Transcriber’s Notes:

“Adrift in the World,” “The Bailiff’s Scheme,” “The Belle of the
Season,” “Cecil Rosse,” “The Haunted Husband,” “Sundered
Hearts,” and numerous other books published in the
Eagle, New Eagle, and Select Libraries.

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Neva’s Choice

SYNOPSIS OF “NEVA’S THREE LOVERS.”

A beautiful young widow, Mrs. Octavia Hathaway, with the connivance of her admirer, Craven Black, succeeded in marrying the wealthy widower, Sir Harold Wynde, who had a daughter, Neva, at school in France, and a son, George, with his regiment in India. A hurried call to the deathbed of his son frustrated the design of the two adventurers to poison the baronet, who, after his son died, was reported to have been killed by a tiger in India, instead of which he was kept prisoner by a treacherous native servant. After fifteen months of outward mourning Lady Wynde married Craven Black, and in order to secure the large fortune of her stepdaughter, she determined that Neva should marry Black’s son, Rufus. The latter, however, although in fear of his father, was not unscrupulous. He had married a young girl named Lalla Bird, but as both were under age he was persuaded that the marriage was illegal. Lalla was reported to have thrown herself into the river on learning this, but the body recovered was not hers. She found employment as governess to the children of a Mrs. Blight. Rufus, believing her dead, proposed to Neva, but was refused, and the young heiress became betrothed to Lord Towyn.

Neva’s Choice

NEVA’S CHOICE.

CHAPTER I.
NEVA’S ANSWER TO LORD TOWYN.

Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, summoning the indispensable Mrs. Artress to a private conference, passed some hours in their own room in anxious deliberation upon their future course in regard to Neva. It was necessary to the full success of the daring game they were playing, that Neva should marry Rufus Black; but she had rejected him, completely and finally, in obedience to her instincts of duty to God and to herself, and her enemies began to believe that they would have serious trouble in forcing her into the marriage.

In accordance with the conclusion to which they finally arrived, Mrs. Artress went away from Hawkhurst that very afternoon in the family brougham, and two trunks belonging to her were conveyed to Canterbury in a spring wagon. It was given out that she was going to London to visit a friend. She really went up to London, but to what point she then directed her wanderings no one knew.

Rufus Black wandered disconsolately all day in the park, and came in an hour before dinner. His father encountered him in the upper hall, and went into his room with him.

“That’s a fine face, Rufus,” said Craven Black, sneeringly, “to win the heart of a girl like Miss Wynde. You look as if you were traveling straight to the dogs.”

“So I am, sir,” said Rufus, recklessly.

“You dare to answer me in that manner?”

“To whom should I tell the truth, if not to you?” cried Rufus desperately. “You have made me what I am. I married a pure and innocent young girl, who but for me was utterly friendless in the wide world. You tore me from her. You persuaded me that my marriage was illegal—”

“And wasn’t it?”

“I suppose it was, but it was not null and void. It could have been set aside by due process of law, because I was a minor, and because I perjured myself in declaring that I was of age; but I refuse to believe that it was null and void, no marriage at all. I never wronged my poor Lally as you pretend.”

“Why this spasm of virtue?” demanded Craven Black, with a cynical smile. “The girl’s dead, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she’s dead! God help me!”

“What a tragic groan! This morning you were in despair because Miss Wynde rejected you. To-night you are mourning after your corn-chandler’s daughter. I’d like to understand you—I would indeed. Which are you wailing after, Miss Wynde or Lalla Rookh?”

“Which?” cried Rufus, with wild eyes. “For the girl you and I murdered! It is she whom I mourn! I think of her stark form and open eyes and dead bruised face, as she must have looked when they brought her up out of the river, and my heart is like to break within me. She haunts me day and night. In my bed I waken from my dreams to clasp her closer to me, but my arms close on the empty air. I seem to feel the touch of her hands on my face—oh, Heaven! I shall never feel them there again! I was a poor pitiful coward. Yet what could I do? And yet you and I are Lally’s murderers!”

Craven Black shivered involuntarily.

“You act as if you had a touch of the D. T.” he said. “Have you been spending the day in a Canterbury pot-house?”

“No; I have been wandering in the park, trying to forget. You need not fear that I shall get drunk again.”

“Your reflections were rather singular for a rejected lover of Miss Wynde,” sneered Craven Black. “I thought you loved the heiress?”

“So I do, but not as I loved Lally. If Miss Wynde does not take pity on me, I am lost. The love of a good woman would save me from madness and utter despair. In time I might grow to love her as I loved Lally, and in any case I would worship her from very gratitude.”

“I am blessed if I can understand you,” said Craven Black, his lips curling. “You love a dead woman and a living woman, and mourn one while you want to marry the other. It is very curious. It’s a pity you are not a Mahommedan, so that you could have had both.”

“Stop!” cried Rufus, in a tone of command. “Don’t speak such words in connection with the names of Lally and Miss Wynde. I want to marry Neva to save myself from going mad—”

“After another woman? Exactly. No wonder Miss Wynde declined the honor, with thanks.”

“I shall leave here to-morrow,” said Rufus.

“You won’t do any such thing. You will stay at Hawkhurst for the remainder of the week, and play the lover to Miss Wynde, and sigh like any donkey in her ears, and spout poetry, and touch her heart. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ says the proverb. Girls often refuse a man the first time he offers, for fear of being held too cheap. Pursue the girl gently, but keep pursuing.”

“She says her father wrote her a letter saying he knew me,” said Rufus doggedly. “She asked me about him, and I told her I didn’t know Sir Harold from a butcher.”

“You did?” gasped Craven Black. “The devil!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you have put your foot in it. I knew you were a fool, but I didn’t suppose you had arrived at such a low state of idiocy as it appears you have. Didn’t I tell you what to tell the girl if she ever spoke of her father?”

“I believe you did, but I couldn’t stand there with her eyes on me and deliberately lie to her. I understood about the letter. You wrote it.”

“Hush! I’ve a good mind to leave you to yourself, and let you fetch up in some union,” declared Craven Black angrily. “Such a dolt as you are isn’t fit to live. How do you expect the girl to marry you when you yourself put obstacles in the way?”

“See here,” said Rufus. “What are you going to make out of my marriage with Neva Wynde?”

“Ten thousand pounds a year, which you are to formally agree to pay me out of her income.”

“I thought you had some motive in the matter besides love to me. But I’d pay it if she’d marry me. But she won’t.”

“She will, if you choose to be a little bolder. We leave here, my wife, Neva and myself, next Monday for Wynde Heights. Mrs. Black will use all her influence with Neva during our absence to induce her to accept you, and I am sure she will succeed. You are to hold yourself in readiness to come to us at any moment on receiving my summons.”

“Where is Wynde Heights?”

“In Yorkshire.”

“Very well. I will come when you notify me. But I don’t think going will do any good. Miss Wynde is no coquette, and not likely to change her mind. Besides, she is likely to marry Lord Towyn.”

“I think not,” said Craven Black significantly. “She is a minor, and I don’t believe she would marry against the wishes of her step-mother?”

“The question is if your wife is her step-mother,” remarked Rufus, still recklessly. “The probability is that the relationship is worn out by this time, and the sense of duty that Miss Wynde may have felt toward her father’s widow will fall short when it comes to be directed toward Craven Black’s wife.”

“We won’t go into details,” said his father coolly. “If you want to marry the girl, keep telling her so. There’s nothing like persistence.”

“Ye-s; but about that ten thousand pounds a year?” said Rufus thoughtfully. “I don’t think it would be right to take any such sum out of her income, and besides, it might be impossible.”

“Leave that to me. As to the right and wrong of it, a perjurer is not qualified to judge. Confine yourself to what you can understand. It is time to get ready for dinner, and I advise you to come down with a cheerful face.”

With this advice, Craven Black went away to his own rooms.

Rufus resolved to act upon his father’s advice, and when he went down to dinner with a pale, melancholy face, and haggard eyes, he wore an air of assumed cheerfulness which touched Neva’s heart.

That evening he sang with her while she played upon the piano. He quoted poetry to her in the third drawing-room, where they were alone, and afterward induced her to walk with him in the moonlight upon the terrace.

The next day he was full of delicate attentions to Miss Wynde. She found a bouquet of wood violets at her plate at breakfast, with the dew still upon them, and knew who had procured them for her. He asked to be allowed to accompany her on her morning ride, and Neva assented. After the ride, they played chess, gathered bouquets in the conservatory, and, later, walked in the park. Neva was gently courteous to him all the while, but there was a quiet reserve in her manner that forbade him to speak again of love or marriage to her.

The day after Lord Towyn called at Hawkhurst, and Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black received him with all courtesy, and were so politely attentive to him that he could not exchange a word with Neva unheard by them.

The young earl went away, as may be supposed, troubled and annoyed.

On Friday he rode over again from his marine villa, and was similarly entertained, and again could not see Neva alone.

On Saturday he came to Hawkhurst in the early morning, and learned at the lodge gate that Miss Wynde, attended by her groom, was gone for a ride, and that she had gone by the Dingle Farm. His heart bounded within him, and he spurred away in eager pursuit.

He traversed the wood and crossed the wide common, and skirted the dangerous chalk pit, and rode up to the old farm gate just as Neva, remounting her horse, came riding out on her return.

The young earl’s warm blue eyes flashed a tender radiance upon her, and he raised his hat, his golden hair gleaming in the sunshine while his noble face glowed with a laughing delight. An answering radiance flashed from Neva’s red-brown orbs, and she blushed as she bade him a careless good-morning.

“I came out to meet you,” said Lord Towyn, as he wheeled his horse and rode at her side.

“I have much to say to you.”

He glanced over his shoulder, but the discreet groom was hanging back, and with a mental blessing upon the fellow, Lord Towyn saw that the field was clear, and that the time had arrived in which to learn his fate.

They rode on for a little while in silence, until they were past the chalk pit and out upon the breezy common. The groom was out of earshot, and the young earl said gently:

“Neva, I have been twice to Hawkhurst to receive the answer you promised me, but I could not speak to you alone. I may not find another opportunity than this, as you go with the Blacks to Wynde Heights on Monday. And so, although this does not seem a fitting place, I ask you again if you will be my wife. I love you, Neva, with all my heart and soul. If you will trust your happiness to me, you will find in me a true lover to the end of our days. Do you think you could be happy with me?”

Neva’s pure proud face flushed hotly, and she bent her head low toward her saddle-bow. Lord Towyn waited for her answer in an almost breathless suspense, but she did not speak until they were in the wood path and out of sight of even the lagging groom.

Then she lifted her head shyly, and turned upon her lover a face as divinely fair and roseate as a June morning, and although she spoke no word he read assent in the drooping eyes, the reddening cheeks, and the proud, tremulous mouth.

He pressed toward her in rapture, and seized one little gauntleted hand, pressing it in his own.

“It is Yes, Neva?” he whispered, as if fearing the very birds might hear him. “Oh, my darling, how shall I deserve this great joy?”

He raised her hand to his lips, and the contact thrilled his very soul. He looked back. No one was in sight. He stooped in his saddle and bent toward her, and his kiss, warm, tender and passionate, fell upon her scarlet mouth, and thus they were betrothed.

The next instant he was again erect in his saddle, and the ecstasy of his glowing face and the unrepressed rapture of his manner, and the tender caressing in his very gaze, proclaimed his great and solemn joy.

“I have a ring, it was my mother’s, Neva, and I ask you to wear it as a sign of our engagement to each other,” he said. “When I see my mother’s ring on your finger, I shall feel that you are indeed mine.”

He took from his little finger a gold ring set with a single brilliant of great size and splendor. Neva tremblingly removed her gauntlet, and the young earl placed the ring upon that finger which custom has dedicated to the purpose.

“That is the seal of our betrothal,” he whispered.

Neva slowly put on her glove.

“Arthur,” she said suddenly, “do you think papa would have approved my marriage with you?”

“I know he would, my darling. It was his wish, as it was my father’s, that we should marry.”

“If I could only think that he never changed his mind!” sighed the young girl. “I have a letter he wrote me the night before he perished in India, Arthur, and in this letter he says that he desires me to marry Rufus Black.”

The young earl looked surprised, incredulous.

“I have the letter with me,” said Neva. “You can read it. In it papa says he desires me to marry this young man, whom he esteems and loves. I have struggled to obey papa’s last wishes, but I cannot—I cannot! And he was such a good father, Arthur, that I reproach myself continually for my disobedience. I never disobeyed him before, and I seem to see his eyes full of reproach fixed upon me, and to hear his voice—Oh, Arthur! Arthur!”

“Let me see the letter, darling.”

Neva extricated it from the folds of her dress, and gave it to him. They halted while he read it. A look of surprise, wonder and incredulity mantled Lord Towyn’s face as he read. It was followed by a sternness that well became his fair and haughty face.

“I pronounce the letter a forgery!” he declared. “May I keep it, Neva, for the present? I desire to show it to Mr. Atkins, who shall give us his opinion on the handwriting.”

“Yes; keep it,” assented Neva.

Lord Towyn carefully put it in his pocket.

“I pronounce the letter a forgery,” he repeated sternly. “How did it come to you, darling?”

“Lady Wynde gave it to me on my return from France. Papa desired her to retain it for a year. Who would forge such a letter, Arthur?”

“I don’t know. I am puzzled. One cannot suspect Lady Wynde, and yet—and yet—I don’t know what to think, Neva. I don’t believe Sir Harold ever saw Rufus Black.”

“Rufus says he never saw papa, or that he never spoke to him,” said Neva. “And that remark made me doubt the letter. But Rufus never forged it, Arthur. Rufus is a kind-hearted, but weak-willed boy—he is no more. If he had more ‘backbone’ in his character, he would be even noble. I like him, Arthur, and I know he never wrote that letter. Lady Wynde did not. She is too good for that. It might have been written by Craven Black. I do not like him, and think him quite capable of the forgery, only so many of the words are papa’s own that it seems wicked to doubt its authenticity.”

“I will prove it a forgery!” cried the young earl. “Sir Harold was incapable of binding your fate in this manner to a man you never saw before it was written. There is some foul conspiracy against you, Neva, but we have outwitted your enemies. I am impatient to have you under my own guardianship. The possibility that you have enemies makes me afraid to trust you from me. Give up this visit to Wynde Heights, darling.”

“It is too late, Arthur. We shall stay there but a fortnight, and I have promised to go. Papa bade me love his wife and obey her, and though she no longer bears his name, and I no longer owe her obedience, yet I have given my word to go up to Yorkshire with her, and must keep my promise.”

“But when you return, Neva, you will marry me? Do not condemn me to a long probation. Let us be married quietly some morning at Wyndham church, after due intimation to our friends. Shall it not be so?”

Neva yielded a shy assent.

“We will be married a month hence, Neva?” whispered the ardent young lover.

“Two months,” said Neva, smiling. “I must not be too lightly won, Lord Towyn. And, besides, I must have the orthodox trousseau. I will tell Mrs. Black of our engagement when I am with her at Wynde Heights. Rufus is not going with us, nor is Artress.”

They had threaded the wood and come out upon the highway long since while they were talking, and were now within sight of Hawkhurst. Rufus Black was riding out of the great gates, on his way to meet Neva. The tete-a-tete of the young pair was over for the morning, and recognizing the fact, and not wishing to proclaim his happy secret to his defeated rival, Lord Towyn made his adieus to Neva, begging her to write him daily from Yorkshire, which she promised to do, and, then raising his hat to Rufus Black, the young earl spurred his horse and rode swiftly on toward Wyndham.

Neva returned home with Rufus.

On Monday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, accompanied by Miss Wynde, departed for Wynde Heights.

On Wednesday, Lord Towyn looked for a letter from his young betrothed. None came. Thursday, Friday and Saturday went by, and still there came no letter from Neva, announcing her safe arrival in Yorkshire.

The young earl wrote every day, his uneasiness increasing as the time passed. He communicated his alarm to Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins, and they telegraphed to the clergyman of the little town in whose vicinity Wynde Heights was situated, begging him to call and see if Miss Wynde was in good health.

The answer to this dispatch came promptly, and also by telegraph. It was to this effect:

“Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins: Wynde Heights is untenanted, save by the housekeeper. Miss Wynde has not been here, nor have Mr. and Mrs. Black.”

On receipt of this astounding message, the young earl posted up to town, as did Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins. They searched for the missing heiress and her guardians, but their search was futile. Not a trace of her could be found. She had come up to London with her enemies, but no further clue to her could be found. She had completely disappeared, and her fate was shrouded in dark and horrible mystery!

CHAPTER II.
THE PUZZLE OF NEVA’S WHEREABOUTS.

On going up to town with Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins to engage in the search for Neva Wynde, who had so strangely and mysteriously disappeared, Lord Towyn had left orders with the steward of his marine villa to forward to him in London without delay any and all letters that might arrive to the address of the young earl. And so, while he prosecuted his researches with desperate energy, Lord Towyn half expected by every post some news from his young betrothed.

The three guardians of Neva’s estate were sadly puzzled and thoroughly alarmed, but for Neva’s own sake they kept the mystery to themselves. Mr. Atkins urged that no detectives be taken into their confidence, and that no newspapers be permitted to publish the strange story.

“We shall do as well as any detectives,” said the attorney, “and if there is any game afoot, we will not set the villains who are at work in it upon their guard.”

“Villains?” echoed Sir John Freise disapprovingly. “The thing is mysterious, Mr. Atkins, but it is susceptible of explanation. Had it not been for Miss Wynde’s promise to write daily to Lord Towyn, and her failure to comply with that promise, we should have suspected no harm. ‘Villains’ is a strong word to apply to Miss Wynde’s companions. Miss Wynde may have fallen ill on the way to Wynde Heights, or the plan of the tour may have been changed. In fact, one of these alternatives doubtless contains the truth. But ‘villains,’ Mr. Atkins—the word troubles me. To whom do you apply it? Certainly not to the beautiful lady who was the wife of our friend Sir Harold Wynde, and who was so loved and trusted by him that he constituted her the sole personal guardian of his beloved daughter?”

“And who so appreciated her husband’s love and noble qualities,” said Mr. Atkins dryly, “that in one year from his tragic death she was receiving the loving attentions of a Craven Black, and in fifteen months after Sir Harold’s death became the wife of a Craven Black! Bah! I was never deceived in Lady Wynde, not even when Sir Harold brought her home to Hawkhurst. She is a bold, designing, unscrupulous creature, and it is as well that Sir Harold died before she broke his heart.”

“Mr. Atkins, your harsh judgment amazes me—”

“I imagine, Sir John Freise,” said the attorney, “that in your secret soul your opinion of Mrs. Craven Black is much higher than mine. Have you been blind to the insatiable vanity, and the vulgarity and ill-taste of the widow of Sir Harold Wynde, who, fifteen months after losing the noblest husband the sun ever shone on, converts that husband’s house into a ball-room, and sets his church bells ringing and his tenantry dancing at her marriage with a gambler and adventurer, unworthy even to breathe the same air with Sir Harold’s pure young daughter? You look shocked, Sir John. If it were necessary, I could give you my further opinion concerning Mrs. Craven Black, but you are sufficiently shocked already.”

“You said, Mr. Atkins,” said Lord Towyn, “that you thought Mrs. Black unscrupulous. I cannot believe her as base as you think, but I have a question to submit to you and Sir John. When I asked Miss Wynde to become my wife, she told me that it had been her father’s last wish that she should marry Rufus Black—”

“Impossible!” cried Sir John and Mr. Atkins, in a breath.

“Miss Wynde showed me a letter purporting to have been written by Sir Harold the night before his sudden death,” said Lord Towyn. “I have the letter with me, and a study of it may throw light upon a matter that certainly looks dark to me. I could almost make oath that the deceased baronet never wrote this letter. It deceived Neva completely, if it prove, as I have declared it, a forgery.”

He produced the letter, and gave it into the hands of Mr. Atkins. The attorney read it aloud, weighing each phrase and turn of sentence.

“Sir Harold wrote it,” declared Sir John Freise, without hesitation. “I have heard him express himself in those quaint, oddly turned sentences a hundred times. Those pet names for his daughter, so tender and poetical, were surely written by him. Miss Wynde accepted the letter as genuine, and I do the same without question.”

“And you, my lord?” inquired Atkins.

“It seems to me a forgery,” said Lord Towyn. “Rufus Black confessed to Neva that he had had no personal acquaintance with Sir Harold Wynde.”

“That is odd,” declared Sir John, puzzled. “Perhaps Sir Harold was not quite in his right mind when he wrote the letter. His presentiment of approaching death may have unsettled his judgment; but that is preposterous. I can’t explain the incongruities, but I persist in my opinion that Sir Harold Wynde wrote the letter.”

“What is your opinion, Mr. Atkins?” demanded Lord Towyn.

“Where is Rufus Black?” asked the lawyer abruptly.

“Down at Hawkhurst. He remains there during the absence of the bridal party,” answered the young earl in surprise.

“And Rufus Black has confessed to Miss Wynde that he was not personally acquainted with Sir Harold Wynde?” mused the attorney. “My opinion about young Black is, that he is a well-meaning but weak-souled lad, just the person to be made a dupe or instrument in the hands of more unscrupulous and daring souls. I don’t dislike the boy. If he were his own master, or had a different father, he’d be a decent fellow.”

“What do you think of his father, Atkins?” inquired Sir John.

“I think he’s a villain.”

“And what do you think of this letter, Atkins?” asked Lord Towyn.

“I think,” said Atkins quietly, “that it is a forgery. More, I know that it is a forgery. Sir Harold Wynde was too tender a father to attempt to control his daughter’s choice of a husband in a manner so singular. The truth is, Craven Black has begun some sort of game against the Wyndes, and if it don’t date further back than Sir Harold’s death, I am mistaken. I see you look distressed, Sir John, so I will keep my ideas to myself until I can prove their value. Lord Towyn, will you allow me to retain this letter for the present, to study at my leisure?”

The young earl assented, and Atkins secured the letter on his person.

“And now what are we to do?” asked Sir John.

“I shall take a turn up into Yorkshire, and have a look at Wynde Heights for myself,” said Atkins. “You had better remain here, Sir John, and not expose yourself to useless fatigue.”

“I shall go with you, Atkins,” declared the young earl.

Sir John Freise was anxious to accompany them, but he was scarcely able to bear the fatigue of so hurried a journey, and permitted himself to be overruled. He agreed to remain at their hotel, the Langham, until the return of his friends from the north, and that very evening Lord Towyn and Mr. Atkins departed for Yorkshire.

They arrived in due time at Wynde Heights, a lofty hill, crowned with a beautiful, wide spreading villa, built after the Italian style, and having long colonades. There were ample grounds attached to the villa, a hundred acres or more in extent. Lord Towyn and Mr. Atkins drove out to the place in a cab, and alighting at the carriage porch rang loudly for admittance.

