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The Baronet's Bride; Or, A Woman's Vengeance

by May Agnes Fleming · English · Gutenberg #15317 · 460,688 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Baronet's Bride; Or, A Woman's Vengeance

Author: May Agnes Fleming


        
Release date: March 10, 2005 [eBook #15317]
                Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15317

Credits: E-text prepared by Al Haines


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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 _blasé_ 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 mère_--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 mère_; 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 _tête-à-tête_ 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 _passée_, 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 _prononcé_ 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 

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