kicked from the
+house."
+
+He sat beside her, watching her while she slept, with a face quite
+colorless between conflicting love and torturing doubt.
+
+Nearly an hour passed before Harriet awoke.  The great dark eyes opened
+in wide surprise at sight of that pale, intense face bending so
+devotedly over her.
+
+"You here, Everard?" she said.  "How long have I been asleep?  How long
+have you been here?"
+
+"Over an hour, Harrie."
+
+"So long?  I had no idea of going asleep when I lay down; but my head
+ached with a dull, hopeless pain, and--What is that?"
+
+She had caught sight of the note lying on the table.
+
+"You will scarcely believe it, but that stranger--that American
+artist--has had the impertinence to address that note to you.  Sybilla
+Silver brought it here.  Shall I ring for your maid and send it back
+unopened, and order him out of the house for his pains?"
+
+"No!" said Harriet, impetuously.  "I must read it."
+
+She snatched it up, tore it open, and, walking over to the window, read
+the scrawl.
+
+"Harriet!"
+
+She turned slowly round at her name spoken by her husband as that
+adoring husband had never spoken it before.
+
+"Give me that note."
+
+He held out his hand.  She crushed it firmly in her own, looking him
+straight in the eyes.
+
+"I can not."
+
+"You can not?" he repeated, slowly, deathly pale.  "Do I understand you
+aright, Harriet?  Remember, I left that note untouched while you slept.
+No man has a right to address a note to my wife that I may not see.
+Show me that paper, Harriet."
+
+"It is nothing"--she caught her breath in a quick, gasping, affrighted
+way as she said it--"it is nothing, Everard!  Don't ask me!"
+
+"If it is nothing, I may surely see it.  Harriet, I command you!  Show
+me that note!"
+
+The eyes of Captain Hunsden's daughter inflamed up fierce and bright at
+sound of that imperious word command.
+
+"And I don't choose to be commanded--not if you were my king as well as
+my husband.  You shall never see it now!"
+
+There was a wood-fire leaping up on the marble hearth.
+
+She flung the note impetuously as she spoke into the midst of the
+flames.  One bright jet of flame, and it was gone.
+
+Husband and wife stood facing each other, he deathly white, she flushed
+and defiant.
+
+"And this is the woman I loved--the wife I trusted--my bride of one
+short month."
+
+He had turned to quit the room, but two impetuous arms were around his
+neck, two impulsive lips covering his face with penitent, imploring
+kisses.
+
+"Forgive me--forgive me!" Harriet cried.  "My dear, my true, my
+cherished husband!  Oh, what a wicked, ungrateful creature I am!  What
+a wretch you must think me!  And I can not--I can not--I can not tell
+you."
+
+She broke out suddenly into a storm of hysterical crying, clinging to
+his neck.
+
+He took her in his arms, sat down with her on the sofa, and let her sob
+herself still.
+
+"And now, Harriet," he said, when the hysterical sobs were hushed, "who
+is this man, and what is he to you?"
+
+"He is nothing to me--less than nothing!  I hate him!"
+
+"Where did you know him before?"
+
+"Know him before?" She sat up and looked him half angrily in the face.
+"I never knew him before!  I never set eyes on him until I saw him
+here."
+
+Sir Everard drew a long breath of relief.  No one could doubt her
+truth, and his worst suspicion was at rest.
+
+"Then what is this secret between you two?  For there is a secret,
+Harriet."
+
+"There is."
+
+"What is it, Harriet?"
+
+"I can not tell you."
+
+"Harriet!"
+
+"I can not."  She turned deathly white as she said it.  "Never,
+Everard!  There is a secret, but a secret I can never reveal, even to
+you.  Don't ask me--don't!  If you ever loved me, try and trust me now!"
+
+There was a blank pause.  She tried to clasp him, but he held her
+sternly off.
+
+"One question more: You knew this secret before you married me?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"For a year."
+
+"And that picture the American showed you is a picture you know."
+
+She looked up at him, a wild startled light in her great gray eyes.
+
+"How do you know that?"
+
+"I am answered," he said.  "I see I am right.  Once more, Lady
+Kingsland," his voice cold and clear, "you refuse to tell me?"
+
+"I must.  Oh, Everard, for pity's sake, trust me!  I can not tell
+you--I dare not!"
+
+"Enough, madame!  Your accomplice shall!"
+
+He turned to go.  She made a step between him and the door.
+
+"What are you going to do?  Tell me, for I will know!"
+
+"I am going to the man who shares your guilty secret, madame; and, by
+the Heaven above us, I'll have the truth out of him if I have to tear
+it from his throat!  Out of my way, before I forget you are a woman and
+strike you down at my feet!"
+
+She staggered back, with a low cry, as if he had struck her indeed.  He
+strode past, his eyes flashing, his face livid with jealous rage,
+straight to the picture-gallery.
+
+A door at the opposite side of the corridor stood ajar.  Sybilla
+Silver's listening cars heard the last fierce words, Sybilla Silver's
+glittering black eyes saw that last passionate gesture of repulsion.
+She saw Harriet, Lady Kingsland--the bride of a month--sink down on the
+oaken floor, quivering in anguish from head to foot; and her tall form
+seemed to tower and dilate with diabolical delight.
+
+"Not one year," she cried to her exultant heart--"not one month will I
+have to wait for my revenge!  Lie there, poor fool! and suffer and die,
+for what I care, while I go and prevent your madly jealous husband from
+braining my precious fiance.  There is to be blood on the hands and the
+brand of Cain on the brow of the last of the Kingslands, or my oath
+will not be kept; but it must not be the ignoble blood of George
+Washington Parmalee!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+MR. PARMALEE SWEARS VENGEANCE.
+
+Sir Everard strode straight to the picture-gallery, his face pale, his
+eyes flashing, his hands clinched.
+
+His step rang like steel along the polished oaken floor, and there was
+an ominous compression of his thin lips that might have warned Mr.
+Parmalee of the storm to come.  But Mr. Parmalee was squinting through
+his apparatus at a grim, old warrior on the wall, and only just glanced
+up to nod recognition.
+
+"Morning, Sir Everard!" said the artist, pursuing his work.  "Fine day
+for our business--uncommon spring-like.  You've got a gay old lot of
+ancestors here, and ancestresses; and stunningly handsome some of 'em
+is, too."
+
+"Spare your compliments, sir," said the baronet, in tones of suppressed
+rage, "and spare me your presence here for the future altogether!  The
+sooner you pack your traps and leave this, the surer you will be of
+finding yourself with a sound skin."
+
+"Hey?" cried Mr. Parmalee, astounded.  "What in thunder do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that I order you out of my house this instant, and that I'll
+break every bone in your villainous carcass if ever I catch you inside
+my gates again!"
+
+The artist dropped his tools and stood blankly staring.
+
+"By ginger!  Why, Sir Everard Kingsland, I don't understand this here!
+You told me yourself I might come here and take the pictures.  I call
+this doosed unhandsome treatment--I do, going back on a feller like
+this!"
+
+"You audacious scoundrel!" roared the enraged young lord of Kingsland,
+"how dare you presume to answer me?  How dare you stand there and look
+me in the face?  If I called my servants and made them lash you outside
+the gates, I would only serve you right!  You low-bred, impertinent
+ruffian, how dare you write to my wife?"
+
+"Whew!" he whistled, long and shrill, "that's it, is it?  Look here,
+Sir Everard, don't you get so tearin' mad all for nothing.  I didn't
+write no disrespect to her ladyship--I didn't, by Jupiter!  I jest had
+a little request to make, and if I could have seen her ladyship I
+wouldn't have writ at all, but she kept out of my way, and--"
+
+"You scoundrel!" cried the passionate young baronet, white with fury,
+"do you mean to say my wife kept out of your way--was afraid of you?"
+
+"Exactly so, squire," replied the imperturbable foreigner.  "She must
+'a' known I had something to say to her yesterday when I----  Well, she
+knowed it, and she kept out of my way--I say it again."
+
+"And you dare tell me there is a secret between my wife and you?  Are
+you not afraid I will throw you out of yonder window?"
+
+Mr. Parmalee drew himself stiffly up.
+
+"Not if I know myself!  That is a game two can play at.  As for the
+secret," with a sudden sneer, "I ain't no desire to keep it a secret if
+your wife ain't.  Ask her, Sir Everard, and if she's willing to tell
+you, I'm sartin I am.  But I don't think she will, by gosh!"
+
+The sneering mockery of the last taunt was too much for the fiery young
+prince of Kingsland.  With the yell of an enraged tiger he sprung upon
+Mr. Parmalee, hurled him to the ground in a twinkling, and twisted his
+left hand into Mr. Parmalee's blue cotton neckerchief, showering blows
+with his right fast and furious.
+
+The attack was so swift and savage that Mr. Parmalee lay perfectly
+stunned and helpless, turning unpleasantly black in the face, his eyes
+staring, the blood gushing.
+
+Kneeling on his fallen foe, with fiery face and distended eyes, Sir
+Everard looked for the moment an incarnate young demon.  It flashed
+upon him, swift as lightning, in his sudden madness, what he was about.
+
+"I'll murder him if I stay here," he thought; and as the thought
+crossed his mind, with a shriek and a swish of silk, in rushed Miss
+Silver and flung herself between them.
+
+"Good Heaven!  Sir Everard, have you gone mad?  In mercy's name, stop
+before you have quite murdered him!"
+
+"Dog--cur!" he cried.  "Get up and quit my house, or, by the living
+light above us, I'll blow your brains out as I would a mad hound's!"
+
+He swung round and strode out of the picture-gallery, and slowly,
+slowly arose the prostrate hero, with bloody face and blackened eyes.
+
+"Get up, Mr. Parmalee," she said, "and go away at once.  The woman at
+the lodge will give you soap and water and a towel, and you can make
+yourself decent before entering the village.  If you don't hurry you'll
+need a guide.  Your eyes are as large as bishop pippins, and closing
+fast now."
+
+She nearly laughed again, as she assisted her slaughtered betrothed to
+his feet Mr. Parmalee wiped the blood out of his eyes and looked
+dizzily about him.
+
+"Where is he?" he gasped.
+
+"Sir Everard?  He has gone, I believe he would have killed you outright
+only I came in and tore him off.  What on earth did you say to
+infuriate him so?"
+
+"I say?" exclaimed the artist, fiercely.  "I said nothing, and you know
+it.  It was you, you confounded Delilah, you mischief-making deceiver,
+who showed him that air note!"
+
+"I protest I did nothing of the sort!" cried Sybilla, indignantly.  "He
+was in my lady's room when I entered, and he saw the note in my hand.
+She was asleep, and I tried to escape and take the note with me, but he
+ordered me to leave it and go.  Of course I had to obey.  If he read
+it, it was no fault of mine; but I don't believe he did.  You have no
+right to blame me, Mr. Parmalee."
+
+"I'll be even with him for this, the insulting young aristocrat!  I'll
+not spare him now!  I'll spread the news far and wide; the very birds
+in the trees shall sing it, the story of his wife's shame!  I'll lower
+that cursed pride of his before another month is over his head, and
+I'll have his handsome wife on her knees to me, as sure as my name's
+Parmalee!  He knocked me down, and he beat me to a jelly, did he? and
+he ordered me out of his house; and he'll shoot me like a mad dog, will
+he?  But I'll be even with him; I'll fix him off!  I'll make him repent
+the day he ever lifted his hand to G. W. Parmalee!"
+
+"So you shall.  I like to hear you talk like that.  You're a glorious
+fellow, George, and Sybilla will help you; for, listen"--she came close
+and hissed the words in a venomous whisper--"I hate Sir Everard
+Kingsland and all his race, and I hate his upstart wife, with her high
+and mighty airs, and I would see them both dead at my feet with all the
+pleasure in life!"
+
+"You get out!" rejoined Mr. Parmalee, recoiling and clapping his hand
+to his ear.  "I told you before, Sybilla, not to whistle in a fellow's
+ear like that.  It goes through a chap like cold steel.  As to your
+hating them, I believe in my soul you hate most people; and women like
+you, with big, flashing black eyes, are apt to be uncommon good haters,
+too.  But what have they done to you?  I always took 'em to be good
+friends to you, my girl."
+
+"You have read the fable, Mr. Parmalee, of the man who found the frozen
+adder, and who warmed and cherished it in his bosom, until he restored
+it to life?  Well, Sir Everard found me, homeless, friendless,
+penniless, and he took me with him, and fed me, clothed me, protected
+me, and treated me like a sister.  The adder in the fable stung its
+preserver to death.  I, Mr. Parmalee, if you ever feel inclined to
+poison Sir Everard, will mix the potion and hold the bowl, and watch
+his death-throes!"
+
+"Go along with you!" said the American, beginning to collect his traps.
+"You're a bad one, you are.  I don't like such lingo--I don't, by
+George!  I never took you for an angel, but I vow I didn't think you
+were the cantankerous little toad you are!  I don't set up to be a
+saint myself, and if a man knocks me down and pummels my innards out
+for nothin', I calculate to fix his flint, if I can; but you--shoo!
+you're a little devil on airth, and that's my opinion of you."
+
+"With such a complimentary opinion of me, then, Mr. Parmalee, I presume
+our late partnership is dissolved?"
+
+"Nothing of the sort!  I like grit, and if you've got rayther more than
+your share, why, when you're Mrs. Parmalee it will be amusing to take
+it out of you.  And now I'm off, and by all that's great and glorious,
+there'll be howling and gnashing of teeth in this here old shop before
+I return."
+
+"You go without seeing my lady, then?" said Sybilla.
+
+"My lady's got to come to me!" retorted the artist, sullenly.  "It's
+her turn to eat humble pie now, and she'll finish the dish, by George,
+before I've done with her!  I'm going back to the tavern, down the
+village, and so you can tell her; and if she wants me, she can put her
+pride in her pocket and come there and find me."
+
+"And I, too?" said Sybilla, anxiously.  "Remember your promise to
+reveal all to me, George.  Am I to seek you out at the inn, too, and
+await your sovereign pleasure?"
+
+She laid her hands on his shoulders and looked up in his face with eyes
+few men could resist.  They were quite alone in the vast hall--no
+prying eyes to see that tender caress.  Mr. Parmalee was a good deal of
+a stoic and a little of a cynic; but he was flesh and blood, as even
+stoics and cynics are, and the man under sixty was not born who could
+have resisted that dark, bewitching, wheedling, beautiful face.
+
+The American artist took her in his long arms with a vigorous hug, and
+favored her with a sounding kiss.
+
+"I'll tell you, Sybilla.  Hanged if I don't believe you can twist me
+round your little finger if you choose!  You're as pretty as a
+picture--you are, I swear and I love you like all creation; and I'll
+marry you just as soon as this little business is settled, and I'll
+take you to Maine, and keep you in the tallest sort of clover.  I never
+calk'lated on having a British gal for a wife; but you're handsome
+enough and spunky enough for a president's lady, and I don't care a
+darn what the folks round our section say about it.  I'll tell you,
+Sybilla; but you mustn't split to a living soul, or my cake's dough.
+They say a woman can't keep a secret; but you must try, if you should
+burst for it.  I reckon my lady will come down handsomely before I've
+done with her, and you and me, Sybilla, can go to housekeeping across
+the three thousand miles of everlasting wet in tip-top style.  Come
+to-night; you've got to come to me now."
+
+"I suppose I will find you at the inn?"
+
+"I suppose so.  'Tain't likely," said Mr. Parmalee, with a sulky sense
+of injury, "you'll find me prancing up and down the village with this
+here face.  I'll get the old woman to do it up in brown paper and
+vinegar when I go home, and I'll stay abed and smoke until dark.  You
+won't come afore dark, wilt you?"
+
+"No; I don't want to be recognized; and you must be prepared to come
+out with me when I do.  I'll disguise myself.  Ah! suppose I disguise
+myself in men's clothes?  You won't mind, will you?"
+
+"By gosh! no, if you don't.  Men's clothes!  What a rum one you are,
+Miss Silver?  Doosed good-looking little feller you'll make.  But why
+are you so skeery about it?"
+
+"Why?  Need you ask?  Would Sir Everard permit me to remain in his
+house one hour if he suspected I was his enemy's friend?  Have you any
+message to deliver to my lady before we part?"
+
+"No.  She'll send a message to me during the day, or I'm mistaken.  If
+she don't, why, I'll send one back with you to-night.  By-bye, Mrs.
+Parmalee that is to be.  Take care of yourself until to-night."
+
+The gentleman walked down the stair-way alone toward a side entrance.
+The lady stood on the landing above, looking after him with a bitter,
+sneering smile.
+
+"Mrs. Parmalee, indeed!  You blind, conceited fool!  Twist you round my
+little finger, can I?  Yes, you great, hulking simpleton, and ten times
+better men!  Let me worm your secret out of you--let me squeeze my
+sponge dry, and then see how I'll fling you into your native gutter!"
+
+Mr. Parmalee, on his way out, stopped at the pretty rustic lodge and
+bathed his swollen and discolored visage.  The lodge-keeper's wife was
+all sympathy and questions.  How on earth did it happen?
+
+"Run up against the 'lectric telegraph, ma'am," replied Mr. Parmalee,
+sulkily; "and there was a message coming full speed, and it knocked me
+over.  Morning.  Much obliged."
+
+He walked away.  Outside the gates he paused and shook his clinched
+fist menacingly at the noble old house.
+
+"I'll pay you out, my fine feller, if ever I get a chance!  You're a
+very great man, and a very proud man, Sir Everard Kingsland, and you
+own a fine fortune and a haughty, handsome wife, and G. W. Parmalee's
+no more than the mud under your feet.  Very well--we'll see!  'Every
+dog has his day,' and 'the longest lane has its turning,' and you're
+near about the end of your tether, and George Parmalee has you and your
+fine lady under his thumb--under his thumb--and he'll crush you,
+sir--yes, by Heaven, he'll crush you, and strike you back blow for
+blow!"
+
+True to his word, ho ordered unlimited supplies of brown paper and
+vinegar, rum and water, pipes and tobacco, swore at his questioners,
+and adjourned to his bedroom to await the coming of nightfall and
+Sybilla Silver.
+
+The short winter day wore on.  A good conscience, a sound digestion,
+rum and smoke _ad libitum_, enabled our wounded artist to sleep
+comfortably through it, and he was still snoring when Mrs. Wedge, the
+landlady, came to his bedside with a flaring tallow candle, and woke
+him up.
+
+"Which I've been a-knockin' and a-knockin'," Mrs. Wedge cried, shrilly,
+"fit to knock the skin off my blessed knuckles, Mr. Parmalee, and
+couldn't wake you no more'n the dead.  And he's a-waitin' down-stairs,
+which he won't come up, but says it's most particular, and must see you
+at once."
+
+"Hold your noise!" growled the artist, tumbling out of bed.  "What's
+o'clock?  Leave that candle and clear out, and tell the young feller
+I'll be down in a brace of shakes."
+
+"I couldn't see him," replied Mrs. Wedge, "which he's that muffled up
+in a long cloak and a cap drawed down that his own mother herself
+couldn't tell him hout there in the dark.  Was you a-expectin' of him,
+sir?"
+
+"That's no business of yours, Mrs. Wedge," the American answered,
+grimly.  "You can go."
+
+Mrs. Wedge departed in displeasure, and tried again to see the muffled
+stranger.  But he was looking out into the darkness, and the good
+landlady was completely baffled.
+
+She saw her lodger join him; she saw the hero of the cloak take his
+arm, and both walk briskly away.
+
+"By George! this is a disguise!" exclaimed Mr. Parmalee.  "I wouldn't
+recognize you at noonday in this trim.  Do you know who I took you for
+until you spoke?"
+
+"Whom?"
+
+"Sir Everard himself.  You're as like him as two peas in that rig, only
+not so tall."
+
+"The cloak and cap are his," Miss Silver answered, "which perhaps
+accounts--"
+
+"No," he said, "there's more than that.  I might put on that cap and
+cloak, but I wouldn't look like the baronet.  Your voices sound alike,
+and there's a general air--I can't describe it, but you know what I
+mean.  You're no relation of his, are you, Sybilla?"
+
+"A relation of the Prince of Kingsland--poor little Sybilla Silver!  My
+good Mr. Parmalee, what an absurd idea!  You do me proud even to hint
+that, the blue blood of all the Kingslands could by any chance flow in
+these plebeian veins!  Oh, no, indeed!  I am only an upper servant in
+that great house, and would lose my place within the hour if its lordly
+master dreamed I was here talking to the man he hates."
+
+"And my lady, any news from her?"
+
+"Not a word.  She came down to dinner beautifully dressed, but white as
+the snow lying yonder.  She and Sir Everard dined _tete-a-tete_.  I
+take my meals with the housekeeper, now," smiling bitterly.  "My Lady
+Harriet doesn't like me.  The butler told me they did not speak six
+words during the whole time of dinner."
+
+"Both in the sulks," said Mr. Parmalee.  "Well, it's natural.  He's
+dying to know, and she'll be torn to pieces afore she breathes a word.
+She's that sort.  But this shyin' and holding off won't do with me.
+I'm getting tired of waiting, and--and so's another party up to London.
+Tell her so, Sybilla, with G. W. P.'s compliments, and say that I give
+her just two more days, and if she doesn't come to book before the end
+of that time, I'll sell her secret to the highest bidder."
+
+"Yes!" Sybilla said, breathlessly; "and now for that secret, George!"
+
+"You won't tell?" cried Mr. Parmalee, a little alarmed at this
+precipitation.  "Say you won't--never--so help you!"
+
+"Never--I swear it.  Now go on!"
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+An hour later, Sybilla Silver, in her impenetrable disguise, re-entered
+Kingsland Court.  No one had seen her go--no one saw her return.  She
+gained her own room and took off her disguise unobserved.
+
+Once only on her way to it she had paused--before my lady's door--and
+the dark, beautiful face, wreathed with a deadly smile of hate and
+exultation, was horribly transformed to the face of a malignant,
+merciless demon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+A STORM BREWING.
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland was blazing in the very hottest of the flame when
+he tore himself forcibly away from the artist and buried himself in his
+study.  The unutterable degradation of it all, the horrible humiliation
+that this man and his wife--his--were bound together by some mysterious
+secret, nearly drove him mad.
+
+"Where there is mystery there must be guilt!" he fiercely thought.
+"Nothing under heaven can make it right for a wife to have a secret
+from her husband.  And she knew it, and concealed it before she married
+me, and means to deceive me until the end.  In a week her name and that
+of this low-bred ruffian will be bandied together throughout the
+country."
+
+And then, like a man mad indeed, he tore up and down the apartment, his
+hands clinched, his face ghastly, his eyes bloodshot.  And then all
+doubts and fears were swept away, and love rushed back in an impetuous
+torrent, and he knew that to lose her were ten thousand times worse
+than death.
+
+"My beautiful! my own! my darling!  May Heaven pity us both! for be
+your secret what it may, I can not lose you--I can not!  Life without
+you were tenfold worse than the bitterest death!  My own poor girl!  I
+know she suffers, too, for this miserable secret, this sin of
+others--for such it must be.  She looked up in my face with truthful,
+innocent eyes, and told me she never saw this man until she met him
+that day in the library, and I know she spoke the truth!  My love, my
+wife!  You asked me to trust you, and I thrust you aside!  I spoke and
+acted like a brute!  I will trust you!  I will wait!  I will never
+doubt you again, my own beloved bride!"
+
+And then, in a paroxysm of love and remorse, the young husband strode
+out of the library and upstairs to his wife's room.  He found her
+alone, sitting by the window, in her loose white morning-robe, a book
+lying idly on her knee, herself whiter than the dress she wore.  She
+was not reading, the dark eyes looked straight before them with an
+unutterable pathos that it wrung his heart to see.
+
+"My love! my life!"  He had her in his strong arms, strained to his
+breast as if he never meant to let her go.  "My own dear Harrie!  Can
+you ever forgive me for the brutal words I used--for the brutal way I
+acted?"
+
+"My Everard! my beloved husband!  My darling! my darling!  You are
+not--you will not be angry with your poor little Harrie?"