An old housekeeper, a Yorkshire woman, with a broad face and quiet manners, and with but little of the usual Yorkshire burr in her speech, opened the door cautiously after a long delay, and peeped out at them with apparent timidity.

“How do you do, ma’am?” said the lawyer, raising his hat to her respectfully. “We have called to see Miss Wynde and Mrs. Craven Black.”

“The leddies are not here, sir,” answered the housekeeper.

“Not here!” exclaimed Atkins. “But Mrs. Black said they were coming here.”

“Her leddyship wrote to me to have the house ready for her, after her new marriage,” said the housekeeper, “and to engage servants, which I did. And about two weeks ago I got a letter from her leddyship, telling me to dismiss the servants and shut up the house, as her leddyship had decided not to come to the Heights, and I obeyed orders.”

“Will you show us that letter?” demanded the lawyer. “We are the guardians of Miss Wynde’s estate, and find it necessary to see the young lady at the earliest possible moment. We expected to find her here, but the letter may afford us some clue to her whereabouts. This gentleman is Lord Towyn, and I am William Atkins, the attorney of the Wynde family.”

The housekeeper threw wide open the door of the house. Both names were familiar to her, and she welcomed the visitors as those having a right to the hospitalities of the place.

“Come in, my lord; come in, sir,” she exclaimed. “I will get the letter for you.”

The visitors followed her into a cool, unused parlor, and seated themselves, while the woman hurried away in quest of the letter of which she had spoken.

“I had an idea that the Blacks might be stopping here secretly,” said Atkins, in a low voice; “but I’ve changed my mind, my lord. They have not been here. The housekeeper’s face is honesty itself. We’ll have to look elsewhere. I’m sorry we’ve wasted time on the wrong tack.”

The housekeeper reappeared with the letter. Lord Towyn and Mr. Atkins read it. It had been written by Mrs. Craven Black, and was to the effect that she had changed her mind, and that the bridal party would not come north that season, and ordering the newly engaged servants to be dismissed, and the house to be again closed.

Atkins sighed, as he restored the letter to the housekeeper.

“We are much obliged to you ma’am,” he said, “and now we must hasten back to London. If you hear from your mistress, be kind enough to drop me a line at my address. There’s my card. But it’s not likely you will hear from Mrs. Black before we do.”

The visitors bade the housekeeper good morning, and hurried back to the railway station in their cab, catching the down train, and speeding on their way to London.

“I don’t believe our party is in England,” said Atkins musingly, as they steamed swiftly down the line to the southward. “It would be like the Blacks, if they had any game afoot, to make for the Continent. Our next point is to make inquiries at the docks, or at the railway stations.”

They arrived in London in the morning, and hastened to the Langham hotel, where they had an interview with Sir John Freise, who was looking worn and ill under all this suspense and anxiety. The three gentlemen devoted the day to visiting the various railway stations and offices of the Continental boats. They visited also the foreign packet-boats lying in dock, and toward evening learned from the steward of an Ostend boat, that a party such as was described, consisting of two ladies and one gentleman, had crossed the Channel to Ostend at about the time indicated by Atkins.

“Thank Heaven! We are on the track!” breathed Sir John.

“Atkins and I will start for Ostend by way of Dover this very night,” said Lord Towyn, all ardor and impatience.

Atkins drew out a golden sovereign, which he held tantalizingly before the eyes of the steward.

“Answer a few more questions,” said the attorney, “and this is yours, my good fellow. Describe the gentleman who accompanied the two ladies.”

The steward hesitated, eyeing the coin with greedy eyes.

“He was tall and fair, with mustaches,” he said slowly, as if fearing the description would not suit his interlocutor, “and he was dressed in black.”

“That would describe Craven Black well enough,” murmured Sir John.

“And the ladies?” questioned Atkins. “How did they look?”

“One was some years older than the other, and was dark, with black eyes. The young lady had lighter hair. They were going on to Brussels, and I took it that the elder lady and gentleman were newly married,” said the steward, “they were that sickish, begging your pardon.”

“There’s no doubt we are on the right track,” cried Sir John, in a tone of relief.

Atkins paid the steward the promised sovereign, and led the way ashore and to the waiting cab.

“To the hotel,” he ordered.

The gentlemen entered the vehicle and hastened back to the Langham. Atkins was very thoughtful and silent during the journey, but as they drove up to the hotel he said:

“We are tired Lord Towyn, and must have rest. I propose that we sleep here to-night, and go on to Dover and Ostend in the morning. I know how anxious and impatient you are, but we must not overtask our strength. You look quite worn out.”

“It is with anxiety then,” said the young earl. “I am eager to go on, Mr. Atkins, but will wait till morning as you counsel.”

The three gentlemen ascended to their private parlor which they shared in common. As they entered the room, a man who was standing at one of the windows, looking out, turned and came forward to meet them.

He was the steward of Lord Towyn’s marine place.

“You here, Sewel?” exclaimed the young earl. “Is anything the matter?”

The steward, an elderly man, with a rugged countenance, as gnarled as an old oak, yet full of kindly warmth, shook his head as he answered:

“There’s nothing wrong, my lord; but you ordered any letters to be sent to you, and knowing how anxious you were, I feared the letter might miscarry, and here it is. I brought it myself.”

“A letter!” cried the three gentlemen in chorus, having no thought of any letter save the one they so much desired.

“It’s in a lady’s hand, and that’s why I brought it,” said the steward.

He took out his pocket-book and drew from it a small square envelope, daintily addressed and sealed.

Lord Towyn uttered a cry of joy, recognizing the handwriting at once.

“It is from Neva!” he ejaculated.

He hurried with it to a window, turning his back on his friends, and tore open the envelope, disclosing a four-page letter, signed with the name of Neva Wynde.

“Ah!” he cried aloud. “It is dated Brussels.”

“We were on the right track then,” said Atkins exultantly.

The young earl perused his letter with a glad heart.

It was very tender and very sweet, full of delicate allusions to their betrothal, and was indeed such a letter as only a woman could write, yet the young lover was not satisfied. The letter lacked the straightforward simplicity that distinguished Neva, and it seemed to Lord Towyn to lack also sincerity. It had been written from the head rather than from the heart, and his first great joy and gladness gave way to a sudden and terrible sense of disappointment.

The steward, seeing that he was not wanted, went quietly from the room, intent upon securing his dinner.

Mr. Atkins and Sir John Freise approached our hero, and the baronet laid a kindly hand upon the young earl’s shoulder.

“Forgive us for interrupting your happy reverie, Lord Towyn,” he said, “but we are very anxious. Miss Wynde writes from Brussels, and in good spirits? We have been troubling ourselves for nothing?”

The young earl did not look around, nor did he speak. He only clutched the letter tighter in his fingers.

“We have got into a panic for nothing,” said Atkins, smiling. “We will keep the joke to ourselves. I would not have Mr. Black curling his cynical lips over our folly, not for worlds. No doubt Miss Wynde satisfactorily explains her previous silence, my lord, and we are free to return home again, wiser if not better men?”

The young earl turned to his companions now, and they started when they saw how deadly pale he was, and what a look of terror and anguish gleamed from his warm blue eyes.

“Miss Wynde is not ill?” cried Sir John.

Lord Towyn raised his arm, waving the letter in the air.

“This letter is in Neva’s handwriting, and signed with her name,” he said, in a strained voice. “It purports to come from her, but, before God, I believe it to be a forgery! My instinct tells me that Neva never wrote it. We are upon the wrong track. Neva is not at Brussels. Perhaps she is not out of England. She is in the hands of her enemies, who have formed some foul conspiracy against her, and we, O God! are powerless to save her!”

CHAPTER III.
AN ADVERTISEMENT QUICKLY ANSWERED.

As the hour drew near for the arrival of the expected guest at Sandy Lands, a suppressed excitement pervaded the pert little villa from basement to attic. The servants had all received orders to wait upon Mrs. Wroat with the utmost alacrity, and some notion of her wealth and eccentricity had been conveyed to them, together with the idea that Mr. and Mrs. Blight entertained “expectations” of inheriting the old lady’s fortune at her death.

Mr. Blight had remained at home upon this day, in order that his aunt-in-law might not conceive herself neglected by him. He was dressed in his Sunday garments, and was practising a smile of welcome, which had somewhat a sickly look, contrasted as it was with his anxious eyes, and uneasy, apprehensive manner.

“Everything hangs upon this visit,” he muttered to himself, as he stood at the parlor window, watching the road. “The old creature is a bundle of whims and caprices, and if she should leave her money to a charity we are undone. Our expenses are so heavy that I can no longer meet them. The old woman must make her will in my favor!”

Mrs. Blight had attired herself in a tightly fitting gown of red silk, through which her rotund figure threatened to burst at any moment, and she wore a massive gold chain, a necklace, bracelets and brooch, so that she might have personated at a fancy ball the character of an animated jeweller’s shop.

“What have you got on all that jewelry for?” demanded Mr. Blight, glancing at his wife, as she complacently surveyed the reflection of her stout person and flushed face in the long mirror.

“Why?” said Mrs. Blight, with a degree of worldly wisdom for which her husband, it is to be feared, had never given her credit, “there’s nothing like making the old woman think we are prosperous. Money brings money. If Aunt Wroat sees us haggling about the butcher’s bills and the school bills, she may think her money is going into a bottomless bucket. But if she sees us apparently rich, and without money cares, she will be more anxious to leave her money to us.”

“That’s so,” said Mr. Blight. “I wish she’d come. Upon my soul, I do. Why didn’t my uncle leave me his money, and give his wife an annuity? In that case, I shouldn’t have cared what became of her, and I certainly would not have been dancing attendance upon her. All our care,” he added sourly, “and all our flattery will go for nothing if the children are not kept out of the way. And there the young savages come pellmell down the stairs.”

“The ‘young savages!’” moaned Mrs. Blight, in terrible reproach. “Have you the soul of a father? Can you call your own offspring savages, as if they were the children of a red Indian, or of cannibals? I’ll send the poor dears back to the school-room. Between you and your horrible old aunt, the poor darlings are in terror of their lives.”

Mrs. Blight hastened out into the hall, but it was now empty. The young governess and the nurse had captured all of the refractory brood save Leopold, and had conveyed them back to the school-room. Leopold had made good his escape into the garden, and was now careering about like a young colt, shouting at the top of his voice.

Mrs. Blight, hearing the noise made by her offspring, was full of terror lest her guest should arrive, and encounter the terrible infant at the gate of Sandy Lands. She rang the bell violently, and ordered Miss Bird to take charge of her pupil immediately. Lally descended to the garden to obey this command, and at the very moment when he chose to yield to her persuasions and be led away captive, a heavily laden cab drove up to the garden door, and the garden bell was rung violently.

The smart housemaid hastened to give admittance to the visitor, and the youthful Leopold, greatly excited at the prospect of seeing Mrs. Wroat, whom he detested, but cordially loved to annoy, struggled in Lally’s grasp. The young girl drew her charge into the shadow of a clump of trees, and stood there, panting and flushed, just as the visitor’s luggage was brought in in advance of the visitor herself.

First came three large trunks, a bandbox in a green cotton bag, a parrot in a cage, who croaked and chattered and muttered hoarse threats, and a blue silk family umbrella.

And then followed the queerest old lady Lally had ever seen. She leaned upon the arm of a tall, angular, hatchet-faced woman, her maid and constant attendant, who spoke to her mistress with a loving gentleness a mother might exhibit toward her child, but which sounded strangely from her thin, compressed lips, and who guided the faltering steps of her mistress with the tenderest care.

It was the old lady, however, upon whom Lally’s gaze was fixed with strange intensity. She was thin and withered and bent, a mere wreck of a woman who had been in her day handsome, graceful and spirited. She was nearly eighty years of age, and her hands, incased in black knitted mittens, through whose open meshes her bony fingers showed, clasped a gold-headed staff, which partially supported her, the maid giving her an arm.

The old lady wore an old-fashioned brocade gown, a big traveling cloak, a white frilled cap, and a huge scuttle-shaped bonnet, such as had been worn in her early prime. But her eyes were black and keen and penetrating, full of sparkle and brightness; her hooked nose was prominent like an eagle’s beak; and her mouth was curled habitually in a strangely cynical smile or sneer.

The old lady gave a quizzical glance up at the doorway, in which stood Mr. and Mrs. Blight with outstretched arms, and then looked toward Lally. The young girl shrank back, and hurried in at the rear porch and up stairs with her young charge, just as Mrs. Wroat came in at the front door and was received by her connections with loud exclamations of welcome.

The visitor was installed in her own apartments, and she did not emerge from them for the remainder of the day. Mr. Blight went to his office. A supernatural stillness reigned throughout the villa. Mrs. Wroat chose to appear at dinner, which was served at Sandy Lands at seven o’clock; and Mr. Blight was then at home to give her his arm into the dining-room, and to pay her all necessary attentions.

She looked, as Mrs. Blight privately remarked to her husband, “like a witch of Endor,” in her dinner costume of black velvet, with a scarlet velvet circular cloak thrown about her thin bent figure, and with her keen black eyes peering sharply out of her sallow face. She only needed a scarlet hood over her gray, wild looking hair, to complete her resemblance to one of the witches who are fabled to meet in lonely wood at midnight, to stir devilish messes in boiling caldrons. But then she wore a set of very fine diamonds, and even a “witch of Endor,” with diamonds, would have been handsomely treated by Mrs. Blight.

The old lady was not as courteous as a female Chesterfield. In fact she snapped out spiteful remarks with the utmost unconsciousness of the rising anger of host or hostess, taking a malicious pleasure in stirring up their evil passions, knowing that they dared not give vent to them. It may be that she comprehended their time-serving, speculating natures, and realized that they paid court to her only for her money.

“Miserable wine!” she commented, with a wry face, as she set down her glass. “Gladstone, isn’t it, Charles? It comes at four and six the dozen bottles, I believe. I never buy it myself. I prefer to take wormwood and vitriol undiluted.”

The lawyer flushed. He prided himself on being a connoisseur of wines, and having the choicest cellar in Canterbury.

“That’s real port, Aunt Wroat,” he exclaimed—“of the vintage of ’42.”

“Oh, they told you that, did they?” asked the old lady. “These cheap wine dealers are up to all sorts of tricks. I am surprised that you should have been taken in so, nephew Charles. At your time of life a man should have some judgment of his own.”

Mr. Blight bit his lips furiously, and his wife fancied she heard the old lady chuckle softly to herself, but a glance at her did not confirm the impression.

Presently the old lady opened an attack upon the lawyer’s wife. She looked at her though a quizzing-glass, and exclaimed suddenly, with apparent astonishment:

“Laura, do you think it good taste to wear all that Brummagem? If I could not get real gold, I wouldn’t put on servant’s ornaments; I wouldn’t indeed.”

“But these are real gold, Aunt Wroat,” said Mrs. Blight, her voice trembling with annoyance.

“Tut, tut,” said the old lady severely. “Don’t contradict me. I have been used to good jewelry all my life, and ought to know it when I see it. Good gold! Ha, ha! If you don’t know good gold, ask your cook.”

Mrs. Blight nearly choked with rage, and sulked during the remainder of the dinner, or until her husband threw her a warning glance that reminded her that she could not afford to quarrel with their eccentric relative.

Several times during the repast the host and hostess were stirred to anger they dared not exhibit, and several times Mrs. Blight fancied she heard the old lady chuckle to herself, but of this she could not be quite sure. The Blights fawned upon their wealthy guest, swallowed her insults, and smiled distractedly at her deadliest thrusts. But both drew a sigh of relief when the old lady had been carried back into the drawing-room.

“May be she’ll go to her room now?” whispered Mrs. Blight to her husband, as the old lady fanned herself vigorously, and appeared oblivious of their existence.

“No such good luck,” returned the lawyer ill-naturedly. “She ought to be shut up in a lunatic asylum, the old nuisance. If it wasn’t for her money, she might die in an alms-house before I’d give her shelter.”

The whisper was not low, but then Mrs. Wroat was supposed to be “as deaf as a post,” and of course she could not hear a sound so faint and indistinct. Mr. and Mrs. Blight had frequently vented their opinions much more loudly before her. But there was an odd snap in her eyes on this occasion, as they thus whispered to each other, and again Mrs. Blight fancied she heard a malicious chuckle, but the old lady fell to coughing in a frightful manner, and the lawyer’s wife had no time for fancies, believing the old lady likely to die on the spot.

When the paroxysm was over, and Mrs. Wroat began to breathe freely, Mrs. Blight said, not without nervousness:

“You have a terrible cold, Aunt Wroat. Don’t you do anything for it?”

“It’s a cold that’ll last me my days,” said Mrs. Wroat. “It’s consumption.”

“Do you employ a doctor for it?” asked the lawyer.

“Death is the best doctor,” answered the old lady, with grim facetiousness. “He’ll cure it for nothing. This is my last visit to you, Charles. I sha’n’t last much longer.”

“Oh, I hope you will live twenty years yet, and visit us every year!” cried Mrs. Blight. “Dear Aunt Wroat, we love to have you with us.”

“Yes, I know it,” said Mrs. Wroat, with another odd snap in her witch-like eyes. “I know it, my dear. It’s time to settle my affairs. I am thinking of making my will soon.”

The Blights tried to look unconcerned, but failed. Their curiosity and anxiety displayed themselves in their features.

“Shall you leave your money to a charity, dear Aunt Wroat?” inquired Mrs. Blight caressingly.

“No, no! I shall leave it to—But don’t ask me. You’ll know in good time.”

The lawyer looked significantly at his wife.

“She means to leave it to us!” he whispered. “The old nuisance will pay us for our trouble at last.”

It was singular that just then another fit of coughing attacked the old lady. When it was over, she said sharply:

“I’ll go to my room. I want to be composed, or I sha’n’t sleep a wink to-night. We’ll visit to-morrow, but I am tired after my journey. I should like some one to play a little music for me in my room, but I don’t want any sentimental songs from your girls, Laura.”

“The governess will sing and play for you, dear Aunt Wroat,” said Mrs. Blight. “She has orders to obey you during your visit, and you can command her at any or all hours.”

“Then send her to me in half an hour. Charles, you can carry me up stairs.”

The lawyer obeyed the intimation, carrying the old lady up to her own room and depositing her in her armchair. The maid was in attendance, and the lawyer and his wife bade their guest an affecting good-night, and retreated to the drawing-room to speculate upon their prospects and the state of Mrs. Wroat’s health.

“Shut the door, Peters,” said the old lady. “And you might open the windows and air the room after those people’s presence.”

Peters obeyed. She was wont to humor all the whims of her mistress.

“Did you find them the same as usual, ma’am?” she asked.

“Just the same, Peters,” and the old lady sighed. “They call me ‘an old cat’ and ‘a nuisance’ in whispers, and ‘dear Aunt Wroat’ out aloud. Miserable hypocrites! I wanted to give them a last chance, but they have ruined their prospects with me. Bah! A pair of fawning, treacherous cats! They will never get a penny of my money beyond a guinea to buy a mourning ring.”

“What shall you do, ma’am? Leave your money to a charity?”

“No, I won’t do that. I won’t have it scattered and doled out in sixpennies and shillings, when the whole sum might go to enrich some deserving person. I’ll leave you an annuity, Peters. You’re the only true friend I have on earth.”

The woman caressed the withered hand of her old mistress with genuine affection.

“Have you given up all hope of finding your own relatives, ma’am?” she asked. “You tracked your niece until after her marriage with a corn-chandler, and have discovered that she died, leaving one child, a daughter, and that her husband died also. The girl may live, ma’am. She’s the last of your blood, and surely it’s better to give to your own kin than to undeserving connections or to strangers.”

“But I can’t find the girl,” sighed the old lady. “I’d adopt her and leave her my money, if she was deserving of it; but I’ve set detectives to look for her, and they have failed to discover anything except that her moonstruck parents named her the ‘The Vailed Prophet,’ or ‘Lalla Rookh,’ or some such nonsense. They did find out that she had been educated like a lady—her mother was a lady—and that she had taught music, or drawing, or something. But she may be dead by this time.”

“We might advertise for her,” cried the maid all enthusiasm. “We could say, if Miss So and So would call at such a place, she would hear of something to her advantage. I do wish you would leave your money to some nice young lady, instead of these people below. I’ll write the advertisement immediately. What is the name of your great-niece, Mrs. Wroat?”

“It’s Kubla Khan, or Lalla Rookh Bird,” answered the old lady. “There was a crack in my niece’s brain, as was shown by her marriage with a corn-chandler, and by the naming of her child. I wonder what kind of a bird the corn-chandler was,” and Mrs. Wroat laughed queerly. “He left his daughter not one penny to bless herself with. Write the advertisement, Peters, at once. What geese we were not to have thought of an advertisement before. If I can find and cage my Bird, Peters, and it turns out a good and worthy Bird, I’ll leave her the whole of my fifty thousand pounds, and you shall have an annuity, Peters, and live with her and take care of her. She’s only a child—not over seventeen.”

Peters brought out her mistress’ portable writing-desk, and sat down before it to pen the required advertisement. Being unused to composition, she spoiled a dozen sheets of paper before she produced the following, which she read aloud to her mistress:

“If Miss Lalla Bird will apply to the undersigned she will hear of something to her advantage. M. W., Mount street, London, W.”

“That will do,” cried Mrs. Wroat delighted. “M. W.—Maria Wroat. Very good. We’ll have it in all the London papers. Make a dozen copies of it, and address them to a dozen different papers. You shall get the post-office orders to put with them in the morning. But let us see if the advertisement wants any improving. Read it again.”

The maid did so. As she concluded, and before she could speak, the advertisement was answered, for a low knock was heard at the door, and the young governess, in her black dress and with her young face pitiful in its sadness, entered the room, and said shyly and with a low courtesy:

“If you please, ma’am, I’m the governess, and Mrs. Blight sent me in to play to you. My name is Miss Bird.”

CHAPTER IV.
LALLY AND MRS. WROAT.

The simple and business-like announcement of her name by Mrs. Blight’s young governess to Mrs. Blight’s eccentric guest, produced a sensation as startling as unexpected to Lally. Mrs. Wroat uttered a strange exclamation, and leaned forward on her staff, her black eyes staring at the young girl in a piercing gaze, her hooked nose and her chin almost meeting, and her shrivelled lips mumbling excitedly an inaudible whisper. The old lady’s eagerness and agitation was shared by her maid, who stared at Lally with a wondering and incredulous gaze.

“Who—who did you say you were?” demanded Mrs. Wroat, as soon as she could speak, in cracked, hoarse tones—“Who?”

“I am Mrs. Blight’s governess, ma’am,” replied Lally wonderingly, and concluding that Mrs. Wroat’s eccentricities verged upon madness.

“Yes, yes, I know,” cried the old lady impatiently, “but who are you?”

“Nobody, ma’am—only Lally Bird, the governess.”