+
+"I could not, my life!  What is the world worth to us if we can not
+love and trust?  I do love you, God alone knows how well!  I will trust
+you, though all the world should rise up against you!"
+
+"Thank Heaven! thank Heaven!  Everard, dearest, I can not tell you--I
+can not--how miserable I have been!  If I lost your love I should die!
+Trust me, my husband--trust me!  Love me!  I have no one left in the
+wide world but you!"
+
+She broke down in a wild storm of womanly weeping.  He held her in
+silence--the hysterics did her good.  He only knew that he loved her
+with a passionate, consuming love, and not ten million secrets could
+keep them apart.
+
+Presently she raised her head and looked at him.
+
+"Everard, have you--have you seen that man?"
+
+His heart contracted with a sudden sharp pang, but he strove to
+restrain himself and be calm.
+
+"Parmalee?  Yes, Harrie; I left him not an hour ago."
+
+"And he--Everard--for God's sake--"
+
+"He told me nothing, Harrie.  You and he keep your secrets well.  He
+told me nothing, and he is gone.  He will never come back here more."
+
+He looked at her keenly, suspiciously, as he said it.  Alas! the
+intermittent fever was taking its hot fit again.  But she dropped her
+face on his shoulder and hid it.
+
+"Has he left the village, Everard?" very faintly.
+
+"I can not say.  I only know I have forbidden him this place," he
+replied.  "Harrie, Harrie, my little wife!  You are very merciless!
+You are torturing me, and I--I would die to save you an instant's pain!"
+
+At that eloquent cry she slipped out of his arms and fell on her knees
+before him, her clasped hands hiding her face.
+
+"May God grant me a short life!" was her frenzied cry, "for I never can
+tell you--never, Everard, not on my dying bed--the secret I have sworn
+to keep!"
+
+"Sworn to keep!"  It flashed upon him like a revelation.  "Sworn to
+whom? to your father, Harrie?"
+
+"Do not ask me!  I can tell you nothing--I dare not!  I am bound by an
+awful vow!  And, oh, I think I am the most wretched creature in the
+wide world!"
+
+He raised her up; he kissed the white, despairing face again and
+again--a rain of rapturous kisses.  A ton weight seemed suddenly lifted
+off his heart.
+
+"I see it all," he cried--"I see it all now!  Fool that I was not to
+understand sooner.  There was some mystery, some guilt, perhaps, in
+Captain Hunsden's life, and he revealed it to you on his death-bed, and
+made you swear to keep his secret.  Am I not right?"
+
+She did not look up.  He could feel her shivering from head to foot.
+
+"Yes, Everard."
+
+"And this man has in some way found it out, and wishes to trade upon
+it, to extort money from you?  I have often heard of such things.  Am I
+right again?"
+
+"Yes, Everard," very faint and sad.
+
+"Then, my own dearest, leave me to deal with him; see him and fear him
+no more.  I will seek him out.  I will not ask to know it.  I will pay
+him his price and send him about his business."
+
+He rose as he spoke.  But Harriet clung to him with a strange, white
+face.
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried.  "It would not do.  You could not satisfy him.
+You don't know--"  She stopped distractedly.  "Oh, Everard, I can't
+explain.  You are all kindness, all generosity, all goodness; but I
+must settle with this man myself.  Don't go near him--don't ask to see
+him.  It could do no good."
+
+"I am not right, then, after all.  The secret is yours, not your
+father's?"
+
+"Do not ask me!  If the sin is not mine, the atonement--the bitter
+atonement--is, at least.  Everard, look at me--see!  I love you with
+all my heart.  I would not tell you a lie.  I never committed a deed, I
+never indulged a thought of my own, you are not free to know.  I never
+saw this man until that day in the library.  Oh, believe this and trust
+me, and don't ask me to break my oath!"
+
+"I will not!  I believe you; I trust you.  I ask no more.  Get rid of
+this man, and be happy once again.  We will not even talk of it longer;
+and--will you come with me to my mother's, Harrie?  I dine there, you
+know, to-day."
+
+"My head aches.  Not to-day, I think.  What time will you return?"
+
+"Before ten.  And, as I have a little magisterial business to transact
+down in the village, it is time I was off.  Adieu, my own love!  Forget
+the harsh words, and be my own happy, radiant, beautiful bride once
+more."
+
+She lifted her face and smiled--a smile as wan and fleeting as
+moonlight on snow.
+
+Sir Everard hastened to his room to dress, striving with all his might
+to drive every suspicion out of his mind.
+
+And she--she flung herself on the sofa, face downward, and lay there as
+if she never cared to rise again.
+
+"Papa, papa!" she wailed, "what have you done--what have you done?"
+
+All that day Lady Kingsland kept her room.  Her maid brought her what
+she wanted.  Sir Everard returned at the appointed hour, looking gloomy
+and downcast.
+
+His evening at his mother's had not been a pleasant one--that was
+evident.  Perhaps some vague hint of the darkening mystery had already
+reached The Grange.
+
+"My mother feels rather hurt, Harrie," he said, somewhat coldly, "that
+you did not accompany me.  She is unable to call on you, owing to a
+severe cold.  Mildred is absorbed in waiting upon her, and desires to
+see you exceedingly.  I promised them we would both dine there tomorrow
+and spend the evening."
+
+"As you please, Everard," she said, wearily.  "It is all the same to
+me."
+
+She descended to breakfast next morning carefully dressed to meet the
+fastidious eye of her husband.  But she ate nothing.  A gloomy
+presentiment of impending evil weighed down her heart.  Her husband
+made little effort to rouse her--the contagious gloom affected him, too.
+
+"It is the weather, I dare say," he remarked, looking out at the bleak,
+wintery day, the leaden sky, the wailing wind.  "This February gloom is
+enough to give a man the megrims.  I must face it, too, for to-day I
+'meet the captains at the citadel'--that is to say, I promised to ride
+over to Major Warden's about noon.  You will be ready, Harrie, when I
+return to accompany me to The Grange?"
+
+She promised, and he departed; and then Lady Kingsland ascended to her
+own apartment.
+
+While she stood there, gazing at the gray desolation of the February
+morning, there was a soft tap at the door.
+
+"Come in!" she said, thinking it her maid; and the door opened, and
+Sybilla Silver entered.
+
+Lady Kingsland faced round and looked at her.  How handsome she was!
+That was her first involuntary thought.  Her sweeping black robes fell
+around her tall, regal figure with queenly grace, the black eyes
+sparkled with living light, a more vivid scarlet than usual lighted up
+each dusky cheek.  She looked gloriously beautiful standing there.  Mr.
+Parmalee would surely have been dazzled had he seen her.
+
+There was a moment's pause.  The two women eyed each other as
+accomplished swordsmen may on the eve of a duel.  Very pale, very
+proud, looked my lady.  She disliked and distrusted this brilliant,
+black-eyed Miss Silver, and Miss Silver knew it well.
+
+"You wish to speak with me, Miss Silver?" my lady said, in her most
+superb manner.
+
+"Yes, my lady--most particularly, and quite alone.  I beg your pardon,
+but your maid is not within hearing, I trust?"
+
+"We are quite alone," very coldly.  "Speak out; no one can overhear
+you."
+
+"I do not care for myself," Sybilla said, her glittering black eyes
+meeting the proud gray ones.  "It is for your sake, my lady."
+
+"For my sake!" in haughty amaze.  "You can have nothing to say to me,
+Miss Silver, the whole world may not overhear.  If you intend to be
+impertinent, I shall order you out of the room."
+
+"One moment, my lady; you go too fast.  The whole world may not
+overhear the message Mr. Parmalee sends you by me."
+
+"Ah!" my lady recoiled as though an adder had stung her--"always that
+man!  Speak out, then"--turning swiftly upon her husband's
+protegee--"what is the message this man sends me by you?"
+
+"That if you do not meet him within two days, he will sell your secret
+to the highest bidder."
+
+Sybilla delivered, word for word, the words of the American--cruelly,
+slowly, significantly--looking her still straight in the eyes.  Those
+clear gray eyes flashed with a fierce, defiant light.
+
+"You know all?" she cried.
+
+Sybilla Silver bowed her head.
+
+"I know all," she answered.
+
+Dead silence fell.  White as a dead woman, Lady Kingsland stood, her
+eyes ablaze with fierce, consuming fire.  Sybilla made a step forward,
+sunk down before her, and lifted her hand to her lips.
+
+"He told me all, my dear lady; but your secret is safe with me.
+Sybilla will be your true and faithful, though humble, friend, if you
+will let her.  Dear Lady Kingsland, don't look at me with that stony,
+angry face.  I have no wish but to serve you."
+
+The gracious speech met with but an ungracious return.  My lady
+snatched her hand away, as though from a snake, and gazed at her with
+flashing eyes of scorn and distrust.
+
+"What are you to this man, Miss Silver?" she asked.  "Why should he
+tell you?"
+
+"I am his plighted wife," replied Sybilla, trying to call up a
+conscious blush.
+
+"Ah, I see!" my lady said, scornfully.  "Permit me to congratulate you
+on the excellent execution your black eyes have wrought.  You are a
+very clever girl, Miss Silver, and I think I understand you thoroughly.
+I am only surprised you did not carry your discovery straight to Sir
+Everard Kingsland."
+
+"Your ladyship is most unjust," Sybilla said, turning away, "unkind and
+cruel.  I have delivered my message, and I will go."
+
+"Wait one moment," my lady said, in her clear sweet voice, her proud
+face gleaming with a cynical smile.  "Tomorrow evening it will be
+impossible for me to see Mr. Parmalee--there is to be a dinner-party at
+the house--during the day still more impossible.  Since he commands me
+to see him, I will do so to-night, and throw over my other engagements.
+At eight this evening I will be in the Beech Walk, and alone.  Let Mr.
+Parmalee come to me there."
+
+A gleam of diabolical triumph lighted up the great black eyes of
+Sybilla, but the profound bow she made concealed it.
+
+"I will tell him, my lady," she said, "and he will be there without
+fail."
+
+She quitted the room, closed the door, and looked back at it as Satan
+may have looked back at Eden after vanquishing Eve.
+
+"My triumph begins," she said to herself.  "I have caught you nicely
+this time, my lady.  You and Mr. Parmalee will not be alone in the
+Beech Walk to-night."
+
+Left to herself, Harriet stood for a moment motionless.
+
+"She, too," she murmured, "my arch-enemy!  Oh, my God, help me to bear
+it--help me to keep the horrible truth from the husband I love!  She
+will not tell him.  She knows he would never endure her from the hour
+she would make the revelation; and that thought alone restrains her.
+It will kill me--this agonizing fear and horror!  And better so--better
+to die now, while he loves me, than live to be loathed when he
+discovers the truth!"
+
+Sir Everard Kingsland, riding home in the yellow, wintery sunset, found
+my lady lying on a lounge in her boudoir, her maid beside her, bathing
+her forehead with eau-de-Cologne.
+
+"Headache again, Harrie?" he said.  "You are growing a complete martyr
+to that feminine malady of late.  I had hoped to find you dressed and
+ready to accompany me to The Grange."
+
+"I am sorry, Everard, but this evening it is impossible.  Make my
+excuses to her ladyship, and tell her I hope to see her soon."
+
+She did not look up as she said it, and her husband, stooping,
+imprinted a kiss on the colorless cheek.
+
+"My poor, pale girl!  I will send Edwards with an apology to The
+Grange, and remain at home with you."
+
+"No!" Harriet cried, hastily; "not on any account.  You must not
+disappoint your mother, Everard; you must go.  There, good-bye!  It is
+time you were dressing.  Don't mind me; I will be better when you
+return."
+
+"I feel as though I ought not to leave you to-night," he said.  "It
+seems heartless, and you ill.  I had better send Edwards and the
+apology."
+
+"You foolish boy!"  She looked up at him and smiled, with eyes full of
+tears.  "I will be better alone and quiet.  Sleep and solitude will
+quite restore me.  Go!  Go!  You will be late, and my lady dislikes
+being kept waiting."
+
+He kissed her and went, casting one long, lingering backward look at
+the wife he loved.  And with a pang bitterer than death came the
+remembrance afterward of how she had urged him to leave her that night.
+
+Thus they parted--to look into each other's eyes no more, in love and
+trust for a dark and tragic time.
+
+Sybilla Silver, standing at the house door, was gazing out, at the
+yellow February sun sinking pale and watery into the livid horizon
+tine, as the baronet ran down-stairs, drawing on his gloves.  He
+paused, with his usual courtesy, to speak to his dependent as he went
+by.
+
+"The sky yonder looks ominous," he said, "and this wailing, icy blast
+is the very desolation of desolation.  There is a storm brewing."
+
+Miss Silver's black eyes gleamed, and her white teeth showed in a
+sinister smile.
+
+"A storm?" she repeated.  "Yes, I think there is, and you will be
+caught in it, Sir Everard, if you stay late."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+AT NIGHT IN THE BEECH WALK.
+
+The instant Sir Everard was out of sight Sybilla ran up to her chamber,
+and presently reappeared, dressed for a walk.
+
+Even the long, shrouding mantle she wore could not disguise the
+exquisite symmetry of her graceful form, and the thick brown veil could
+not dim the luster of her flashing Assyrian eyes.  She smiled back,
+before flitting away, at the dark, bright, sparkling face her mirror
+showed her.
+
+"You are a very pretty person, my dear Miss Silver," she
+said--"prettier even than my lady herself, though I say it.  Worlds
+have been lost for less handsome faces than this in the days gone by,
+and Mr. Parmalee will have every reason to be proud of his wife--when
+he gets her."
+
+She ran lightly down-stairs, a sarcastic smile still on her lips.  In
+the lower hall stood Mr. Edwards, the valet, disconsolately gazing at
+the threatening prospect.  He turned around, and his dull eyes lighted
+up at sight of this darkling vision of beauty--for Mr. Parmalee was by
+no means the only gentleman with the good taste to admire handsome
+Sybilla.
+
+"Going hout, Miss Silver!" Mr. Edwards asked.  "Huncommon urgent your
+business must be to take you from 'ome such a hevening as this.  'Ow's
+my lady?"
+
+"My lady is not at all well, Mr. Edwards," answered Sybilla.  "Sir
+Everard was obliged to go alone to his mother's, my lady's headache is
+so intense.  Claudine is with her, I believe.  We are going to have a
+storm, are we not?  I shall be obliged to hurry back."
+
+She flitted away as she spoke, drawing down her veil, and disappearing
+while yet Mr. Edwards was trying to make a languid proffer of his
+services as escort.  He lounged easily up against the window, gazing
+with calm admiration after her.
+
+"An huncommon 'andsome and lady-looking young pusson that," reflected
+Sir Everard's gentleman.  "I shouldn't mind hasking her to be my missus
+one of these days.  That face of hers and them dashing ways would take
+helegantly behind the bar of a public."
+
+Sybilla sped on her way down the village to the Blue Bell.  Just before
+she reached the inn she encountered Mr. Parmalee himself, taking a
+constitutional, a cigar in his mouth, and his hands deep in his
+trousers pockets.  He met and greeted his fair betrothed with natural
+phlegm.
+
+"How do, Sybilla?" nodding.  "I kind of thought you'd be after me, and
+so I stepped out.  You've been and delivered that there little message
+of mine, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," said Sybilla; "and she will meet you to-night in the Beech Walk,
+and hear what you have got to say."
+
+"The deuce she will!" said the artist; "and have her fire-eating
+husband catch us and set the flunkies at me.  Not if I know myself.  If
+my lady wants to hear what I've got to say, let my lady come to me."
+
+"She never will," responded Sybilla.  "You don't know her.  Don't be an
+idiot, George--do as she requests.  Meet her to-night in the Beech
+Walk."
+
+"And have the baronet come upon us in the middle of our confab!  Look
+here, Sybilla, I ain't a cowardly feller, you know, in the main; but,
+by George! it ain't pleasant to be horsewhipped by an outrageous young
+baronet or kicked from the gates by his under-strappers."
+
+"There is no danger.  Sir Everard is not at home, and will not be
+before ten o'clock at least.  He is gone to dine at The Grange with his
+mother; and my lady was to have gone, too, but your message frightened
+her, and she told him little white lies, and insisted on his going by
+himself.  And, you silly old stupid, if you had two ideas in your head,
+you would see that this opportunity of braving his express command, and
+entering the lion's den to meet his wife by night and by stealth, is
+the most glorious opportunity of revenge you could have.  Sir Everard
+is nearly mad with jealousy and suspicion already.  What will he be
+when he finds his wife of a month has lied to him to meet you alone and
+in secret at the Beech Walk?  I tell you, Mr. Parmalee, you will be
+gloriously revenged!"
+
+"By thunder!" cried the artist, "I never thought of that.  I'll do it,
+Sybilla--I'll do it, so help me!  Tell my lady I'll be there right on
+the minute; and do you take care that confounded baronet finds it out.
+I said I'd pay him off for every blow, and I'll do it, by the Eternal!"
+
+"And strike through her!" hissed Sybilla, with glittering black eyes,
+"and every blow will go straight through the core of his proud heart.
+We'll torture him, George Parmalee, as man never was tortured before."
+
+"What a little devil you are, Sybilla!" he said, with lover-like
+candor.  "I've heard tell that you wimmin knock us men into a cocked
+hat in the way of hating, and I now begin to think it is true.  What
+has this 'ere baronet done to you, I should admire to know?  You don't
+hate him like the old sarpent for nothing."
+
+"What has he done to me?" repeated Sybilla, with a strange, slow smile.
+"That is easily told.  He gave me a home when I was homeless; he was my
+friend when I was friendless.  I have broken his bread and drunk of his
+cup, and slept under his roof, and--I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!"
+
+Mr. Parmalee took out his cigar and stared at her in horror.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Miss Silver," he said, "I don't like this sort
+of thing--I don't, by George!  I ain't surprised at a person hating a
+person, because I hate him myself; but for a young woman that is going
+to be my wife to cut up like this here, and swear everlasting
+vengeance--well, I don't like it.  You see, wild cats ain't the most
+comfortable sort of pets a man can have in his house, and how do I know
+but it may be my turn next?"
+
+"You precious old stupid!  As if I could hate you, if I tried.  No, no,
+George; you may trust Sybilla.  The wild cat will sheathe her claws in
+triple folds of velvet for you."
+
+"Humph!" said Mr. Parmalee; "but the claws will still be there.
+However, I ain't a-going to quarrel with you about it.  I like a spunky
+woman, and I hate him.  I'll meet my lady to-night, and you see that my
+lady's husband finds it out."
+
+"Until then," responded Sybilla, folding her mantle closer about her,
+"remember the hour--eight sharp--and don't keep her waiting.  Before he
+sleeps to-night the proudest baronet in the realm shall know why his
+wife deliberately deceived him to meet a strange man by night and by
+stealth in the park, where her husband had ordered him never to set
+foot again."
+
+She fluttered away in the chill spring twilight with the last words,
+leaving her fiance gazing after her with an expression that was not
+altogether unmixed admiration.
+
+"I'll be darned if I ever met the like of you, Miss Silver, in all my
+travels.  You might be own sister to Lucifer himself for wickedness and
+revengefulness.  I'll find out what's at the bottom of all this
+cantankerous spite before I make you Mrs. G. W. Parmalee, or I'll know
+the reason why.  It's all very fine to have a handsome wife, with big
+black eyes and a spunky spirit, but a fellow doesn't want a wife that
+will bury the carving-knife in him the first time he contradicts her."
+
+Sybilla was a good walker; the last yellow line of the watery February
+sunset had hardly faded as she tripped up the long drive under the
+gaunt, tossing trees.  Mr. Edwards still lounged in elegant leisure in
+the hall, conversing with a gigantic young footman, and his fishy eyes
+kindled for the second time as Sybilla appeared, flushed and bright and
+sparkling, after her windy, twilight walk.
+
+"I have outstripped the storm after all, you see," she remarked as she
+went by.  "I don't believe we shall have it before midnight.  Oh,
+Claudine! is my lady in her room?  I have been on an errand for her
+down the village."
+
+She had encountered the jaunty little French girl on the upper landing,
+and paused to put the question.
+
+"Yes," Claudine said.  "Madame's headache was easier.  She is reading
+in her dressing-room."
+
+Sybilla tapped at the dressing-room door, then turned the handle and
+entered.  It was an exquisite little _bijou_ of a chamber, with fluted
+walls of rose silk, and delicious plump beauties with bare shoulders
+and melting eyes, by Greuze.  A wood fire flickered on the marble
+hearth, and was flashed back from lofty mirrors as tall as the room.
+
+Lying back in an arm-chair, her book fallen aimlessly on her lap, her
+dark, deep eyes looking straight before her into the evening gloaming,
+my lady sat alone.
+
+The melancholy wash of the waves on the shore, the mournful sighing of
+the evening wind among the groaning trees, the monotonous ticking of a
+dainty buhl clock, and the light fall of the cinders sounded abnormally
+loud in the dead silence of the apartment.
+
+Lady Kingsland turned round at the opening of the door, and her face
+hardened into that cold look it always wore at sight of her husband's
+brilliant protegee.
+
+"I have been to the village, my lady," Sybilla said.  "I have seen Mr.
+Parmalee.  He will be in the Beech Walk precisely at eight."
+
+My lady bent her head in cold acknowledgment.  Sybilla paused an
+instant, determined to make her speak.
+
+"Can I be of service to you in any way in this matter, my lady?" she
+asked.
+
+"You?" in proud surprise.  "Certainly not.  I wish to be alone, Miss
+Silver.  Be good enough to go."
+
+Sybilla's little brown fist clinched itself furiously, once on the
+landing outside.
+
+"I can't humble her!" she thought.  "I can't make her fear me.  I can't
+triumph over her, do what I will.  I have her secret and I hold her in
+my power, but she is prouder than Lucifer himself, and she would let me
+stand forth and tell all, and if one pleading word would stop me, she
+would not say it.  'The brave may die, but can not yield!'  She should
+have been a man."
+
+She went to the window and drew out her watch; it wanted a quarter of
+eight.
+
+"In fifteen minutes my lady goes; in fifteen more I shall follow her,
+and not alone.  I am afraid Sir Everard's slumbers will be rather
+disturbed to-night."
+
+The last yellow gleam of the dying day was gone, and a sickly, pallid
+moon glimmered dully among drifts of scudding black clouds.  An icy
+blast wailed up from the sea, and the rocking trees were like dryad
+specters in writhing agony.  The distant Beech Walk looked black and
+grim and ghostly in the weird light.
+
+A great clock high up in a windy turret struck eight.  A moment after
+the door of my lady's dressing-room opened.  A dark, shrouded figure
+emerged, flitted swiftly down the long gallery, down the stair-way, and
+vanished.
+
+Ten minutes later Edwards, yawning forlornly, still in the entrance
+hall, beheld Miss Silver coming toward him with an anxious face, a
+large shawl thrown over her head.
+
+"Going out again?" the valet exclaimed.  "And such a nasty night, too.
+You are fond of walking, Miss S., and no mistake."
+
+"I'm not going for a walk," said Sybilla.  "I am going to look for a
+locket I lost this afternoon.  I was out in the park, in the direction
+of the Beech Walk, and there I must have dropped it."
+
+"Better wait until to-morrow," suggested Edwards.  "The wind's 'owling
+through the trees, and it's colder than the Harctic regions.  Better
+wait."
+
+"I can not.  The locket was a present, and I value it exceedingly.  I
+thought of asking you to accompany me, but as it is so cold perhaps you
+had better not."
+
+"Oh, I'll go with pleasure!" said Mr. Edwards.  "If you can stand the
+cold, I can, I dessay.  Wait till I get my 'at and hovercoat--I won't
+be a minute."
+
+Miss Silver waited.  Mr. Edwards reappeared in a twinkling.
+
+"'Adn't I better fetch a lantern?" he suggested.  "It will be
+himpossible to see it, heven if it should be there."
+
+"No," said Sybilla.  "The moon is shining, and the locket will glimmer
+on the snow.  Come!"
+
+She took his arm, and they started at a brisk pace for the Beech Walk.
+The ground, baked hard as iron, rang under their tread, and whether it
+was the bitter blast or not, Mr. Edwards could not tell, but his
+companion's face was flushed with a more brilliant glow, in the ghostly
+moonlight, than he had ever before seen there.
+
+They reached the long grove of magnificent copper-beeches, and just
+without its entrance Miss Silver began searching for her lost locket.
+
+"It is not here," said Sybilla.   "Let us go further down----"
+
+She paused at a sudden gesture of her companion.
+
+"Hush!" he said.  "There is some one talking in the Beech Walk."
+
+Both paused and stood stock still.  Borne unmistakably on the night
+wind, voices came to them--the soft voice of a woman, the deeper tones
+of a man.
+
+"One of the maids, I dare say," Sybilla said, carelessly, "holding
+tryst with her lover."
+
+"No," said the valet; "not one of the maids would set foot hinside this
+walk hafter nightfall for a kingdom!  They say it's 'aunted.  Come
+forward a little, and let's see if we can't 'ave a look at the talkers.
+Whoever it is, he's hup to no good, I'll be bound!"
+
+Very softly, stealing on tiptoe, the twain approached the entrance of
+the avenue.  The watery moonlight breaking through a rift in the
+clouds, shone out for an instant above the trees, and showed them a man
+and a woman, standing face to face, earnestly talking.  Mr. Edwards
+barely repressed a cry of consternation.
+
+"Good Lord!" he gasped; "it's my lady!"
+
+"Hush!" cried Sybilla.  "Who is the man?"
+
+As if some inward prescience told him they were there, the man lifted
+his hat at that very instant, and plainly showed his face.
+
+"The Hamerican, by Jove!" gasped the horrified valet.  Sybilla Silver's
+eyes blazed like coals of fire, and the demoniac smile, that made her
+brilliant beauty hideous, gleamed on her lips.
+
+She grasped the man's arm with slender fingers of iron, and stood
+gloating over the scene.
+
+Not one word could they hear--the distance was too great--but they
+could see my lady's passionate gestures; they could see the white hands
+clasp and cover her face; they could see her wildly excited, even in
+that dim light.  And once they saw her take from her pocket her purse,
+and pour a handful of shining sovereigns into Mr. Parmalee's extended
+hand.
+
+Nearly an hour they had stood, petrified gazers, when they were aroused
+as by a thunder-clap.  A horse came galloping furiously up the avenue,
+as only one rider ever galloped there.  Sybilla Silver just repressed a
+scream of exultation--no more.
+
+"It is Sir Everard Kingsland!" she cried, in a whisper of fierce
+delight, "in time to catch his sick wife in the Beech Walk with the man
+he hates!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+MY LADY'S SECRET.
+
+It was quite dark before prudent Mr. Parmalee, notwithstanding
+Sybilla's assurance that the baronet was away from home, ventured
+within the great entrance gates of the park.  He was not, as he said
+himself, a coward altogether; but he had a lively recollection of the
+pummeling he had already received, and a wholesome dread of the
+scientific hitting of this strong-fisted young aristocrat.  When he did
+venture, his coat-collar was so pulled up that recognition was next to
+impossible.
+
+Mr. Parmalee, smoking a cigar, made his way to the Beech Walk, and
+leaning against a giant tree, stared at the moon, and waited.  The
+loud-voiced turret clock struck eight a moment after he had taken his
+position.
+
+"Time is up," thought the photographer.  "My lady ought to be here now.
+I'll give her another quarter.  If she isn't with me in that time, then
+good-bye to Lady Kingsland and my keeping her secret."
+
+Ten minutes passed.  As he replaced his watch a light step sounded on
+the frozen snow, a shadow darkened the entrance, and Lady Kingsland's
+pale, proud face looked fixedly at him in the moonlight.  He took off
+his hat and threw away his half-smoked cigar.
+
+"My Lady Kingsland!"
+
+She bowed haughtily, hovering aloof.
+
+"You wished to see me, Mr. Parmalee--that is your name, I believe.
+What is it you have to say to me?"
+
+"I don't think you really need to ask that question, my lady.  You know
+as well as I do, or I'm mistaken."
+
+"Who are you?" she demanded, impatiently, impetuously.  "How do you
+come to know my secret?  How do you come to be possessed of that
+picture?"
+
+"I told you before.  She gave it to me herself."
+
+"For God's sake, tell me the truth!  Don't deceive me!  Do you really
+mean it?  Have you really seen my----"
+
+She stopped, shuddering in some horrible inward repulsion from head to
+foot.
+
+"I really have," rejoined Mr. Parmalee.  "I know the--the party in
+question like a book.  She told me her story, she gave me her picture
+herself, of her own free will, and she told me where to find you.  She
+is in London now, all safe, and waiting--a little out of patience,
+though, by this time, I dare say."
+
+"Waiting!" Lady Kingsland gasped the word in white terror.  "Waiting
+for what?"
+
+"To see you, my lady."
+
+There was a blank pause.  My lady covered her face with both hands, and
+again that convulsive shudder shook her from head to foot.
+
+"She is very penitent, my lady," Mr. Parmalee said, in a softer tone.
+"She is very poor, and ill and heart-broken.  Even you, my lady, might
+pity and forgive her if you saw her now."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, hush!  I don't want to hear.  Tell me how you met
+her first.  I never heard your name until that day in the library."
+
+"No more you didn't," said the artist.  "You see, my lady, it was pure
+chance-work from first to last.  I was coming over here on a little
+speculation of my own in the photographic line, and being low in pocket
+and pretty well used to rough it, I was coming in the steerage.  There
+was a pretty hard crowd of us--Dutch and Irish and all sorts mixed up
+there--an' among 'em one that looked as much out of her element as a
+fish out of water.  Any one could tell with half an eye she'd been a
+lady, in spite of her shabby duds and starved, haggard face.  She was
+alone.  Not a soul knew her, not a soul cared for her, and half-way
+across she fell sick and had like to died."
+
+Mr. Parmalee paused.  My lady stood before him, ashen, white to the
+lips, listening with wild, wide eyes.
+
+"Go on," she said, almost in a whisper.
+
+"Well, my lady," Mr. Parmalee resumed, modestly,  "I'm a pretty rough
+sort of a fellow, as you may see, and I hain't never experienced
+religion or that, and don't lay claim to no sort of goodness; but for
+all that I've an old mother over to home, and for her sake I couldn't
+stand by and see a poor, sufferin' feller-critter of the female
+persuasion and not lend a helping hand.  I nussed that there sick party
+by night and by day, and if it hadn't been for that nussin' and the
+little things I bought her to eat, she'd have been under the Atlantic
+now, though I do say it."
+
+My lady held out her hand, aglitter with rich rings.
+
+"You are a better man than I took you for," she said softly.  "I thank
+you with all my heart."
+
+Mr. Parmalee took the dainty hand, rather confusedly, in his
+finger-tips, held it a second, and dropped it.
+
+"It was one night, when she thought herself dying, that she told me her
+story--told me everything, my lady--who she had been, who she was, and
+what she was coming across for.  My lady, nobody could be sorrier than
+she was then.  I pitied her, by George, more than I ever pitied any one
+before in my life.  She had been unhappy and remorseful for a long
+time, but she was in despair.  It was too late for repentance, she
+thought.  There was nothing for it but to go on to the dreadful end.
+Sometimes, when she was almost mad, she--well, she took to drink, you
+know, and he wasn't in any way a good or kind protector to
+her--Thorndyke wasn't."
+
+My lady flung up both arms with a shrill scream.
+
+"Not that name," she cried--"not that accursed name, if you would not
+drive me mad!"
+
+"I beg your pardon!" said Mr. Parmalee; "I won't.  Well, she heard of
+your father's death--_he_ told her, you see--and that completed her
+despair.  She took to drink worse and worse; she got out of all
+bounds--sort of frantic, you see.  Twice she tried to kill
+herself--once by poison, once by drowning; and both times he--you know
+who I mean--caught her and stopped her.  He hadn't even mercy enough on
+her, she says, to let her die!"
+
+"For God's sake, don't tell me of those horrors!" my lady cried, in
+agony.  "I feel as though I were going mad."
+
+"It is hard," said the artist, "but I can't help it--it's true, all the
+same.  She heard of your marriage to Sir Everard Kingsland next.  It
+was the last thing he ever taunted her with; for, crazed with his jeers
+and insults, she fled from him that night, sold all she possessed but
+the clothes on her back, and took passage for England."
+
+"To see me?" asked Harriet, hoarsely.
+
+"To see you, my lady, but all unknown.  She had no wish to force
+herself upon you; she only felt that she was dying, and that if she
+could look on your face once before she went out of life, and see you
+well, and beautiful, and beloved, and happy, she could lie down in the
+dust at your gates and die content.
+
+"She made me write you a line or two that night," continued Mr.
+Parmalee--"that night which she thought her last--and she begged me to
+find you and give it to you, with her picture.  I have it yet; here
+they are, both."
+
+He drew from his pocket the picture and a note, and gave them into my
+lady's hand.
+
+"She didn't die," he resumed; "she got better, and I took her to
+London, left her there, and came down here.  Now, my lady, I don't make
+no pretense of being better than I am; I took this matter up in the way
+of speculation, in the view to make money out of it, and nothing else.
+I said to myself: 'Here's this young lady, the bride of a rich baronet;
+it ain't likely she's been and told him all this, and it ain't likely
+her pa has died and left her ignorant of it.  Now, what's to hinder my
+making a few honest pounds out of it, at the same time I do a good turn
+for this poor, sufferin'.  sinful critter here?  That's what I said, my
+lady, and that's what I am here for.  I'm a poor man, and I live by my
+wits, and a stroke of business is a stroke of business, no matter how
+far it's out of the ordinary run.  Your husband don't know this here
+story; you don't want him to know it, and you come down handsomely and
+I'll keep your secret."
+
+"You have rather spoiled your marketable commodity, then, Mr. Parmalee.
+It would have paid you better not to have shared your secret with
+Sybilla Silver."
+
+"She's told you, has she?" said the artist, rather surprised.  "Now
+that's what I call mean.  You don't think she'll peach to Sir Everard,
+do you?"
+
+"I think it extremely likely that she will.  She hates me, Mr.
+Parmalee, and Miss Silver would do a good deal for a person she hates.
+You should have waited until she became Mrs. Parmalee before making her
+the repository of your valuable secrets."
+
+"It's no good talking about it now, however," said Mr. Parmalee, rather
+doggedly.  "I've told her, and it can't be helped.  And now, my lady, I
+don't want to be caught here, and it's getting late, and what are you
+going to give a fellow for all his trouble?"
+
+"What will hardly repay you," said my lady, "for I have very little of
+my own, as you doubtless have informed yourself ere this.  What I have
+you have earned and shall receive.  At the most it will not exceed
+three hundred pounds.  Of my husband's money not one farthing shall any
+one ever receive from me for keeping a secret of mine."
+
+"I must have more than that," he said, resolutely.  "Three hundred
+pounds is nothing to a lady like you."
+
+"It is all I have--all I can give you, and to give you that I must sell
+the trinkets my dear dead father gave me.  But it is for his sake I do
+it--to preserve his secret.  My jewels, my diamonds, my husband's gifts
+I will not touch, nor one farthing of his money will you ever receive.
+You entirely mistake me, Mr. Parmalee.  My secret I will keep from him
+while I can; I swore a solemn oath by my father's death-bed to do so.
+But to pay you with his money--to bribe you to deceive him with his
+gold--I never will.  I would die first."
+
+She stood before him erect, defiant, queenly.
+
+Mr. Parmalee frowned darkly.
+
+"Suppose I go to him then, my lady--suppose I pour this nice little
+story into his ear--what then?"
+
+"Then," she exclaimed, in tones of ringing scorn, "you will receive
+nothing.  His servants will thrust you from his gates.  No, Mr.
+Parmalee, if money be your object you will make a better bargain with
+me than with him.  What is mine you shall have--every farthing I own,
+every trinket I possess--on condition that you depart and never trouble
+me more.  That is all I can do--all I will do.  Decide which you
+prefer."
+
+"There is no choice," replied the American, sullenly; "half a loaf is
+better than nothing.  I'll take the three hundred pounds.  And now, my
+lady, what do you mean to do about her?  She wants to see you."
+
+"See me!"  An expression of horror swept over my lady's face.  "Not for
+ten thousand worlds!"
+
+"Well, now, I call that hard," said Mr. Parmalee.  "I don't care what
+she's done or what she's been, it's hard!  She's sorry now, and no one
+can be more than that.  I take an interest in that unfortunate party,
+my lady; and if you knew how she hankers after a sight of you--how poor
+and ill and heart-broken she is--how she longs to hear you say once, 'I
+forgive you,' before she dies--well, you wouldn't be so hard."
+
+"Stop--stop!" Lady Kingsland exclaimed.
+
+She turned away, leaning against a tree, her face more ghastly than the
+face of a dead woman.
+
+Mr. Parmalee watched her.  He could see the fierce struggle that shook
+her from head to foot.
+
+"Don't be hard on her!" he pleaded.  "She's very humble now, and fallen
+very low.  She won't live long, and you'll be happier on your own
+death-bed, my lady, for forgiving her poor soul!"
+
+She put out her hand blindly and took his.
+
+"I will see her," she said, hoarsely.  "May God forgive her and pity
+me!  Fetch her down here, Mr. Parmalee, and I will see her."
+
+"Yes, my lady; but as I'm rather short of funds, perhaps--"
+
+She drew out her purse and poured its glittering contents into his palm.
+
+"It is all I have now; when you return I will have the three hundred
+pounds.  You must take her back to New York.  She and I must never meet
+again--for my husband's sake."
+
+"I understand, my lady.  I'll do what I can.  I'll take her back, and
+I'll trouble you no more."
+
+His last words were drowned in the gallop of Sir Galahad up the avenue.
+
+"It is my husband," my lady exclaimed.  "I must leave you.  When will
+you--and she--return?"
+
+"In two days we will be here.  I'll give out she's a sister of mine at
+the inn, and I'll send you word and arrange a meeting."
+
+Mr. Parmalee drew down his hat and strode away.  Weak, trembling, my
+lady leaned for a few moments against a tree, trying to recover
+herself, then turned slowly and walked back to the house to meet her
+husband.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+MISS SILVER BREAKS THE NEWS.
+
+The Grange, the jointure house of the Dowager Lady Kingsland, stood,
+like all such places, isolated and alone, at the furthest extremity of
+the village.  It was a dreary old building enough, weather-beaten and
+brown, with primly laid-out grounds, and row upon row of stiff poplars
+waving in the wintery wind.  A lonely, forlorn old place--a vivid
+contrast to the beauty and brightness of Kingsland Court; and from the
+first day of her entrance, Lady Kingsland, senior, hated her
+daughter-in-law with double hatred and rancor.
+
+"For the pauper half-pay officer's bold-faced daughter we must drag out
+our lives in this horrible place!" she burst out, bitterly.  "While
+Harriet Hunsden reigns _en princesse_ amid the splendors of our
+ancestral home, we must vegetate in this rambling, dingy old barn.
+I'll never forgive your brother, Mildred--I'll never forgive him as
+long as I live for marrying that creature!"
+
+"Dear mamma," the gentle voice of Milly pleaded, "you must not blame
+Everard.  He loves her, and she is as beautiful as an angel.  It would
+have been all the same if he had married Lady Louise, you know.  We
+would still have had to quit Kingsland Court."
+
+"Kingsland Court would have had an earl's daughter for its mistress in
+that case.  But to think that this odious, fox-hunting,
+steeple-chase-riding, baggage-cart-following _fille du regiment_ should
+rule there, while we--Oh, it sets me wild only to think of it!"
+
+"Don't think of it, then, mamma," coaxed Mildred.  "We will make this
+wilderness 'blossom as the rose' next summer.  As for Harrie, you don't
+know her yet--you will like her better when you do!"
+
+"I shall never like her!" Lady Kingsland replied, with bitterness.  "I
+don't want to like her!  She is a proud upstart, and I sincerely hope
+she may make Everard see his folly in throwing himself away before the
+honey-moon is ended."
+
+It was quite useless for Mildred to try to combat her mother's fierce
+resentment.  Day after day she wandered through the desolate, draughty
+rooms, bewailing her hard lot, regretting the lost glories of
+Kingsland, and nursing her resentment toward her odious
+daughter-in-law; and when the bridal pair returned, and Milly timidly
+suggested the propriety of calling, my lady flatly refused.
+
+"I never will!" she said, spitefully.  "I'll never call on Captain
+Hunsden's daughter.  I never countenanced the match before he made it.
+I shall not countenance it now when she has usurped my place.  She
+should never have been received in society--a person whose mother was
+no better than she ought, to be."
+
+"But, mamma--"
+
+"Hold your tongue, Milly!  You always were a little fool!  I tell you I
+will not call on my son's wife, and no more shall you.  Let her come
+here."
+
+My lady adhered to her resolution with iron force, and received her
+son, when the day after his return he rode over, with freezing
+formality.  But with all that, she was none the less deeply displeased
+when he called and came to dinner and left his bride at home.
+
+"My humble house is not worthy my lady's presence, I dare say," she
+remarked.  "After the magnificence of barrack life and the splendor of
+Hunsden Hall, I scarcely wonder she can not stoop to your mother's
+jointure house.  A lady in her position must draw the line somewhere."
+
+"You are unjust, mother," her son said, striving to speak calmly.  "You
+always were unjust to Harriet.  If you will permit us, we will both do
+ourselves the pleasure of dining with you to-morrow."
+
+"It shall be precisely as the Prince and Princess of Kingsland please.
+My poor board will be only too much honored."
+
+"It is natural, I suppose," he thought, riding homeward.  "The contrast
+between Kingsland Court and The Grange is striking.  She is jealous and
+angry and hurt--poor mother!  Harrie must come with me to-morrow, and
+try to please her."
+
+But when to-morrow came Harrie had a headache, and the baronet was
+obliged to go alone.
+
+There was an ominous light in his mother's eyes, and a look of troubled
+inquiry in Mildred's face that told him a revelation was coming.
+
+His mother's eyes transfixed him the instant he appeared.
+
+"I thought your wife was coming?"
+
+"Harriet had a shocking bad headache.  She has been ill all day," he
+replied, hastily.  "It was quite impossible for her to leave her room.
+She regrets----"
+
+"That will do, Everard!"  His mother rose as she spoke, with a short
+laugh.  "I understand it all.  Don't trouble yourself to explain.  Let
+us go to the dining-room--dinner waits."
+
+"But, my dear mother, it is really as I say.  Harrie is ill."
+
+"Ill?  Yes, ill of a guilty conscience, perhaps!  Such a mother--such a
+daughter!  I always knew how this mad _mesalliance_ would end.  I don't
+know that I am surprised.  I don't know that I regret it.  I am only
+sorry that my son's wife should be the first to disgrace the name of
+Kingsland!"
+
+"Disgrace?  Take care, mother!  That is an ugly word."
+
+"It is.  But, however ugly, it is always best to call these things by
+their right names."
+
+"These things!  What under heaven do you mean?"
+
+"Do you really need to ask?" she said, with cold contempt.  "Are you
+indeed so blind where this woman is concerned?  Why, my son's wife is
+the talk of the town, and my son sits here and asks me what I mean?"
+
+"Mamma! mamma!" Mildred said, imploringly.  "Pray don't!  You are
+cruel!  Don't say such dreadful things!"
+
+"Your mother is cruel, and unjust, and unnatural!" he said, in a hard,
+hoarse voice.  "Do you tell me what she means, Mildred."
+
+"Don't ask me, Everard!" Mildred said, in distress.  "We have heard
+cruel, wicked stories---false, I know--about Harrie and--and a
+stranger--an American gentleman--who is stopping at the Blue Bell Inn."
+
+"Yes, Everard," his mother said, pity for him, hatred of his wife,
+strangely mingled in look and tone, "your bride of a month is the talk
+of the place.  The names of Lady Kingsland and this unknown man go
+whispered together from lip to lip."
+
+"What do they say?"
+
+"Nothing!" Mildred exclaimed, indignantly--"nothing but their own base
+suspicions!  She nearly fainted at first sight of him.  He showed her a
+picture, and she ran out of the room and fell into hysterics.  Since
+then he has written to her, and mysterious personages--females in
+disguise--visit him at the Blue Bell.  That is what they whisper,
+Everard; nothing more."
+
+"Nothing more!" echoed her mother.  "Quite enough, I think.  What would
+you have, Miss Kingsland?  Everard, who is this man?"
+
+"You appear to know more than I do, mother.  He is an American--a
+traveling photograph artist--and my wife never laid eyes on him until
+she saw him, the day after our arrival, in the library.  As to the
+fainting and the hysterics, I chanced to be in the library all through
+that first interview, and I saw neither one nor the other.  I am sorry
+to spoil the pretty romance in which you take such evident delight, my
+good, kind, charitable mother; but truth obliges me to tell you it is a
+fabrication from beginning to end.  And now, if you will be good enough
+to tell me the name of the originator of this report, you will confer
+upon me the last favor I shall ever ask of you.  My wife's honor is
+mine; and neither she nor I will ever set foot in a house where such
+stories are credited--not only credited, but exulted in.  Tell me the
+name of your tale-maker, Lady Kingsland, and permit me to wish you
+good-evening."
+
+"Everard!" his sister cried, in agony.
+
+But he cut her short with an impatient wave of his hand.
+
+"Hush, Mildred; let my mother speak."
+
+"I have nothing to say."  She stood haughtily before him, and they
+looked each other full in the face, mother and son.  "My tale-maker is
+the whole town.  You can not punish them all, Sir Everard.  There is
+truth in this story, or it never would have originated; and he has
+written to her--that is beyond a doubt.  He had told it himself, and
+shown her reply."
+
+"It is as false as hell!"  His eyes blazed like coals of fire.  "My
+wife is as pure as the angels, and any one who dares doubt that purity,
+even though it be the mother who bore me, is my enemy to the death!"
+
+He dashed out of the house, mounted Sir Galahad, and rode away as if
+Satan and his hosts were after him.
+
+"Mamma! mamma!" Mildred cried, in unutterable reproach, "what have you
+done?"
+
+"Told him the truth, child.  It is better he should know it, although
+that knowledge parts us forever."
+
+Like a man gone mad the young baronet galloped home.  The sickly
+glimmer of the fitful moon shone on a face that would never be more
+ghastly in his coffin--on strained eyes and compressed lips.  It seemed
+to him but an instant from the time he quitted The Grange until he
+dashed up the avenue at Kingsland, leaped off his foaming bay, and
+strode into the house.  Straight to his wife's room he went, fierce,
+invincible determination in every line of his rigid face.
+
+"She shall tell me all--she shall, by Heaven!" he cried.
+
+He entered her dressing-room--she was, not there; her boudoir--she was
+not there; her bedroom--it too was empty.  He seized the bell and
+nearly tore it down.  Claudine, the maid, looked in with a startled
+face.
+
+"Where is your mistress?"
+
+The girl gazed round with a bewildered air.
+
+"Is my lady not here, sir?  She sent me away over an hour ago.  She was
+lying down in her dressing-room; she said she was ill."
+
+He looked at her for a moment--it was evident she was telling the
+simple truth.
+
+"Send Miss Silver here."
+
+"I am not sure that Miss Silver is in the house, Sir Everard.  I saw
+her go out with Edwards some time ago but I will go and see."
+
+Claudine departed.  Five minutes passed--ten; he stood rigid as stone.
+Then came steps--hurried, agitated--the footsteps of a man and a woman.
+
+He strode out and confronted them--Edwards, his valet, and Sybilla
+Silver.  Both were dressed as from a recent walk; both wore strangely
+pale and agitated faces.
+
+Edwards barely repressed a cry at sight of his master.
+
+"What is it?" Sir Everard asked.
+
+The valet looked at Sybilla in blank terror.  Miss Silver covered her
+face with both hands and turned away.
+
+"What is it?" the baronet repeated, in a dull, thick voice.  "Where is
+my wife?"
+
+"Sir Everard, I--I don't know how--she--she is not in the house."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"She is--in the grounds."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the Beech Walk."