“Ah-h!” said the old lady, in an odd, choked voice. “Lal-Lally Bird! Lord bless my soul, Peters!”

Mrs. Wroat looked at the young governess with such a queer snap in her eyes, and such a glow on her sallow, withered face, that Lally involuntarily retreated a step toward the door.

“It’s the young lady, ma’am,” whispered Peters, full of amazement. “Whatever does it mean? It’s like magic or sorcery.”

“It means that our advertisement is already answered,” returned Mrs. Wroat grimly. “Saved the post-office orders, Peters. I believe in advertising, Peters. We’ve just seen the benefit of it.”

Lally retreated another step toward the door.

“If you please, ma’am,” she said, in a little fluttering voice, “I will come and play for you later—”

“No you won’t!” interrupted Mrs. Wroat. “Now you are here, you’ll stay here till I am through with you. Do you know who I am?”

Lally brought to her support a pretty, girlish dignity which sat well upon her round gipsy face.

“Yes, madam,” she answered; “you are Mrs. Wroat, the aunt of Mr. Blight.”

“Wrong. I am only his uncle’s widow. Come under the chandelier.”

Lally came forward hesitatingly, and stood under the great chandelier where a dozen wax candles burned mellowly from a forest of tall unlighted ones. The soft glow fell upon Lally’s face and figure. She was thin, and there was a tremulous anxiety on her features; but in her mourning dress, with a red flush on her dark cheeks, and a bright light in her velvety black eyes, she was very pretty, with a dark gipsy beauty that seemed to startle Mrs. Wroat.

“The very image of poor Clara,” muttered the old lady, “and the very image of what I was at her age. There, Peters, if you want to see how I looked in my youth, look at that girl.”

However Mrs. Wroat might have looked in her far-past youth, she looked now like a malignant old fairy in her gown of black velvet, and with her cloak of scarlet velvet drawn around her shoulders. Her diamonds were not brighter than her eyes, whose keen and piercing glances tried to read Lally’s soul.

“Peters,” said the old lady, abruptly, “give the girl that copy of the advertisement.”

The maid silently handed the slip of paper to Lally, who read it in deepening amazement.

“Is this an advertisement for me, madam?” she demanded. “I am Lally Bird. Are—are you ‘M. W.?’”

“Of ‘Mount street, London?’” finished the old lady. “Yes, I am ‘M. W.’—Maria Wroat.”

“And you were about to advertise for me, madam? I—I don’t understand. Or, is there some other Lally Bird?”

“No danger of that,” said Mrs. Wroat. “There were never two women in this world so silly and moonstruck as your mother—never two women who named their girls Lalla Rookh. Pah! What a name! But for fear your mother was not the only goose in the world who married a Bird, just answer me a few questions. What was your father’s name, and what was his business?”

“He was a corn-chandler in the city, and his name was John Bird,” answered Lally, quite bewildered.

“And what was your mother’s name before her marriage?”

“Clara Mulford Percy—”

Mrs. Wroat gave a queer little gasp, and her hands trembled, and she looked at her faithful attendant in a sort of triumph.

“Do you hear that, Peters?” she whispered. “Do you hear it, I say?” Then she added aloud, “Go on, girl. Who was your mother?”

“She was the daughter of a country gentleman who owned an estate in Hampshire. There were several children besides my mother, but they all died young and unmarried. The estate was entailed, and went to a distant relative. My mother married my father against the wishes of her friends, and was disowned by them for her misalliance.”

“And very properly too, I should say. If a girl chooses to descend from her proper rank in society as a gentleman’s petted daughter, and take to living in a back room behind a corn-chandler’s shop, she can’t expect her friends to follow her,” said Mrs. Wroat, with some energy. “And you were her only child?”

“Yes madam.”

“Any relatives living?”

“No, madam. My mother died young. My father lived to give me a good education, and then died insolvent, leaving me dependent upon my own exertions when I was less than sixteen years old. My father was a tradesman, humbly born, madam, but he was a gentleman at heart—”

“So poor Clara said. Humph! So you’ve no relatives living, eh?”

“None whom I know, madam. The present holder of my grandfather’s estate in Hampshire is my distant relative, but he knows as little of me as I know of him. And—and,” added Lally, suddenly trembling, as if a suspicion of the truth were dawning upon her soul, “I have a great-aunt living in London—she was my mother’s aunt—who married a banker, and is now a widow, if she still lives. She must be very old.”

“About my age!” said Mrs. Wroat, her eyes snapping. “Just about my age. What was her name?”

“Her name was Maria Percy, when a girl. She was married many years before my mother was born, and she was my mother’s god-mother. I don’t know her married name. If I ever heard it, I have forgotten it.”

“Then I’ll tell it to you,” said the old lady. “Her present name is Maria Wroat. Her home is in Mount street, London. And at this moment she sits before you, taking stock of you.”

Lally grew pale, and her black eyes opened to their widest extent.

“You—you my aunt?” she ejaculated.

“So it seems, my dear. I’ve been searching for you for some time. And so you are Clara’s child? You may kiss me if you want to, my dear.”

Lally approached the old lady with some hesitation, and bestowed a kiss upon the proffered wrinkled cheek. Then she shrank back in a sort of affright, wondering at her own temerity.

“Sit down,” said the old lady kindly. “I have a few questions to ask you, and on your answers depend more than you know of. Peters, don’t stare the poor child out of countenance. Girl, how old are you?”

“Seventeen years, ma’am.”

“And I’m eighty—one of us at the beginning, the other at the end of life! Heigh-ho! And so you’re governess here?”

Lally replied in the affirmative.

“No wonder you look sorrowful and pale and woe-begone!” muttered Mrs. Wroat. “To be governess of the young Blights is a horrible martyrdom. Don’t you think so? And isn’t it martyrdom to be under the orders of that odious, vulgar, garrulous Mrs. Blight? Hey?”

“When I came here,” said Lally agitatedly, “I had no home on earth. I was out of money, out of clothes, and utterly friendless. And so, madam, I am very grateful to Mrs. Blight for shelter and a home, and I cannot consider any service that gives me these a martyrdom.”

“Grateful, eh? What have you to be grateful for?” asked the old lady cynically. “You have shelter and food, but you earn them, I’ll be bound. You work early and late for the pitiful sum of forty pounds a year. That is what you get, is it not?”

“No, ma’am. I am young and inexperienced, and I needed the place so much, so I get but twenty pounds a year.”

“Bless my soul!” cried the old lady. “Because you needed the place so much, you get only half price! That is just like Laura Blight. How came you to be so friendless?”

“After my father’s death,” said Lally, “I taught music in the school in which I had been educated. The school broke up, the proprietors being advanced in life and being able to retire from labor, and I was thrown adrift. I was obliged to do anything I could get to do. I lived for some weeks or months with an old woman who was seamstress to a boys’ school, and when she died I was out of work again, and came down into Kent and worked in the hop-fields. I was so hungry—”

“Do you hear that, Peters?” interrupted the old lady, turning savagely upon her attendant, her bright black eyes beaded with tears. “Do you hear it, and sit there unmoved? She was hungry, while my servants flung away the dainties from my table, and I grumbled because they could not contrive newer delicacies to tempt my appetite. Hungry? Homeless? Friendless? Heaven be merciful to me! Hungry! Ah-h!”

“That is all past now, madam,” said Lally softly.

“To begin again when Laura Blight chooses to send you packing! She’s full of caprices, is Laura. You’re not sure of a place here over night, unless her interest bids her keep you. How much money have you laid up?”

“Mrs. Blight advanced me five pounds, my first quarter’s salary, and I have eighteen shillings remaining,” answered Lally.

“Humph. Eighteen shillings between you and the union. Look me in the eye, Lally.”

The young girl obeyed, looking into Mrs. Wroat’s piercing eyes with a steady, honest, unflinching gaze, although the color fluttered in and out of her cheeks, as a bird flutters in and out of its cage.

“Have you ever done anything in your life of which you are ashamed?” asked the old lady, in a low, sternly anxious voice.

“No, ma’am,” answered the girl truthfully, “I never have.”

“What do you think of her, Peters?” demanded Mrs. Wroat, turning to her maid and confidant.

The woman was crying behind her handkerchief. She had hard features, but her heart was warm and soft. She answered sobbingly:

“I think, ma’am, as you’d ought to take her and adopt her, and make her your heiress—that’s what I think, poor, pretty dear!”

“Shows your sense, Peters,” said Mrs. Wroat. “You’re a woman of a thousand, Peters, and I’ll double the annuity I’m going to give you. Girl, come and sit here on the stool at my feet.”

Lally came forward and sat down as directed.

“I am alone in the world, except for my good old Peters,” said Mrs. Wroat, with a quiver of her pointed, up-turned chin. “These people here think only of what they can make out of me—of the fortune they hope to inherit at my death. I am old, and very near my end. I should like to leave my money to one of my own kindred, and to one who would really mourn a little for me when I am gone. I’m a queer old woman, Lally, full of notions, and so cross that any one but Peters would have given me up long ago; but, strange as it may seem, the good soul actually loves me. She’s been in my service five and thirty years, and she’s more a friend to me than a servant. Now, Lally, do you think you could ever love me? It’s odd, I own, but even a dried-up old woman like me sometimes yearns to be loved.”

Her voice trembled, and tears brimmed over the bright black eyes, and her sharp features were convulsed in sudden emotion. She looked at Lally with a strange wistfulness and yearning, and Lally’s desolate, frozen soul thawed within her, and with a great sob she sprang up and threw her arms around her aged kinswoman, and kissed her fervently and tenderly.

“I have no one to love,” whispered the girl, sobbing. “I would love you if you would let me.”

A paroxysm of coughing seized upon the old lady, and Lally shrank back affrighted into her seat. Peters patted her mistress gently on her back and gave her water to drink, and she soon recovered, sinking back upon her cushions, tired and panting.

“I am near the end, my dear,” she said, when she could command her voice. “I may live weeks, or it may be months; but the time is short. I like you, Lally, and I am going to adopt you and make you my heiress. You shall change your name to mine, and be known as Lally Wroat, and at my death you shall inherit my fifty thousand pounds. And all I ask of you, Lally, is to love me a little, and try to be a daughter to me. I never had a daughter of my own.”

Lally raised the old lady’s hand reverently to her lips.

“I am afraid all this happiness is not for me, madam,” she said bravely. “I am not what you think me, and you may not deem me fit to inherit your wealth. I—I have been married!”

“Peters, the girl’s head is turned.”

“No, madam, I speak the truth. I am pure in the sight of God, but I am a disowned wife.”

“A wife—at seventeen?”

“Yes, madam. After I lost my situation as music teacher I was married to a young gentleman, just from Oxford, where he had been educated. He was only twenty years old, and we were married by license. He worked to support us, having talent as an artist, and we struggled along together until his father discovered our marriage and separated us, declaring the marriage null and void, his son being under twenty-one years of age. We were married in good faith; we loved each other; and Rufus was good, although he made oath that he was of age in order to secure the marriage license. His father threatened to prosecute him for perjury if he did not give me up; and he gave me up.”

“And who is this precious youth?” asked Mrs. Wroat.

Lally replied by telling her story precisely as it had occurred, excusing the conduct of her young husband as well as she could, and displaying in every look and word how passionately she still loved him.

“So the young man is poor, but of good birth and connections, and university bred?” commented Mrs. Wroat. “Well, Lally, my opinion is that your husband is not free from you, but that he will have to have recourse to law to secure his freedom. We’ll consult my London lawyer when we get up to town, and we’ll see about the young man. I’m afraid he’s a poor stick; but we’ll see—we’ll see. I haven’t changed my mind about adopting you, and I shall immediately assume a guardianship over you. You will quit Mrs. Blight’s service to-morrow. Peters, how soon can we go back to town?”

“At the end of the week, ma’am, if you like,” responded Peters, brightening.

“So be it then. Pack your trunk, Lally. You will finish your stay in this house as my adopted daughter and future heiress, and to-morrow you and Peters shall go out shopping—”

Mrs. Wroat paused, as a knock was heard at the door.

“Open the door, Peters,” commanded the old lady. “It’s Laura Blight.”

Before Peters could obey, the door opened from without, and Mrs. Blight, her chains tinkling and her red silk gown rustling, came into the room as airily as the rotund proportions of her figure would permit.

Her glances fell upon Lally, who was still sitting at the feet of her great-aunt, and Mrs. Blight’s face showed her surprise and displeasure.

“I didn’t hear the piano, dear Aunt Wroat,” she exclaimed, “and I feared my governess might not have obeyed my order and come in to you. Miss Bird, I fear you forget your place. You are not a guest in this house—you are merely a hired servant. If you try, like a treacherous viper, to creep into the good graces of my poor unsuspecting relative, I shall dismiss you in the morning. You are to play upon the piano, and then go to your room.”

The old lady’s yellow and bony hand was stretched out and laid caressingly on Lally’s black hair.

“I was talking to the child, Laura,” she said. “I have been hearing her history. Don’t you remember that I’ve been trying for years to find my niece, Clara Bird, or her children? Well, this girl is Clara’s child—”

A look of fear and anger disfigured Mrs. Blight’s face. The girl became, upon the instant, a terror to her.

“Aunt Wroat,” said the lawyer’s wife hastily, “this girl is a mere imposter that I took in out of charity. She has deceived you. Miss Bird, go to your room at once. To-morrow morning you leave my house.”

“Peters,” said Mrs. Wroat quietly, “give me my purse.”

Peters brought a plethoric pocket-book from her mistress’ traveling-bag, and the old lady took out a five-pound Bank of England note.

“Give that to Mrs. Blight, Peters,” continued the old lady calmly. “Mrs. Blight, that is the amount you advanced to my great-niece when she entered your service. I do not wish her to be indebted to you. And here are twenty pounds to reimburse you for any expense I may have put you to. I am sorry, Laura, to disappoint you,” added Mrs. Wroat, putting her wallet in her pocket, “but you and your husband need the lesson. I am not so deaf but that I heard every whisper you and your husband exchanged in the drawing-room to-night. I am aware that you consider me ‘an old cat,’ and ‘an old nuisance,’ and that you ‘would send me to an alms-house, if it were not for my money.’ I have now only to say to you that your heartlessness has met with its appropriate reward. This young lady is my adopted daughter and future heiress, and when you order a cab for her in the morning, you may let the boy come up for my luggage also. I shall go with my adopted daughter.”

CHAPTER V.
NEVA AND HER ENEMIES.

Neva Wynde had arrived in London, by the morning express train from Canterbury, in the care of Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, and from the moment in which she had emerged with them from the railway station, all clue to her movements was suddenly and mysteriously lost.

What had become of her? How had she so singularly disappeared?

These questions, which filled the souls of Neva’s lover and guardians with such unspeakable terror and anxiety and which they so signally failed in their efforts to solve, we now purpose answering for the benefit of the reader.

On alighting from the crowded morning train, Craven Black hurried his bride, her maid and Neva into a waiting cab, superintended the mounting of the luggage to the stout cab roof, and gave the order to be driven to Gravesend, adding more explicit directions in an undertone. He then entered the vehicle, and the vehicle rolled from the station.

“Where are we going, Mrs. Black?” asked Neva, looking from the cab windows. “I fancied Mr. Black said Gravesend.”

“So he did, my dear,” said Mrs. Craven Black placidly. “Didn’t I tell you that we are going to Yorkshire by water? September is such a lovely month, and this is such lovely weather, and it’s quite the thing to take a sea trip for a bridal tour, and I prevailed upon Craven to charter—is not that the word—a beautiful little yacht, which we are to have three months if we want it. We shall have a glorious voyage down the Thames and up the Channel, and through the great German ocean. The very idea stirs all my love of romance. Doesn’t it affect you in the same manner!”

“But Wynde Heights is not near the sea,” objected Neva, in surprise.

“It’s not two hours distant by rail, and it will be delightful to get up yachting parties by ourselves, and go off for a two-days’ excursion; don’t you think so? Don’t throw cold water upon my little plans for happiness, I beg of you, my dear Neva,” cried Mrs. Craven Black imploringly. “There is no reason why we shouldn’t be perfectly happy, if you won’t interpose objections, Neva.”

Thus adjured, Neva took care to “interpose” no more objections. She had no liking for nor trust in Craven Black, but Mrs. Craven Black had been her father’s beloved and honored wife, and Neva still believed in her. That the pair could mean her harm never once occurred to her. Neither did she realize how completely she was in their power. She had left her maid at home, at Mrs. Black’s solicitation, the latter declaring that one maid would suffice for both, and that she especially disliked Meggy West, the girl who attended upon Neva. Thus the young heiress of Hawkhurst was absolutely friendless and helpless, in the hands of her enemies.

They had a long drive to Gravesend. On arriving at their destination, they alighted at a pier at which a small boat with two oarsmen was lying. These men were dressed in blue sailor custom, each having an arrow embroidered on the breast of his jacket. Mr. Black went up to them, accosting them familiarly.

“What boat do you belong to?” he demanded.

“To the Arrow, sir, lying out yonder,” said one of the men, pointing to a graceful yacht lying in the stream, her sails unfurled, and looking ready for flight. “We are waiting for Mr. Craven Black.”

“I am he. It’s all right, my men. Octavia, my love, let me assist you into the boat. Miss Wynde, this way.”

The maid was left to scramble in by herself. The luggage was deposited in the boat; Mr. Black took his seat, and the rowers pulled off for the yacht.

The process of transferring passengers and luggage to the deck of the Arrow was speedily and safely accomplished. Mrs. Black was ecstatic in her commendations of the arrangements of the little vessel, and occupied the attention of Neva while Mr. Black conversed with the sailors and their captain, and the vessel was gotten under way.

The Arrow was no means a new vessel but she had been recently painted and fitted with new sails, and presented a very trim appearance. She was of about twenty tons burden. She had belonged to a member of the Royal Yacht Club, but had been advertised to be sold for a comparatively small sum, her owner having had built for him a vessel of greater size and speed. Craven Black had seen, a week before, the advertisment offering the Arrow for sale, and warranting her ready to put to sea at an hour’s notice; and a part of the business of Mrs. Artress in town had been to purchase the vessel.

Among his friends of high and low degree, Craven Black possessed one who was thoroughly disreputable, but who had proved useful to him at too many periods of his life to be thrown aside. This person had formerly been a lawyer, but had been stricken from the rolls for illegal or dishonorable practice, and was a needy hanger-on and parasite of Craven Black. This person had been called upon to assist Mrs. Artress in the examination of the yacht, and had purchased the boat in his own name, paying therefor a sum of money provided by Mrs. Craven Black out of the jointure acquired by her marriage with Sir Harold Wynde. This ex-lawyer had also engaged three experienced sailors, one of whom had been a mate on an India vessel, and whom he hired as captain of the Arrow, and these three men were now in charge of the little yacht.

These sailors, we may as well mention here, had been chosen for other qualifications than good seamanship. The ex-lawyer, in the days when he had been qualified to practice his profession, had been called upon to defend the three against a charge of mutiny, preferred against them by their captain. The charge had been proved, they had been convicted, and were now fresh from two years’ imprisonment. The ex-lawyer had come upon them at a drinking shop, after their release, and only a few days before, and knowing their reckless character, had engaged them for a cruise of the Arrow.

Such was the character of the seamen in charge of the yacht; and in such manner had the yacht itself been acquired by Craven Black.

As the vessel moved forward down the stream, the sails filling, Mrs. Black said to her young charge:

“Let us go below, Neva, and take a look at our quarters. The luggage and my maid have gone down.”

Neva assented, and the two went into the cabin, which was found to be newly fitted up, and smelling unpleasantly of fresh paint. The cabin was small, affording room only for the table and divans around it, but there were three neat little state-rooms, newly carpeted and newly furnished with mattresses, blankets, bed-linen, towels, camp chairs, and all toilet appurtenances. One of these state-rooms was appropriated by Mr. and Mrs. Black, the second by Neva, and the third was assigned to the maid, a French woman completely won to the interests of her mistress.

“We shall be very comfortable here, Neva,” said Mrs. Black, with gayety. “The sea air will bring the roses to your cheeks. I think you’ve not been looking well lately.”

“I wish you had told me that we were to go to Yorkshire by sea,” said Neva gravely.

“How could I suppose, my dear child, that you cared whether you went by train or by boat?” demanded Mrs. Black, in seeming surprise. “Your dear papa told me once that you were a fine sailor, and I planned this voyage as a little surprise to you—that’s the truth, Neva.”

“You are very kind,” said the young girl, “but I would have preferred to know it beforehand. My friends will be anxious about me if I do not write as soon as I promised.”

“Your friends?” and Mrs. Black arched her brows. “Are we not your friends?”

“You are, madam, I trust, but you are not my only friend. I leave those behind me who are dear to me, and who have a right to know my movements.”

Mrs. Black looked significantly down upon the great diamond that sparkled in limpid splendor upon Neva’s finger. She had noticed the jewel before, but had refrained from alluding to it.

“Is that ring the gift of one who has a right to know your movements?” she asked, smiling.

Neva blushed, but gravely assented.

“It is from Rufus Black?” asked the elder lady, well knowing to the contrary.

“No, madam,” said Neva bravely, “it is the gift of Lord Towyn, and is the emblem of our betrothal.”

Mrs. Black bit her lips fiercely, but made no response. There was a hardness in her glittering eyes, and a cruel compression of her lips, that boded ill for the engagement thus proclaimed to her.

One of the seamen was an excellent cook and steward, and presently a luncheon was spread in the cabin which proved very tempting to appetites sharpened by sea air. Mrs. Artress had provided such an abundance of delicate stores that a cook was scarcely required. There were tin boxes of assorted biscuits, jars of pickles, boxes of fruits of every kind attainable in Covent Garden market, dried and crystalized fruits, smoked salmon, jerked beef and venison, pickled reindeers’ tongues, and cheeses, cakes and fancy breads in every variety.

After the luncheon, the ladies went on deck, Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black paced to and fro, arm in arm, and Neva leaned idly upon the rail, watching the fleeting shores and the frequent sails and steamers, and tried to shake off the shadow of distrust and gloom that would creep over her soul.

At six o’clock, dinner was served in the cabin. This second meal resembled the one that had preceded, but there were also roast beef, roast fowls, and vegetables, and wines. The swinging lamp was lighted in the cabin, which looked as comfortable as a yacht cabin can be made to look. There is, at best, a dreariness about a ship’s cabin or state-room which no art can conquer. And this cabin was no exception to the rule. Neva was glad to throw a shawl around her and go out again upon the deck.

The moon was shining when she sat down at one side of the boat in her folding deck chair, and the pale flood of silvery light illumined the white-capped waves, and the dark abysses of the waters, the sails of vessels making into port, and the dusky little steamers, making the whole scene a picture full of glorious lights and shadows, but a scene that seemed a picture rather than a reality.