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"With Mr. Parmalee."
+
+There was dead pause.  Sybilla clasped her hands and looked imploringly
+up in his face.
+
+"Don't be angry with us, Sir Everard; we could not help seeing them.  I
+lost a locket, and Edwards came to help me look for it.  It was by the
+merest chance we came upon them in the Beech Walk."
+
+"I am not angry.  Did they see you?"
+
+"No, Sir Everard."
+
+"Did you hear what they said?"
+
+"No, Sir Everard; we would not have listened.  They were talking; my
+lady seemed dreadfully agitated, appealing to him as it appeared, while
+he was cool and indifferent.  Just before we came away we saw her give
+him all the money in her purse.  Ah, here she is now!  For pity's sake,
+do not betray us, Sir Everard!"
+
+She flitted away like a swift, noiseless ghost, closely followed by the
+valet.  And an instant later Lady Kingsland wild and pale, and shrouded
+in a long mantle turned to enter her dressing-room, and found herself
+face to face with her wronged husband.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE BREAKING OF THE STORM.
+
+She looked at him and recoiled with a cry of dismay.  He stood before
+her so ghastly, so awful, that with a blind, unthinking motion of
+intense terror she put out both hands as if to keep him off.
+
+"You have reason to fear me!" he said, in a hoarse, unnatural voice.
+"Wives have been murdered for less than this!"
+
+Sybilla and Edwards heard the ominous words, and looked blankly in each
+other's faces.  They heard no more.  The baronet caught his wife's
+wrist in a grasp of iron, drew her into the dressing-room, and closed
+the door.  He stood with his back to it, gazing at her, his blue eyes
+filled with lurid rage.
+
+"Where have you been?"
+
+He asked the question in a voice more terrible from its menacing calm
+than any wild outburst of fury.
+
+"In the Beech Walk," she answered, promptly.
+
+"With whom?"
+
+"With Mr. Parmalee."
+
+Her glance never fell.  She looked at him proudly, unquailingly, full
+in the face.  The look in his flaming eyes, the tone of his ominous
+voice, were bitterly insulting, and with insult her imperious spirit
+rose.
+
+"And you dare stand before me--you dare look me in the face," he said,
+"and tell me this?"
+
+"I dare!" she said, proudly.  "You have yet to learn what I dare do,
+Sir Everard Kingsland!"
+
+She drew herself up in her beauty and her pride, erect and defiant.
+Her long hair fell loose and unbound, her face was colorless as marble;
+but her dark eyes were flashing with anger and wounded pride, and at
+her brightest she had never looked more beautiful than she did now.
+
+"So beautiful and so lost!" he said, bitterly.  "So utterly deceitful
+and depraved!  Surely what they tell of her mother must be true.  The
+taint of dishonor is in the blood!"
+
+The change was instantaneous.  The pallor of her face turned to a
+burning red.  She clasped her hands with a sudden spasm over her heart.
+
+"My mother!" she gasped.  "What do you say of her?"
+
+"What they say of you--that she was a false and wicked wife.  Deny it
+if you can."
+
+"No," she said, with an imperial gesture of scorn, "I deny nothing.  If
+my husband can believe such a vile slander of his wife of a month, let
+it be.  I scorn to deny what he credits so easily."
+
+"I am afraid it would tax even your invention, my lady, to deny these
+very plain facts.  I leave you in your room, too ill to leave it, too
+ill by far to ride with me to my mother's, but not too ill to get up
+and meet your lover--shall I say it, madame?--clandestinely in the
+Beech Walk as soon as I am gone!  You should be a little more careful,
+madame, and make sure before you hold those confidential
+_tete-a-tetes_, that the servants are not listening and looking on.
+Lady Kingsland and Mr. Parmalee are the talk of the county already.
+To-night's meeting will be a last _bonne bouche_ added to the spicy
+dish of scandal."
+
+"Have you done?" she said, whiter than ashes.  "Have you any more
+insults to offer?"
+
+"Insults!" the baronet repeated, hoarse with passion.  "You do well,
+madame, to talk of insults--lost, fallen creature that you are!  You
+have dishonored an honorable name; betrayed a husband who loved and
+trusted you with all his heart; blighted and ruined his life; covered
+him with disgrace!  And you stand there and talk of insult!  I have
+loved you as man never loved woman before, but God help you, Harriet
+Kingsland, if I had a pistol now!"
+
+She fell down on her knees before him.
+
+"Kill me!" she cried.  "I am here at your feet--have mercy and stab me
+to the heart, but do not drive me mad with your horrible reproaches!
+May God forgive me if I have brought dishonor upon you, for I never
+meant it!  Never--never--so help me Heaven!"
+
+"Rise, madame!  Kneel to Him who will judge you for your baseness; it
+is too late to kneel to me!  Oh, great God! to think how I have loved
+this woman, and how bitterly she has deceived me!"
+
+The unutterable agony of his tone to her dying day Harriet Kingsland
+might never forget.
+
+"I loved her and I trusted her!  I would have died to save her one hour
+of pain, and this is my reward!  Dishonored--disgraced--my life
+blighted--my heart broken--deceived from first to last!"
+
+"No, no, no!" she shrieked aloud.  "I swear it to you, Everard!  I am
+guiltless!  By all my hopes of heaven, I am your true, your faithful,
+your loving wife!"
+
+He turned and looked up at her in white amaze.  Truth, that no living
+being could doubt, was stamped in agony on that upturned, beautiful
+face.
+
+"Hear me, Everard!" she cried--"my own beloved husband!  I met this man
+to-night because he holds a secret I am sworn to keep, and that places
+me in his power.  But, by all that is high and holy, I have told you
+the simple truth about him!  I never saw him in all my life until I saw
+him that day in the library.  I have never set eyes on him since,
+except for an hour to-night.  Oh, believe me, Everard or I shall die
+here at your feet!"
+
+"And you never wrote to him?" he asked.
+
+"Never--never!"
+
+"Nor he to you?"
+
+"Once--the scrawl you saw Sybilla Silver fetch me.  I never wrote--I
+never sent him even a message."
+
+"No?  How, then, came you two to meet to-night?"
+
+"He wished to see me--to extort money from me for the keeping of this
+secret--and he sent word by Sybilla Silver.  My answer was, 'I will be
+in the Beech Walk at eight tonight.  If he wishes to see me let him
+come to me there.'"
+
+"Then you own to have deliberately deceived me?  The pretended headache
+was--a lie?"
+
+"No; it was true.  It aches still, until I am almost blind with the
+pain.  Oh, Everard, be merciful!  Have a little pity for me, for I love
+you, and I am the most wretched creature alive!"
+
+"You show your love in a singular way, my Lady Kingsland.  It is not by
+keeping guilty secrets from your husband--by meeting other men by night
+and by stealth in the grounds--that you are to convince me of your
+love.  Tell me what this mystery means.  I command you, by your wifely
+obedience, tell me this secret at once!"
+
+"I can not!"
+
+"You mean you will not."
+
+"I can not."
+
+"It is a secret of guilt and of shame?  Tell me the truth?"
+
+"It is; but the guilt is not mine.  The shame--the bitter shame--and
+the burning expiation, God help me, are!"
+
+"And you refuse to tell me?"
+
+"Everard, I have sworn!" she cried out, wildly.  "Would you have me
+break a death-bed oath?"
+
+"I would have you break ten thousand such oaths," he exclaimed, "when
+they stand between you and your husband!  Harriet Hunsden, your dead
+father was a villain!"
+
+She sprung to her feet--she had been kneeling all this time--and
+confronted him like a Saxon pythoness.  Her great gray eyes actually
+flashed fire.
+
+"Go!" she cried.  "Leave me this instant!  Were you ten times my
+husband, you should never insult the memory of the best, the noblest,
+the most devoted of fathers!  I will never forgive you the words you
+have spoken until my dying day!"
+
+"_You_ forgive!" he retorted, with sneering scorn, stung out of all
+generosity.  "Forgiveness is no word for such lips as yours, Lady
+Kingsland!  Keep your guilty secret, or your father's or your mother's,
+whosoever it may be; but not as my wife!  No, madame! when the world
+begins to point the finger of scorn, through her own evil-doing, at the
+woman I have married, then from that hour she is no longer my wife.
+The law of divorce shall free you and your secrets together; but until
+that freedom comes, I command you to meet this man no more!  On your
+peril you write to him, or speak to him, or meet him again.  If you do,
+by the living Lord, I will murder you both!"
+
+He dashed out of the room like a man gone mad, leaving her standing
+petrified in the middle of the floor.
+
+One instant she stood, the room heaving, the walls rocking around her;
+then, with a low, moaning cry, she tottered blindly forward and fell
+like a stone to the floor.
+
+The storm burst at midnight.  A gale surged through the trees with a
+noise like thunder; the rain fell in torrents.  And while rain and wind
+beat tempestuously over the earth and the roaring sea, the husband
+paced up and down the library, with clinched teeth and locked hands and
+death-like face--for the time utterly mad--and the wife lay alone in
+her luxuriant room, deaf and blind to the tempest, in a deep swoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+"THE PERSON IN LONDON."
+
+The February day was closing in London in a thick, clammy, yellow fog.
+No keen frost, no sparkling stars brightened the chill spring twilight;
+the sky, where it could be seen, was of a uniform leaden tint, the damp
+mist wet you to the bone, and a long, lamentable blast whistled around
+the corners and pierced chillingly through the thickest wraps, and
+passengers strode through the greasy black mud with surly faces and
+great-coats and the inevitable London umbrella.
+
+At the window of a dull and dirty little lodging a woman sat, in this
+dark gloaming, gazing out at the passers-by.  The house had a perpetual
+odor of onions and cabbage and dinner, as it is in the nature of such
+houses to have, and the room, "first floor front," was in the last
+stage of lodging-house shabbiness and discomfort.
+
+The woman was quite alone--a still, dark figure sitting motionless by
+the grimy window.  She might have been carved in stone, so still she
+sat--so still she had sat for more than two hours.
+
+Her dress was black, of the poorest sort, frayed and worn, and she
+shivered under a threadbare shawl drawn close around her shoulders.
+Yet, in spite of poverty and sickness, and despair and middle age, the
+woman was beautiful still, with a dark and haggard and wild sort of
+beauty that would have haunted one to one's dying day.
+
+In her youth, and her first freshness and innocence, she must have been
+lovely as a dream; but that loveliness was all gone now.
+
+The listless hands lay still, the great, glittering dark eyes stared
+blankly at the dingy houses opposite, at the straggling pedestrians, at
+the thickening gloom.  The short February day was almost night now, the
+street-lamps flared yellow and dull athwart the clammy fog.
+
+"Another day," the woman murmured, "another endless day of sick despair
+gone.  Alone and dying--the most miserable creature on the wide earth.
+Oh, great God, who didst forgive Magdalene, have a little pity on me!"
+
+A spasm of fierce anguish crossed her face for an instant, fading away,
+and leaving the hopeless despair more hopeless than before.
+
+"I am mad, worse than mad, to hope as I do.  She will never look upon
+my guilty face--she so pure, so stainless, so sweet--how dare I ask it?
+Oh, what happy women there are in the world!  Wives who love and are
+beloved, and are faithful to the end!  And I--think how I drag on
+living with all that makes life worth having gone forever, while those
+happy ones, whose lives are one blissful dream, are torn by death from
+all who love them.  To think that I once had a husband, a child, a
+home; to think what I am now--to think of it, and not to go mad!"
+
+She laid her face against the cold glass with a miserable groan.  "Have
+pity on me, oh, Lord! and let me die!"
+
+There was a rush of carriage-wheels without, a hansom cab whirled up to
+the door, and a tall young man leaped out.  Two minutes more and the
+tall young man burst impetuously into the dark room.
+
+"All alone, Mrs. Denover," called a cheery voice, "and all in the dark?
+Darkness isn't wholesome--too conducive to low spirits and the blue
+devils.  Halloo!  Jane Anne, idol of my young affections, bring up the
+gas."
+
+He leaned over the greasy baluster, shouting into the invisible regions
+below, and was answered promptly enough by a grimy maid-servant with a
+flickering dip-candle.
+
+"'Tain't my fault, nor yet missis's," said this grimy maid.  "Mrs.
+Denover will sit in the dark, which I've----"
+
+"That will do, Jane Anne," taking the dip and unceremoniously cutting
+her short.  "Vamoose! evaporate!  When I want you I'll sing out."
+
+He re-entered the room and placed the candle on the table.  The woman
+had risen, and stood with both hands clasped over her heart, a wild,
+gleaming, eager light in her black eyes.  But she strove to restrain
+herself.
+
+"I am glad to see you back, Mr. Parmalee," she said.  "I have been
+expecting you for the last two days."
+
+"And wearing yourself to skin and bone, as I knew you would, with your
+fidgets.  What's the good of taking on so?  I told you I'd come back as
+quick as I could, and I've done so.  It ain't my fault that the time's
+been so long--it's Lady Kingsland's."
+
+"You have seen her?"
+
+"That I have.  And very well worth seeing she is, I tell you.  She's as
+handsome as a picture, though not so handsome as you must have been at
+her age, either, Mrs. Denover.  And she says she'll see you."
+
+"Oh, thank God!"
+
+The woman tottered hack and sunk into a chair.
+
+"That's right," said Mr. Parmalee; "take a seat, and let us talk it all
+over at our ease."
+
+He took one himself, not in the ordinary fashion, but with his face to
+the back, his arms crossed over it, and his long legs twisted
+scientifically round the bottom.
+
+"I've seen him, and I've seen her," said the photographer, "and a
+finer-looking couple ain't from here to anywhere.  And as the Lord made
+'em, He matched 'em for an all-fired prouder pair you couldn't meet in
+a summer-day's walk."
+
+"She comes of a proud race," the woman murmured, feebly.  "The Hunsdens
+are of the best and oldest stock in England."
+
+"And she's a thorough-bred, if ever there was a thorough-bred one yet,
+and blood will show in a woman as well as a horse.  Yes, she's proud,
+she's handsome and dreadful cut up, I can tell you, at the news I
+brought her."
+
+The woman covered her face with her hands with a low moan.  Mr.
+Parmalee composedly went on:
+
+"She knew your picture the minute she clapped eyes on it.  I was afraid
+she might holler, as you wimmin do, at the sight, and her husband and
+another young woman were present, but she's got grit, that girl, the
+real sort.  She turns round, by George! and gives me such a look--went
+through me like a carving-knife--and gets up without a word and walks
+away.  And she never sent for me nor asked a question about it,
+although I mentioned you gave it to me, until I forced her to it, and
+after that no one need talk to me about the curiosity of the fair sex."
+
+"Does her husband know?"
+
+"No; and he's as jealous as a Turk.  I wrote her a note--just a
+line--and sent it by that other young woman I spoke of, and what does
+he do but come to me like a roaring lion, and like to pummel my innards
+out!  I owe him one for that, and I'll pay him off, too.  I had to send
+again to my lady before she would condescend to see me, but when she
+did, I must say she behaved like a trump.  She gave me thirty
+sovereigns plump down, promised me three hundred pounds, and told me to
+fetch you along.  It ain't as much as I expected to make in this
+speculation; but, on the whole, I consider it a pretty tolerable fair
+stroke of business."
+
+"Thank God!" the woman whispered, "thank God!  I shall see my lost
+darling once before I die!"
+
+"Now don't you go and take on, Mrs. Denover," observed Mr. Parmalee,
+"or you'll use yourself up, you know, and then you won't be able to
+travel to-morrow.  And after to-morrow, and after you see your----
+Well, my lady, there's the other little trip back to Uncle Sam's
+domains you've got to make; for you ain't a-going to stay in England
+and pester that poor young lady's life out?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Denover, mournfully--"no, I will never trouble her
+again.  Only let me see her once more, and I will go back to my native
+land and wait until the merciful God sends me death."
+
+"Oh, pooh!" said the artist; "don't you talk like that--it kind of
+makes my flesh creep, and there ain't no sense in it.  There's Aunt
+Deborah, down to our section--you remind me of her--she was always
+going on so, wishing she was in heaven, or something horrid, the whole
+time.  It's want of victuals more than anything else.  You haven't had
+any dinner, I'll be bound!"
+
+"No; I could not eat."
+
+"Nor supper?"
+
+"No: I never thought of it."
+
+Mr. Parmalee got up, and was out of the room and hanging over the
+baluster in a twinkling.
+
+"Here you, Jane Anne!"
+
+Jane Anne appeared.
+
+"Fetch up supper and look sharp--supper for two.  Go 'round the corner
+and get us some oysters and a pint of port, and fetch up some baked
+potatoes and hot mutton chops--and quick about it."
+
+"Now, then," said Mr. Parmalee, reappearing, "I've dispatched the
+slavery for provisions, and you've got to eat when they come.  I won't
+have people living on one meal a day, and wishing they were in heaven,
+when I'm around."
+
+"I will do whatever you think best, Mr. Parmalee," she said, humbly.
+"You have been very good to me."
+
+"I know it," said Mr. Parmalee.  "I always do the polite thing with
+your sex.  My mother was a woman.  She's down in Maine now, and can
+churn and milk eight cows, and do chores, and make squash pie.  Oh!
+them squash pies of my old lady's require to be eat to be believed in;
+and, for her sake, I always take to elderly female parties in distress.
+Here's the forage.  Come in, Jane Anne, beloved of my soul, and dump
+'em down and go."
+
+Jane Anne did.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Denover, you sit right up and fall to.  Here's oysters, and
+here's mutton chops, raging hot, and baked potatoes--delicious to look
+at.  And here's a glass of port wine, and you've got to drink it
+without a whimper.  Mind what I told you; you don't budge a step
+to-morrow unless you eat a hearty supper to-night."
+
+"You are very good to me," Mrs. Denover repeated.  "What would have
+become of me but for you?"
+
+She strove to eat and drink to please him and to sustain her feeble
+strength, but every morsel seemed to choke her.  She pushed away her
+plate at last and looked at him imploringly.
+
+"I can not eat another mouthful.  Indeed I would if I could.  I have no
+appetite at all of late."
+
+"That's plain to be seen.  Well, if you can't, you can't, of course.
+And now, as it's past nine, the best thing you can do is to go to bed
+at once."
+
+With the same humility she had evinced throughout, the woman obeyed at
+once.  Mr. Parmalee, left alone, sat over his oysters and his port,
+luxuriating in the thirty sovereigns in the present and the three
+hundred pounds in the prospective.
+
+"It's been an uncommon good investment," he reflected, "and knocks the
+photograph business into a cocked hat.  Then there's Sybilla--she goes
+with the bargain, too.  Three hundred pounds and a handsome, black-eyed
+wife.  I wish she hadn't such a devil of a temper.  I'll take her home
+to the farm, and if mother doesn't break her in she'll be the first she
+ever failed with."
+
+Mr. Parmalee retired betimes, slept soundly, and was up in the gray
+day-dawn.  Breakfast, piping hot, smoked on the table when Mrs. Denover
+appeared.
+
+"Eat, drink and be merry," said Mr. Parmalee.  "Go in and win.  Try
+that under-done steak, and don't took quite so much like the ghost of
+Hamlet's father, if you can help it."
+
+The woman tried with touching humility to please him, and did her best,
+but that best was a miserable failure.
+
+A cab came for them in half an hour, and whirled them off on the first
+stage of their journey.
+
+In the golden light of the spring afternoon Mr. Parmalee made his
+appearance again at the Blue Bell Inn, with a veiled lady, all in
+black, hanging on his arm.
+
+"This here lady is my maiden aunt, come over from the State of Maine to
+see your British institutions," Mr. Parmalee said, in fluent fiction,
+to the obsequious landlady.  "She's writing a book, and she'll mention
+the Blue Bell favorably in it.  Her name is Miss Hepzekiah Parmalee.
+Let her have your best bedroom and all the luxuries this hotel affords,
+and I will foot the bill."
+
+He lighted a cigar and sallied forth.
+
+"Miss Hepzekiah Parmalee" dined alone in her own room; then sat by the
+window, with white face and strained eyes, waiting for Mr. Parmalee's
+return.
+
+It was almost dark when he came.  He entered hurriedly, flushed and
+excited.
+
+"Fortune favors us this bout, Mrs. Denover," he said, "I've met an old
+chum down on the wharf yonder--a countryman--and I'd as soon have
+expected to find the President of the United States in this little
+one-horse town.  His name's Davis--Captain Davis, of the schooner
+'Angelina Dobbs'--and he's going to sail for Southampton this very
+night.  There's a streak of luck.  A free passage for you and for me up
+to Southampton to-night."
+
+"But my--Lady Kingsland?" she faltered.
+
+"I've made that all right, too.  I met one of the flunkies and sent
+word to Sybilla that we were here, and that she'd better see us at
+once.  I expect an answer every----  Ah, by George! speak of the--here
+she is!"
+
+It was Miss Sybilla Silver, sailing gracefully down the street.  Mr.
+Parmalee darted out and met her--superbly handsome, her dark cheeks
+flushed with some inward excitement, her black eyes gleaming with
+strange fire.
+
+"Is she here?" she breathlessly asked.
+
+Mr. Parmalee nodded toward the window.
+
+Sybilla gazed up a moment at the pale, haggard face.
+
+"They are alike," she said, under her breath--"mother and daughter--and
+that face is scarcely more haggard than the other now.  We have had a
+dreadful quarrel, Mr. Parmalee, since you left, up at the Court."
+
+"Want to know about me?"
+
+"Partly.  About the secret--about that meeting in the Beech Walk.  He
+absolutely threatened her life."
+
+"Should like to have been there to hear him," said Mr. Parmalee.  "It
+would be paying off old scores a little.  How did she take it?"
+
+"She fainted.  Her maid found her in a dead swoon next morning.  She
+did not tell Sir Everard, by my advice; he would have been for making
+it up directly.  They have not met since--my doing, too.  He thinks she
+is sulking in her room.  He is half mad to be reconciled--to make a
+fool of himself, asking pardon, and all that--but I have taken good
+care he shall not.  He thinks she is obstinate and sullen; she thinks
+he is full of nothing but rage and revenge.  It is laughable to manage
+them."
+
+"Fun to you, but death to them," observed the artist.  "You are flinty,
+Sybilla, and no mistake.  I'm pretty hard myself, but I couldn't
+torment folks like that in cold blood.  It's none of my business,
+however, and I don't care how high you pile the agony on him.  Did you
+tell her the elderly party was here?"
+
+"Yes.  She has not left her room for three days.  She is the shadow of
+her former self, and she was dreadfully agitated upon hearing it; but
+she answered, firmly, 'I will see her, and at once.  I will meet her
+to-night.'  I asked where, and then, for the first time, she was at a
+loss."
+
+"The Beech Walk," suggested the artist.
+
+"The Beech Walk is watched.  Sir Everard's spies are on the lookout.
+No--I know a better place.  The young plantation slopes down to the
+very water's edge; the shrubbery is thick and dense, the spot gloomy;
+no one ever goes there.  You can come by water and fetch her in the
+boat.  Land on the shore under the stone terrace, about midnight, and
+my lady will meet you there."
+
+"And you, Sybilla?  The old lady and me, we sail at the turn of the
+tide for Southampton, to take passage for America.  I suppose you
+hain't forgotten your promise?"
+
+"Is it likely, George?  I will follow you to America and we will be
+married there.  It is impossible for me to go with you now.  You can
+wait a couple of months, can you not?"
+
+"But--"
+
+"You must wait, George.  I love you, and I will follow you and be your
+true and devoted wife.  But you must wait a little.  Say you agree, and
+let us part until we meet again--where?  In New York?"
+
+"I suppose so," Mr. Parmalee responded, gruffly.  "You're boss in this
+business, it seems, and I've got to do as you say.  But it's hard on a
+fellow; I calk'lated on taking you over with me."
+
+"Would you have me go to you penniless?  I will come to you with a
+fortune.  Believe me, trust me, and wait.  You will be on the stone
+terrace at twelve to-night?"
+
+"She will," said the American.  "I'll wait in the boat.  'Tain't likely
+they want me to be present at their interview.  Just remind my lady to
+fetch along the three hundred pounds, and don't let her fail to come.