The yacht was out in the North Sea now, battling with the short, chopping waves, but impelled onward by a fine breeze. She was well ballasted, seaworthy, and a swift sailer. What more could be desired by the guilty pair whose hearts beat exultantly at their evil success, as they regarded the unconscious victim of their machinations.

“She has no suspicion,” murmured Craven Black, as he promenaded the deck, his wife leaning on his arm.

“None whatever. She is too guileless herself to suspect guile in others. And she trusts me implicitly,” laughed Octavia Black softly.

“That old dotard, her father, did you and me a good turn when he so frequently urged his daughter to obey me and love me, and try to win my love. I declare, Craven, it’s enough to make the old fellow come out of his grave, to confront us; isn’t it now?”

“If I were superstitions, I might think so,” said Black.

“If he did come out of his grave, he’d be slightly astonished at finding how I had cajoled and hoodwinked him, eh, Craven?” said the woman mockingly. “I’d like him to find out the truth where he is; I would, indeed. I hated the man; and to think you were jealous of him even when you urged me to marry him! Oh, Craven? Do you know, dear, speaking of jealousy, I was once jealous of Neva Wynde?”

“I did not know it.”

“No? Well, I was. It was absurd, of course. I fancied you fell in love with her the first time you saw her.”

Craven Black’s heart stirred guiltily, and his fair cheek flushed. His love for Neva Wynde was not altogether dead yet. It smouldered in his breast, and although at times he believed that he felt an absolute hatred for her, yet all the while a spark of the old passion remained that circumstances might again fan into a flame.

“We’re likely to have more trouble than we looked for,” said Mrs. Black, changing the subject, without awaiting a reply to her previous remark. “Neva owned to me since we came on board that she is engaged to Lord Towyn.”

“I suspected it when I saw that new ring she wears. But go to her now, Octavia. She will suspect us of plotting against her if we whisper together longer.”

Mrs. Black relinquished her husband’s arm, and went to Neva’s side, drawing a deck chair beside her.

“Enjoying the moonlight, Neva?” she asked. “And thinking of the earl, of course? I have not yet wished you joy of your future husband, and I suppose I ought to do so now. But first I would like to ask you if you have irrevocably chosen to obey your own wishes in regard to your marriage, rather than to regard the last wishes of your father?”

“I am not certain what were my father’s wishes,” said Neva, with a strange gravity, looking afar over the waters with her eyes of red gloom.

“Not certain? My dear child, you puzzle me. Did I not give into your own hands your father’s last letter to you, received by me from India in the same mail that brought me the awful news of his death?”

“You gave me a letter purporting to be from my father, Mrs. Black,” said the young girl, looking now at her companion, “but are you sure that it was not changed by any one while in your possession? Do not think I would hint one word against your watchful care of it, or—or—your good faith with me; but I am not altogether convinced that papa wrote that letter. Lord Towyn, on reading it, immediately declared it a forgery.”

Mrs. Black started.

“Did you show it to Lord Towyn?” she demanded.

“Yes, and he has it now in his possession, and will submit it to Sir John Freise and Mr. Atkins for their inspection and opinion,” answered Neva.

Octavia Black’s dark cheeks paled in the moonlight, and a sudden terror gathered in her hard black eyes.

“Neva,” she exclaimed harshly, “I am astonished at the singular want of delicacy that prompted your display of your father’s last letter to Lord Towyn. Of course the earl believes the letter a forgery, since he purposes marrying you himself. He believes whatever it is to his interest to believe.”

“Lord Towyn is the soul of honor,” asserted Neva, her cheeks flushing hotly. “He would tell the truth, whether it might be for or against his interests.”

“What simple, childlike faith!” murmured Octavia Black, in affected admiration. “But, my dear child, Lord Towyn is no better than other men. Did—did he think that I forged Sir Harold’s letter?”

“No, he has too high an opinion of the lady who has been my father’s wife,” returned Neva proudly, “to think such evil of her. But he fancied the true letter might have been replaced with a forged one. Mrs. Artress—Mr. Black—”

She paused abruptly, having been urged into saying more than she had intended.

“Ah, Lord Towyn thinks them capable of the forgery. Let me tell you, Neva Wynde, that your father told me with his own lips that he had once hoped for your marriage with Lord Towyn, but that he desired in his later days with all his mind and heart that you should marry Rufus Black.”

“Papa said that—to you?”

“He did. I swear it,” cried the woman, perjuring herself, in her eagerness to produce the desired impression upon Neva’s mind.

“But Rufus said he did not know papa?”

“That does not affect the fact that Sir Harold knew him,” said Octavia Black firmly. “Rufus did some brave deed at Oxford—saved a comrade’s life, or some such thing—and that first fixed Sir Harold’s eyes upon him. From that moment Sir Harold watched the young fellow’s progress. He saw him frequently, himself unseen. He studied his character, and he became resolved upon your marriage to Rufus.”

“But, Mrs. Black, this is incredible!” exclaimed Neva, utterly refusing to believe the preposterous story, although until this moment her faith in her companion had remained unshaken. “Papa could not have wished me to marry a man he did not know personally. He would not have laid upon me the burden of a command—for that solemnly expressed desire was little less than a command—to marry a man whom he admired for a single act of personal courage, but of whose character he was ignorant. I know papa too well to believe anything like this, Mrs. Black.”

“You accuse me of falsehood then. I say such was his wish!” declared Octavia, doggedly and sullenly.

Neva looked pained, perplexed, and deeply troubled.

“If this indeed be so,” she murmured, “then he could not have been in his right mind, terrible as it seems to utter the words. For there never was a truer, kinder father, or a more noble man, than papa. He thought my happiness of so much moment that he never would have dictated my course in such a vital matter as the acceptance or rejection of a lover, so long as the lover was worthy. I am sorry you have told me this, Mrs. Black. I am compelled to doubt papa’s complete sanity, or—or—”

“Or me?” said the handsome Octavia, with an ugly frown. “You ought to know me too well by this time to doubt me. Old gentlemen frequently get odd ideas, which seem at variance with their usual character, but the having them does not prove them insane, only crotchety. As for me, knowing Sir Harold’s wishes, I did not doubt that you would act upon them as upon his actual command. Your father told you to obey me in all things. Is that command to be as lightly set aside?”

“Have I failed to consider your wishes, madam?” asked Neva sorrowfully.

“Not until now. But it is my wish that you should marry Rufus Black. Nay it is my command.”

Neva’s pure proud face looked very white in the moonlight, as she answered:

“Then I must fail in my obedience to you now, Mrs. Black. Papa did not desire me to obey unreasonable commands, to the destruction of my own happiness. He would consider you unfaithful to the charge he gave you, could he know that you are urging me to marry Rufus Black. My rejection of Rufus was final.”

“We will see,” said Mrs. Black, compressing her lips.

In an angry mood, Octavia walked away, joining her husband on the opposite side of the deck. Neva leaned over the low railing, her face upturned to the stars, and murmured:

“Perhaps—perhaps, after all, she forged the letter. How strange she seems to-night. I fear her. I wish I had not come with her. A terrible gloom is on my soul to-night!”

That gloom grew heavier and darker, and the pure face grew whiter and more sorrowful as the time went on, and the yacht bowled on toward the northward, bound—ah whither?

CHAPTER VI.
WHERE NEVA’S TRAVELS ENDED.

Neva Wynde sat until a late hour upon the deck, watching the play of the moonlight on the waters, the leaping white crests of the waves, and the white furrow plowed by the Arrow as she sped onward over the waters on her way to the northward.

The prophetic gloom settled down yet more darkly upon the young girl’s soul. A bitter, homesick yearning filled her heart—a yearning for her father’s love to shield her, her father’s arm to lean upon, and her father’s wisdom to counsel her.

Ah, could she but have known that far away upon other seas, but under starlit skies, and speeding as fast as steam and wind could bear him, her father whom she so mourned as dead—her father was hurrying toward his home, with the same homesick longing in his breast, the same yearning, to clasp her in his arms, together with the false wife he so idolized!

And could that false wife have but guessed the truth, as she paced the yacht’s deck arm in arm with her husband, conspiring against the peace and happiness of Neva, much of grief and terror that was lying in wait for the baronet’s daughter, and much of guilt and wickedness that the two conspirators were planning, might have been avoided. But neither knew nor guessed the truth, and long before Sir Harold could arrive in England, Neva’s fate was likely to be decided by herself or her enemies.

At a late hour the young heiress went to her state-room, Mrs. Craven Black bidding her a careless good-night as she passed. Mrs. Black’s French maid Celeste was in the cabin, yawning and out of temper, and she accompanied Neva to her room and assisted her to disrobe. Neva soon dismissed her, finished her night toilet, and knelt to pray by her small port window, through which she could see the dusky azure sky gemmed with stars, and the white waves glorified by the shimmering pale moonlight.

Neva crept into her narrow berth, leaving her lantern on the wall burning. She could not sleep. A feverish unrest was upon her. The first shadow of distrust of Octavia Black had flung its gloom across her pathway. Until this night she had been full of innocent child-like faith in the woman her father had deemed as pure as an angel. Sir Harold’s praises of his second wife had been received by Neva without allowance, and without suspicion that he might be deceived. She had an implicit reliance upon his judgment, but now she questioned, with a terrible pang, if he had not been deceived.

“I cannot believe Mrs. Black when she says that papa was determined to marry me to a man of whom my father knew nothing, save that he had committed a noble deed upon impulse. And when I refused to believe the story, there was a look on Mrs. Black’s face I have never before seen there, a look as of convicted treachery and falsehood. I distrust her—I almost fear her! I am sorry I came with her. And if it be true that she is false and treacherous, I am reconciled at last to papa’s horrible death. He could never have borne the knowledge of her real character!”

She sighed, and turned restlessly on her pillow.

“I believe Craven Black to be a villain,” her thoughts ran presently. “He made love to me when he was already engaged to marry my father’s widow. I am sure he hates me now. Perhaps he has perverted her mind against me? Perhaps she never liked me? I was never allowed to come back to my own home after she entered it, not even when dear papa died, and my heart seemed breaking, until Madame Dalant wrote that my school-days should terminate, and that I ought to be allowed to enter society. Mrs. Black has a caressing manner toward me, and flatters me, but I am sure she does not love me. Perhaps the two are my enemies? If so, how completely I am in their power, having even left my faithful maid behind me, at Mrs. Black’s request. I fear I have been blind—blind!”

Poor Neva was now thoroughly alarmed. She remembered a score of incidents, scarcely noticed at the time that went far to confirm the truth of her sudden suspicion that Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black were her enemies and that they were conspiring against her. She struggled with her conviction, calling herself foolish, romantic and ungrateful, but the conviction remained.

The fact that the yacht had been engaged for the voyage to Yorkshire, when she expected to go by train, and that she had not been told of the proposed route until her arrival in London, recurred to her unpleasantly, and as something of sinister moment.

The fact also, that Mrs. Craven Black had a keen personal interest in Neva’s marriage to Rufus Black, now for the first time obtruded itself upon the young girl.

“Rufus is Craven Black’s son,” she said to herself, “and if I were married to Rufus, Craven Black would probably assume control of all my property! I acquit Rufus of any share in the conspiracy, but he is so weak of will that he would not dare to resist his father, who could appropriate half my income to his own use. Can this be Craven Black’s design? Can Craven Black have forged that last letter purporting to come from papa? And does Octavia know his designs, and willingly aid him to carry them out? I must study them closely, without seeming to do so. I must be on my guard.”

With thoughts like these, Neva tossed upon her pillow for hours, until long after Craven Black and his bride had retired to their state-room, and silence had fallen upon the cabin, and the creaking of a block, or the rattling of cordage, or a voice or footstep on the little deck, sounded through the night with startling loudness, and as something new and strange.

At last she fell asleep, but her slumber was not refreshing, and she was looking very pale and worn when, after a careful toilet in the morning, she came out into the cabin.

The breakfast was spread upon the table and Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black were seated upon a divan, conversing in whispers. They started guiltily at Neva’s appearance, and Mrs. Black cried out gayly:

“Good-morning, my dear. You are a laggard this morning. It is ten o’clock, and I have already taken a constitutional on deck. It’s a fine, bracing air.”

“I hope I have not kept you waiting,” said Neva courteously.

“Did you think us barbarous enough to eat our breakfast before your coming?” cried Craven Black, with exaggerated courtesy. “Sorry not to see you looking better. Did you pass a pleasant night?”

“I did not sleep very well,” answered Neva quietly.

She took her place at the table, and Craven Black waited upon her and his wife with careful attention. The breakfast consisted of stewed chicken, coffee, bread, fancy biscuits, and delicate fruits, including oranges, grapes, and peaches, and Neva brought to the meal an appetite sharpened by the sea air.

“I suppose we shall sleep at Wynde Heights to-night?” said Neva, forcing a cheerfulness she did not feel. “We must reach Yorkshire at our present rate of sailing long before evening. Do you purpose landing at Scarborough, or Whitby, or Stockton, Mr. Black?” she asked. “All three are railway stations, and we can go on to the Heights without delay.”

The husband and wife exchanged significant glances.

“Neva, dear,” said Mrs. Black caressingly, “would you care if we do not go to Wynde Heights? You know the place so little, and have no acquaintances in the neighborhood; and I have none, and I dread a visit to the Yorkshire dower house as something dull and stupid beyond comparison.”

Neva looked at the speaker with startled eyes.

“Are we not on our way to Wynde Heights, Mrs. Black?” she demanded, in surprise.

“Yes, dear, if you insist upon adhering to the strict letter of our original plan,” answered Mrs. Black. “But I am sure you will not be so hard-hearted and cruel. I no longer want to go to Wynde Heights, and Craven thinks a stay there would be a bore; but of course, if you insist upon it, we will sacrifice our own pleasure to yours.”

Neva struggled with her bewilderment.

“I supposed we were on our way to Wynde Heights,” she said, “but do not suppose I desire to go there, if you prefer to go elsewhere. It is your wish and pleasure, Mrs. Black, that must be consulted. Would you prefer a watering place, or a visit to the German coast?”

“Neither,” said Mrs. Black. “I am so relieved, dear Neva, for I feared you would oppose my wishes, and I think if a woman ought ever to have her own way, it should be on her bridal tour. Craven has been telling me of the only piece of property he owns in the world, a worthless old Highland estate, valueless except for the shooting, with a dear old tumble-down house which no one will rent, and I fairly long to see it. It’s quite natural, I think, for a bride to desire to visit her husband’s property, and this came to Craven through his Scottish ancestors, the Macdonalds, and it has a host of curious legends and ghost stories, and such a charming, romantic name—Wilderness—that I am impatient to go there; and Craven says, if you do not object we will go on to Wilderness.”

“Where is this place?” asked Neva.

“In Rosshire. There are post-offices convenient, so that you can write back daily, if you like.”

“But our coming will be unexpected,” objected Neva. “The servants at Wynde Heights are prepared for our coming, but no one will look for us at Wilderness.”

“There is an old couple residing there,” said Craven Black, “and everything will be done to make our stay pleasant at my old ‘Castle Rackrent.’ I confess I should like to take my bride to the old place—it is years since I was there—and a week could be very pleasantly passed in mountain excursions, rows on the loch, and rides to the village. Can I say nothing to melt the stern resolution I see expressed in your face, Miss Neva?”

“September seems late for the Highlands,” said Neva.

“But this is exceptionally lovely weather,” urged Mrs. Black. “And we only want to stay there a week. I see you mean to destroy all our pleasure, Neva, and condemn us to follow your lead.”

“You are mistaken,” said Neva gravely. “I have no desire to urge my own wishes in the matter. This project of visiting the Highlands takes me by surprise, but I have nothing to urge against it. I wish, however,” she added coloring, “that you would land me at some convenient point on the coast, and permit me to return to Hawkhurst—”

“What! Alone and unattended?” cried Mrs. Black. “You wish to desert us, when I count upon your companionship and society? If you insist upon returning to Hawkhurst, Neva, of course you can go, and we will go with you. But this selfish tyranny—forgive me—is not like your generous self. I would not have believed you so ungracious. My pleasure is quite spoiled. Craven, dear, let us turn back to London.”

Mr. Black arose to go on deck.

Neva detained him by a gesture, her proud face flushing.

“You need not turn back upon my account,” she said half haughtily. “I will accompany Mrs. Black to the Wilderness. I have no wish to appear ungracious, but you will remember that my friends do not know where I am, and may be anxious about me.”

“Oh, Neva!” cried Mrs. Black reproachfully. “Are we not your best friends? But I am too happy in your concession to find fault with your phraseology. Craven, we will go to your dear old Wilderness, and if I like it, I’ll fit it up for a shooting-box, and next year we will come up here the gayest party that ever visited the ‘land o’ cakes.’”

Neva did not linger in the cabin, but went out on deck, and walked to and fro for exercise, while her eyes scanned the waters and the horizon.

The yacht was far out upon the wide North Sea, or German Ocean, a mere speck in the wild waste of waters. There were sails gleaming in the distance in the clear September sunshine, but no shores were visible. The wind was blowing fair and free, the sky was clear, the air crisp and chilly, but nevertheless agreeable.

Neva walked alone until she grew tired, and then sat down in her folding deck chair and thought until her brain was wearied. Mr. and Mrs. Black joined her, and talked and chatted for some hours. Luncheon was served on the deck, and the afternoon wore on as the morning had done.

Night again settled down upon the sea, so bright with moonlight and starlight that it was not less lovely than the day had been. Neva went to bed early, and slept profoundly, not being even visited by dreams.

The next day passed as the other had done, but the coast was not yet seen. The wind proved variable upon this day, but Craven Black consulted his charts frequently, and talked with the sailors, and Mrs. Black yawned, and declared that a sea voyage was charming, but intolerably dull.

A third night dragged by, and Neva began to be anxious to get into port. She knew that Lord Towyn must be looking for a letter from her, and she desired to inform him of Mrs. Black’s change of plan of travel, and of her own whereabouts.

Upon the fourth day after leaving London, the graceful little yacht stood in for the land. Mrs. Black and Neva, as usual, spent the day on deck. About noon the Arrow sped into Moray Frith, in the wake of a steamer bound for Inverness and the Caledonian canal, and followed by one or two sailing vessels which were allowed to pass the swifter yacht.

“Do we go into Inverness?” asked Neva, as she looked at the chart which Craven Black was exhibiting to her and his wife.

“No,” answered Black. “Look at the chart, Miss Wynde. Do you see those narrow straits that connect Moray Frith with Cromarty Frith? We thread those straits, and a not very pleasant excursion it is either. Once safe in Cromarty Frith, we have plain sailing. I expect to sleep at Wilderness to-night.”

The yacht in good time threaded the straits, and came out into the calmer waters of the loch-like Cromarty Frith, sailing up a portion of its distance, and then obeying the skillful hand at the helm, it shot into a deep stream or river, and went on into the very shadow and heart of the wild mountain region.

It seemed to Neva, as she looked around her in wonder, awe and delight, that the chaos of the primeval creation yet reigned here. She saw no villages, no hamlets, no houses, no signs of habitation—nothing but grim mountain peaks and ranges, frowning cliffs, and inaccessible rocks. The very vegetation was sparse and stunted, the few trees wildly clinging to niches in the bare rocks, being dwarfed and sickly. Upon higher peaks in the distance, Neva saw glittering crowns of snow, but nearer all was deadness, desolation, chaos.

“It looks as if this part of the earth had been abandoned by God and shunned by man,” she thought. “The utter dreariness is oppressive and terrible.”

The Arrow felt her way on up the river, the banks growing steeper and narrower, the rocks and cliffs more frowning, and the waters blacker. Mrs. Black began to look nervous, and to express a fear that the vessel would presently be caught in the narrowing throat of rocks, but her husband smiled reassuringly, and a little later the yacht shot into a little placid mountain loch, shut in by towering mountains, the waters looking black with the everlasting shadows of the hills bending above them.

Both the ladies breathed freer at this unlooked for termination to their voyage. Half way up the loch the yacht came to anchor, and a boat was lowered to convey the passengers ashore.

“But, Craven,” said Mrs. Black wonderingly, “I see no house.”

“Look half way up the mountain side,” said her husband, pointing with his finger. “Do you see that broad ledge set thick with black looking trees, firs, larches and mountain pines? Back of the ledge, at a distance of half a mile, rises the high mountain peak. Well, on that wild looking ledge, perched in mid-air, as one might say, an outlaw ancestor of mine who fought on the losing side in one of the Scottish wars, and was compelled to flee for his life, built an outlaw’s den, in which he spent his last years and finally died. The house has since been improved and enlarged—”

“But, my dear Craven,” interrupted Octavia, “the Wilderness cannot be upon that ledge, up this steep pile of rocks. Why, the ledge is inaccessible, unless to yonder eagle. We cannot get up there without wings.”

“You comprehend why I could never let nor sell the place,” said Craven Black. “But we can get up the cliff. There is a narrow footpath, not especially dangerous, but rather fatiguing. The men will bring up the luggage, and we will walk up. The boat is ready. Come.”

He assisted his wife into the boat, and then Neva. The maid came next. Dressing bags followed. Mr. Black sprang in, and two of the sailors pulled lustily for the shore.

The passengers were landed at a projecting rock at the water’s edge, and Craven Black, ordering the seamen to remain where they were until he should send a servant to them, conducted his wife, Neva and the maid, by a narrow, steep and tortuous path, up the precipitous face of the cliff. The dreary night fell before they had gained the ledge, but the soft moonlight flecked their path with gleams of brightness, and at last they stood upon the ledge, high up among the mountains, with the loch lying like a tarnished jewel far below at their feet.

“We are buried alive here, mon Dieu!” gasped the little French woman, staring around her. “We are in a tomb!”

Neva’s heart echoed the words.

The wide plateau, with its thickly growing trees on every side, looked very grim in the moonlight, obscured as that light was by the towering, frowning mountains. In the midst of the plateau stood an old stone house, long and low, and hideously ugly in its proportions, having a frowning and grim appearance well in keeping with its surroundings.

The front door of this house was opened, and lights gleamed from the windows, and forms were seen hovering near the dwelling in watchful expectation.

“It looks as if we were expected!” said Neva, in surprise. “The house is not closed, as you said, Mr. Black!”

Octavia Black laughed with a strange, mocking cadence that struck a chill to Neva’s heart.

“Give Neva your arm, my dear,” she said gayly. “What an idea of yours that we are expected, Neva! Why, we only decided to come while we were on the sea. I am nearly famished, and hope some one will prepare supper for us and give us something better than oatmeal.”

As the new-comers drew near the house, the forms Neva had seen disappeared. The travelers ascended the single step to the low broad porch, and entered the wide hall of the dwelling. This hall was lighted by a lantern suspended from the ceiling, and had a stone floor, a stone staircase, and doors upon each side opening into the living rooms of the house.