+I want to sail in the 'Angelina Dobbs' to-night."
+
+"She will not fail.  She will come."
+
+Her eyes blazed up with a lurid fire as she said it.
+
+"She will be there," she said, "and she shall fetch the three hundred
+pounds.  Do you not fail!"
+
+"I will not.  Will you be there, too, Sybilla?"
+
+"I?  Of course not.  There is no need of me."
+
+"Then we say good-bye here?"
+
+"Yes.  Good-bye until we meet in New York."
+
+"I will write to you from there," he said, wringing her hand.
+"Good-bye, Sybilla!  I will be at the trysting-place to-night.  Be sure
+the other party is, too."
+
+"Without fail.  Adieu, and--forever!"
+
+She waved her hand and flitted away, uttering the last word under her
+breath.
+
+Mr. Parmalee watched her out of sight, heaved a heavy sigh, and went
+back to the house.
+
+Swiftly Sybilla Silver fluttered along in the chill evening wind, her
+face to the sunset sky.  But not the pale luster of that February
+sunset lighted her dark face with that lurid light--the flame burned
+within.  Two fierce red spots blazed on either cheek: her eyes glowed
+like living coals; her hands were clinched under her shawl.
+
+"She will be there," she whispered, under her breath--"she will be
+there, but she never will return.  By the wrongs of the dead, by the
+vengeance I have sworn, this night shall be her last on earth.  And he
+shall pay the penalty--my oath will be kept, the astrologer's
+prediction fulfilled, and Zenith the gypsy avenged!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+"HAVE YOU PRAYED TO-NIGHT, DESDEMONA?"
+
+The sun went down--a fierce and wrathful sunset.  Black and brazen
+yellow flamed in the western sky; the sea lay glassy and breathless;
+the wind came in fitful gusts until the sun went down, and then died
+out in dead and ominous calm; night fell an hour before its time.
+
+My lady sat by her chamber window, looking out at black sea and blacker
+sky.  Exquisite pictures, wonderful bric-a-brac treasures, inlaid
+tables and cabinets, richest carpets and curtains, and chairs that were
+like ivory touched up with gold, made the room a miracle of beauty.
+
+But my lady herself, sitting alone amid the rose-colored curtains,
+looking blankly out at the menacing sky, wore a face as dark as that
+sky itself.  She had wasted to a shadow; dark circles under her hollow
+eyes told of sleepless nights and wretched days; her cheeks were
+haggard, her lips bloodless.
+
+The white morning-dress she still wore clung loosely around her wasted
+figure; all the bright hair was pushed impatiently off her face and
+confined in a net.
+
+No one who had seen Harrie Hunsden, radiant as Hebe, blooming as Venus,
+daring as Diana, at the memorable fox-hunt of a little more than a year
+ago, would ever have recognized this haggard, pallid, wretched-looking
+Lady Kingsland as the same.
+
+She sat still and alone, gazing out at the dreary desolation of earth
+and heaven.  The great house was still as a tomb; the bustle of the
+servants' regions was far removed, the gnawing of a mouse behind the
+black paneling, the soft ticking of the toy clock sounded unnaturally
+loud.
+
+"Darkening," Harriet thought, looking at the leaden
+twilight--"darkening, like my life.  Not two months a wife, and his
+love and trust gone forever.  May Heaven pity me, for there is none on
+earth!"
+
+There was a tap at the door.  Lady Kingsland had learned to know that
+soft, light tap.
+
+"Come in," she said; and Sybilla entered.
+
+She did not pause at the closed door as usual; she glided noiselessly
+across the room and stood beside her.  So like a ghost she came, her
+dead-black garments making no rustle, her footfall making no sound, her
+white face awfully corpse-like in the spectral light, her black eyes
+glowing like a cat's in the dark; my lady shrunk in absolute affright.
+
+"Don't come any nearer!" she cried, putting out her hands.  "What do
+you want?"
+
+"I have seen Mr. Parmalee, my lady."
+
+Her tones were the same as usual--respectful.  But the gentle voice did
+not reassure Lady Kingsland.
+
+"Well?" she said, coldly.
+
+"He will be there, my lady.  At half past eleven to-night you will
+find--your mother"--slowly and distinctly--"waiting for you on the
+terrace down by the shore."
+
+"Half past eleven.  Why so very late?"
+
+"My lady, it will not be safe for you to venture out before.  You are
+watched!"
+
+"Watched!" she repeated, haughtily.  "Do you mean, Sybilla Silver--"
+
+"I mean, my lady," Miss Silver said, firmly, "Sir Everard has set
+spies.  The Beech Walk is watched by night and by day.  Claudine is
+little better than a tool in the hands of Edwards, the valet, with whom
+she is in love.  She tells everything to Edwards, and Edwards repeats
+to his master.  A quarter past eleven all will be still--the household
+will have retired--you may venture forth in safety.  The night will be
+dark, the way lonely and dismal; but you know it every inch.  On the
+stone terrace, at half past eleven, you will find--your mother awaiting
+you.  You can talk to her in perfect safety, and for as long as you
+choose."
+
+"Have you seen her?" she asked.
+
+"At the window of the Blue Belt Inn--yes, my lady.  It is very rash for
+her to expose herself, too, for hers is a face to strike attention at
+once, if only for the wreck of its beauty, and for its unutterable look
+of despair.  But as she leaves again soon, I dare say nothing will come
+of it."
+
+"When do they leave?"
+
+"To-night.  It appears a friend of Mr. Parmalee is captain of a little
+vessel down in the harbor, and he sails for Southampton at the turn of
+the tide--somewhere past midnight.  It is a very convenient arrangement
+for all parties.  By the by, Mr. Parmalee told me to remind you, my
+lady, of the three hundred pounds."
+
+"Mr. Parmalee is impertinent.  I need no reminder.  Have you anything
+more to say, Miss Silver?"
+
+"Only this, my lady: the servants' entrance on the south side of the
+house will be the safest way for you to take, and the nearest.  If you
+dread the long, dark walk, my lady, I will be only too happy to
+accompany you."
+
+"You are very good.  I don't in the least dread it.  When I wish you to
+accompany me anywhere I will say so."
+
+Sybilla bowed, and the darkness hid a sinister smile.
+
+"You have no orders for me, then, my lady?"
+
+"None.  Yes, you had better see Claudine, and say I shall not require
+her services to-night.  Inform me when the servants have all retired,
+and"--a momentary hesitation, but still speaking proudly--"does Sir
+Everard dine at home this evening?"
+
+"Sir Everard just rode off as I came in, my lady.  He dines with Major
+Morrell and the officers, and will not return until past midnight, very
+likely.  He is always late at those military dinners."
+
+"That will do; you may go."
+
+"Shall I not light the lamp, my lady?"
+
+"No; be good enough to leave me."
+
+Sybilla quitted the room, her white teeth, set together in a viperish
+clinch.
+
+"How she hates me, and how resolved she is to show it!  Very well, my
+lady.  You don't hate me one thousandth part as much as I hate you; and
+yet my hatred of you is but a drop in the ocean compared to my deadly
+vengeance against your husband.  Go, my haughty Lady Kingsland--go to
+your tryst--go to your death!"
+
+Left alone, Harriet sat in the deepening darkness for over three hours,
+never moving--still and motionless as if turned to stone.
+
+The pretty Swiss clock played a waltz preparatory to striking eleven.
+She sat and listened until the last musical chime died away; then she
+rose, groped her way to the low, marble chimney-piece, struck a
+lucifer, and lighted a large lamp.
+
+The brilliant light flooded the room.  Sybilla's rap came that same
+instant softly upon the door.
+
+"My lady."
+
+"I hear," my lady said, not opening it.  "What is it?"
+
+"All have retired; the house is as still as the grave.  The south door
+is unfastened; the coast is clear."
+
+"It is well.  Good-night."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+She stood a moment listening to the soft rustle of Miss Silver's skirts
+in the passage, then, slowly and mechanically, she began to prepare for
+her night's work.
+
+She took a long, shrouding mantle, wrapped it around her, drew the hood
+over her head, and exchanged her slippers for stout walking shoes.
+Then she unlocked her writing-case and drew forth a roll of bank-notes,
+thrust them into her bosom, and stood ready.
+
+But she paused an instant yet.  She stood before one of the full-length
+mirrors, looking at her spectral face, so hollow, so haggard, out of
+which all the youth and beauty seemed gone.
+
+"And this is what one short month ago he called bright and
+beautiful--this wasted, sunken-eyed vision.  Youth and beauty, love and
+trust and happiness, home and husband, all lost.  Oh, my father, what
+have you done?"
+
+She gave one dry, tearless sob.  The clock struck the quarter past.
+The sound aroused her.
+
+"My mother," she said--"let me think I go to meet my mother.  Sinful,
+degraded, an outcast, but still my mother.  Let me think of that, and
+be brave."
+
+She opened her door; the stillness of death reigned.  She glided down
+the corridor, down the sweeping stair-way, the soft carpeting muffling
+every tread--the dim night-lamps lighting her on her way.
+
+No human sound startled her.  All in the house were peacefully
+asleep--all save that flying figure, and one other wicked watcher.  She
+gained the door in safety.  It yielded to her touch.  She opened it,
+and was out alone in the black, gusty night.
+
+Harriet Kingsland's brave heart quailed only for a moment; then she
+plunged resolutely forward into the gloom.  Slipping, stumbling,
+falling, rising again, the wind beating in her face, the branches
+catching like angry hands at her garments--still she hurried on.  It
+was a long, long, tortuous path, but it came to an end.  The roar of
+the sea sounded awfully loud as it rose in sullen majesty, the flags of
+the stone terrace rang under her feet.  Panting, breathless, cold as
+death, she leaned against the iron railing, her hands pressed hard over
+her tumultuous heart.
+
+It was light here.  A fitful midnight moon, pale and feeble, was
+breaking through a rift in the clouds, and shedding its sickly glimmer
+over the black earth and raging sea.  To her eyes, accustomed to the
+dense darkness, every object was plainly visible.  She strained her
+gaze over the waves to catch the coming boat she knew was to bear those
+she had come to meet; she listened breathlessly to every sound.  But
+for a weary while she listened, and watched, and waited in vain.  What
+was that?  A footstep crashing through the under-wood near at hand.
+She turned with a wordless cry of terror.  A tall, dark figure emerged
+from the trees and strode straight toward her.  An awful voice spoke:
+
+"I swore by the Lord who made me I would murder you if you ever came
+again to meet that man.  False wife, accursed traitoress, meet your
+doom!"
+
+She uttered a long, low cry.  She recognized the voice--it was the
+voice of her husband; she recognized the form--her husband's--towering
+over her, with a long, gleaming dagger in his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+ON THE STONE TERRACE.
+
+When Sybilla Silver parted from Lady Kingsland outside the chamber
+door, she went straight to her own room, and began her preparations for
+that night's work.
+
+The flaming red spots, all foreign to her usual complexion, blazed on
+either cheek-bone; her black eyes shone like the eyes of a tigress
+crouched in a jungle.
+
+But she never faltered--she never wavered in her deadly purpose.  The
+aim of her whole life was to be fulfilled this night--the _manes_ of
+her dead kinsfolk to be appeased.
+
+Her first act was to sit down and write a note.  It was very brief,
+illy spelled, vilely written, on a sheet of coarsest paper, and sealed
+with a big blotch of red wax and the impress of a grimy thumb.  This is
+what Miss Silver wrote:
+
+
+SUR HEVERARD KINGSLAND:
+
+HONURED SIR:--This is to Say that my Lady is Promised the hamerican
+Gent, for to meet him this Night at Midnight on the Stone Terrace,
+Which honoured Sir you ought to Know, which is why I write.
+
+      Yours too Command,    A FRIEND.
+
+
+"This will do it, I think.  Sir Everard will visit the stone terrace
+to-night before he sleeps.  It will be fully eleven, probably half
+past, before be comes home.  He will find this anonymous communication
+awaiting him.  He will fume and stamp and spurn it, but he will go, all
+the same.  And then!"
+
+She sealed the note, directed it in the same atrocious fist to the
+baronet, and then, rising, proceeded to undress.
+
+But not to go to bed.  A large bundle lay on a chair; she opened it,
+drew forth a full suit of man's attire--an evening suit that the young
+baronet had worn but a few times, and the very counterpart of that
+which he wore to-night.
+
+Miss Silver stood before the glass and arrayed herself in these.  She
+was so tall that they fitted her very well, and when her long hair was
+scientifically twisted up, and a hat of Sir Everard's crushed down upon
+it, she was as handsome a young fellow as you could see in a long day's
+search.
+
+That vague and shadowy resemblance to the baronet, which Mr. Parmalee
+had once noticed, was very palpable and really striking when she threw
+over all a long riding-cloak which Sir Everard often wore.
+
+"You will do, I think," she said, to her transformed image in the
+glass.  "Even my lady might mistake you for her husband in the
+uncertain moonlight."
+
+She left the mirror, crossed the room, unlocked a trunk with a key she
+took out of her bosom, and drew forth a morocco scabbard case.  The
+crest of the Kingslands and the monogram "E. K.," decorated the leather.
+
+Opening this, she drew forth a long, glittering Spanish stiletto, not
+much thicker than a coarse needle, but strong and glittering and deadly
+keen.
+
+"Sir Everard has not missed his pretty toy yet," she muttered.  "If he
+had only dreamed, when he saw it first, not a fortnight ago, of the
+deed it would do this night!"
+
+She closed the trunk, thrust the dagger into its scabbard, the scabbard
+into her bosom, blew out the lamp, and softly opened the door.  All was
+still as the grave.
+
+She locked her door securely, put the key in her pocket, and stole
+toward Sir Everard's rooms.  Her kid slippers fell light as snow-flakes
+on the carpet.  She opened the baronet's dressing-room door.  It had
+been his sleeping-room, too, of late.  His bed stood ready prepared; a
+lamp burned dimly on the dressing-table.  Beside the lamp Miss Silver
+placed her anonymous letter, then retreated as noiselessly as she had
+entered, shut the door, and glided stealthily down the corridor, down
+the stairs, along the passages, and out of the same door which my lady
+had passed not ten minutes previously.
+
+Swift as a snake, and more deadly of purpose, Sybilla glided along the
+gloomy avenues of the wood toward the sea-side terrace.  Every nerve
+seemed strung like steel, every fiber of her body quivered to its
+utmost tension.  Her eyes blazed in the dark like the eyes of a wild
+cat; she looked like a creature possessed of a devil.
+
+She reached the extremity of the woodland path almost as soon as her
+victim.  A moment she paused, glaring upon her with eyes of fiercest
+hate as she stood there alone and defenseless.  The next, she drew out
+the flashing stiletto.  Flung away the scabbard, and advanced with it
+in her hand and horrible words upon her lips.
+
+"I swore by the Lord who made me I would murder you if you ever came
+again to meet that man!  False wife, accursed traitoress, meet your
+doom!"
+
+There was a wild shriek.  In that fitful light she never doubted for a
+moment but that it was her husband.
+
+"Have mercy!" she cried.  "I am innocent, Everard!  Oh, for God's sake,
+do not murder me!"
+
+"Wretch--traitoress--die.  You are not fit to pollute the earth longer!
+Go to your grave with my hate and my curse!"
+
+With a sudden paroxysm of mad fury the dagger was lifted--one fierce
+hand gripped Harriet's throat.  A choking shriek--the dagger fell--a
+gurgling cry drowned in her throat--a fierce spurt of hot blood--a reel
+backward and a heavy fall over the low iron railing--down, down on the
+black shore beneath--and the pallid moonlight gleaming above shone on
+one figure standing on the stone terrace, alone, with a dagger dripping
+blood in its hand.
+
+She leaned over the rail.  Down below--far down--she could see a
+slender figure, with long hair blowing in the blast, lying awfully
+still on the sands.  Not five feet off the great waves washed, rising,
+steadily rising.  In five minutes more they would wash the feet of the
+terrace--that slender figure would lie there no more.
+
+"The fall alone would have killed her.  Before I am half-way back to
+the house those waves will be her shroud."
+
+She wrapped her cloak around her and fled away--back, swift as the
+wind, into the house, up the stairs.  Safe in her own room, she tore
+off her disguise.  The cloak and the trousers were horribly spotted
+with blood.  She made all into one compact package, rolled up the
+dagger in the bundle, stole back to the baronet's dressing-room and
+listened, and peeped through the key-hole.  He was not there; the room
+was empty.  She went in, thrust the bundle out of sight in the remotest
+corner of the wardrobe, and hastened back to her chamber.  Her letter
+still lay where she had left it.  The baronet bad not yet returned.
+
+In her own room Miss Silver secured the door upon the inside, according
+to custom, donned her night-dress, and went to bed--to watch and wait.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+The mess dinner was a very tedious affair to one guest at least.  Major
+Morrell and the officers told good stories and sung doubtful songs, and
+passed the wine and grew hilarious; but Sir Everard Kingsland chafed
+horribly under it all, and longed for the hour of his release.
+
+A dull, aching torture lay at his heart; a chill presentiment of evil
+had been with him all day; the tortures of love and rage and jealousy
+had lashed him nearly into madness.
+
+Sometimes love carried all before him, and he would start up to rush to
+the side of the wife he loved, to clasp her to his heart, and defy
+earth and Hades to part them.  Sometimes anger held the day, and he
+would pace up and down like a madman, raging at her, at himself, at
+Parmalee, at all the world.
+
+He was haggard and worn and wild, and his friends stared at him and
+shrugged their shoulders, and smiled significantly at this outward
+evidence of post-nuptial bliss.
+
+It was almost midnight when the young baronet mounted Sir Galahad and
+rode home.  Kingsland Court lay dark and still under the frowning night
+sky.  He glanced up at the window of his wife's chamber.  A light
+burned there.  A longing, wistful look filled his blue eyes, his arms
+stretched out involuntarily, his heart gave a great plunge, as though
+it would break away and fly to its idol.
+
+"My darling!" he murmured, passionately--"my darling, my life, my love,
+my wife!  Oh, my God to think, I should love her, wildly, madly still,
+believing her--knowing her to be false!"
+
+He went up to his dressing-room, his heart full to bursting.  A mad,
+insane longing to go to her, to fold her to his breast, to forgive her
+all, to take her, guilty or innocent, and let pride and honor go to the
+winds, was upon him.  He loved her so intensely, so passionately, that
+life without her, apart from her, was hourly increasing torture.
+
+The sight of a folded note lying on the table alone arrested his
+excited steps.  He took it up, looked at the strange superscription,
+tore it open, ran over its diabolical contents, and reeled as if struck
+a blow.
+
+"Great Heaven! it is not true! it can not be true! it is a vile,
+accursed slander!  My wife meet this man alone, and at midnight, in
+that forsaken spot!  Oh, it is impossible!  May curses light upon the
+slanderous coward who dared to write this infernal lie!"
+
+He flung it, in a paroxysm of mad fury, into the fire.  A flash of
+flame, and Sybilla Silver's artfully written note was forever gone.  He
+started up in white fury.
+
+"I will go to her room; I will see for myself!  I will find her safely
+asleep, I know!"
+
+But a horrible misgiving filled him, even while he uttered the brave
+words.  He dashed out of his room and into his wife's.  It was
+deserted.  He entered the bedroom.  She was not there; the bed had not
+been slept in.  He passed to her boudoir; that, too, was vacant.
+
+Sir Everard seized the bell-rope and rang a peal that resounded with
+unearthly echoes through the sleeping house.  Five minutes of mad
+impatience--ten; then Claudine, scared and shivering, appeared.
+
+"Where is your mistress?"
+
+"_Mon Dieu_! how should I know?  Is not my lady in bed?"
+
+"No; her bed has not been slept in to-night.  She is in none of her
+rooms.  When did you see her last?"
+
+"About ten o'clock.  She dismissed me for the night; she said she would
+undress herself."
+
+"Where is Miss Silver?"
+
+"In bed, I think, monsieur."
+
+"Go to her--tell her I want to see her at once.  Lose no time."
+
+Claudine disappeared.  Miss Silver was so very soundly asleep that it
+required five minutes rapping to rouse her.  Once aroused, however, she
+threw on a dressing-gown, thrust her feet into slippers, and appeared
+before the baronet, with a pale, anxious, inquiring face.
+
+"Where is my wife?  Where is Lady Kingsland?"
+
+"Good Heaven! is she not here?"
+
+"No.  You know where she is!  Tell me, I command you!"
+
+Sybilla Silver covered her face with both hands, and cowered before him
+with every sign of guilt.
+
+"Spare me!" she cried, faintly.  "I dare not tell you!"
+
+He made one stride forward, caught her by the arm, his eyes glaring
+like the eyes of a tiger.
+
+"Speak!" he thundered; "or by the Heaven above us, I'll tear it from
+your throat!  Is she with him?"
+
+"She is," cowering, shrinking, trembling.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"On the stone terrace."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"He returned this afternoon; he sent for me; he told me to tell her to
+meet him there to-night, about midnight.  She did not think you would
+return before two or three----  Oh, for pity's sake----"
+
+"I'll have their hearts' blood!" he thundered, with an awful oath.
+
+The horrible voice, the horrible oath, was like nothing earthly.  The
+two women cowered down, too intensely frightened even to scream.  One
+other listener recoiled in wordless horror.  It was Edwards, the valet.
+
+The madman, goaded to insane fury, had rushed out of the hall--out of
+the house.  The trio looked at each other with bloodless faces and
+dilated eyes of terror.
+
+Edwards was the first to find his paralyzed tongue:
+
+"May the Lord have mercy upon us!  There'll be murder done this night!"
+
+The two women never spoke.  Huddled together, they clung to Edwards, as
+women do cling to men in their hour of fear.
+
+Half an hour passed; they never moved nor stirred.
+
+Ten minutes more, and Sir Everard dashed in among them as he had dashed
+out.
+
+"It is false!" he shouted--"a false, devilish slander!  She is not
+there!"
+
+A shriek from Claudine--a wild, wild shriek.  With starting eyes she
+was pointing to the baronet's hands.
+
+All looked and echoed that horror-struck cry.  They were literally
+dripping blood!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+BRANDED.
+
+The baronet lifted his hands to the light, and gazed at their crimson
+hue with wild, dilated eyes and ghastly face.
+
+"Blood!" he said, in an awful whisper--"blood--Good God, it is hers!
+She is murdered!"
+
+The three listeners recoiled still further, paralyzed at the sight, at
+the words, at the awful thought that a murderer, red-handed, stood
+before them.
+
+"A horrible deed has been done this night!" he cried, in a voice that
+rang down the long hall like a bugle blast.  "A murder has been
+committed!  Rouse the house, fetch lights, and follow me!"
+
+Edwards rose up, trembling in every limb.
+
+"Quick!" his master thundered.  "Is this a time to stand agape?
+Sybilla, sound the alarm!  Let all rise and join in the search."
+
+In a moment all was confusion.  Claudine, of a highly excitable
+temperament, no sooner recovered from her stupor of dismay, then, with
+a piercing shriek, she fainted and tumbled over in a heap.
+
+But no one heeded her.  Bells rang, lights flashed, servants, white and
+wild, rushed to and fro, and over all the voice of the master rang,
+giving his orders.
+
+"Lights, lights!" he shouted.  "Men, why do you linger and stare?
+Lights! and follow me to the stone terrace."
+
+He led the way.  There was a general rush from the house.  The men bore
+lanterns; the women clung to the men, terror and curiosity struggling,
+but curiosity getting the better of it.  In dead silence all made their
+way to the stone terrace--all but one.
+
+Sybilla Silver saw them depart, stood a moment, irresolute, then turned
+and sped away to Sir Everard's dressing-room.  She drew the compact
+bundle of clothes from their corner, removed the dagger, tied up the
+bundle again with the weight inside, and hurriedly left the house.
+
+"These blood-stained garments are not needed to fix the guilt upon
+him," she said to herself: "that is done already.  The appearance of
+these would only create confusion and perplexity--perhaps help his
+cause.  I'll destroy these and fling away the dagger in the wood.
+They'll he sure to find it in a day or two.  They will make such a
+search that if a needle were lost it would be found."
+
+There was an old sunken well, half filled with slimy, green water, mud,
+and filth, in a remote end of the plantation.  Thither, unobserved,
+Sybilla made her way in the ghostly moonlight and flung her
+blood-stained bundle into its vile, poisonous depths.
+
+"Lie there!" she muttered.  "You have done your work, and I fling you
+away, as I fling away all my tools at my pleasure.  There, in the green
+muck and slimy filth, you will tell no tales."
+
+She hurried away and struck into a path leading to the stone terrace.
+She could see the lanterns flashing like firefly sparks; she could hear
+the clear voice of Sir Everard Kingsland commanding.  All at once the
+lights were still, there was a deep exclamation in the baronet's voice,
+a wild chorus of feminine screams, then blank silence.
+
+Sybilla Silver threw the dagger, with a quick, fierce gesture, into the
+wood, and sprung in among them with glistening, greedy black eyes.
+They stood in a semicircle, in horror-struck silence, on the terrace.
+The light of half a dozen lanterns streamed redly on the stone
+flooring, but redder than that lurid light, a great pool of blood lay
+gory before them.  The iron railing, painted creamy white, was all
+clotted with jets of blood, and clinging to a projecting knob,
+something fluttered in the bleak blast, but they did not see it.  All
+eyes were riveted on the awful sight before them--every tongue was
+paralyzed.  Edwards, the valet, was the first to break the dreadful
+silence.
+
+"My master!" he cried, shrilly; "he will fall!"
+
+He dropped his lantern and sprung forward just in time and no more.
+The young baronet reeled and fell heavily backward.  The sight of that
+blood--the life-blood of his bride--seemed to freeze the very heart in
+his body.  With a low moan he lay in his servant's arms like a dead man.
+
+"He has fainted," said the voice of Sybilla Silver.  "Lift him up and
+carry him to the house."
+
+"Wait!" cried some one.  "What is this?"
+
+He tore the fluttering garment off the projection and held it up to the
+light.
+
+"My lady's Injy scarf!"
+
+No one knew who spoke--all recognized it.  It was a little Cashmere
+shawl Lady Kingsland often wore.  Another thrilling silence followed;
+then--
+
+"The Lord be merciful!" gasped a house-maid.  "She's been murdered, and
+we in our beds!"
+
+Sybilla Silver, leaning lightly against the railing, turned
+authoritatively to Edwards:
+
+"Take your master to his room, Edwards.  It is no use of lingering here
+now; we must wait until morning.  Some awful deed has been done, but it
+may not be my lady murdered."
+
+"How comes her shawl there, then?" asked the old butler.  "Why can't
+she be found in the house?"
+
+"I don't know.  It is frightfully mysterious, but nothing more can be
+done to-night."
+
+"Can't there?" said the butler.  "Jackson and Fletcher will go to the
+village and get the police and search every inch of the park before
+daylight.  The murderer can't be far away."
+
+"Probably not, Mr. Norris.  Do as you please about the police, only if
+you ever wish your master to recover from that death-like swoon, you
+will carry him at once to the house and apply restoratives."
+
+She turned away with her loftiest air of hauteur, and Miss Silver had
+always been haughty to the servants.  More than one dark glance
+followed her now.
+
+"You're a hard one, you are, if there ever was a hard one!" said the
+butler.  "There's been no luck in the house since you first set foot in
+it."
+
+"She always hated my lady," chimed in a female.  "It's my opinion
+she'll be more glad than sorry if she is made away with.  She wanted
+Sir Everard for herself."
+
+"Hold your tongue, Susan!" angrily cried Edwards.  "You daren't call
+your soul your own if Miss Silver was listening.  Bear a hand here, you
+fellers, and help me fetch Sir Heverard to the house."
+
+They bore the insensible man to the house, to his room, where Edwards
+applied himself to his recovery.  Sybilla aided him silently,
+skillfully.  Meantime, the two gigantic footmen were galloping like mad
+to the village to rouse the stagnant authorities with their awful news.
+And the servants remained huddled together, whispering in affright;
+then, in a body, proceeded to search the house from attic to cellar.
+
+"My lady may be somewhere in the house," somebody had suggested.  "Who
+knows?  Let us try."
+
+So they tried, and utterly failed, of course.
+
+Morning came at last.  Dull and dreary it came, drenched in rain, the
+wind wailing desolately over the dark, complaining sea.  All was
+confusion, not only at the Court, but throughout the whole village.
+The terrible news had flown like wild-fire, electrifying all.  My lady
+was murdered!  Who had done the deed?
+
+Very early in the wet and dismal morning, Miss Silver, braving the
+elements, wended her way to the Blue Bell Inn.
+
+Where was Mr. Parmalee?  Gone, the landlady said, and gone for good,
+nobody knew where.
+
+Sybilla stood and stared at her incredulously.  Gone, and without a
+word to her--gone without seeing the murdered woman!  What did it mean?
+
+"Are you sure he has really gone?" she asked.  "And how did he go?"
+
+"Sure as sure!" was the landlady's response; "which he paid his bill to
+the last farthing, like a gentleman.  And as for how he went, I am sure
+I can't say, not being took in his confidence; but the elderly party,
+she went with him, and it was late last evening."
+
+Miss Silver was nonplused, perplexed, bewildered, and very anxious.
+What did Mr. Parmalee mean?  Where had he gone?  He might spoil all
+yet.  She had come to see him, and accuse him of the murder--to
+frighten him, and make him fly the village.  Circumstances were
+strongly against him--his knowledge of her secret; his nocturnal
+appointment; her disappearance.  Sybilla did not doubt but that he
+would consider discretion the better part of valor, and fly.
+
+She went back to the house, intensely perplexed.  There the confusion
+was at its height.  The scabbard had been found near the terrace, with
+the baronet's initials thereon.
+
+Men looked into each other's blank faces, afraid to speak the frightful
+thoughts that filled their minds.
+
+And in his room Sir Everard lay in a deep stupor--it was not sleep.
+Sybilla, upon the first faint signs of consciousness, had administered
+a powerful opiate.
+
+"He must sleep," she said, resolutely, to Edwards.  "It may save his
+life and his reason.  He is utterly worn out, and every nerve in his
+body is strung to its utmost tension.  Let him sleep, poor fellow!"
+
+He lay before her so death-like, so ghastly, so haggard, that the
+stoniest enemy might have relented--the pallid shadow of the handsome,
+happy bridegroom of two short months ago.
+
+"I have kept my oath," she thought.  "I have wreaked the vengeance I
+have sworn.  If I left him forever now, the _manes_ of Zenith the gypsy
+might rest appeased.  But the astrologer's prediction--ah! the work
+must go on to the appalling end."
+
+Early in the afternoon arrived Lady Kingsland and Mildred, in a
+frightful state of excitement and horror.  Harriet murdered!  The
+tragic story had been whispered through The Grange until it reached
+their ears, thrilling them to the core of their hearts with terror.
+
+Miss Silver met them--calm, grave, inscrutable.
+
+"I am afraid it is true," she said, "awfully incredible as it seems.
+Sir Everard fainted stone-dead, my lady, at sight Of the blood upon the
+terrace."
+
+"Great heavens! it is horrible!  That unfortunate girl.  And my son,
+Sybilla, where is he?"
+
+"Asleep in his room, my lady.  I administered an opiate.  His very
+life, I think, depended on it.  He will not awake for some hours.  Do
+not disturb him.  Will you come up to your old rooms and remove your
+things?"
+
+They followed her.  They had come to stay until the suspense was
+ended--to take care of the son and brother.
+
+Lady Kingsland wrung her hands in a paroxysm of mortal anguish in the
+solitude of her own room.
+
+"Oh, my God!" she cried, "have mercy and spare!  My son, my son, my
+son!  Would God I might die to save you from the worse horrors to come!"
+
+All that day, all the next, and the next, and the next, the fruitless
+search for the murdered bride was made.  All in vain; not the faintest
+trace was to be obtained.
+
+Mr. Parmalee was searched for high and low.  Immense rewards were
+offered for the slightest trace of him--immense rewards were offered
+for the body of the murdered woman.  In vain, in vain!
+
+Had the earth opened and swallowed them up, Mr. Parmalee and the
+baronet's lost bride could not more completely have vanished.
+
+And, meanwhile, dark, ominous whispers rose and circulated from mouth
+to mouth, by whom originated no one knew.  Sir Everard's frantic
+jealousy of Mr. Parmalee, his onslaught in the picture-gallery, the
+threats he had used again and again, overheard by so many, the oath he
+had sworn to take her life if she ever met the American artist again,
+his ominous conduct that night, his rushing like a madman to the place
+of tryst, his returning covered with blood--white, wild, like one
+insane.  Then the finding of the scabbard, marked with his initials,
+and his own words:
+
+"Blood!  Good God! it is hers!  She is murdered!"
+
+The whispers rose and grew louder and louder; men looked in dark
+suspicion upon the young lord of Kingsland, and shrunk from him
+palpably.  But as yet no one was found to openly accuse him.
+
+Toward the close of the second week, a body was washed ashore, some
+miles down the coast, and the authorities there signified to the
+authorities of Worrel that the corpse might be the missing lady.
+
+Sir Everard, his mother, and Miss Silver went at once.  But the sight
+was too horrible to be twice looked at.
+
+The height corresponded, and so did the long waves of flowing hair, and
+Sybilla Silver, the only one with nerve enough to glance again,
+pronounced it emphatically to be the body of Harriet, Lady Kingsland.
+
+There was to be a verdict, and the trio remained; and before it
+commenced, the celebrated detective from Scotland Yard, employed from
+the first by Sir Everard, appeared upon the scene with crushing news.
+He held up a blood-stained dagger before the eye of the baronet:
+
+"Do you know this little weapon, Sir Everard?"
+
+Sir Everard looked at it and recognized it at once.
+
+"It is mine," he replied.  "I purchased it last year in Paris.  My
+initials are upon it."
+
+"So I see," was the dry response.
+
+"How comes it here?  Where did you find it?"
+
+The detective eyed him narrowly, almost amazed at his coolness.
+
+"I found it in a very queer place, Sir Everard--lodged in the branches
+of an elm-tree, not far from the stone terrace.  It's a miracle it was
+ever found.  I think this little weapon did the deed.  I'll go and have
+a look at the body."
+
+He went.  Yes, there in the region of the heart was a gaping wound.
+
+The inquest came on; the facts came out--mysteriously whispered before,
+spoken aloud now.  And for the first time the truth dawned on the
+stunned baronet--he was suspected of the murder of the wife he loved!
+
+The revolting atrocity, the unnatural horror of the charge, nerved him
+as nothing else could have done.  His pale, proud face grew rigid as
+stone; his blue eyes flashed scornful defiance; his head reared itself
+haughtily aloft.  How dare they accuse him of so monstrous a crime?
+
+But the circumstantial evidence was crushing.  Sybilla Silver's
+evidence alone would have damned him.
+
+She gave it with evident reluctance; but give it she did with frightful
+force, and the bereaved young husband stood stunned at the terrible
+strength of the case she made out.
+
+Everything told against him.  His very eagerness to find the murderer
+seemed but throwing dust in their eyes.  Not a doubt lingered in the
+minds of the coroner or his jury, and before sunset that day Sir
+Everard Kingsland was on his way to Worrel Jail to stand his trial at
+the coming assizes for the willful murder of Harriet, his wife.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+MISS SILVER ON OATH.
+
+The day of trial came.  Long, miserable weeks of waiting--weeks of
+anguish and remorse and despair had gone before, and Sir Everard
+Kingsland emerged from his cell to take his place in the criminal dock
+and be tried for his life for the greatest crime man can commit.
+
+The court-house was crowded to suffocation--there was not even standing
+room.  The long gallery was one living semicircle of eyes; ladies, in
+gleaming silks and fluttering plumes, thronged as to the opera, and
+slender throats were craned, and bright eyes glanced eagerly to catch
+one fleeting glimpse of the pale prisoner--a baronet who had murdered
+his bride before the honey-moon was well over.
+
+The case was opened in a long and eloquent speech by the counsel for
+the crown, setting forth the enormity of the crime, citing a hundred
+incidents of the horrible and unnatural deeds jealousy had made men
+commit, from the days of the first murderer.
+
+His address was listened to in profoundest silence.  The charge he made
+out was a terribly strong one, and when he sat down and the first
+witness was called the hearts of Sir Everard Kingsland's friends sunk
+like lead.
+
+He pleaded "Not guilty!" with an eye that flashed and a voice which
+rang, and a look in his pale, proud face that no murderer's face ever
+wore on this earth, and with those two words he had carried conviction
+to many a doubter.
+
+"Call Sybilla Silver."
+
+All in black--in trailing crape and sables, tall, stately, and
+dignified as a young duchess--Sybilla Silver obeyed the call.
+
+She was deeply veiled at first, and when she threw back the heavy black
+veil, and the dark, bright, beautiful face looked full at judge and
+jury, a low murmur thrilled through the throng.
+
+Those who saw her for the first time stared in wonder and admiration at
+the tall young woman in black, with the face and air of an Indian
+queen, and those to whom she was known thought that Miss Silver had
+never, since they saw her first, looked half as handsome as she did
+this day.
+
+Her brilliant bloom of color was gone; she was interestingly pale, and
+her great black eyes were unnaturally deep and mournful.
+
+"Your name is Sybilla Silver, and you reside at Kingsland Court.  May
+we ask in what character--as friend or domestic?"
+
+"As both.  Sir Everard Kingsland has been my friend and benefactor from
+the first.  I have been treated as a confidential friend both by him
+and his mother."
+
+"By the deceased Lady Kingsland also, I conclude?"
+
+"I was in the late Lady Kingsland's confidence--yes."
+
+"You were the last who saw her alive on the night of March tenth--the
+night of the murder?"
+
+"I was."
+
+"Where did you part from her?"
+
+"At her own chamber door.  We bade each other good-night, and I retired
+to rest immediately."
+
+"What hour was that?"
+
+"About ten minutes before eleven."
+
+"What communication were you making to Lady Kingsland at that hour?"
+
+"I came to tell her the household had all retired--that she could quit
+the house unobserved whenever she chose."
+
+"You knew, then, that she had an assignation for that night?"
+
+"I did.  It was I who brought her the message.  She was to meet Mr.
+Parmalee at midnight, on the stone terrace."
+
+"Who was this Mr. Parmalee?"
+
+"An American gentleman--a traveling photographic artist, between whom
+and my lady a secret existed."
+
+"A secret unknown to her husband?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And this secret was the cause of their mysterious midnight meeting?"
+
+"It was.  Mr. Parmalee dare not come to the house.  Sir Everard had
+driven him forth with blows and abuse, and forbidden him to enter the
+grounds.  My lady knew this, and was forced to meet him by stealth."
+
+"Where was Sir Everard on this night?"
+
+"At a military dinner given by Major Morrell, here in Worrel."
+
+"What time did he return to Kingsland Court?"
+
+"At half past eleven, as nearly as I can judge.  I did not see him for
+some ten or fifteen minutes after; then Claudine, my lady's maid, came
+and aroused me--said Sir Everard was in my lady's dressing-room and
+wished to see me at once."
+
+"You went?"
+
+"I went immediately.  I found Sir Everard in a state of passionate fury
+no words can describe.  By some means he had learned of the
+assignation; through an anonymous note left upon his dressing-table, he
+said."
+
+"Did you see this note?"
+
+"I did not.  He had none in his hand, nor have I seen any since."
+
+"What did the prisoner say to you?"
+
+"He asked me where was his wife--he insisted that I knew.  He demanded
+an answer in such a way I dared not disobey."
+
+"You told him?"
+
+"I did.  'Is she with him?' he said, grasping my arm, and I answered,
+'Yes.'"
+
+"And then?"
+
+"He asked me, 'Where?' and I told him; and he flung me from him, like a
+madman, and rushed out of the house, swearing, in an awful voice, 'I'll
+have their hearts' blood!'"
+
+"Was it the first time you ever heard him threaten his wife's life?"
+
+"No; the second.  Once before I heard him say to her, at the close of a
+dreadful quarrel, 'If ever you meet that man again, I'll murder you, by
+the living Lord!'"
+
+"What was the cause of the quarrel?"
+
+"She had met Mr. Parmalee, by night and by stealth, in Sir Everard's
+absence, in the Beech Walk."
+
+"And he discovered it?"
+
+"He did.  Edwards, his valet, had gone out with me to look for some
+article I had lost, and by chance we came upon them.  We saw her give
+him money; we saw her dreadfully frightened; and when Edwards met his
+master again his face betrayed him--we had to tell him all."
+
+"Did any one hear the prisoner use those words, 'I'll have their
+hearts' blood!' on the night of the murder, but yourself?"
+
+"Yes; Edwards, his valet, and Claudine, the lady's maid.  We crouched
+together in the hall, frightened almost to death."
+
+"When did the prisoner reappear?"
+
+"In little over half an hour.  He rushed in in the same wild way he had
+rushed out--like a man gone mad."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He shouted, 'It is false--a false, devilish slander!  She is not
+there!'"
+
+"Well--and then?"
+
+"And then Claudine shrieked aloud and pointed to his hands.  They were
+dripping with blood!"
+
+"Did he attempt any explanation?"
+
+"Not then.  His first words were, as if he spoke in spite of himself:
+'Blood! blood!  Good God, it is hers!  She is murdered!'"
+
+"You say he offered no explanation then.  Did he afterward?"
+
+"I believe so.  Not to me, but to others.  He said his foot slipped on
+the stone terrace, and his hand splashed in a pool of something--his
+wife's blood."
+
+"Can you relate what followed?"
+
+"There was the wildest confusion.  Claudine fainted.  Sir Everard
+shouted for lights and men.  'There has been a horrible murder done,'
+he said.  'Fetch lights and follow me!' and then we all rushed to the
+stone terrace."
+
+"And there you saw--what?"
+
+"Nothing but blood.  It was stained and clotted with blood everywhere;
+and so was the railing, as though a bleeding body had been cast over
+into the sea.  On a projecting spike, as though torn off in the fall,
+we found my lady's India scarf."
+
+"You think, then, he cast the body over after the deed was done?"
+
+"I am morally certain he did.  There was no other way of disposing of
+it.  The tide was at flood, the current strong, and it was swept away
+at once."
+
+"What was the prisoner's conduct on the terrace?"
+
+"He fainted stone-dead before he was there five minutes.  They had to
+carry him lifeless to the house."
+
+"Was it not on that occasion the scabbard marked with his initials was
+discovered?"
+
+"It was.  One of the men picked it up.  The dagger hidden in the
+elm-tree was found by the detective later."
+
+"You recognized them both?  You had seen them before in the possession
+of the prisoner?"
+
+"Often.  He brought the dagger from Paris.  It used to lie on his
+dressing-table."
+
+"Where he said he found the anonymous note?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Now Miss Silver," said the prosecuting attorney, "from what you said
+at the inquest and from what you have let drop to-day, I infer that my
+lady's secret was no secret to you.  Am I right?"
+
+There was a momentary hesitation--a rising: flush, a drooping of the
+brilliant eyes, then Miss Silver replied:
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How did you learn it?"
+
+"Mr. Parmalee himself told me."
+
+"You were Mr. Parmalee's intimate friend, then, it appears?"
+
+"Y-e-e-s."
+
+"Was he only a friend?  He was a young man, and an unmarried one, as I
+am given to understand, and you, Miss Silver, are--pardon my
+boldness--a very handsome young lady."
+
+Miss Silver's handsome face drooped lower.  She made no reply.
+
+"Answer, if you please," blandly insinuated the lawyer.  "You have
+given your evidence hitherto with most unfeminine and admirable
+straightforwardness.  Don't let us have a hitch now.  Was this Mr.
+Parmalee a suitor of yours?"
+
+"He was."
+
+"An accepted one, I take it?"
+
+"Y-e-e-s."
+
+"And you know nothing now of his whereabouts?  That is strange."
+
+"It is strange, but no less true than strange.  I have never seen or
+heard of Mr. Parmalee since the afternoon preceding that fatal night."
+
+"How did you see him then?"
+
+"He had been up to London for a couple of days on business connected
+with my lady; he had returned that afternoon with another person; he
+sent for me to inform my lady.  I met and spoke to him on the street,
+just beyond the Blue Bell Inn."
+
+"What had he to say to you?"
+
+"Very little.  He told me to tell my lady to meet him precisely at
+midnight, on the stone terrace.  Before midnight the murder was done.
+What became of him, why he did not keep his appointment, I do not know.
+He left the inn very late, paid his score, and has never been seen or
+heard of since.
+
+"Had he any interest in Lady Kingsland's death?"
+
+"On the contrary, all his interest lay in her remaining alive.  While
+she lived, he held a secret which she intended to pay him well to keep.
+Her death blights all his pecuniary prospects, and Mr. Parmalee loved
+money."
+
+"Miss Silver, who was the female who accompanied Mr. Parmalee from
+London, and who quitted the Blue Bell Inn with him late on the night of
+the tenth?"
+
+Again Sybilla hesitated, looked down, and seemed confused.
+
+"It is not necessary, is it?" said she, pleadingly.  "I had rather not
+tell.  It--it is connected with the secret, and I am bound by a
+promise----"
+
+"Which I think we must persuade you to break," interrupted the debonair
+attorney.  "I think this secret will throw a light on the matter, and
+we must have it.  Extreme cases require extreme measures, my dear young
+lady.  Throw aside your honorable scruples, break your promise, and
+tell us this secret which has caused a murder."
+
+Sybilla Silver looked from judge to jury, from counsel to counsel, and
+clasped her hands.
+
+"Don't ask me!" she cried--"oh, pray, don't ask me to tell this!"
+
+"But we must--it is essential--we must have it, Miss Silver.  Come,
+take courage.  It can do no harm now, you know--the poor lady is dead.
+And first--to plunge into the heart of it at once--tell us who was the
+mysterious lady with Mr. Parmalee?"
+
+The hour of Sybilla's triumph had come.  She lifted her black eyes,
+glittering with livid flame, and shot a quick, sidelong glance at the
+prisoner.  Awfully white, awfully calm, he sat like a man of stone,
+awaiting to hear what would cost him his life.
+
+"Who was she?" the lawyer repeated.
+
+Sybilla turned toward him and answered, in a voice plainly audible the
+length and breadth of the, long room:
+
+"She called herself Mrs. Denover.  Mr. Parmalee called her his sister.
+Both were false.  She was Captain Harold Hunsden's divorced wife, Lady
+Kingsland's mother, and a lost, degraded outcast!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+FOUND GUILTY.
+
+There was the silence of death.  Men looked blankly in each other's
+faces, then at the prisoner.  With an awfully corpse-like face, and
+wild, dilated eyes, he sat staring at the witness--struck dumb.
+
+The silence was broken by the lawyer.
+
+"This is a very extraordinary statement, Miss Silver," he said.  "Are
+you quite certain of its truth?  It is an understood thing that the
+late Captain Hunsden was a widower."
+
+"He was nothing of the sort.  It suited his purpose to be thought so.
+Captain Hunsden was a very proud man.  It is scarcely likely he would
+announce his bitter shame to the world."
+
+"And his daughter was cognizant of these facts?"
+
+"Only from the night of her father's death.  On that night he revealed
+to her the truth, under a solemn oath of secrecy.  Previous to that she
+had believed her mother dead.  That death-bed oath was the cause of all
+the trouble between Sir Everard and his wife.  Lady Kingsland would
+have died rather than break it."
+
+She glanced again--swift, keen, sidelong, a glance of diabolical
+triumph--at the prisoner.  But he did not see it, he only heard the
+words--the words that seemed burning to the core of his heart.
+
+This, then, was the secret, and the wife he had loved and doubted and
+scorned had been true to him as truth itself; and now he knew her worth
+and purity and high honor when it was too late.
+
+"How came Mr. Parmalee to be possessed of the secret?  Was he a
+relative?"