The travelers halted in the midst of the hall, and at the same moment the parlor door opened, and a woman came out with smiles of welcome—a woman clad in bright-colored garments, but with ash-colored hair and complexion.

This woman was Mrs. Artress!

Neva recognized her with a sudden horror. She knew in that instant that her visit to the Wilderness had been pre-arranged by her enemies—that her wildest suspicions of the falseness and perfidy of Octavia Black had fallen short of the truth—that she had been snared in a trap—that she was a prisoner!

CHAPTER VII.
HOW LALLY TOOK HER DEPARTURE.

The composed and defiant announcement by Mrs. Wroat that she had adopted Lally Bird as her daughter and heiress, was like a bombshell flung into the enemy’s camp. Mrs. Blight stood as if turning to stone, in an utter panic, her eyes glaring upon Mrs. Wroat and upon Lally alternately, her chest heaving, her face livid. All her fine schemes of future grandeur became in an instant “airy visions fading into nothingness.” She beheld herself and her family upon the brink of insolvency, which this old lady’s fortune might have averted. She was convulsed with rage and amazement, and with bitter hatred of her young governess.

What she might have done or said cannot be known, for Peters, desiring to spare her aged mistress a scene and expected reproaches, pushed the bank-notes she held into Mrs. Blight’s hand, and taking her by the arm, gently forced her out into the hall and closed the door upon her.

This last indignity was too much for the disappointed woman. With a wild shriek, she fled precipitately down the stairs, and burst into the drawing-room and into her husband’s presence like an incarnate whirlwind. And here flinging herself into a chair, she gave way to a burst of hysterics as violent as terrifying.

The first act of Mr. Blight was to deluge his wife with the contents of a carafe of water which happened to be at hand. Then bending over her and chafing her hands, he adjured her to tell him what was the matter, and if the children were all killed.

“You—you beast!” gasped the wife, with the tones and breathing of a drowning woman. “You’ve ruined my new dress, and it cost fifteen shillings a yard, if it cost a penny! The dear knows where I am to get another. I expect to find myself in the union by this time next year, on account of that treacherous viper that I warmed in my bosom! Oh, my poor children—my poor ruined lambs!”

“What do you mean, Laura?” demanded her husband impatiently. “Don’t be a fool, if you can help it, for once. What has happened?”

“Everything has happened!” wailed Mrs. Blight. “We are wretched, good-for-nothing beggars. The old wretch up stairs has gone and left all her money to that jade of a governess—”

“Speak sense, if you can. What do you mean, I ask again? How can Aunt Wroat have ‘gone and left all her money’ to Miss Bird? Is your mind wandering?”

“No, I wish it was. I’d rather be a wild maniac of Bedlam than what I am at this moment,” moaned the unhappy lawyer’s wife. “My governess, Miss Bird, you know, is hob-nobbing with Aunt Wroat; and who do you think the artful minx has turned out to be? Why, she says she’s the daughter of Clara Percy, who married a corn-chandler—the very girl that Aunt Wroat has been looking for for over a year. And Aunt Wroat has adopted her, and says the girl is to inherit every penny of her fifty thousand pounds, except money enough to buy you and me each a penny whistle, or some such thing. And the girl is to have all of Aunt Wroat’s splendid diamonds. O dear! O dear! What is life but a trial? Why was I born?”

“But this is infamous!” gasped the lawyer. “It’s preposterous. The girl’s an impostor. Why didn’t you tell Aunt Wroat so?”

“I did—I did. But she sneered at me—she did, indeed. And here is the five pounds I advanced the girl, and Aunt Wroat paid it back to me. And here is twenty pounds for the expenses we’ve been put to on Aunt Wroat’s account. They made me take it. But what can pay us for our blighted hopes? The girl ought to be arrested. If I were only a judge I’d send her to Botany Bay!”

“Serves you right for taking the jade in! And so she’s the daughter of Clara Percy. I thought her name seemed familiar,” said the lawyer. “Aunt Wroat was always uttering that name on her visit to us last year. What fatality!”

“Must we give up in this way?” sobbed Mrs. Blight. “Is there nothing we can do?”

The lawyer paced the floor excitedly, his features working. Suddenly he paused before his wife, and said in a whisper:

“Are you sure the girl is honest?”

“As sure as that I am—the treacherous cat!”

“Are you sure, Laura, that she hasn’t stolen something of yours—a jewel, a bit of lace, or a trinket?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” answered the obtuse Mrs. Blight. “She’s had no chance to take anything of mine since she came into this house. Ellen’s been sewing in my bedroom every day from morning till night.”

“Are you sure—”

“You’re worse than the solicitor-general in the Tichborne case, with that eternal repetition,” snapped Mrs. Blight angrily. “‘Would you be surprised to hear?’—‘Are you sure?’—I’m not sure of anything, Charles, except that we are lost, ruined, and undone. Yes, I am sure that what you’re thinking of can’t be done. I won’t be dragged into court; I won’t swear to a lie, for I’d be sure to be caught. I won’t be publicly disgraced in an attempt to ruin the girl. We shouldn’t deceive Aunt Wroat, and she’d get a keener lawyer than you are to turn you and me inside out.”

“You needn’t tell all that to the whole house, servants included,” exclaimed Mr. Blight. “Our game is up, unless this girl is got rid of. We can turn her out of the house to-night, and that we will do. But, first of all, we will go up stairs and argue the case with Aunt Wroat.”

“I haven’t told you all,” said Mrs. Blight, still weeping. “Aunt Wroat is not deaf at all, and heard you call her an old cat, and an old nuisance.”

“It was you called her so!”

“It was you! Of course, if we are ruined you’ll lay all the blame on me. Men are all alike, from Adam down. It’s always the woman did it. The idea of her pretending to be deaf and listening to what we said! It’ll do no good to go up stairs to talk with Aunt Wroat, but I’ll make a last effort for the sake of my dear children.”

The well-mated pair went up to the door of Mrs. [Wroat’s] chamber, and knocked loudly for admittance. Peters replied to them through the key-hole:

“My mistress desires to be excused. She can bear no more excitement to-night. Besides, she is occupied with her niece.”

The lawyer tried the door fiercely: it was locked. Then he stooped, applying his mouth to the key-hole.

“Tell your mistress,” he said, in a sort of roar, “that that girl is an impostor, and no more her niece than she’s her grandfather. The girl is deceiving her—”

He paused discomfited as he heard the old lady hobble away into the inner room, followed by Lally.

“You’d better go down stairs,” advised Peters, through the medium Mr. Blight had employed. “May be you don’t know you are laying yourself liable to a suit for slander.”

“We had better go down,” said the lawyer. “The servants are collecting on the basement stairs to learn the cause of the hubbub. We’ll see Aunt Wroat in the morning, and convince her that she’s been taken in by a clever adventuress, but the girl goes to-night.”

With this resolve the couple returned to the drawing-room, leaving the door ajar that they might hear Lally’s return to her room. They waited hours, but they did not hear it. The servants retired to bed, and the clocks through the house struck twelve, and still Lally did not emerge from Mrs. Wroat’s room. The Blights crept up again to their visitor’s door, but silence reigned within.

“The old thing has gone to sleep,” murmured Mrs. Blight. “I can hear that odious Peters breathing. Perhaps the girl has slipped to her room so silently that we did not hear her.”

They stole up to the third floor to see. They found Lally’s room empty and dark.

“They’ve outwitted us,” said Mr. Blight, with an oath. “The girl is going to sleep with the old woman to-night. By George, I wish the old creature would die in her sleep. I’d have the girl arrested for her murder. We may as well go to bed, Laura. We must be up early in the morning.”

They retired to their room, but we may safely assert that they did not sleep. They lamented the failure of their plans, accused each other of ruining their mutual prospects and the prospects of their children, and arose soon after daybreak, imbittered, angry, and full of rage and bitterness.

About seven o’clock they heard Lally come forth from Mrs. Wroat’s chamber and go up to her room. The young governess had slept with her aged kinswoman, and now, by Mrs. Wroat’s command, was about to pack her few effects in her box, ready for departure.

Mr. and Mrs. Blight followed Lally to her room, and entered, without knocking.

The girl was busy, folding her garments, and her round gipsy face was all aglow, her black eyes had in them a look of hopefulness of late a stranger to them, and she was altogether changed from the piteously sorrowful young creature of the day before. Even the love of her eccentric kinswoman had served to kindle the spark of new hopes and new interests in Lally’s lonely life. She regarded her visitors with something of surprise, but received them courteously.

“Good-morning, madam; good-morning, sir,” she said, bowing. “Will you be seated?”

“Viper! Ingrate!” cried Mrs. Blight theatrically, but with genuine anger. “I warmed you in my bosom, as it were; I fed you at my table; I paid you at the rate of twenty pounds a year; and this is the way you reward me! Serpent! Base serpent!”

“I don’t understand you, madam. What is it I have done?”

“Hear her!” cried Mrs. Blight, her hands uplifted, apostrophizing the ceiling. “She asks what she has done!” and the lady’s tones grew hysterical. “She has taken the bread from my children’s mouths! She has made me a beggar! She has traduced us and lied about us, and now asks us what she has done!”

“Madam,” said Lally, her black eyes flashing, “I have not traduced you, nor lied about you.”

“You have repeated to Mrs. Wroat my unguarded remarks about her, made to you in confidence.”

“Again you are mistaken, madam,” said Lally sternly. “I have not repeated those remarks. Mrs. Wroat judged you by words she herself overheard. I have done nothing to injure you, nor is it my fault that my great-aunt has chosen to exalt me at your expense. Believe me, Mrs. Blight, if my aunt had not found me, she would not have left her money to you.”

“Your aunt?” cried the lawyer. “Seems to me you are getting along fast, young woman. Your aunt, eh? It is my opinion that you are a clever adventuress, and I deem it my duty to protect my dear aunt from your evil machinations. Put your things into that trunk. Laura, ring the hall bell for Buttons.”

Mrs. Blight complied. Buttons made his appearance.

“Take that trunk down to the street, and call a cab,” commanded Mr. Blight.

The trunk being locked with a spring catch, Buttons shouldered it and vanished down the stairs.

“Now, Miss,” said the lawyer, with vindictive triumph, “you must be off. You cannot be allowed to speak again to the infirm old lady you have persecuted. March down the stairs quietly, or I’ll call a policeman and accuse you of stealing.”

“Mr. Blight—”

“Not a word, Miss. On with your bonnet and shawl, and depart. One word to arouse Mrs. Wroat, and I’ll have you dragged off to jail.”

The color went in and out of the girl’s cheeks, and she was frightened and confused. Her situation seemed to her indeed terrible. Peters had confided to her during the previous night, while Mrs. Wroat slept, that the old lady, in addition to her pulmonary disease, had an affection of the heart, and her physician had declared that she must not be unnecessarily excited, for excitement might prove dangerous to her. The excitement of finding her great-niece for whom she had so long sought had been almost too much for her, and Lally feared to disturb her further.

“You need not lay your hands upon me, Mr. Blight,” said the young girl, drawing herself away from his touch. “I will go from your house, as you command—but don’t touch me!”

She hastened down the stairs, followed by her late employers, and paused for a second in the lower hall with her gaze fixed upon Mrs. Wroat’s door. But the door did not open, and she went on and came into the yard. The garden door was open, and a cab stood in front of it, Lally’s box already mounted upon its roof.

“Where shall I tell the cabby to go, Miss?” asked the lawyer, ushering Lally into the street, and laying hold of the cab door. “Get in,” he added fiercely, in an under tone, “or I’ll send for a policeman!”

Lally climbed into the cab, not answering. “To the railway station,” said the lawyer, closing the door softly.

The cab rolled down the street. The Blights, triumphant, reentered their villa.

“I’ll make it right with the old woman,” muttered the lawyer, rubbing his hands. “I’ll tell her the girl has run off, after acknowledging that she was an impostor, and that her real name is Jones. Come in, Laura. We’re not quite ruined yet.”

If he was not quite ruined, he was certainly nearer ruin than he thought. Astute as he believed himself, he had not quite understood the young lady with whom he had to deal. Lally had not gone a block down the street, when she lowered the front window of the cab, and quietly touched the driver’s arm.

“We’ll go back to Sandy Lands,” she said, in a tone of command. “I have no money with me.”

“Forgot your purse, hey?” said the driver. “All right, Miss.”

He turned and drove back.

Lally commanded him to halt in the middle of the road, in full view of the front windows of the villa. The parlor of Mrs. Wroat faced the street. The inside blinds were raised, and Lally gazed up at the windows expectantly.

“Could you throw a pebble to hit those upper windows, driver?” she asked, of the puzzled cabman.

“Doubtful, Miss. Might break the glass, and have a big bill to pay. Is there somebody up stairs there you want to call?”

Lally nodded.

The cabman glanced up and down the street; there was no policeman to be seen; and he then gave utterance to such a yell as brought to the window not only Mrs. Wroat and Peters, but Mr. and Mrs. Blight at the drawing-room windows.

Mrs. Wroat at the upper window saw Lally, the cab, and the box upon it, and comprehended what had occurred. Peters threw up the sash.

“Wait a minute, cabby,” said the old lady, leaning from the window, and speaking shrilly. “There’s two more of us, and a parrot and a dog and plenty of luggage. I’ll give you double fare, cabby—wait!”

She disappeared, just as the lawyer bounded out of the house to order the cabman away. That worthy, obeying Lally’s command, stood his ground, and offered to fight the lawyer if he received “any more of his sarce.” Mr. Blight retreated with his wife, and hurried up to Mrs. Wroat’s chambers. He met her hobbling out of her room leaning upon the arm of the faithful Peters, who was laden with the parrot’s cage, the bandbox and umbrella, and was followed by the dog. This latter immediately conceived a desire to nip the lawyer’s legs, and Mr. Blight was obliged to keep up a very undignified dance to avoid him, while he addressed the old lady in terms of expostulation and entreaty, heaping vituperations upon Lally.

“Send my trunks down, and be lively,” said Mrs. Wroat, paying no heed to his words. “Don’t act like a Dancing Jack, or your friends will put you in Bedlam, Blight. Come, Peters, Mr. Blight has kindly ordered a cab for us, and we must be off. If we’re lively, we can catch the up express.”

She brushed past the Blights, husband and wife, the latter weeping and pleading, and descended into the yard. The cabman was induced to go up after her baggage, the exhibition of a half-crown lending him wonderful strength and alacrity, and the cab was soon piled high with luggage. Mrs. Wroat, Lally and Peters took their places inside, the driver mounted, and just then the Blights, resolved upon a last despairing effort to gain the fleeting fifty thousand pounds, came out to the garden door.

Mrs. Wroat bowed to them mockingly, and said as she waved her hand, with glowing exultation, her eyes snapping:

“Good-bye, Mr. and Mrs. Blight. My daughter and I will breakfast at the station, and dine at our house in town. My Blighted friends, if you are ever in need, write to my heiress, and I dare say she will send you a half-crown. Driver, to the railway station.”

The cab with its occupants rolled away in triumph.

CHAPTER VIII.
LALLY’S NEW EXISTENCE.

After their triumphant departure from Sandy Lands, and from the presence of the utterly discomfited Mr. and Mrs. Blight, Mrs. Wroat, accompanied by Lally, and attended by the faithful Peters, proceeded without molestation to the Canterbury railway station. The up express was due in some ten minutes, and Mrs. Peters found opportunity to send a telegraphic message to Mrs. Wroat’s housekeeper in town announcing the immediate return of her mistress with a young lady guest, and ordering that suitable preparations be made for their reception.

This duty had scarcely been fulfilled, when the train came puffing into the station, and the party took their seats in a first-class coach, securing a compartment to themselves.

On alighting at the London station Peters procured a cab.

“This is my last journey, Peters,” sighed Mrs. Wroat, leaning back her head, as the cab rolled out of the station and into the streets. “My traveling days end here!”

“So you always say, ma’am,” said Peters cheerfully. “But you’ve no call to travel any more. You’ve found what you’ve been searching for so long,” and she glanced at Lally. “You should stay at home now and take comfort.”

“The end is near!” sighed the old lady—“very near!”

Peters and Lally looked at the old lady with a sudden keenness of vision. Her hooked nose and pointed chin seemed sharper than usual. Her black eyes were more piercing and lustrous than was their wont; her features were pinched; and over all her face was spread an ominous gray pallor that told to the experienced eyes of Peters that the diseased heart was not properly performing its functions.

Peters turned and looked from the window with tears in her eyes. Her heart echoed those sad words: “The end is near!”

In due time the cab came to a halt in Mount street, Grosvenor Square, before the stately and somewhat old-fashioned mansion which had been the home of Mrs. Wroat for more than half a century. It was a double house, with parlors on either side of a wide hall, and was built of brick with stone copings and lintels, and possessed a pretentious flight of steps guarded by stone lions, and a great oriel window projecting from the drawing-room.

The front door of this house opened as the cab drew up, and a footman and a boy came down the steps and assisted their aged mistress to alight and enter the house. Lally and Peters came after, and Mrs. Wroat was taken to her own room, one of the rear parlors on the first floor, which she had appropriated twenty years before as her bed-chamber.

Out of doors the September air was mild, but in this room of Mrs. Wroat a sea-coal fire was burning in the grate, and its genial heat in that great house was not unpleasant. A crimson carpet covered the floor; crimson damask curtains half draped the wide windows that looked out upon a small square garden; and crimson-hued easy chairs and couches were scattered about the room in profusion.

Mrs. Wroat sank down upon one of the couches, and Peters bent over her, removing her huge scuttle-shaped bonnet and her Indian shawl. The footman and the boy were bringing in the luggage. Lally stood apart, not knowing what to do, when the housekeeper, an elderly, plain-featured Scottish woman, appeared. Mrs. Wroat beckoned the woman to come nearer to her.

“Mrs. Dougal,” she said, in a clear, loud voice, and looking affectionately at the slender, black-robed figure of Lally, “I have brought home with me my great-niece, Miss Lalla Bird, who is also my adopted daughter and heiress. I desire you to consider her as your future mistress.”

Mrs. Dougal bowed low to the young lady, and Mrs. Wroat continued:

“Let the best room in the house be prepared for her use, Mrs. Dougal—the amber room. Ah, it is ready! Show Miss Bird to it then, and see that her trunk is sent up to her. And have luncheon ready for us in half an hour or less, Mrs. Dougal. We are nearly famished.”

The housekeeper again bowed, and conducted Lally into the hall and up the broad stairs to a front chamber, one of the state apartments of the house. Here, soon after, she left the young girl to renovate her toilet, going again to her aged mistress.

“This is a wonderful change for me!” murmured Lally. “I must be dreaming. So lately I slept in a barn with tramps and thieves, glad of even that shelter, and now I am housed in a palace. I am afraid I shall wake up presently to find myself in the barn. Ah, I never even dreamed of such magnificence!”

She examined her surroundings with the delighted curiosity of a child. There was a fire behind the silvered bars of the low, wide grate, and its red gleams streamed out over the rich blue velvet carpet with its bordering of amber arabesques on a blue ground, and one long red spike of dancing light fell upon the amber silk curtains of the low canopied bedstead. The square pillows were covered with the daintiest of linen, frilled with real lace. The coverlet was of amber satin, embroidered with a great medallion in blue silk. The curtains were of amber satin, with blue fringe, over white lace drapery, and the couches and chairs were upholstered in amber relieved with blue.

Lally observed two doors at one side of the room, and crossing the floor softly, she opened them successively. The first door opened upon a large and handsomely fitted bath-room, with marble basin and marble floor, half covered by a Turkish rug. The other door opened into a beautiful little dressing-room, furnished to match the bed-chamber. A massive armoire of carved ebony, with doors formed of plate-glass mirrors, completely covered one side of the wall, and a long swing mirror, framed in ebony, stood opposite. A gasolier depended from the middle of the ornate ceiling, and in three of the globes a mellow light was burning.

“It is like fairy-land!” thought the girl. “All this for me—for me! I can hardly believe it.”

There were ivory-handled brushes on the low dressing bureau, and Lally handled them carefully, almost afraid to use them. Her poor garments seemed out of place in these beautiful rooms, but she had no better dress, and with a smothered sigh she bathed her face and hands in the bath-room, and brushed her hair and dress in the dressing-room. She tied anew the bow in her hair and her black sash, and her toilet was complete. She gave a last look to her new quarters, and hastened down stairs to the chamber of her benefactress.

She found Mrs. Wroat comfortably ensconced in an easy chair by her fire. The parrot’s cage swung by a stout silver chain from the ceiling; the ugly little dog lay dozing upon a cushion near the fender; and a general atmosphere of delicious warmth and coziness prevailed.

“Come here, my dear, and kiss me,” said Mrs. Wroat, not looking around, but recognizing Lally’s step.

The girl obeyed, and sat down upon a stool at the old lady’s feet. Mrs. Wroat smiled upon her and talked to her, and when Peters came in, announcing that luncheon waited, Lally and her great-aunt were in the midst of a confidential talk, and their friendship had already deepened into a mutual affection.

Luncheon was served in the dining-room, across the hall from Mrs. Wroat’s chamber. The windows of the dining-room opened into a small conservatory overlooking the garden, and the room itself, lofty and handsome, seemed to Lally the realization of one of her long-ago girlish dreams. Mrs. Wroat sat at one end of the oval table, Peters at the other, and Lally took a place at one side. The footman waited at table, but was soon dismissed, and the three were left to themselves and the enjoyment of the dainties plentifully displayed before them.

After the luncheon, Peters assisted her aged mistress back to her own room, Lally lending an arm to the support of the old lady.

“Ring the bell, Peters,” said Mrs. Wroat, as she again ensconced herself in her favorite chair. “But stay! Bring me my little desk. I want to write a note.”

Peters brought a portable malachite writing-desk, and placed it upon a table before her mistress. Mrs. Wroat, with an unsteady hand, penned a brief note to her lawyer, demanding his immediate attendance upon her, upon a matter of the utmost moment.

“Read it, Peters,” she said, when she had appended her name and the date. “It must be sent immediately. I feel, somehow, as if I had no time to waste. Let the footman take the letter to Mr. Harris and wait for an answer.”

Peters read and sealed the missive, removed the desk and went out upon her errand.

Some two hours later, Mr. Harris, Mrs. Wroat’s lawyer, arrived and was shown into the old lady’s presence. He was an old man, sharp-witted, business-like, and reticent, but honest, kindly, and devoted to the interests of his client, whose personal friend he had been for over a third of a century.

Mrs. Wroat welcomed him with outstretched hands and exclaimed:

“My friend, I have a surprise for you. You have sought, at my request, for my great-niece, Lally Bird, and failed to find her, even with a detective officer to assist you. I am neither lawyer nor detective, but I am more clever than you both. I have found my niece, and here she is. Lally, come nearer. Mr. Harris, this is Lally Bird, the daughter of my niece Clara Percy.”