+
+"No.  He learned the story by the merest accident.  He left New York
+for England in his professional capacity as photographic artist, on
+speculation.  On board the steamer was a woman--a steerage
+passenger--poor, ill, friendless, and alone.  He had a kindly heart, it
+appears, under his passion for money-making, and when this woman--this
+Mrs. Denover--fell ill, he nursed her as a son might.  One night, when
+she thought herself dying, she called him to her bedside and told him
+her story."
+
+Clear and sweet Sybilla Silver's voice rang from end to end, each word
+cutting mercilessly through the unhappy prisoner's very soul.
+
+"Her maiden name had been Maria Denover, and she was a native of New
+York City.  At the age of eighteen an English officer met her while on
+a visit to Niagara, fell desperately in love with her, and married her
+out of hand.
+
+"Even at that early age she was utterly lost and abandoned; and she
+only married Captain Hunsden in a fit of mad desperation and rage
+because John Thorndyke, her lover, scornfully refused to make her his
+wife.
+
+"Captain Hunsden took her with him to Gibraltar, where his regiment was
+stationed, serenely unconscious of his terrible disgrace.  One year
+after a daughter was born, but neither husband nor child could win this
+woman from the man she passionately loved.
+
+"She urged her husband to take her back to New York to see her friends;
+she pleaded with a vehemence he could not resist, and in an evil hour
+he obeyed.
+
+"Again she met her lover.  Three weeks after the wronged husband and
+all the world knew the revolting story of her degradation.  She had
+fled with Thorndyke."
+
+Sybilla paused to let her words take effect.  Then she slowly went on:
+
+"There was a divorce, of course; the matter was hushed up as much as
+possible; Captain Hunsden went back to his regiment a broken-hearted
+man.
+
+"Two years after he sailed for England, but not to remain.  How he
+wandered over the world, his daughter accompanying him, from that time
+until he returned to Hunsden Hall, every one knows.  But during all
+that time he never heard one word of or from his lost wife.
+
+"She remained with Thorndyke--half starved, brutally beaten, horribly
+ill-used--taunted from the first by him, and hated at the last.  But
+she clung to him through all, as women do cling; she had given up the
+whole world for his sake; she must bear his abuse to the end.  And she
+did, heroically.
+
+"He died--stabbed in a drunken brawl--died with her kneeling by his
+side, and his last word an oath.  He died and was buried, and she was
+alone in the world as miserable a woman as the wide earth ever held.
+
+"One wish alone was strong within her--to look again upon her child
+before she died.  She had no wish to speak to her, to reveal herself,
+only to look once more upon her face, then lie down by the road-side
+and die.
+
+"She knew she was married and living here; Thorndyke had maliciously
+kept her _au fait_ of her husband and child.  She sold all she
+possessed but the rags upon her back, and took a steerage passage for
+England.
+
+"That was the story she told Mr. Parmalee.  'You will go to
+Devonshire,' she said to him; 'you will see my child.  Tell her I died
+humbly praying her forgiveness.  She is rich; she will reward you.'
+
+"Mr. Parmalee immediately made up his mind that this sick woman, who
+had a daughter the wife of a wealthy baronet, was a great deal too
+valuable, in a pecuniary light, to be allowed 'to go off the hooks,' as
+he expressed it, thus easily.
+
+"He pooh-poohed the notion of her dying, cheered her up, nursed her
+assiduously, and finally brought her around.  He left her in London,
+posted down here, and remained here until the return of Sir Everard and
+my lady from their honey-moon trip.  The day after he presented himself
+to them--displayed his pictures, and among others showed my lady her
+mother's portrait, taken at the time of her marriage.  She recognized
+it at once--her father had left her its counterpart on the night he
+died.  He knew her secret, and she had to meet him if he chose.  He
+threatened to tell Sir Everard else, and the thought of her husband
+ever discovering her mother's shame was agony to her.  She knew how
+proud he was, how proud his mother was, and she would have died to save
+him pain.  And that is why she met Mr. Parmalee by night and by
+stealth--why she gave him money--why all the horrors that have followed
+occurred."
+
+Once more the cruel, clear, unfaltering voice paused.  A groan broke
+the silence--a groan of such unutterable anguish and despair from the
+tortured husband that every heart thrilled to hear it.
+
+With that agonized groan, his face dropped in his hands, and he never
+raised it again.  He heard no more--he sat bowed, paralyzed, crushed
+with misery and remorse.  His wife--his lost wife--had been as pure and
+stainless as the angels, and he--oh, pitiful God! how merciless he had
+been!
+
+Sybilla Silver was dismissed; other witnesses were called.  Edwards and
+Claudine were the only ones examined that day, Sybilla had occupied the
+court so long.  They corroborated all she had said.  The prisoner was
+remanded, and the court adjourned.
+
+The night of agony which followed to the wretched prisoner no words can
+ever tell.  All he had suffered hitherto seemed as nothing.  Men
+recoiled in horror at the sight of him next day; it was as if a
+galvanized corpse had entered the court-room.
+
+He sat in dumb misery, neither heeding nor hearing.  Only once was his
+attention dimly aroused.  It was at the evidence of a boy--a ragged
+youth of some fifteen years, who gave his name as Bob Dawson.
+
+"He had been out late on that 'ere night.  It was between ten and
+eleven that he was a-dodgin' round near the stone terrace.  Then he
+sees a lady a-waitin', which the moon was shining on her face, and he
+knowed my lady herself.  He dodged more than hever at the sight, and
+peeked round a tree.  Just then came along a tall gent in a cloak, like
+Sir Everard wears, and my lady screeches out at sight of him.  Sir
+Everard, he spoke in a deep, 'orrid voice, and the words were so
+hawful, he--Bob Dawson--remembered them from that day to this.
+
+"'I swore by the Lord who made me I would murder you if you ever met
+that man again.  False wife, accursed traitoress, meet your doom!'
+
+"And then my lady screeches out again and says to him--she says:
+
+"'Have mercy!  I am innocent, Heverard!  Oh, for God's sake, do not
+murder me!'
+
+"And Sir Heverard, he says, fierce and 'orrid:
+
+"'Wretch, die!  You are not fit to pollute the hearth!  Go to your
+grave with my 'ate and my cuss!'
+
+"And then," cried Bob Dawson, trembling all over as he told it, "I see
+him lift that there knife, gentlemen, and stab her with all his might,
+and she fell back with a sort of groan, and he lifts her up and pitches
+of her over hinto the sea.  And then he cuts, he does, and I--I was
+frightened most hawful, and I cut, too."
+
+"Why did you not tell this before?" the judge asked.
+
+"'Cos I was scared--I was," Bob replied, in tears.  "I didn't know but
+that they might took and hang me for seeing it.  I told mammy the other
+night, and mammy she came and told the gent there," pointing one finger
+at the counsel for the crown, "and he said I must come and tell it
+here; and that's all I've got to tell, and I'm werry sorry as hever I
+seed it, and it's all true, s'help me!"
+
+Sybilla Silver's eyes fairly blazed with triumphant fire.  Her master,
+the arch-fiend, seemed visibly coming to her aid; and the most
+miserable baronet pressed his hand to his throbbing head.
+
+There was the summing up of the evidence--one damning mass against the
+prisoner.  There was the judge's charge to the jury.  Sir Everard heard
+no words--saw nothing.  He fell into a stunned stupor that was indeed
+like madness.
+
+The jury retired--vaguely he saw them go.  They returned.  Was it
+minutes or hours they had been gone?  His dulled eyes looked at them
+expressionless.
+
+"How say you, gentlemen of the jury--guilty or not guilty?"
+
+"Guilty!"
+
+Amid dead silence the word fell.  Every heart thrilled with awe but
+one.  The condemned man sat staring at them with an awful, dull, glazed
+stare.
+
+The judge arose and put on his black cap, his face white, his lips
+trembling.
+
+Only the last words seemed to strike him--to crash into his whirling
+brain with a noise like thunder.
+
+"And that there you be hanged by the neck until dead, and may the Lord
+have mercy upon your soul!"
+
+He sat down.  The awful silence was something indescribable.  One or
+two women in the gallery fainted, then the hush was broken in a
+blood-curdling manner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+SYBILLA'S TRIUMPH.
+
+It was the night before the execution.  In his feebly lighted cell the
+condemned man sat alone, trying to read by the palely glimmering lamp.
+The New Testament lay open before him, and on this, the last night of
+his life, he was reading the story of Gethsemane and Calvary.  On this
+last night heart and soul were at rest, and an infinite calm illumined
+every feature.
+
+Weeks had passed since the day when sentence of death had been
+pronounced upon him, and the condemned man had lain burning in the wild
+delirium of brain fever.
+
+Sybilla Silver had been his most sleepless, his most devoted attendant.
+Her evidence had wrung his heart--had condemned him to the most
+shameful death man can die; but she had only told the truth, and truth
+is mighty and will prevail.  So she came and nursed him now, forgetting
+to eat or sleep in her zeal and devotion, and finally wooed him back to
+life and reason, while those who loved him best prayed God, by night
+and by day, that he might die.
+
+But, while hovering in the "Valley of the Shadow," death had lost all
+its terror for him--he rose a changed man.
+
+"And she is there," he said, with his eyes fixed dreamily on the one
+patch of blue May sky he could see between his prison bars--"my
+wronged, my murdered, my beloved wife!  Ah, yes, death is the highest
+boon the judges of this world can give me now!"
+
+And so the last night came.  He sat alone.  The jailer who was to share
+his cell on this last, awful vigil had been bribed to leave him by
+himself until the latest moment.
+
+"Come in before midnight," he said, smiling slightly, "and guard me
+while I sleep, if you wish.  Until then, I should like to be left quite
+alone."
+
+And the man obeyed, awed unutterably by the sublime look of that marble
+face.
+
+"He never did it," he said to his wife.  "No murderer ever looked with
+such clear eyes and such a sweet smile as that.  Sir Everard Kingsland
+is as hinnocent as a hangel, and there'll be a legal murder done
+to-morrow.  I wish it was that she-devil that swore his life away
+instead, I'd turn her off myself with the greatest pleasure."
+
+As if his thoughts had evoked her, a tall dark figure stood before
+him--Miss Sybilla Silver herself.
+
+"Good Lord!" cried the jailer, aghast; "who'd a-thought it?  What do
+you want?"
+
+"To see the prisoner," responded Sybilla.
+
+"You can't see him, then," said the jailer, gruffly.  "He ain't going
+to see anybody this last night, ma'am."
+
+"Mr. Markham"--she came over and laid her velvet paw on his arm, and
+magnetized him with her big black eyes--"think better of it.  It is his
+last night.  His mother lies on the point of death.  I come here with a
+last sacred message from a dying mother to a dying son.  You have an
+aged mother yourself, Mr. Markham.  Ah! think again, and don't be hard
+upon us."
+
+A sovereign slipped into his palm.
+
+"For only half an hour, then," he said; "mind that.  Come along!"
+
+The key clanked; the door swung back.  The pale prisoner lifted his
+serene eyes; the tall, dark figure stepped in.
+
+"Sybilla!"
+
+"Yes, Sir Everard."
+
+The great door closed with a bang.
+
+"Half an hour, mind," reiterated the jailer.
+
+The key turned; they were alone together within those massive walls.
+
+"I thought we parted yesterday for the last time in this lower world,"
+said the baronet, calmly.
+
+"Did you?  You were mistaken, then.  We meet again and part again
+forever to-night, for the last time in this lower world, or that upper
+one either, in which you believe, and which I know to be a very pretty
+little fable."
+
+She laughed a low, derisive laugh, and came up close to him.  He shut
+his book, and looked at her in wonder.
+
+"What do you mean?  Why have you come hither to-night?  Why do you look
+like that?  What is it all?"
+
+"It is this!  That the mask worn two long years is about to be torn
+off.  It means that you are to hear the truth; it means that the
+purpose of my life is fulfilled; it means that the hour of my triumph
+has come."
+
+He sat and looked at her, lost in wonder.
+
+"You do not speak--you sit and stare as though you could not believe
+your eyes or ears.  It is hard to believe, I know--the humble, the meek
+Sybilla metamorphosed thus.  But the Sybilla Silver you knew was a
+delusion.  Behold the real one, for the first time in your life!"
+
+"Woman, who are you?  What are you?"
+
+"I am the granddaughter of Zenith the gypsy, the woman your father
+wronged to the death, and your bitterest enemy, Sir Everard Kingsland!"
+
+"The granddaughter of Zenith the gypsy?" he repeated.  "Then Sybilla
+Silver is not your name?"
+
+"The name is as false as the character in which she showed
+herself--that of your friend."
+
+"And yet, the first time we met you saved my life."
+
+"No thanks for that.  I did not know you, though if I had I would have
+saved it, all the same.  That was not the death you were to die.  I
+saved you for the gallows."
+
+"Sybilla, Sybilla!"
+
+"I saved you for the gallows!" she repeated.  "I come here to-night to
+tell you the truth, and you shall hear it.  Did I not swear your life
+away?  Did I not nurse you back from the jaws of death?  All for what?
+That the astrologer's prediction might be fulfilled--that the heir of
+Kingsland Court might die a felon's death on the scaffold!"
+
+"The astrologer's prediction?" he cried, catching some of her
+excitement.  "What do you know about that?"
+
+"Everything--everything!" she exclaimed, exultingly.  "Far more than
+you do, for you only know such a thing exists--you know nothing of its
+contents.  Oh, no! mamma guarded her darling boy too carefully for
+that, notwithstanding your dying father's command.  But in spite of her
+it has come true."
+
+"What was the astrologer's prediction--that terrible prediction that
+shortened my father's life?"
+
+"It was this--that his only son and heir, born on that night, would die
+by the hand of the common hangman, a murderer's death on the scaffold.
+Enough to blight any father's life who believed in it, was it not?"
+
+"It was devilish.  My poor father!  Tell me the name of the fiend
+incarnate who could do so diabolical a deed, for you know?"
+
+"I do.  That man was my father."
+
+"Your father?"
+
+"Ay, Achmet the Astrologer.  Ha! ha!  As much an astrologer as you or
+I.  It was his part of our vengeance--my part was to see it carried
+out.  I swore, by my dying mother's bedside, to devote my life to that
+purpose.  Have I not kept my oath?"
+
+She folded her arms and looked at him with a face of devilish
+malignity.  He recoiled from her as from a visible demon.
+
+"For God's sake, go!  You bring a breath of hell into this prison.
+Go--go!  You have done your master's work.  Leave me!"
+
+"Not yet; you have heard but half the truth.  Oh, potent Prince of
+Kingsland, hear me out!  You will be hanged tomorrow morning for
+murdering your wife!  You didn't murder her, did you?  Who do you
+suppose did it?"
+
+He rose to his feet, staggered back against the wall, his eyes starting
+from their sockets.
+
+"Great God!"
+
+"Ah, you anticipate, I see.  Yes, my lord of Kingsland, I murdered your
+pretty little wife!  Keep off!  I have a pistol here, and I'll blow
+your brains out if you come one step nearer--if you utter a word!  I
+don't want to cheat Jack Ketch, if I can.  And it is no use your crying
+for help--there is no one to hear, and these stone walls are thick.
+Stand there, my rich, my noble, my princely brother, and listen to the
+truth."
+
+He stood, holding by the wall, paralyzed with horror.
+
+"Yes, I murdered her!" Sybilla reiterated, with sneering triumph.
+"Disguised in your clothes, using your dagger; and she died, believing
+it to be you.  All I told, and all the boy Dawson told at the trial was
+true as the Heaven you believe in.  Your wife was true as truth, pure
+as the angels.  She loved only you--she loved you with her whole heart
+and soul.  Her vow by the bedside of her dying father chained her
+tongue.  To save you the shame, the humiliation of learning the truth
+about her degraded mother, she met in secret this Mr. Parmalee.  On
+that night she went to the stone terrace to see her mother, for the
+first, the last, the only time.  I arranged it all--I lured her
+there--I stabbed her, and flung her over into the sea!  I hated her for
+your sake--I hated her for her own.  And to-morrow, for my crime, you
+will die!"
+
+And still he gazed, paralyzed, stunned, speechless.
+
+"Poor fool!" she said, with unutterable scorn--"poor, blind, besotted
+fool! and this is the end of all!  Young, handsome, rich, high-born,
+surrounded by friends, the wealthy and the great, one woman's work
+brings you to this!  I have said my say, and now I leave you; here we
+part, Sir Everard Kingsland.  Call the jailer; tell him what I have
+told you--tell it through the length and breadth of the land, if you
+choose.  Not one will believe you.  It is an utterly mad and impossible
+tale.  I have only to calmly and scornfully deny it.  And to-morrow,
+when the glorious sun rises I will be far away.  In Spain, the land of
+my mother and my grandmother, I go to join our race--to become a
+dweller in tents--a gypsy, free as the wind that blows.  The gold your
+lavish hand has given me will make me and my tribe rich for life.  I go
+to be their queen.  Farewell, Sir Everard Kingsland.  My half hour has
+expired; the jailer comes to let me out.  But first I go straight from
+here to Kingsland Court, to tell your mother what I have just told
+you--to tell her her idolized son dies for my crime, and to kill her,
+if I can, with the news."
+
+The door swung open--Miss Silver flitted out.  It broke the spell.  The
+prisoner started forward, tried hoarsely, vainly to speak.  Enfeebled
+by long illness, by repeated shocks, he staggered a pace or two and
+fell face forward at the jailer's feet like a log.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.
+
+And while Sir Everard Kingsland lay in his felon's cell, doomed to die,
+where was she for whose murder he was to give his life?  Really
+murdered?
+
+Harriet--Lady Kingsland--was not dead.  Hundreds of miles of sea and
+land rolled between her and Kingsland Court, and in a stately New York
+mansion she looked out at the sparkling April sunshine, with life and
+health beating strong in her breast.
+
+Mr. George Washington Parmalee had saved her life.  On that tragic
+night of March tenth, he had quitted the Blue Bell with Mrs. Denover,
+and descended at once to the shore, where a boat from the "Angelina
+Dobbs" was awaiting them.
+
+Mr. Parmalee took the oars and rowed away in the direction of the park.
+The sickly glimmer of the moon showed him the stone terrace and the
+solitary figure standing waiting there.  But the noise of the wash on
+the beach and the sighing of the trees prevented Harriet from hearing
+the dip of the sculls.  On the sea the night was so dark that the boat
+glided along unseen.
+
+He had neared the spot and rowed softly along under the deep shadow of
+overhanging trees, when he espied a second figure, muffled in a cloak,
+emerge and confront the lady.  He recognized, or thought he recognized,
+the baronet, and came to a deadlock, with a stifled imprecation.
+
+"It's all up with them three hundred pounds this bout," he thought;
+"confound the luck!"
+
+He could not hear the words--the distance was too great--but he could
+see them plainly.  The wild shriek of Lady Kingsland would have been
+echoed by her terrified mother had not the artist clapped his hand
+firmly over her mouth.
+
+"Darnation!  Dry up, can't you?  Oh, good God!"
+
+He started up in horror, nearly upsetting the boat.  He had seen the
+fatal blow given, he saw the body hurled over the railing, and he saw
+the face of the murderer!
+
+A flash of moonlight shone full upon it bending down, and he
+recognized, in men's clothes, the woman who was to be his wife.
+
+The assassin fled.  As she vanished G. W. Parmalee looked up with a
+hollow groan, remained irresolute for an instant, shook himself, and
+took up the oars.
+
+"We must pick up the body," he said, in an unearthly voice.  "The waves
+will wash it away in five minutes."
+
+He rowed ashore, lifted the lifeless form, carried it into the boat,
+and laid it across the mother's knee.
+
+"We'll put for the 'Angelina,'" he observed.  "If there's any life
+left, we'll fetch her to there."
+
+"Her heart beats," said Mrs. Denover, raining tears and kisses on the
+cold face.  "Oh, my child, my child! it is your wretched mother who has
+done this!"
+
+They reached the "Angelina Dobbs," where they were impatiently waited
+for, and captain and crew stared aghast at sight of the supposed corpse.
+
+"Do you take the 'Angelina Dobbs' for a cemetery, Mr. Parmalee?"
+demanded Captain Dobbs, with asperity.  "Who's that air corpse?"
+
+"Come into the cabin and I'll tell you."
+
+There he heard, in wonder and pity, the story.
+
+"Poor creeter!  Pretty as a picter, too!  Who did the deed?"
+
+"It looked like her husband," replied Mr. Parmalee.  "He was as jealous
+as a Turk, anyway."
+
+"She is not dead!" exclaimed Mrs. Denover; "her heart flutters.  Oh!
+pray leave me alone with her; I think I know what to do."
+
+The men quitted the cabin.  Mrs. Denover removed her daughter's
+clothing and examined the wound.  It was deep and dangerous looking,
+but not necessarily fatal--she knew that, and she had had considerable
+experience during her rough life with John Thorndyke.  She stanched the
+flow of blood, bathed and dressed the wound, and finally the dark eyes
+opened and looked vaguely in her face.
+
+"Who are you?  Where am I?" very feebly.
+
+"I am your nurse," she said, tremulously, "and you are with friends who
+love you."
+
+"Ah!  I remember."  A look of intense anguish crossed her face.  "You
+are my mother!"
+
+"Your most wretched mother!  Oh, my darling, I am not worthy to look in
+your face!"
+
+"You are all that is left to me now--ah, Heaven pity me!--since he
+thinks me guilty.  I remember all.  He tried to murder me; he called me
+a name I will never forget.  Mother, how came I here?  Is this a ship?"
+
+Very gently, softly, soothingly the mother told how Mr. Parmalee had
+saved her life.
+
+"And where are we going now?"
+
+"To Southampton, I think.  But we will return if you wish it."
+
+"To the man who tried to take my life?  Ah, no, mother!  Never again in
+this world to him!  Call Mr. Parmalee."
+
+"My dear, you must not talk so much; you are not able."
+
+"Call Mr. Parmalee."
+
+Mrs. Denover obeyed.
+
+The artist presented himself promptly, quite overjoyed.
+
+"Why, now," said Mr. Parmalee, "I'd rather see this than have a
+thousand dollars down.  Why, you look as spry almost as ever.  How do
+you feel?"
+
+"You have been very good to me and my mother.  Be good until the end.
+If I die, bury me where he will never hear of my death nor look upon my
+grave.  If I live, take me back to New York--I have friends there--and
+don't let him know whether I am living or dead."
+
+"I'll do it!  It's a go!  I owe him one for that kicking, and, by Jove!
+here's a chance to pay him.  Jest you keep up heart and get well, and
+we'll take you to New York in the 'Angelina Dobbs,' and nobody be the
+wiser."
+
+Mr. Parmalee kept his word.  They lay aboard the vessel while loading
+at Southampton, and a surgeon was in daily attendance upon the sick
+girl.
+
+"You fetch her round," said Mr. Parmalee.  "She's the skipper's only
+daughter--this 'ere craft, the 'Angelina Dobbs,' is named after
+her--and he'll foot the bill like a lud."
+
+The surgeon did his best, and was liberally paid out of the three
+hundred pounds which Mrs. Denover had found in the bosom of Harriet's
+dress.  But for days and weeks she lay very ill--ill unto
+death--delirious, senseless.  Then the fever yielded, and death-like
+weakness ensued.
+
+This, too, passed; and by the time the "Angelina" reached New York, the
+poor girl was able to saunter up and down the deck, and drink in the
+life-giving sea air.
+
+Thus, while fruitless search was being made for G. W. Parmalee
+throughout London--while detectives examined every passenger who sailed
+in the emigrant ships--he was safely skimming the Atlantic in Captain
+Dobb's cockleshell.
+
+To do him justice, he never thought--and no more did Harriet--of what
+might follow her disappearance.  The baronet would leave the country,
+they both imagined, and her fate would remain forever a mystery.
+
+So the supposed dead bride reached New York in safety, and that body
+washed ashore and identified by Sybilla Silver, to suit her own ends,
+was some nameless unfortunate.
+
+On the pier in New York Mr. Parmalee and Lady Kingsland parted.
+
+"I am going to my uncle's house," she said; "my mother's brother.  Hugh
+Denover is a rich merchant, and will receive us, I know.  Keep my story
+secret, and come and see me next time you visit New York.  Here is my
+uncle's address; give me yours, and if ever it is in my power, I will
+not forget how nobly you have acted and how inadequately you have been
+repaid."
+
+They shook hands and parted.
+
+Mr. Parmalee went "down East," not at all satisfied with his little
+English speculation.  He had lost a handsome reward and a handsomer
+wife.  He dared hardly think to himself that Sybilla had done the
+horrid deed, and he had never breathed his suspicion to Harriet.
+
+"Let her think it's the baronet, if she's a mind to.  I ain't a-going
+to do him a good turn.  But I know better."
+
+Harriet and her mother sought out Mr. Denover.  He lived in a stately
+up-town mansion, with his wife and one son, and received both poor
+waifs with open arms.  His lost sister had been his boyhood's pet; he
+had nothing for her now but pity and forgiveness, when she looked at
+him with death in her face.
+
+"My poor Maria, don't talk of the wretched past.  I love my only sister
+in spite of all, and neither she nor her child shall want a home while
+I have one."
+
+Harriet told her story very briefly.  Her father had been dead for two
+years.  She had married; she had not lived happily with her husband,
+and they had parted.  She had come to Uncle Hugh; she knew he would
+give his sister's daughter a home.
+
+She told her story with dry eyes and unfaltering voice; but Mr.
+Denover, looking in that pale, rigid young face, read more of her
+despair than she dreamed.
+
+"Her husband has been some English grandee, like Captain Hunsden, I
+dare say," he thought, "proud as Lucifer, and when he discovered that
+about her mother, despised and ill-treated her."
+
+The penitent wife of Captain Hunsden did not long survive to enjoy her
+new home.  Two weeks after their arrival she lay upon her death-bed.
+Nothing could save her.  She had been doomed for months--life gave way
+when the excitement that had buoyed her up was gone.
+
+By night and day Harriet watched by her bedside, and the repentant
+Magdalen's last hours were the most blessed she had ever known.
+
+"I do not deserve to die like this," she said.  "Oh, my darling, your
+love makes my death-bed very sweet!"
+
+They laid her in Greenwood, and once more Harriet's desolation seemed
+renewed.
+
+"I am doomed to lose all I love," she thought, despairingly--"father,
+husband, mother--all!"
+
+She drooped day by day, despite the tenderest care.  No smile ever
+lighted her pale face, no happy light ever shone from the mournful dark
+eyes.
+
+"Her heart is broken," said Uncle Hugh; "she will die by inches before
+our very eyes!"
+
+And Uncle Hugh's prediction might have been fulfilled had not a new
+excitement arisen to stimulate her to renewed life and send her back to
+England.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+MR. PARMALEE TURNS UP TRUMPS.
+
+Mr. G. W. Parmalee went down to Dobbsville, Maine, and reposed again in
+the bosom of his family.  He went to work on the paternal acres for
+awhile, gave that up in disgust, set up once more a picture-gallery,
+and took the portraits of the ladies and gentlemen of Dobbsville at
+fifty cents a head.
+
+Mr. Parmalee was fast becoming a misanthrope.  His speculation had
+failed, his love was lost; nothing lay before him but a long and dreary
+existence spent in immortalizing in tin-types the belles and beaus of
+Dobbsville.
+
+Sometimes a fit of penitence overtook him when his thoughts reverted to
+the desolate young creature, worse than widowed, dragging out life in
+New York.
+
+"I'd ought to tell her," Mr. Parmalee thought.  "It ain't right to let
+her keep on thinking that her husband murdered her.  But then it goes
+awfully against a feller's grain to peach on the girl he meant to
+marry.  Still----"
+
+The remorseful reflection haunted him, do what he would.  He took to
+dreaming of the young baronet, too.  Once he saw him in his shroud,
+lying dead on the stone terrace, and at sight of him the corpse had
+risen up, ghastly in its grave clothes, and, pointing one quivering
+finger at him, said, in an awful voice:
+
+"G. W. Parmalee, it is you who have done this!"
+
+And Mr. Parmalee had started up in bed, the cold sweat standing on his
+brow like a shower of pease.
+
+"I won't stand this, by thunder!" thought the artist next morning, in a
+fit of desperation.  "I'll write up to New York this very day and tell
+her all, so help me Bob!"
+
+But "_l'homme propose_"--you know the proverb.  Squire Brown, who lived
+half a mile off, and had never heard of Harriet in his life, altered
+Mr. Parmalee's plans.
+
+The worthy squire, jogging along in his cart from market, came upon the
+artist, sitting on the top rail of the gate, whittling, and looking
+gloomily dejected.
+
+"Hi!  George, my boy!" cried out the squire, "what's gone wrong?  You
+look as dismal as a graveyard!"
+
+"W-a-a-l!" drawled the artist, who wasn't going to tell his troubles on
+the house-tops, "there ain't nothin' much to speak of.  It's the
+all-fired dullness of this pesky one-horse village, where there ain't
+nothin' stirrin', 'cept flies in fly-time, from one year's end to
+t'other."
+
+"See what comes of traveling," said Squire Brown.  "If you had stayed
+at home, instead of flying round England, you'd have been as right as a
+trivet.  My 'pinion is, you've been and left a gal behind.  Here's a
+London paper for you.  My missus gets 'em every mail.  Perhaps you'll
+see your gal's name in the list of marriages."
+
+Mr. Parmalee took the paper chucked at him with languid indifference.
+
+"Any news?" he asked.
+
+"Lots--just suited to your complaint.  A coal mine in Cornwall's been
+and caved in and buried alive fifteen workmen; there's been a horrid
+riot in Leeds; and a baronet in Devonshire is sentenced to be hung for
+murdering his wife."
+
+Mr. Parmalee gave one yell--one horrid yell, like a Comanche
+war-whoop--and leaped off the fence.
+
+"What did you say?" he roared.  "A baronet in Devonshire for murdering
+his wife?"
+
+"Thunder!" ejaculated Squire Brown.  "You didn't know him, did you?
+Maybe you took his picture when in England?  Yes, a baronet, and his
+name it's Sir Everard Kingsland."
+
+With an unearthly groan, Mr. Parmalee tore open the paper.
+
+"They haven't hanged him yet, have they?" he gasped.  "Oh, good Lord
+above! what have I done?"
+
+Squire Brown stared, a spectacle of dense bewilderment.
+
+"You didn't do the murder, I hope?" he asked.
+
+The squire rode away, and Mr. Parmalee sat for a good hour, half
+stupefied over the account.  The paper contained a resume of the trial,
+from first to last--dwelling particularly on Miss Silver's evidence,
+and ending with the sentence of the court.
+
+The paper dropped from the artist's paralyzed hand.  He covered his
+face and sat in a trance of horror and remorse.  His mother came to
+call him to dinner, and as he looked up in answer to her call, she
+started back with a scream at sight of his unearthly face.
+
+"Lor' a-massy, George Washington! what ever has come to you?"
+
+"Pack up my clean socks and shirts, mother," he said.  "I'm going back
+to England by the first steamer."
+
+Late next evening Mr. Parmalee reached New York.  Early the following
+morning he strode up to the brownstone mansion of Mr. Denover and
+sharply rang the bell.
+
+"Is Lady--I mean, is Mr. Denover's niece to home?"
+
+The servant ushered him into the drawing-room.
+
+"Who shall I say?"
+
+Mr. Parmalee handed her his card.
+
+"Give her that.  Tell her it's a matter of life and death."
+
+The servant stared, took the pasteboard and vanished.  Ten minutes
+after, and Harriet, in a white morning robe, pale and terrified,
+hurried in.
+
+"Mr. Parmalee, has anything--have you heard----  Oh, what is it?"
+
+"It is this, Lady Kingsland: your husband has been arrested and tried
+for your murder!"
+
+She clasped her hands together and sunk into a seat.  She did not cry
+out or exclaim.  She sat aghast.
+
+"He has been tried and condemned, and----"
+
+He could not finish the sentence, out of pity for that death-like face.
+
+But she understood him, and a scream rang through the house which those
+who heard it might never forget.
+
+"Oh, my God! he is condemned to be hanged!"
+
+"He is," said Mr. Parmalee; "but we'll stop 'em.  Now, don't you go and
+excite yourself, my lady, because you'll need all your strength and
+presence of mind in this here emergency.  There's a steamer for
+Liverpool to-morrow.  I secured our passage before I ever came here."
+
+"May the great God grant we be in time!  Oh, my love! my darling! my
+husband!  I never thought of this.  Let me but save you, and I am ready
+to die!"
+
+"Only hear her!" cried the electrified artist, "talking like that about
+the man she thinks stabbed her.  I do believe she loves him yet."
+
+"With my whole heart.  I would die this instant to save him.  I love
+him as dearly as when I stood beside him at the altar a blessed bride."
+
+"Well, I'll be darned," burst out Mr. Parmalee, "if this don't beat all
+creation!  Now, then, what would you give to know it was not Sir
+Everard who stabbed you that night?"
+
+"Not Sir Everard?  But I saw him; I heard him speak.  He did it in a
+moment of madness, Mr. Parmalee, and Heaven only knows what anguish and
+remorse he has suffered since."
+
+"I hope so," said Mr. Parmalee.  "I hope he's gone through piles of
+agony, for I don't like a bone in his body, if it comes to that.  But,
+I repeat, it was not your husband who stabbed you on the stone terrace
+that dismal night.  It was--it was Sybilla Silver!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am--sounds incredible, but it's a fact.  She rigged out in a
+suit of Sir Everard's clothes, mimicked his voice, and did the deed.  I
+saw her face when she pitched you over the rail as plain as I see
+your'n this minute, and I'm ready to swear to it through all the courts
+in Christendom.  She hated you like pisen, and the baronet, too, and
+she thinks she's put an end to you both; but if we don't give her an
+eye-opener pretty soon, my name ain't Parmalee."
+
+She sunk on her knees and held up her clasped hands.
+
+"Thank God! thank God! thank God!"
+
+Next day they sailed for England.  The passage was all that could be
+desired, even by the impatience of Harriet.
+
+They arrived in Liverpool.  Mr. Parmalee and his companion posted full
+speed down to Devonshire.  In the luminous dusk of the soft May evening
+they reached Worrel, Harriet's thick veil hiding her from every eye.
+
+"We'll go to Mr. Bryson's first," said Parmalee, Bryson being Sir
+Everard's lawyer.  "We're in the very nick of time; to-morrow morning
+at day-dawn is fixed for----"
+
+"Oh, hush!" in a voice of agony; "not that fearful word!"
+
+They reached the house of Mr. Bryson.  He sat over his eight-o'clock
+cup of tea, with a very gloomy face.  He had known Sir Everard all his
+life--he had known his beautiful bride, so passionately beloved.  He
+had bidden the doomed baronet a last farewell that afternoon.
+
+"He never did it," said he to himself.  "There is a horrible mystery
+somewhere.  He never did it--I could stake my life on his
+innocence--and he is to die to-morrow, poor fellow!  That missing man,
+Parmalee, did it, and that fierce young woman with the big black eyes
+and deceitful tongue was his aider and abettor.  If I could only find
+that man!"
+
+A servant entered with a card, "G. W. Parmalee."  The lawyer rose with
+a cry.
+
+"Good Heaven above!  It can't be!  It's too good to be true!  He never
+would rush into the lion's den in this way.  John Thomas, who gave you
+this?"
+
+"Which the gentleman is in the droring-room, sir," responded John
+Thomas, "as likewise the lady."
+
+Mr. Bryson rushed for the drawing-room, flung wide the door, and
+confronted Mr. Parmalee.
+
+"Good-evening, squire," said the American.
+
+"You here!" gasped the Sawyer--"the man for whom we have been scouring
+the kingdom!"
+
+"You'd oughter scoured the Atlantic," replied the artist, with infinite
+calm.  "I've been home to see my folks.  I suppose you wanted me to
+throw a little light on that 'ere horrid murder?"
+
+"I suspect you know more of that murder than any other man alive!" said
+the lawyer.
+
+"Do tell!  Well, now, I ain't a-going to deny it--I do know all about
+it, squire."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Precisely!  Yes, sir.  I saw the deed done."
+
+"You did?  Good heavens!"
+
+"Don't swear, squire.  Yes, I saw the stab given, with that 'ere long
+knife; and it wasn't the baronet did it, either, though you're going to
+hang him for it to-morrow."
+
+"In Heaven's name, man, who did the deed?"
+
+"Sybilla Silver!"
+
+"I knew it--I thought it--I said it!  The she-devil!  Poor, poor Lady
+Kingsland!"
+
+"Ma'am," said the American, turning to his veiled companion, "perhaps
+it will relieve Mr. Bryson's gushing bosom to behold your face.  Jest
+lift that 'ere veil."
+
+"All-merciful Heaven! the dead alive!  Lady Kingsland!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+HIGHLY SENSATIONAL.
+
+Sybilla Silver went straight from the prison cell of Sir Everard to the
+sick-room of his mother.  It was almost eleven when she reached the
+Court, but they watched the night through in that house of mourning.
+
+Leaving the fly before the front entrance, Sybilla stole round to that
+side door she had used the memorable night of March tenth.  She
+admitted herself without difficulty, and proceeded at once to Lady
+Kingsland's sick-room.
+
+She tapped lightly at the door.  It was opened instantly, and the pale
+face of Mildred looked out.
+
+"You here!  How dare you, you cruel, wicked, merciless woman!" she
+indignantly cried.
+
+"Hard words, Miss Kingsland.  Let me in, if you please--I wish to see
+your mother."
+
+"You shall not come in!  The sight of you will kill her!  Was it not
+enough to swear away the life of her only son?  Do you want to blast
+her dying hours with the sight of your base, treacherous face?"
+
+With a look of scornful contempt, Sybilla took her by the shoulder and
+drew her out of the room.
+
+"Don't be an idiot, Mildred Kingsland!  I gave my evidence--how could I
+help it?  It wasn't my fault that your brother murdered his wife.  I
+must see your mother for ten minutes.  I bring a last message from her
+son."
+
+"You have been to prison!" she cried.  "You dare look my brother in the
+face!"
+
+"Just as easily as I do his sister.  Am I to see Lady Kingsland, or
+shall I go as I came, with Sir Everard's message undelivered?"
+
+"The sight of you will kill her."
+
+"We must risk that."
+
+She passed into the room as she spoke.
+
+"Wait here," she said.  "I must see her quite alone, but it will only
+be for a few minutes."
+
+She closed the door and stood alone in the sick lady's room.
+
+"Is it you, Mildred?  The light is too strong."
+
+"It is not Mildred, my lady.  It is I."
+
+"Sybilla Silver!"
+
+No words can describe the look of agony, of terror, of repulsion, that
+crossed my lady's face.  She held up both hands with a gesture of
+loathing and horror.
+
+"Keep off!" she cried.  "You murderess!"
+
+"Yes," she cried, "that is the word--murderess!--for I murdered your
+daughter-in-law.  You never liked her, you know, Lady Kingsland.
+Surely, then, when I stabbed her and threw her into the sea, I did you
+a good turn.  Lie still, and listen to me.  I have a long story to tell
+you, beginning with the astrologer's prediction."
+
+With fiendish composure Sybilla repeated the story she had told Sir
+Everard, while Lady Kingsland lay paralyzed and listened.
+
+The atrocious revelation ended, she looked at her prostrate foe with a
+diabolical smile.
+
+"My oath is kept; the prediction is fulfilled.  In a few hours the last
+of the Kingslands dies by the hand of the common hangman.  I have told
+you all, and I dare you to injure one hair of my head.  Within the hour
+my journey from England commences.  Search for last year's snow, for
+last September's partridges, and when you find them you may hope to
+find Sybilla Silver.  Burn the prediction, destroy my grandmother's
+portrait and lock of hair, so carefully hidden away for many years.
+Their work is done, and my vengeance is complete.  Lady Kingsland,
+farewell!"
+
+"Murderess!" spoke a deep and awful voice--"murderess! murderess!"
+
+"Ah-h-h-h-h!"
+
+With a shriek of wordless affright, Sybilla Silver leaped back, and
+stood cowering against the wall.  For the dead had risen and stood
+before her.  The phantom slowly advanced.
+
+"Murderess, confess your guilt!"
+
+"Mercy, mercy! mercy!" shrieked Sybilla Silver.  "Spare me!  Touch me
+not!  Oh, God! what is this?"
+
+"Confess!"
+
+"I confess--I murdered you--I stabbed you!  Sir Everard is innocent!
+Keep off!  Mercy! mercy!"
+
+With an unearthly scream, the horrified woman threw up both arms to
+keep off the awful vision, and fell forward in strong convulsions.
+
+"Very well done," said Mr. Bryson, entering briskly.  "I don't think we
+need any further proof of this lady's guilt.  You have played ghost to
+some purpose, my dear Lady Kingsland.  Come in, gentlemen.  We'll have
+no trouble carrying off our prize."
+
+He paused, and stepped back with a blanched face, for Lady Kingsland
+lay writhing in the last agony.
+
+With a wild cry, Mildred threw herself on her knees by her mother's
+side.
+
+"Mamma--dear mamma--don't look like that!  Harriet is not dead.  She is
+here alive.  It was that dreadful woman who tried to kill her.  Everard
+is innocent, as we knew he was.  He will be here with us in a day or
+two."
+
+The dying woman was conscious.  Her eyes turned and fixed on Harriet.
+The white disguise had been thrown off.  She came over to the bedside,
+pale and beautiful.
+
+"Mother," she said, sweetly, "it is indeed I.  Dear mother, bless me
+once."
+
+"May God bless you and forgive me!  Tell Everard--"  She never finished
+the sentence.  With the name of the son she idolized upon her lips,
+Lady Kingsland was dead.
+
+Harriet's presence of mind did not forsake her.  Reverently she kissed
+the dead face, closed the eyes, and rose.
+
+"The dead are free from suffering.  Our first duty is to the living.
+Take me to my husband!"
+
+The constable lifted Sybilla unceremoniously.
+
+The servants gathered outside the door gave way, and he placed her in
+the carriage which had conveyed them to the house.
+
+Mr. Parmalee went with him, and Lady Kingsland and the lawyer took
+possession of the fly that stood waiting for Miss Silver.
+
+A minute later and they were flying, swift as lash and shout could urge
+them, toward Worrel Jail.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+"AFTER STORM, THE SUNSHINE."
+
+Earlier in the evening, when Harriet had told her story to Mr. Bryson,
+that gentleman had proceeded at once to the prison to inform the
+prisoner and the officials that the murdered lady was alive.
+
+There he found the warden of the prison and the clergyman, listening
+with very perplexed faces to a story the prisoner was narrating.
+
+"This is a most extraordinary revelation," the clergyman was saying.
+"I really don't know what to think."
+
+"What is it?" asked Mr. Bryson.
+
+"A story which, wildly incredible as it seems, is yet true as Holy
+Writ," answered the prisoner.  "The real murderer is found.  She has
+been here, and admitted her guilt."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the lawyer.  "Sybilla Silver?"
+
+"Why!" cried the warden, in wonder, "you, too?"
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Bryson, with a nod.  "I know all about it.  A most
+important witness has turned up--no other than the missing man, Mr.
+Parmalee.  He saw the deed done--saw Sybilla Silver, dressed in Sir
+Everard's clothes, do it, and has come all the way from America to
+testify against her.  Sir Everard, my dear friend, from the bottom of
+my soul I congratulate you on your most blessed escape!"
+
+"Thank you!" he said.  "If my life is spared, it is for some good end,
+no doubt.  Thank God!  A felon's death would have been very bitter, and
+for my mother's sake I rejoice."
+
+"Not for your own?"
+
+"I have lost all that made life sweet.  My wife is in heaven.  For me
+earth holds nothing but penitence and remorse."
+
+"I am not so sure about that.  I have better news for you even than the
+news I have told.  My dear friend, can you bear a great shock--a shock
+of joy?"
+
+He sprung up in bed, electrified.
+
+"Speak!" he gasped.  "Oh, for God's sake----"
+
+"Your wife is alive!"
+
+There was a simultaneous cry.
+
+Mr. Bryson hurried on rapidly:
+
+"Sybilla Silver stabbed her, and threw her over upon the shore.  Mr.
+Parmalee picked her up--not dead, but badly wounded--took her on board
+a vessel--took her finally to America.  Sybilla Silver deceived your
+poor wife as she deceived us all.  Lady Kingsland thought it was you,
+Sir Everard.  But she is alive and well, and in Worrel at this very
+moment.  Our first business is to cage our bird before she flies.  Can
+you aid us any, Sir Everard?  Where are we most likely to find her?"
+
+"At the Court," the baronet answered.  "She left here to go there--to
+kill my mother with her horrible news, if she could."
+
+"We will leave you now," Mr. Bryson said, rising.  "Come, gentlemen;
+Sir Everard wants to be alone.  I am off to secure my prisoner."
+
+It was on his way back to his own house that Mr. Bryson lighted on his
+ghostly plan for frightening Sybilla.  How well it succeeded you know.
+
+She was still insensible when they reached the prison, and was handed
+over to the proper authorities.  Harriet turned her imploring face
+toward the lawyer.
+
+"Let me go to my husband!  Oh, dear Mr. Bryson, let me go at once!"
+
+They led her to the door.  The jailer admitted her and closed it again.
+She was in her husband's prison-cell.  Her arms were around his neck,
+her tears, her kisses raining on his face.
+
+"Oh, my darling, my darling! my life, my love, my husband!"
+
+"Harriet!"
+
+With a great cry he rose and held her to his heart.
+
+"My wife, my wife!"
+
+And then, weak with long illness and repeated shocks--this last,
+greatest shock of all--he sat down, faint unto death.
+
+"Oh, my love, my wife! to think that I should hold you once more in my
+arms, look once more into your living face!  My wife, my wife!  How
+cruel, how merciless I have been to you!  May God forgive me!  I will
+forgive myself--never!"
+
+"Not one word!  Between us there can be no such thing as forgiveness.
+We could neither of us have acted other than as we did.  My oath bound
+me--your honor was at stake.  We have both suffered--Heaven only knows
+how deeply.  But it is past now.  Nothing in this lower world shall
+ever come between us again, my beloved!"
+
+"Not even death," he said, folding her close to his heart.
+
+One month after and Sir Everard Kingsland, his wife, and sister quitted
+England for the Continent, not to make the grand tour and return, but
+to reside for years.  England was too full of painful memories; under
+the sunlit skies of beautiful Italy they were going to forget.
+
+Sybilla Silver was dead.  All her plans had failed--her oath of
+vengeance was broken.  Sir Everard and his bride were triumphant.  She
+had failed--miserably failed; she thought of it until she went
+mad--stark, staring mad.  Her piercing shrieks rang through the stony
+prison all day and all night long, until one night, in a paroxysm of
+frenzy, she had dashed her head against the wall.  They found her, in
+the morning, dead.
+
+     *     *     *     *     *
+
+Out into the lazy June sunshine the steamer glided.  With his handsome
+wife on his arm, the young baronet stood looking his last at his native
+land, his face infinitely happy.
+
+"For years," he said, with a smile--"for life, perhaps, Harriet.  I
+feel as if I never wished to return."
+
+"But we shall," she said.  "England is home.  A few happy years in fair
+foreign lands, and then, Everard, back to the old land.  But first, I
+confess, I should like again to see America, and Uncle Denover,
+and"--with a little laugh--"George Washington Parmalee."
+
+For Mr. Parmalee had gone back to Dobbsville, at peace with all the
+world, Sir Everard Kingsland included.
+
+"You're a brick, baronet," his parting speech had been, as he wrung
+that young man's hand; "you air, I swan!  And your wife's another!
+Long may you wave!"
+
+Sir Everard laughed aloud now at the recollection.
+
+"Money can never repay our obligation to that worthy artist.  May his
+shadow never be less!  We shall go over to Dobbsville and see him, and
+have our pictures taken, next year.  Look, Harriet! how the chalky
+cliffs are melting into the blue above!  One parting peep at England,
+and so a long good-by to the old land!" he said, taking off his hat,
+and standing, radiant and happy, with the June sunlight on his handsome
+head.
+
+
+
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