Lally bowed. Mr. Harris stared at the girl in surprise.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wroat,” he exclaimed, “but your great-niece, Lally Bird, is dead. Our detective discovered the facts some weeks ago, but I feared to communicate them in your present state of health. I cannot, however, permit you to be imposed upon by a possible adventuress. Miss Lally Bird committed suicide last July. She sprang from London Bridge, and struck upon a passing boat, killing her instantly. I have a newspaper in my pocket—”

“Never mind your paper,” interrupted Mrs. Wroat vivaciously. “Look at the girl. Has she not my black eyes? Can you not remember when I had hair like hers, and that dear olive skin? You are too suspicious, my friend. Where do you suppose I found her? Why, down at Blight’s, at Canterbury. She was governess to the Blight children. Now sit down, and I’ll tell you the whole story. Stay, I am tired, and Lally will tell it. Question her, and be convinced of the truth of my assertions. Sit down, Lally, dear, and tell Mr. Harris all about yourself.”

Lally sat down near her great-aunt. She was a little frightened under the searching gaze of the lawyer, but her clear honest eyes met his unflinchingly, and he read in the sad and innocent face how deeply he had wronged her in deeming her a “possible adventuress.” He asked her a few questions in a quiet, careless manner, referring to a note-book which he produced and then his professional spirit stirring itself, he cross-questioned her as if she had been a witness in court whose evidence he was trying to shake, and upon whose impeachment the success of his cause depended.

He asked her her name, age, and date of her birth, and applied the same questions in regard to each of her deceased parents. He demanded where she had been educated, how she had maintained herself after her father’s death, and finally said, in a tone that betrayed how important the question and its answer was to the establishment of the girl’s claims:

“I have discovered—Miss Bird—assuming that you are Miss Bird—that you left your situation as music-teacher, or, to be more exact, that the school in which you were engaged closed, and you were thrown out of a situation, in the spring of this year. Where did you spend the months that passed between last May and this present month of September? And how, I may as well ask here, did your handkerchief happen to be found upon the water at the precise moment when that poor girl who was drowned, and who was supposed to be Lally Bird, was picked up?”

Lally blushed and paled, and looked appealingly at Mrs. Wroat. The old lady stroked the girl’s black hair softly, and said:

“Mr. Harris, you have touched upon a point of which I, as well as my niece, would have preferred not to speak. But you are my personal friend, and the confidence will be safe with you. Lally, tell Mr. Harris your story.”

Thus adjured, Lally, with much embarrassment, told her story with a quiet truthfulness that carried conviction to the mind of the lawyer; after which, at a sign from Mrs. Wroat, Lally withdrew with the maid, who soon returned alone.

“Now,” said the old lady briskly, “I want to come to business. Mr. Harris, I desire to make my will. Have you the necessary form with you? I want a will as strong as a will can be made, for the Blights may choose to question its validity, on the ground that I am infirm, or something of the sort. Peters, wheel up the writing-table.”

The maid obeyed. Mr. Harris drew from his pocket a large note-case, from which he extracted a document, which he silently handed to his aged client.

“Ah,” she said, “it is my will, which I requested you, months ago, to draw up, without date or names, ready for signature when I should be ready to sign it. It begins by declaring that I am of sound mind—ah, yes, that is all right. The property is enumerated, and the legacy to Peters is down. I must have the annuity to her, to be paid out of the estate, doubled.”

She read the document carefully and slowly, weighing every word and sentence. When she had finished, she gave it back into her lawyer’s hand.

“Write in the name of the legatee, Mr. Harris. ‘I give and bequeath all my real estate, bank-stock, consols and personal property to my great-niece Lalla Bird.’ Make it plain and strong, so that no one but Lally can get my money. I want the property settled upon her. She may marry some day, if her first marriage was no marriage at all. I’ll discuss that first marriage with you at some future time, for I want to know whether the child is bound or not. But no husband must have power to squander Lally’s money.”

Mr. Harris did as he was directed, making out the will to the perfect satisfaction of Mrs. Wroat. Peters, at the command of her mistress, called up the household, and in the presence of the housekeeper, the house-maid, the cook and the footman, Mrs. Wroat signed the will. The domestics appended their signatures as witnesses, and were then dismissed; Lally was called back to her great-aunt, and soon after the lawyer took his leave.

The next day Mrs. Wroat was so much better that she insisted on going out with her young relative upon a shopping excursion. She presented Lally with a silver portmonnaie, filled with bank-notes, and early in the day Mrs. Wroat, Lally and Peters went out in the ancient family carriage, visiting the most celebrated shops in the West End. The old lady did not permit Lally to expend the money she had given her, but bought, and paid for from her own plethoric pocket-book, a magnificent Indian shawl, jewels, rich and costly laces, a set of Russian sables, a dressing-case with gold fittings, odor cases, a jewel case, and a host of costly luxuries of which Lally knew neither the uses nor the names.

“Why do you buy an Indian shawl for so young a lady, ma’am?” whispered Peters, in surprise. “And why buy those costly furs in September?”

“I shan’t be here when the cold weather comes, Peters,” answered Mrs. Wroat, in a low voice. “And though I have Indian shawls which she will inherit, I want to buy her one for her own self. She will keep it always, because I bought it for her.”

Lally, as may be supposed, was grateful for her aunt’s kindnesses; she was more than grateful. But in the midst of her pleasure, a pang shot to her heart. She noticed that although this aged relative bought her an abundance of all standard articles, and toilet appurtenances, and dainty personal belongings, she bought but few dresses—a token that she expected Lally soon to put on a mourning garb.

After a visit to the ladies’ outfitter, where Mrs. Wroat purchased for Lally a trousseau fit for a wealthy bride, they returned to Mount street, and to dinner.

The next fortnight passed swiftly both to Lally and her great-aunt. The health of the latter seemed to improve, and Lally and Peters entertained high hopes that their kind friend and benefactress would live many years. The old lady’s physician contracted the habit of calling in daily, but even Mrs. Wroat smiled at his anxiety, and accused him of desiring to increase his fees at her expense without just cause.

These two weeks sufficed to knit the souls of Lally and her aged relative together in a bond which time alone could sever. They grew to entertain a mutual love, which would be to the survivor a sweet and tender memory while life should endure. Lally’s experiences had been very bitter, and she had thought she should never smile again, yet in her aunt’s society she felt a great degree of actual happiness, and waited upon her, and tended her, with the care and love of a daughter. She played and sang to her; she read to her; she listened with keen interest to the old lady’s tales of her youth; and soon Mrs. Wroat was heard to wonder many times each day how she had so long existed without her bright young niece; and Peters grew to love Lally with a protecting tenderness.

During this fortnight, which passed so happily in the great old mansion in Mount street, Mr. Harris had traced out Lally’s history step by step from the hour of her birth until the present moment, not that he doubted her, but that he desired to be supplied with irrefragable proofs of her identity, should the need arise for them.

The lapse of the fortnight indicated brought the time to October. One evening, when the night was wild without, Mrs. Wroat, Lally and Peters sat late in the parlor adjoining the bedroom of the former. Lally played and sang a grand old anthem, while the old lady’s crooked chin was bent forward upon her gold-headed staff, and her bright black eyes filled with tears. Then followed some old-time hymns, such as the Covenanters sang in the lonely Scottish wilds, in their hours of stolen secret worship. When the sweet voice had died away, and the strains of music melted into silence, the old lady called Lally to her. The girl came, and seeing the unwonted emotion of her aged relative, knelt before her and caressed her hand softly. The withered yellow hands were upraised tremblingly, and dropped upon the girl’s dusky head.

“God bless you, even as I bless you, my darling,” said Mrs. Wroat, with a great yearning over the young creature. “Poor orphaned child! You have blessed my last days; may your life be blessed. Peters, when I am gone, stay with Lally. Be everything to her—maid, attendant, nurse, mother—all that you have been to me.”

“I will—I will!” said Peters, as if registering a vow.

“And now, my darling, good-night,” said Mrs. Wroat softly. “Kiss me, Lally! Again! Again! Good-night.”

The girl enfolded the withered form in her arms, and kissed the old lady a hundred times with passionate fervor, and then, sobbing, went up to her own room.

Peters put her mistress to bed. The old lady seemed as well, or better than usual, but there was something unusual in her manner, and Peters sat up to watch by her.

“If she wakes, she’ll find old Peters by her side,” the woman said to herself. “How sweet she sleeps!”

Toward morning the maid dozed. Just at dawn she awakened with a great start, and a sudden chill. She sprang up and leaned over the recumbent figure of her mistress. How pale the thin, sharp features were! One long lock of gray hair lay on the withered cheek; the bony hands were clasped upon the bosom; the hooked nose and the crooked chin almost met, but upon the shrivelled mouth was a smile far more sweet and lovely than any that had played upon those lips in the old lady’s far-past youth—a smile such as angels wear!

Peters thrust her hand upon the sleeper’s heart. It was silent. The heart, clogged or hampered by disease, had ceased to work hours before; all the machinery of life had stopped; and Mrs. Wroat had wakened from her sleep in another world! Lally’s generous and noble friend and protector was dead!

CHAPTER IX.
A SURPRISE FOR MISS WYNDE.

Miss Neva Wynde, on finding herself confronted by Artress at the very door of Mr. Black’s wild Highland retreat, comprehended in one swift flash that she had been betrayed by her enemies, and caught in a snare, as we have said—that, in short, she was virtually their prisoner.

But after her first wild start of amazement, after the first wild glance at her enemies, she sternly repressed all signs of terror or surprise, and although her pure, proud face was paler than usual, yet she did not otherwise betray her fears.

“Mrs. Artress here!” she said. “This is a surprise. You said, Mrs. Black, that she was staying with friends in London, did you not?”

An evil smile played about the full sensual lips of Octavia Black, and she looked at Neva keenly as she answered, with affected carelessness:

“I did say so, I believe. But I intended to surprise you. You are so fond of Mrs. Artress, Neva, that I wished her to be of our party. I am glad you are so pleased.”

Neva did not reply, but she drew up her slight figure with a sudden haughtiness, and her pale, proud face wore an expression of sternness before which Mrs. Black ought to have quailed. But Octavia only laughed, and as Neva thought, mockingly.

“Come into the drawing-room, good people,” cried Mrs. Artress. “I have made the house habitable, and I want you to compliment me upon my handiwork.”

Mrs. Black went into the room, and Neva followed her, Craven Black coming last like a body-guard. Neva had an uncomfortable feeling that she was already a prisoner.

The drawing-room at the Wilderness was a long barrack-like apartment, with bare white walls, upon which were hung a few engravings. The furniture was old, but well kept, being a combination of mahogany and black haircloth. The six windows were curtained with faded damask of the color of mahogany, and an old book-case, containing a few old and worn volumes, completed the list of furniture.

“It’s a perfect old barrack, Craven!” said Mrs. Black, with a shudder. “But I suppose it must be fearfully difficult to get furniture and such things up the cliff. However, if we make a shooting box of this place, decent furniture and pictures and things have got to be brought here. This room is like a draughty old barn.”

“So is the whole house,” said Mrs. Artress. “But the place is so delightfully romantic, and secluded and hidden, you know, that one can put up with drawbacks. I have had my hands full, I assure you, since I arrived here. How do you like the Wilderness, Miss Wynde?”

“It is romantic and secluded, as you say, Mrs. Artress,” answered Neva quietly, yet with a shade of hauteur. “Have you been here long?”

“I came direct from Hawkhurst, stopping only a day in London,” said Mrs. Artress. “I came by rail to Inverness, and there I chartered a fishing smack and loaded her with provisions and furniture, and bed and table-linen, and whatever else I fancied we were likely to need during our stay here. I had visited the Wilderness once when I was a girl, and knew about what we should require. I came on, sent away the sloop, and put the house in order. I have two women servants in the house, of the stolidest possible description. You will find it next to impossible to make them comprehend your soft southern tongue, Miss Wynde.”

Neva wondered if the last sentence contained a hidden meaning.

“It is September at Hawkhurst,” continued Mrs. Artress, with a shiver, “but here one might swear it was January, the mountain air is so cold. Will you go up to your rooms?”

“Yes,” responded Mrs. Black. “When do we dine?”

Mrs. Artress consulted a tiny jewelled watch, one of her recent acquisitions.

[“A half] an hour,” she said. “You won’t have time to dress. I’ll send one of the servants down the cliff to guide up the sailors with the luggage. But first I will show you to your rooms.”

She passed out into the hall, her train sweeping the floor with silken rustle. Mrs. Black linked her arm in Neva’s, but the young girl quietly withdrew her person from her enemy’s touch, and walked apart proudly, and with a shade of defiance. Thus they passed up the wooden stairs, Craven Black bringing up the rear.

The upper part of the house was very simply arranged, there being a central hall, with chambers opening off it on either side. At the rear end of the hall was a door opening upon a flight of steps, beyond which lay the passage from which the servants’ rooms opened, and from which the servants’ staircase led down to the kitchen.

“The room at the left is yours, Octavia,” said Mrs. Artress. “You will find two dressing-rooms attached, such as they are. The chamber just opposite, here upon the right, is Miss Wynde’s. Permit me to show you into your room, Miss Neva.”

She opened a door upon her right, and ushered Neva into a long ante-room, furnished as a bed-chamber. Beyond this ante-room, the door open between them, was a large square bed-room, where candles were burning in battered silver sconces.

“This ante-room was intended for the use of your maid,” remarked Mrs. Artress, “but as you did not bring your maid, and as Celeste is to attend upon you as well as upon Octavia and me, she may as well occupy your ante-room. In fact, we are so cramped for habitable quarters, that I have been compelled to assign it to her. How do you like your room?”

It was decently furnished, with a new carpet, curtains, and green roller blinds. There was a wood fire on the broad, old-fashioned hearth. The high-post bedstead, a modern armed chair and a low chintz-covered couch were particularly noticeable.

“You have a dressing-room beyond, Miss Wynde,” said Mrs. Artress, as Neva did not answer, pointing out a large light closet adjoining the bedroom. “This is a dear, delightful, out-of-the-world place, is it not?”

Neva deliberately looked into the closet, and surveyed the walls.

“I see no outlet from this room except through the ante-room,” she said abruptly.

“There is none. Those queer old-fashioned architects were very outlandish in their ideas; but then an ante-room is convenient, my dear—”

Neva checked Mrs. Artress’ familiarity by a haughty gesture. She had not liked the woman when Mrs. Artress had been Lady Wynde’s silent and unobtrusive gray companion, and she liked her still less now that she had bloomed into a devotee of fashion, and was obtrusively and offensively familiar and patronizing.

“It strikes me, Mrs. Artress,” she said quietly, “that the marriage of Lady Wynde to Mr. Black has completely transformed you. You do not seem like the same person.”

“And I am not,” declared Mrs. Artress. “There is no use in keeping the secret any longer, Miss Wynde. The whole world may know that I am the cousin of Craven Black, and being his cousin, of course I am his wife’s equal. I am going into society with Mrs. Craven Black during the approaching season, and it is quite possible that I may make as brilliant a marriage as Octavia Hathaway did when she married Sir Harold Wynde.”

Neva started, those careless words bringing to her awakening mind a crowd of new and strange suspicions. She remembered that Mrs. Artress had been in Octavia Hathaway’s employ before the marriage of the latter with Sir Harold. And Mrs. Artress was Craven Black’s cousin! Perhaps it was through Mrs. Artress, and after the death of Sir Harold Wynde in India, that Craven Black and Lady Wynde had become acquainted? And perhaps Craven Black had known Octavia Hathaway before her marriage to Sir Harold Wynde?

The thought—the doubt—was torture to her.

“I had not suspected your relationship to Mr. Black,” she said coldly; “but I saw, upon the very morning after Mrs. Black’s marriage, that your relations to her had changed.”

She longed to ask, directly or indirectly, how long Octavia had known Craven Black, but her pride would not permit her to put the question. She turned haughtily away from Mrs. Artress, signifying by her manner that she desired to be alone.

The woman’s face reddened, and she turned away with scarcely smothered anger.

“There is no bell in the room, Miss Wynde,” she said, halting an instant at the door; “but you will hear the dinner bell, even in here. There will be a servant in the hall to show you down to the dining-room.”

She went out, closing the door behind her.

Neva’s first act, on being left alone, was to examine the two windows under their roller blinds and chintz curtains. The windows were of the quaint, old-fashioned sort, with tiny diamond panes set in heavy divisions of lead. The windows were casements, opening like doors, upon hinges, but the lock and fastening were intricate, and had they not been, it would have been difficult to open the windows owing to the presence of the inside blinds and curtains.

And even while Neva was tugging with all her strength at the cumbrous fastenings, she heard the savage baying of dogs as they chased across the grounds below, and knew that, whether intentionally or otherwise, her escape by her windows, should she ever desire to escape in that manner, would be utterly impracticable.

She retreated from the window and sat down for a few moments by her fire, thinking.

“It will not do to show suspicion,” she decided at length. “Perhaps I am alarmed without cause. Why can my father’s wife, whom my father so loved, desire to harm me? Is she determined upon my marriage to Rufus Black? How will such a marriage benefit her? I acquit Rufus of any share in the conspiracy. They dared not bring him with them to this place. He would not permit this oppression and wickedness. Can it be that my fortune tempts Craven Black and his wife to force me into a marriage that is repugnant to me, and that they count upon the weak nature of Rufus, and that when they get me securely wedded to Rufus, they will seize upon my income and divert it to their own use?”

She could not rid herself of this idea, which, as the reader is aware, approached so nearly to the truth.

“I know that I am in the midst of enemies,” she said to herself energetically. “There is no use in shutting my eyes to the truth. The whole truth has come upon me to-night like a revelation. I must be on my guard, brave and watchful. I must seem unsuspicious, to throw my enemies off their guard. How strange it seems that I, who hate no one, have enemies!”

She arose, not daring to give way further to the suspicions and anxieties crowding upon her, and brushed her brown cloth traveling suit and her red-brown hair, and washed her face and hands. A fresh collar and cuffs were found in her dressing bag, and she had hardly put them on when the loud clangor of a bell in the lower hall announced that dinner was ready.

She went through the ante-room into the hall, and found Celeste, the French maid, waiting to show her down to the dining-room.

“One moment,” said Neva in French, slipping a gold coin into the woman’s hand. “How far is the nearest post-office, Celeste?”

“Fifteen miles across the mountains and lochs, Miss,” answered the woman, pocketing the coin, with a courtesy. “There is a village, or hamlet, fifteen miles from here, but it’s a day’s journey nearly to reach it. It’s over twenty miles to Inverness, and that is a half day by water, with a favorable wind, but Inverness is the family post-office, Miss.”

Neva’s heart sank.

“Could I send a letter to Inverness, do you think?” she inquired.

“Oh yes, Miss. The sailors can go in the sloop. Mr. Black will send them at your bidding, Miss.”

“I prefer a quicker mode,” said Neva, feeling not at all confident that Mr. Black would accede to such a request from her. “I desire to write to an old friend of my father, one of the guardians of my estate—Sir John Freise. Is there no hanger-on about this place who would go secretly and swiftly to Inverness for me? If you can find such a person, I will give him five pounds, and also give you five pounds, Celeste,” she added, carefully concealing her anxiety.

“I will do it, Miss,” exclaimed Celeste enthusiastically. “There is a young man hanging about the kitchen, a relative of the old cook. I will send him. Write your letter to-night, Miss Wynde, and I will send it immediately.”

Neva expressed her satisfaction at this arrangement, and descended the stairs to the lower hall, not seeing the singular gleam in the French woman’s eyes, nor the treacherous smile on the French woman’s countenance. Celeste guided her to the dining-room, a large, long, low room, where Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black and Artress were already gathered. The three greeted Neva courteously, and Craven Black came forward to meet her, and conducted her to her seat at the table.

The dinner consisted of broiled birds upon toast, vegetables, coffee, crystalized fruits, fresh grapes and other delicacies, some of which had been brought up from the yacht. Neva was silent during the meal, and very thoughtful during the subsequent hour she passed with her enemies in the drawing-room. At a very early hour she retired to her own room.

Her luggage had been brought up, and stood unstrapped in her chamber. Neva closed her door, and discovered that there was no key in the lock. She pushed one of her heavy trunks against the door to guard against surprise, and unlocked another trunk, taking out from the tray a dispatch box, upon which she proceeded to write a letter to Sir John Freise.

This was no sooner begun than it was torn up.

“Sir John is too old to be distressed about me,” she thought. “I will write to Arthur, who must be very anxious at not hearing from me. He can consult with Mr. Atkins and Sir John about me if he chooses, or come for me, as he thinks proper.”

She wrote a long letter to her lover, recounting her suspicions of Craven Black and his wife, and declaring that, while she was not locked in her room at the Wilderness, she nevertheless felt herself a prisoner. She entreated her lover to come to her, but not to come alone. She desired him to bring with him either Sir John or Mr. Atkins, whose support of Lord Towyn’s claims to take her home might be necessary. She declared that she was afraid, and that she should count the days until his coming.

Neva sealed and addressed this letter to Lord Towyn, and then stamping it, stole softly out into the ante-room. Celeste sat there sewing a frill upon one of her mistress’ robes by the light of candles, but she arose at Neva’s entrance.

“Celeste,” said the young girl, in a whisper, “here is my letter. And here are five pounds for the boy, and five pounds for you,” and she took out two crisp Bank of England notes from her well-filled pocket-book. “When I receive the answer to this letter which I expect, I will give you as much more. You must be very secret, and let no one see you. Have you spoken to the boy?”

“Yes, Miss, and he has got a rough Highland pony, and he says he’ll start for Inverness immediately.”

With a feeling of relief, Neva placed the two bank-notes and the money in the hands of the French woman.

“Go,” she whispered. “And remember, let no one suspect your errand.”

The French woman assented, and putting the money and the letter in her pocket, hurried away.

“I am forced to trust her, having no one else to trust,” said Neva to herself, after a few minutes of reflection. “Surely she would not take my money and deliberately betray me? She must know my position, but she cannot be sure that I know it. The money must tempt her to be true to me. But will the boy be true? I must see him—I will see him!”

She acted upon the impulse, going out into the hall, and softly descending the stairs. Here she paused, uncertain whether to seek the youth in the kitchen, or out at the stable. He was more likely to be at the latter place, and she flitted along the hall, pausing abruptly as a burst of laughter came from the drawing-room, the door of which was ajar.

She had halted at a point which commanded a view of the interior of the drawing-room, and involuntarily she looked in.

The sight she beheld absolutely transfixed her for the moment.

She beheld Craven Black seated at the centre-table, under a swinging lamp whose light fell full upon him. His wife was looking over his shoulder. Mrs. Artress and the treacherous French woman stood at a little distance, looking also at Mr. Black. And he—and he—Neva could scarcely believe the evidence of her senses—he was reading her letter which she had written to her lover, and he twirled his waxed mustaches and uttered little mocking sneers as some especially tender passage came under his vision.

“By Jove, she’s sweet on Lord Towyn!” he muttered, with bitter envy, and jealousy, his brows darkening. “But to go on. ‘Oh, my own Arthur—’”

With the spring of a leopardess, with her soul on fire, with her wild eyes flaming, with a cry of awful indignation on her lips, Neva bounded into the room, snatched the letter from the hands of Craven Black, and retreated a few steps, clutching it to her bosom, and glaring around her like some fierce wild creature turned at bay.

CHAPTER X.
THE INAUGURATION OF HOSTILITIES.

The sudden entrance of Neva Wynde into the midst of her exulting enemies struck them dumb. Craven Black sat with hands outstretched, as they had grasped the letter Neva had snatched from them, his face growing livid, and a look of consternation glaring from his eyes. Octavia Black stood, half leaning still over her husband’s shoulder, as if turned to stone, the mocking smile frozen on her lips, a look of terror and defiance on her face. Mrs. Artress, retaining more of self-possession than the others, stared at Neva with unmistakable hatred and triumph. The treacherous French woman drooped her gaze, and grew pale and awe-stricken.

Neva, still clutching the letter to her bosom, looked at her enemies one by one, her red-brown eyes blazing. It seemed to those who looked upon her that the red flames leaped from her eyes of gloom, and they trembled before her. Her pure, proud face was deathly white, but it was stern and awful in its wondrous beauty, as she turned it from one to another in an expression of scathing contempt that stung Craven and Octavia Black to the very soul.

Then, without a word, but with her letter still clutched against her panting breast, the young girl swept from the room with the air, the step, and the haughty carriage of an insulted empress.

The conspirators heard her slowly ascend the stairs to her own room. They stared at each other for a brief space in an utter and terrible silence. Mrs. Craven Black was the first to speak, and her companions started as her voice broke the dead and awful hush.

“Well, upon my word!” she ejaculated, forcing a strange, hoarse, and uneasy laugh, that jarred on the ears of her fellow conspirators.

“A queen of tragedy!” muttered Mrs. Artress, referring to Neva’s appearance and departure from their presence.

Craven Black sighed and scowled darkly. An ugly smile disfigured his mouth.

“Well,” he said, “matters have been brought to a crisis. I would have preferred to keep up the semblance of friendship a while longer, but the girl has torn the masks from our faces. She has declared war—so war let it be. In the fight before us, the strongest must conquer!”

“I could not dream she would follow me,” said the French woman deprecatingly. “I am not to blame. I am sure, very sure, that she is going to run away. She will leave the Wilderness to-night.”

The ugly smile deepened upon Craven Black’s visage.

“We will see!” he said, and his voice was terrible in its significance and threatening.

The French woman had read Neva’s purpose aright.

The young lady went up to her room and closed her door, and held in the flames of the bright wood fire the torn and crumpled letter she had written to her lover, and which she had rescued from the hands of Craven Black. She let the small burning remnant of paper fall upon the blazing log, and watched the blue shrivelled ash wave to and fro in the current of air, and then whirl upward into the capacious chimney.

The letter thus destroyed, Neva, with a white face and wild eyes, set about her few preparations for departure. Her soul was in a tumult; her brain seemed on fire. She could not think or reason yet; she only knew that she longed to get away, that she must get away. She put on her round hat above her braids, and was about to throw about her a light shawl, when a sudden fierce rattling of the casements in the wind warned her that a night in late September in the Scottish Highlands was likely to be cold. She opened one of her trunks and dragged out to the light a pretty sleeved jacket of the soft and delicate fur of the silver fox, and this she put on. She took up her muff and dressing bag and hurried into the ante-room, panting and breathless, eager for the outer air.

The door opening from the ante-room into the hall was closed. Neva pulled it open—and found herself face to face with Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, Mrs. Artress and the French woman!

The girl recoiled an instant before this human barricade as if she had received a blow. Then she waved her hand in a haughty, commanding gesture, and said:

“Let me pass! Stand aside!”

“Not so fast, Miss Wynde,” said Craven Black mockingly. “This lady, my wife, is your personal guardian, and she has the authority to control your movements—”

The girl’s passionate eyes flashed stormily at her enemies.

“Let me pass I say!” she cried, in a low, suppressed voice. “Attempt to detain me here, and I will arouse the household!”

“Do so,” said Craven Black, tauntingly. “The two stolid women in the kitchen cannot hear you; and if they could, they have been prepared for your outcries, and will not heed them. The sailors are on the yacht, in the loch below. You are out of the world up in this eagle’s eyrie, and you may beat your wings against the bars of your cage till you drop dead, my pretty bird, but no one will heed your flutterings. Call, if you will. Try the effect of a shriek!”

He took a step nearer to Neva, who retreated before him, shrinking from his touch. He went after her into the room, his companions following. Celeste closed the door, and placed herself against it.

“Sit down, Neva,” said Octavia Black, with a mocking intonation. “Lay aside your hat and sacque. Don’t abandon us upon the very evening of our arrival in our new residence.”

Neva made no answer, but Octavia shrank before the stern accusing of the girl’s gloomy, passionate eyes.

“As your guardian,” said Mrs. Black, recovering her self-possession, which had been momentarily shaken, “I desire to ask you where you were about to go when we intercepted you?”

“I might refuse to answer, madam,” replied Neva, “but you know as well as I do that I was about to start for Inverness on foot, and that I intended to go back to Hawkhurst and to my friends. Unfortunately, Mrs. Black, you are my personal guardian; but Sir John Freise and my other guardians, are desirous that I should choose another in your stead, and I shall now do so. Your character, madam, is at last revealed to me in all its moral hideousness. My recent vague suspicions of you have become certainties. Mr. Atkins was right in his distrust of you. But, madam, because my dead father loved and trusted you to the last hour of his life, because you have borne his honored name, I will spare you from blame and obloquy, and screen your ill-doings and ill-treatment of me even from my guardians. I will agree to thus screen you if you will stand aside and let me go forth now, at this moment.”

“But, Neva,” said Mrs. Black, “you will lose your way on the mountains; you will make a misstep over some cliff, or into some ravine; or you will die of cold and exhaustion long before you can reach Inverness. It is twenty miles as the crow flies. It is forty, as you would have to travel. We will not send you in the yacht. Your scheme of departure is impracticable. In fact, you cannot go.”

“You mean to detain me here a prisoner?”

“Call yourself by what name you will,” said Craven Black, “you cannot go.”

The young girl looked around her desperately, like a hunted deer. There was no pity or sympathy in those hard and greedy faces. Had she been penniless, she would have been as free as the birds of the air; but being rich, her enemies looked upon her as their rightful prey.

“Are you a pack of outlaws?” demanded Neva, her young voice ringing through the room. “How dare you thus interfere with the liberty of an English woman?”

“You are not an English woman, but only an English girl,” interrupted Octavia Black. “You are a minor, without right or liberty or the exercise of your own will. You are my ward, Neva, and as your guardian I command your obedience. How can you reconcile it with your conscience to rebel against your step-mother?”

“You are not my step-mother,” cried Neva hotly. “When you ceased to be my father’s widow, you ceased to be my step-mother.”

“I think the law takes another view of such a case,” said Mrs. Black. “But, at any rate, I am still your guardian, and as such I have a right to read all the letters you write or receive. I read your letter to Lord Towyn, and exhibited it to my husband—”

“And to your husband’s cousin, and to your maid,” said Neva. “I am aware of all that. As to your right to examine my letters, I do not believe in it. Your action in opening my letter to Lord Towyn,” and Neva’s cheeks flamed, “and in reading its contents aloud to your familiars, was an act of the grossest indelicacy and want of honor and moral principle. Any person with a grain of decency in his composition will confirm what I say!”

Mrs. Craven Black was stung to fury by this outspoken declaration, its truthfulness giving it keener effect. She compressed her lips, being unable to speak, and hurried to and fro with uneven tread like a caged tigress.

“We will not discuss the right or wrong of Mrs. Black’s very natural and proper act,” said Craven Black. “She had the right to read your letter, and therefore did read it. I think you have no further fault to find with us than this?”

“Such an indelicate letter for a young lady to write,” murmured Mrs. Artress, turning her eyes upward. “‘My own dear Arthur.’ I never was so shocked!”

Neva turned her back upon the woman, without a word, and replied to Craven Black as if she had not heard his cousin speak.

“I have other fault to find with you, Mr. Black,” the young girl said haughtily. “You and your wife have been false and treacherous to me from the beginning. You planned to come to this place before you left Hawkhurst, and you sent Mrs. Artress on in advance to prepare this house for your reception. Yet you pretended to me that we were to go by rail into Yorkshire. You allowed me to convey that impression to my friends, while you intended the impression to be a false one. The manner in which you proceeded from the railway station to Gravesend, and in which you have come to this place, has been secret and furtive, as if you meant to throw off pursuit. You have shamefully deceived me, and I regard your conduct and that of your wife, now that my eyes have been opened, as base, mean, and treacherous.”

“Regard it as you like,” said Craven Black airily, although his face flushed. “My dear child, you are beating against your bars like the bird in the cage to which I likened you. Don’t waste your strength in this manner. Be reasonable, and submit to the power of those who have right and strength upon their side.”

Mrs. Black paused in her walk before Neva, and said vindictively, and even fiercely:

“That is what you will have to do, Neva—submit! We are stronger than you, I should think your conscience would reproach you for rebelling against me in this manner. Did not your father a score of times enjoin you in his letters to love and obey me? Did he not in his will enjoin you to cling to me, and be gentle and loving and obedient to my wishes? Is it thus you respect his wishes and memory—”

“Stop!” cried Neva imperiously. “How dare you urge my father’s wishes upon me? How dare you speak of respect to his memory, which you outraged at the time of your recent and third marriage, when you summoned my father’s tenantry to a ball, and made merry in my father’s house, thus virtually rejoicing in his death? I cannot hear my father’s name from your lips, madam.”

“Oh, you can’t!” sneered Octavia Black. “You will have to hear whatever I may choose to say of him; let me tell you that, Miss Neva. You may fling off my authority and your late father’s together, if you choose, but his last letter to you should be held sacred by you, and its injunctions fulfilled to the letter, as sacred commands from the dead to the living.”

“That last letter!” said Neva. “The letter written by Craven Black, with your assistance and connivance! Ah, you start. You see that I comprehend you at last—that I have fathomed your wickedness! That letter, now in the hands of Lord Towyn or Mr. Atkins, or Sir John Freise, emanated from Craven Black’s brain and hand. It was a clever forgery, but, thank God, I know it to be a forgery! My father could never have so coolly and easily disposed of his daughter’s future. He never wrote that letter!”

The girl spoke in a tone of such firm conviction, as if she knew whereof she affirmed, that the discomfited plotters made no attempt to deny her assertion. The Blacks looked at each other darkly, and read in each other’s eyes incitement to continue in their wickedness with unabated courage. Mrs. Artress looked on, evilly exultant. She had never liked the heiress of Hawkhurst, with her dainty beauty, her piquant witchery of face and manner, and with all the wealth that seemed so boundless. Mrs. Artress was jealous, envious, and full of hatred of her, and her greed of money had been enlisted against the young girl.

There was a brief pause, during which Neva sat down laying aside her muff and dressing bag. Presently she said:

“I understand you now, as you know. I trust that you understand me. I will not trouble you to deal more in subterfuges and deceptions. I comprehend that I have been decoyed here for a purpose, and that I am now your prisoner. What is your purpose against me?”

“We have no purpose against you, Neva,” said Octavia Black quite calmly, and even pleasantly. “You deceive yourself. We saw you anxious to plunge into marriage with Lord Towyn, but disapproving the match, I have brought you here. I stand in the relation of a parent to you, and use a parent’s authority, as I have a right. I have other designs for you. A worthy and accomplished young man, the son of my present husband, has solicited your hand in marriage, and I am anxious that you should enter the same family with myself. We will not coerce you; but I am sure, after a residence more or less prolonged at this Wilderness, you will be glad to marry Rufus Black and go back into society. You shall have sufficient time for consideration. I am ready to sacrifice myself and remain here all winter, if necessary to bring you to the desired view of the subject.”

“One thing we may as well make plain,” said Craven Black deliberately. “When you leave this house, Miss Wynde, it will be as the promised bride of my son.”

Neva’s eyes flashed mutiny.

“Is Rufus Black a party to this scheme?” she demanded.

“No,” said Mr. Black promptly. “He knows nothing of my designs. I have told him to hope that you will relent, and he thinks that his step-mother has unbounded influence over you, which she will use in his behalf. Rufus is a poor, weak young fellow, with all his desirable qualities, and he would sooner cut his throat than force you into a marriage with him. No; Rufus is at Hawkhurst, where I have ordered him to remain until our return, or until he hears from me. He supposes us to be in Yorkshire. We are ready to start for your home with you any day when you shall have given us your oath that this visit to the Highlands shall be kept secret by you, and that you will marry Rufus on your return to Hawkhurst. These are our terms.”

“I have said upon what terms I am willing to keep your villainy secret,” said Neva haughtily. “My condition is that I am immediately allowed to go free. I shall not repeat that offer after to-night. I shall never agree to your terms. I shall never marry Rufus Black. I am betrothed to a noble and honorable gentleman, and I regard my promise to him as sacred as any oath. In short, Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black, I will stay here until I die before I will yield to your dominion, or perjure myself by a cowardly oath.”

“Very well,” said Black. “It only remains to see which will hold out the longest, besiegers or besieged. Octavia, let us go. A night of reflection may bring our young lady to terms.”

“I have a last word to say,” exclaimed Neva, arising, her young face full of a bitter and passionate rebellion against her enemies. “You have not fairly counted the cost of your present undertaking, Mr. and Mrs. Black. The heiress of Hawkhurst, the only child of the late Sir Harold Wynde, the betrothed wife of the wealthiest young nobleman in Great Britain, cannot disappear in a manner so mysterious without exciting attention. I shall be sought after far and wide. My three guardians will set the officers of the law upon my track. Even now it is quite possible my friends may be on their way to this place. I shall be rescued from your hands, and you will be rewarded with the punishment and ignominy you deserve.”

“You believe all this?” cried Craven Black. “You think I am clumsy enough to permit myself to be tracked? How little you know me! I defy all the detectives in the world to trace me. I did not buy the yacht. A friend bought it in his own name, and provisioned it. The three sailors on board the yacht will never see a newspaper; will not stir out of the loch, and will see no one. I have attached them to me by a free use of money, and I have a hold upon them in knowing their past. If the officers of the law were to trace you to the loch below us, the men would not dare to reveal your whereabouts, for fear of being held as conspirators against your liberty. The two women-servants in this house never stir off the plateau. The cabman I hired to convey us from the London railway station to Gravesend, I discovered, in my conversation with him, was employed for that day alone, to take the place of the cabman who was ill. The fellow told me he was a navvy, bound for a voyage the next day, and he wished he could sail our yacht instead of going out to Australia in a steamer. You see how my tracks are covered? Your help must come from yourself, not from Lord Towyn. I have no more to say at present. If you choose to come to terms, you can send Celeste to my wife at any moment. Permit me to wish you a good-night.”

He approached her as if to shake hands. Neva gathered up her effects and retreated into her room. The next instant a key was inserted in the lock, and the bolt was shot home. Neva was in truth a prisoner.

“Celeste, you will occupy this room,” said Mrs. Black, to her maid, “and you must sleep with one eye open. Miss Wynde is desperate, and may attempt to pick the lock, or to escape by one of her windows.”

“I am not afraid of pursuit,” said Mr. Black meditatively, “but I would like to throw the pursuers upon a wrong scent. I wish I could get Lord Towyn over upon the Continent, with that sharp-eyed Atkins. How can we contrive to give them the impression that we are gone upon a Continental tour?”

They pondered the question for many minutes.

“I have it,” said Celeste at last. “I have a sister who lives in Brussels, and who works in a milliner’s shop in the Rue Montague de la Cour. You shall write a letter for Mademoiselle, Mr. Black, in her very handwriting, and date the letter Brussels, and I will send it under cover to my sister to be posted at Brussels. Yes, my faith, we have it. One of the sailors shall post my letter, with its inclosure, from Inverness. It is well, is it not?”

The plan suited Mr. and Mrs. Black, who resolved to act upon it. The whole party adjourned to the drawing-room. Mrs. Craven Black brought forth several letters she had formerly received from Neva while at the Paris school, and which she had preserved for possible use. Mr. Black still retained the envelope to the letter Neva had addressed to her lover, and which he had intercepted. With these materials, and his skill at counterfeiting, Craven Black set to work to write a letter in Neva’s name, and dated at Brussels. While he was thus engaged, Mrs. Black supplying him with suitable paper and ink, the French maid wrote to her sister at Brussels, requesting her to stamp and forward the inclosed missive. Octavia Black gave her attendant a Bank of England note to inclose in payment of the service.

The double letter was finished and sealed that night, and Craven Black went to Inverness the next day in the yacht and posted it.

This then was the letter which had been brought up to London to Lord Towyn by his steward, and which the young earl, having read, and so instantly and vehemently pronounced a forgery.

But though it failed of its object, and did not deceive the keen-witted young lover as to its origin, it did not enlighten him as to Neva’s whereabouts. He continued his search for her, calling in the aid of professional detectives, Mr. Atkins devoting his time also to the search, but they failed to find a clue to the missing young girl. And she, hidden in the far-off Scottish wilds, among mountain peaks and in a secluded rocky wilderness, looked in vain for her lover’s coming. Her enemies were indeed more cunning than she had dreamed, and it seemed indeed as if the words of Craven Black would prove true, and the matter between the “besiegers and the besieged” would become a question of resistance. Which would be the first to yield to the loneliness and gloom of the Wilderness, and to the rigors of the swiftly approaching Highland winter?

CHAPTER XI.
MRS. BLIGHT ENTERS UPON HER MOURNING.

The sudden death of Mrs. Wroat proved a severe shock to poor Lally Bird, who had grown to love the eccentric, but kind-hearted old lady with a daughter’s affection. She hurriedly dressed herself, and came down to Mrs. Wroat’s chamber, pale and awe-struck, with a horrible sense of desolation and misery. It seemed as if a fatality attended her—that those whom she loved were in some way doomed. Her parents were dead, her young husband had been taken from her, and now her great-aunt had died, and she was again alone. She was not selfish in her grief, but she could not help thinking of her own bitter loneliness, as she bent over the still figure, and softly and reverently touched the straying locks of gray hair, and pressed her lips to the shrivelled mouth from which the angel smile seemed slowly fading.

Peters had by this time regained her self-command. There was much to do, and it devolved upon her to do it. Her tears must wait for a more convenient season. She was anxious that “all things should be done decently and in order,” and that due respect should be given the dead mistress she had so loved. Her first act then, after arousing Lally and the servants, was to dispatch the footman to the family physician, and to Mr. Harris, Mrs. Wroat’s lawyer.

The physician came first. He showed no surprise at the summons, and acknowledged to Peters that he had expected it before. He could only confirm the discovery of Peters that the old lady was dead.

The lawyer arrived while the doctor was in the house. Mrs. Wroat had requested that Mr. Harris should assume control of her affairs after her death, and he proceeded to seal her desk and to take charge of her private papers, while he gave directions for the management of the household while the dead should remain in the house. An undertaker was sent for, and all the grim preparations for the sepulture, so terrible to surviving friends, was entered upon.

The next morning’s papers contained the obituary notice of Mrs. Maria Wroat, relict of the late John Wroat, banker, with a statement of her age and of the time appointed for the funeral.

The next afternoon brought to the door of the mansion in Mount street a cab, from which alighted Mr. and Mrs. Blight of Sandy Lands. They sounded the knocker pompously, ringing the bell at the same moment. The footman hastened to give them admittance.

“I see by the morning’s papers that my dear aunt is dead, Toppen,” said the Canterbury lawyer, who was known and detested by Mrs. Wroat’s servants. “Why was I not informed of her dangerous illness?”

“Mrs. Wroat died sudden, sir,” answered the man respectfully.

“Why was I not telegraphed to immediately upon her death?”

“I don’t know, sir. Mr. Harris, he manages the funeral, sir.”

“Show us up to our room, Toppen. You are perhaps aware that I am the old lady’s heir? I am the nephew of her deceased husband, who left her a good share of his property. It all comes to me. I shall continue you in my service, Toppen, when I come up to town to live, which will be immediately. But, come. Show us our room.”

Toppen hesitated.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but I’ll just speak to Mrs. Peters. Miss Wroat she can’t be disturbed, and I don’t know which room azackly Mrs. Peters intends for you.”

“The amber room, of course,” said Mrs. Blight superciliously. “We shall have the best room in the house, whatever Mrs. Peters or any one else may say.”

“Miss Wroat has the amber room,” said Toppen.

“Miss Wroat!” repeated the lawyer. “And who may Miss Wroat be?”

“She is Mrs. Wroat’s young niece, sir, that she fetched home with her from Canterbury. The Missus said we were to call the young lady Miss Wroat. If you’ll walk into the drawing-room, I’ll go for Mrs. Peters.”

The Blights went into the drawing-room as desired, and there awaited Mrs. Peters’ appearance with outward bravado and some inward anxiety.

“You don’t suppose the old woman can have made a will giving Lally Bird her fortune?” whispered the Canterbury lawyer’s wife.

“No. I think she went off so suddenly at the last that she had no time to make a will. But if she did make one I stand as good a chance as any one of inheriting her money, even after all that has come and gone between her and us. She got her money from her husband, who was my uncle. The old woman had a stern sense of justice, and she would never have left her entire fortune away from her husband’s nephew, who had, as one may say, a claim upon it. No doubt she left her great-niece a legacy, but you’ll find that we come in for the best share of her money.”

Mr. Blight did not reflect that Mrs. Wroat’s “stern sense of justice” might cause her to leave her money away from him, instead of leaving it to him.

“No matter whether she leaves the girl fifty pounds a year or two hundred pounds a year,” said Mrs. Blight venomously, “she goes out of this house on the day after the funeral, bag and baggage, the artful jade! I won’t have her under my roof a night longer than I can help.”

“Quite right, Laura. We should have had the whole pile only for her.”

“I shall furnish the whole house new,” said Mrs. Blight reflectively. “Aunt Wroat had abominable taste, and the colors here quite ruin my complexion. Why don’t Peters or the housekeeper come? I shall discharge Peters—”

The last words were overheard by Peters herself, who came in in list slippers and a black gown, staid, angular, and sour-visaged as usual, with a warm heart nearly bursting with grief under her prim bodice. She courtesied to the self-invited guests, her lips tightly compressed, and an ominous gleam in her tear-blurred eyes.

“Ah, Peters at last!” said Mrs. Blight condescendingly. “We want to go up to our room, Peters, before we see the remains of our dear aunt. Why were we not sent for yesterday, Peters?”

“I suppose Mr. Harris forgot to telegraph to you,” said Peters grimly. “He spoke of doing so. Your room is ready, and I’ll send Buttons up to show you the way.”

“Toppen calls Miss Bird Miss Wroat—ha, ha!” laughed the Canterbury lawyer. “A queer idea, isn’t it, Peters? Does the girl call herself Miss Wroat?”

Peters bowed.

“It was my lady’s wish,” she said.

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Blight. “By the by, Peters, here’s a sovereign for you. I always admired your sturdy independence, Peters. My aunt loved you, ah, like a sister, and leaned upon you, and all that, Peters. I hope she has remembered you at the last. It would be a pity if she had not left some trifle, to mark her appreciation of your fidelity and affection.”

“I have no fault to find,” said Peters coldly, rejecting the coin. “My dear lady remembered me generously in her will—”

“Her will?” interrupted Mr. Blight eagerly. “She did make a will then? I am glad to hear it. Had she died without a will, Miss Bird and Mrs. Wroat’s other relatives would have divided the Wroat property and fattened upon it. As it is, I am sure Mrs. Wroat has done me justice. She would not have remembered any faults of ours in her dying hour, but would have seen to it that Mr. Wroat’s nephew had his proper share in Mr. Wroat’s property. I suppose you know the purport of the will.”

Peters bowed assent.

“I shouldn’t mind a matter of five pounds,” said Mr. Blight insinuatingly. “I should like to know if my poor aunt did justice to me in her last moments?”

“I don’t want your money, Mr. Blight,” said Peters, “but if you are anxious to know, I will tell you that Mrs. Wroat did you justice in her will. That is all that I will say. I am not at liberty to betray the contents of the will, which will be read immediately after the burial.”

The countenances of the two fortune-hunters glowed with delight. They interpreted Mrs. Peters’ words to suit themselves.

Mrs. Peters gave them no time for further questioning. She summoned the boot-boy, and ordered him to conduct the guests to their chamber, and then departed to the room where her dead mistress was lying. The boy led the way up stairs, Mr. and Mrs. Blight following, and ushered them into the red room, opposite Lally’s apartment, and next in beauty and convenience to Lally’s rooms.

“Peters goes out of this house when Miss Bird goes,” cried Mrs. Blight, sinking into a chair and puffing heavily. “Charles, I believe I shall take the old lady’s room for mine, and save coming up stairs. It will be so convenient. And you must run out a new dressing-room and bath-room; those down stairs don’t suit me at all. Aunt Wroat’s personal tastes were so horrid plain. I shall clean out all the present servants. I know that Toppen hates us both, but he was forced to be civil to the heir, you know. And, by the way, we must have mourning clothes, Charles. You must write to your tailor to send a man to take your measure immediately, and I will drop a note to Jay’s, and have them send a complete mourning outfit and a dressmaker to me.”

The notes were written in Mr. Blight’s most grandiloquent style, and although they were brief, they betrayed the complacency of a satisfied heir in every line.

The tailor and dressmaker arrived in due time, and Mrs. Blight discussed ribbons and shades of silk, and the respective merits of French and English crape up stairs, while the old lady was being robed for the grave below, and Lally lay upon her own bed, weeping as though her heart were breaking.

Lally kept to her own room until after the funeral. She could not eat nor sleep. Etiquette forbade her attending her deceased relative to the grave, but she watched the departure of the funeral train from her window, her eyes almost blinded with her tears.

After the funeral, Mr. Blight and Mr. Harris the lawyer returned to the mansion in Mount street, and the latter summoned Mrs. Blight, Lally and Peters, to hear the will read.

Mrs. Blight swept in, clad in the deepest mourning, her garments covered deep with crape, a black-bordered handkerchief held at her eyes. Mr. Blight placed an armed chair for her near the hearth, the October day being chilly, and took a seat at her side with quite an air of proprietorship of the house.

Lally, in deep mourning, came next, with the faithful Peters, also in mourning habiliments. Mr. Harris placed a chair for Lally, and Peters sat near her young mistress, to whose service she intended to devote herself.

Mr. Harris then, with preparatory clearings of his throat, read the will. It commenced by declaring the testator of sound mind, being the usual formula, and proceeded with an enumeration of property at which the Blights grew inwardly radiant.

“All this, my real and personal property,” read Mr. Harris, in effect, “I give and bequeath, absolutely and without reserve, to—my beloved great-niece, Lally Bird, the daughter of John Bird and Clara Mulford Percy his wife, to her and to her heirs and assigns forever.”

The Blights gasped for breath.

Lally’s countenance did not change. She knew that her days of poverty were over; that she would never again wander shelterless and forlorn, glad to find shelter at night in a barn, and famished for food. All that distress for her was forever past. Her comfort and prosperity had been secured by the tenderness of her kindly and eccentric old relative, but Lally would willingly have gone back to her old-time poverty and toil, if by so doing she might have recalled her good friend from her grave.

“I say, this is simply infamous!” gasped Mr. Blight, turning upon Mr. Harris fiercely. “Infamous, sir! Do you know whose money, sir, this wretched old dotard has willed away so lightly? I’ll tell you, sir. It was my late uncle’s. It should be mine—and, by Heaven, it shall be mine. I’ll appeal to the law. I’ll contest the will!”

“Are you a lawyer? Why do you talk so childishly?” demanded Mr. Harris. “The property of which Mrs. Wroat has disposed was hers absolutely, to dispose of as she pleased. If your late uncle had wished to provide for you, he would have done so. You are no relative of Mrs. Wroat, and you ought to know that if you contest the will, you won’t get a penny. The girl would get it just the same—at least a portion of it—even if you succeeded in breaking the will, which you can’t. Mrs. Wroat was indisputably in sound mind when she dictated that will. Under any circumstances, Mr. Blight, you can get nothing. With the exception of an annuity to be paid out of the income to Peters during her lifetime, the remainder of the property is absolutely Miss Bird’s—or Miss Wroat’s, as it was the wish of our deceased friend that the young lady should be called.”

Mr. Blight sullenly recognized the truth of these words. He had been left out in the cold, and he was angry, disappointed, infuriated.

“Oh, my new and expensive mourning!” said Mrs. Blight spitefully. “I wouldn’t have put on black for the old creature if I had known the truth. Peters ought to pay me the hundred pounds I have expended. I shall sell every black rag I’ve bought!”

Lally arose to retire, and Mr. Harris and Peters attended her from the room. Mr. Harris presently returned, and said gravely:

“Miss Wroat is fatigued, and Mrs. Peters thinks her unequal to the task of entertaining guests. At the request of Mrs. Peters, therefore, I have to suggest, sir and madam that you take your leave without again seeing Miss Wroat. I will remain to do the honors of the house, in Miss Wroat’s stead, at your departure.”

Mr. and Mrs. Blight, thus quietly dismissed, retired to their room and packed their effects. An hour later their cab was announced, and they came down stairs, the lady leaning on her husband’s arm and weeping with rage.

As they sat in the cab, the luggage piled on top, and slowly departed from the house where they had hoped to reign, Mrs. Blight looked back, sobbing in her anguish:

“And it might have been ours but for the artful minx I took in, as it were out of the streets. I’ll never do a good action again in all my life—never. And now I must go back to poverty, and scrimp to save what I’ve spent in mourning, and we and our poor dear lambs may fetch up at the union, while that treacherous cat Lally Bird lolls in wealth. O dear! O dear!”

CHAPTER XII.
A FREAK OF DESTINY.

Upon the morning after the burial of Mrs. Wroat, and the utter discomfiture of the fortune-hunting Mr. and Mrs. Blight, Mr. Harris the lawyer called upon Lally. His card, with a message written upon it, was brought up to the young girl in her own room by Toppen, and Lally came down to the drawing-room, accompanied by Peters. Poor Lally looked very small and weak and childlike in her deep mourning garb, but when she lifted her sorrowful black eyes, the lawyer read in them a woman’s capacity for suffering, a woman’s strong and resolute character, a woman’s enlightened and awakened soul.

“Good-morning, Miss Wroat,” he said, with paternal kindness, shaking her hand warmly. “You are looking ill. Ought you not to seek change of air and scene?”

“I would rather remain here, sir,” said Lally wearily; “that is, if I may.”

“You can go and come at your own will, my dear young lady,” said Mr. Harris. “Mrs. Wroat has left you entire liberty to do as you please. This house is yours, and a small country property as well. I came this morning to discuss business with you. I have been the lawyer and business agent of our lamented friend Mrs. Wroat for a third of a century or more, and it was her will that I should continue to have the management of the Wroat property until your marriage, or the attainment of your majority. You are absolute mistress of this house. Is it your desire to keep up the establishment just as it is, or would you prefer a life of greater freedom and of less care?”

“I will stay here,” declared Lally. “This house seems home to me. Aunt Wroat loved it, and I will keep it just as she left it. Everything that she has loved or treasured will be sacred to me.”

Mr. Harris looked approval of the sentiment. Peters’ sour, sharp-featured countenance actually beamed with an unwonted warmth and pleasure. She had feared in her inmost soul that the massive, old-fashioned furniture with its odd carvings and quaint designs was to be sent to an auction room, and to be replaced by modern upholstery.

“Shall you retain the present housekeeper and servants?” inquired the lawyer.

“Yes,” said Lally, “the household is to remain exactly as it is. Mrs. Peters will also remain with me as a friend and attendant. She is the only friend I have now.”

“Not the only one, Miss Wroat,” said the lawyer warmly. “I am your friend, if you will permit me to call myself so. I have now to explain to you the amount of your income. When the late Mr. Wroat died, many years ago, he bequeathed to his wife who has just died the sum of fifty thousand pounds in securities and real estate. Mrs. Wroat had few expenses outside her own household, and did not expend her entire income, the balance of which has been allowed to accumulate, being annually added to the principal. Thus Mrs. Wroat died possessed of over sixty thousand pounds, ten thousand of which is in real estate. This house is not included in the estimate I have made, having been settled upon Mrs. Wroat at her marriage, as her own property to do with as she pleased. In addition to the real estate, therefore, you have fifty thousand pounds, which is invested in the three per cents, in foreign railway shares, in United States bonds, and in other perfectly safe and reliable securities. The interest upon these investments varies from three to seven per cent., but averages five per cent., and I have to announce to you that you have therefore an annual income of twenty-five hundred pounds, of which, by your aunt’s will, you come into immediate possession. Out of this twenty-five hundred pounds per annum, one hundred pounds is to be paid each year to Mrs. Peters, so long as she lives. The rest is absolutely your own! Have I made the matter perfectly plain to you?”

“Perfectly,” said Lally. “It is a large fortune, is it not?”

“It is a very fine income for a young lady,” assented Mr. Harris, “very fine indeed. Your expenditures need not be limited, you see. All reasonable desires can find perfect gratification upon your income, Miss Wroat. Should you desire it, you can take a house at Brighton for the season, or you might find an agreeable change in visiting your country place, although this is scarcely the season.”

“I like the country,” said Lally, “and I think it very pleasant in October.”

“Yes, so it is in Kent and Surrey, and the south of England,” said Mr. Harris, “but this is not a fancy seat, Miss Wroat, and it’s away off at the north—in Scotland, in fact, and on the sea coast. It’s fearfully wild in winter, I’m told, up there. The snow falls early, and the winds rage, and the thermometer falls below zero.”

“I was never in Scotland,” said Lally, a little flush of interest brightening her wan small face. “And I own a place up there—a farm perhaps?”

“Two or three farms, but the soil is sterile, and there is an old house in fine order.”

“Where is this place? Near Edinburgh?”

“Far north of Edinburgh, Miss Wroat. It’s near Inverness—away out of the world at this season, you see. I was up there last year with a shooting party, Mrs. Wroat kindly placing the house at my disposal. There’s capital shooting over the estate, and we had a good time, the house being furnished, and a steward residing in a cottage on the estate.”

“I should like to go up there,” said Lally. “Perhaps I will a little later—but not yet. I don’t mind the lateness of the season, Mr. Harris, and I am not afraid of cold and wind and snow, if I can have shelter and fires. In fact, I think I would like to hide myself in some far off hidden nook until I shall have learned to bear my trials with fortitude. Life is so very bitter to me, Mr. Harris.”

“Life bitter at seventeen!” said the lawyer, with an indulgent smile. “You have money, youth, beauty, and will have hosts of friends. You will learn, as we all do, sooner or later, Miss Wroat, to take the bitter with the sweet, and to thank God for all his goodness, instead of repining because one or two blessings are withheld out of so many given. But I will not bore you with a sermon. I have little more to say this morning except that, should you need me, I entreat that you will call upon me at any time. I will come to you at a moment’s notice. Is there anything I can now do for you?”

There was nothing, but Lally expressed her gratitude for the offer. Mrs. Peters had a few questions to ask, and when these had been duly answered, Mr. Harris paid into Lally’s hands the sum of six hundred pounds being one quarter’s income. He then departed.

The young girl spent the remainder of the day in her own room, not even coming forth to her meals. The next day she came down to the dining-room, but immediately after dinner retired to her apartment. She read no books nor newspapers, but sat before her fire hour after hour, silently brooding, and Peters with an unspeakable anxiety beheld the round gipsy face grow thin and pallid, dark circles form under the black eyes, and the light figure grow lighter and more slender, until she feared that the young mistress would soon follow the old one.

In her distress, Peters had an interview with the housekeeper, and expressed her fears and anxieties.

“A good wind would just blow Miss Lally away,” she said. “She’s pining, and the first we know she’ll be dead. What can I do?”

“Who’d have thought she’d have loved the Missus so much?” said the housekeeper.

“It isn’t that alone,” declared Peters, “although she loved Mrs. Wroat as a daughter might have loved her, but she’s had other troubles that I’m not at liberty to speak of, but which are pressing on her, along with her great-aunt’s death, until, I think, the double burden will crush her into the grave. She don’t eat more than a bird. I ordered her mourning for her, and when the shopman brought great parcels of silks and bombazines and crapes, she never even looked at them, but said, ‘Peters, please select for me. You know what I want.’ The dressmaker was in despair yesterday, because my young lady would not take an interest in her clothes, and did not give a single direction beyond having them made very plainly. I’ll go and see Mr. Harris about her, or else the doctor.”

“What does a man know in a case like this?” exclaimed the housekeeper. “The young lady is pining herself to death, Mrs. Peters, and that’s the long and the short of it. This great house is dull and lonely to her, and the gloom of the funeral isn’t out of it yet. The young mistress wants change—that’s what she wants. Take her to some watering-place, or to the Continent, or somewhere else, and give her new interests and a change of scene, and she’ll come back as pert and chipper as any bird.”

The idea struck Mrs. Peters favorably. She hastened up stairs to the amber room, and softly entered. Lally sat in a great chair before the hearth, her little shrunken figure quite lost among the cushions, her small wan face startlingly pale, and her great black eyes fixed upon the fire. She looked up at her attendant, who approached her with a swelling heart, but with outward calmness.

“If you please, Miss Lally,” said Peters, broaching her wishes without delay, “I’ve been thinking that the house is so gloomy without the dear old mistress, and that you keep so close to your room that you will be ill directly unless some change is made. And I am sure I’d like a change too, for a week or month. And so I make bold to ask you to go for a month to Brighton.”

The girl shook her head with a look of pain.

“Not there,” she murmured. “I cannot bear the crowds, the gayety, the careless faces and curious eyes.”

“Then let us go up to the Heather Hills, your Scottish place,” urged Peters. “I have been there once, and we could take Toppen with us, Miss Lally. The steward who lives on the estate can provide us with servants. Let me telegraph him to-day, and let us start to-morrow.”

“Very well,” said the young mistress listlessly. “If you wish it, Peters, we will go.”

The sour face of the faithful maid brightened, and she expressed her thanks warmly for the concession.

“I’ll telegraph at once, Miss Lally,” she said. “But then the steward is not likely to receive the telegram unless he happens to be at Inverness, which is not likely. I will send Toppen by the first train to prepare for our coming, if you are willing, Miss Lally.”

Lally was willing, and Mrs. Peters withdrew to acquaint the tall footman with her mistress’ design, and to dispatch him on his journey to the northward. When he had gone she returned to Lally.

“Toppen is on his way to the station, Miss,” she announced. “He will have everything in order for us against our arrival. It is cold at Heather Hills, Miss Lally, with the wind blowing off the sea, and you will need flannel and thick boots, and warm clothing.”

“Order them for me then, Peters,” said Lally, with listless voice and manner.

“But you will want an astrachan jacket to wear with your black dresses, and you must try it on, to be sure that it fits,” said Peters. “And you will want books at Heather Hills, and these you can choose best for yourself. And the newspapers must be ordered to be sent to our new address, but that I can do this evening by letter. And you will want work materials, Miss Lally, such as canvas, Berlin wools and patterns; drawing materials, new music, and other things, perhaps. Let me order the carriage, and let us go out and make our purchases.”

Lally looked out of the window. The sun was shining, and the air was clear. She had not been out of the house for days, and she assented to Mrs. Peters’ proposition. The maid ordered the carriage, and proceeded to array her young mistress for her drive.

The carriage, which was called Mrs. Wroat’s carriage, was a job vehicle, hired by the month at a neighboring mews, with horses, and with coachman and footman in livery. It looked like a private brougham, and with its mulberry-colored linings, and plain but elegantly gotten-up harness, was very stylish, and even imposing.

When the carriage came around, Lally and her attendant were quite ready. They descended to the vehicle, and drove away upon their shopping excursion. A fur dealer’s was first visited, then a stationer’s and bookseller’s, then a shop for ladies’ work and their materials. Lally’s purchases were deposited in the carriage. And lastly the young girl stopped at a picture dealer’s in Regent street, a small cabinet painting in the window having caught her eye.

It was simply a quaint Dutch interior, with a broad hearth, a boiling pot over the flames, a great tiled chimney-piece, a Dutch house-wife with ample figure and round, good-natured face, and three or four children pausing at the threshold of the open door to put off their shoes before stepping upon the immaculate floor; a simple picture, executed with fidelity and spirit; but its charm, in Lally’s eyes, lay in the fact that in the early days of her marriage, during the brief period she had passed with Rufus Black in New Brompton, in their dingy lodgings, he had painted a cabinet picture of a Dutch interior, nearly like this in design, but as different in execution as may be imagined. His had been but a daub, and he had been glad to get fifteen shillings for it. The price of this picture which had now caught Lally’s eye was ten guineas.

The young lady had the picture withdrawn from the window and examined it closely.

“I will take it,” she said. “I will select a suitable frame, and you may send it home to-day. Here is my card.”

The picture dealer brought an armful of frames for her selection, and while she examined the designs and gilding, a man walked into the shop with a sauntering gait, and paused near her, in contemplation of an old cracked painting to which was attached a card declaring it to be a genuine Murillo.

“This is no more a Murillo than I’m one!” announced the new-comer loudly, half turning his face toward the shopman. “A Murillo? It’s a modern daub, gotten up to sell.”

At the sound of the stranger’s voice Lally started, dropping the frame she held in her hand. She turned around quickly, looking at him with dilating eyes and whitening face, and gasping breath.

The strange connoisseur, who had so boldly given his opinion of the pretended Murillo, was Rufus Black!

He had tired of the loneliness of Hawkhurst, and had run up to town for a day’s recreation and amusement. The picture shop in Regent street, into which Lally had strayed that morning, had long been one of his favorite haunts, and the picture Lally had just bought had really given him the idea of the picture he had painted so long before in the dingy room at New Brompton.

His face was half averted, but Lally knew him, and a deathly faintness seized upon her. He was well dressed and possessed an air of elegance that well became him. His hair was worn long under an artist’s broad-brimmed hat, and his features from a side view were sharp and thin. His mouth and chin seemed to have gained firmness and character during the past few months, but in the latter feature was still prominent the dimple Lally had loved, and which, pretty in a woman, is nearly always a sign of weakness and irresolution in a man.

Rufus turned slowly toward the girlish figure in black, his gaze seeking the shopman. A low, strange cry broke from Lally’s lips. Rufus heard it and looked at her. Her heavy crape vail was thrown back over her bonnet, and her small face framed in the heavy black folds was so white, so eager, so piteous, that Rufus thought it a vision—an optical illusion—a freak of his imagination. He recoiled in a species of terror.

“Rufus! Oh, Rufus!” cried the deserted young wife in a wild, involuntary appeal.

Mrs. Peters heard the name, and comprehended the identity of the young man. She came and stood by Lally’s side, warning off Rufus by her harsh face and angry eyes.

“Come, my dear,” she said, “let us go.”

“Rufus! Oh, Rufus!” moaned the poor young wife again, seeing nothing but the anguished, horrified face of her husband, hearing nothing but his quick breathing.

Rufus slowly passed his hand over his forehead.

“My God!” he murmured. “Lally’s face! Lally’s voice!”

Mrs. Peters took the hand of her young mistress, attempting to lead her from the shop, which but for them and the amazed shopman was happily deserted. But Lally stared at her young husband in a species of fascination, and he returned her gaze with one of horror and amazement, and the old woman’s efforts were fruitless.

“My dear, my dear!” whispered Peters anxiously. “Come with me. Come, my darling! He abandoned you. Pluck up a spirit, Miss Lally, and leave him alone!”

Lally slowly arose and moved toward the door, but coming quite near to her stupefied young husband.

“It is I—Lally,” she said, with the simplicity of a child, her great black eyes staring at him piteously. “I am not dead, Rufus. It was not I who was drowned in the Thames. I know that you are going to be married again to a great heiress, and I hope you will be happy with her; but she will never love you as I loved you. Good-bye, dear—good-bye forever!”

With a great sob Lally flitted past him, and hurried out to the waiting carriage. Rufus dashed after her, wild-eyed and wild-visaged; but Mrs. Peters grasped him vigorously by the arm, detaining him.

“None of that!” she ejaculated harshly. “I won’t have my young lady tampered with. You shan’t follow her. You’ve broken her heart already.”

“She’s mine—my wife!” cried Rufus, still amazed, but in an ecstasy of joy and rapture. “I tell you she’s mine. I thought she was dead. I am not engaged to an heiress. I won’t marry one. I want my wife—”

“You’re too late, sir,” said Mrs. Peters grimly. “You should have made up your mind to that effect at the time you abandoned her.”

“But I was compelled to abandon her! God alone knows the remorse and anguish I have known since I supposed her dead. I love her better than all the world. How is it that she lives? Why does she wear mourning? Woman let me go to her!” And he tried to break from the detaining grasp of Peters.

“No, sir,” said the woman still more grimly. “If you have a spark of manliness, you will let the young lady alone. She hates you now. I assure you she does. She’s only a governess, and you’ll lose her her place if you hang around her. I tell you again she hates you.”

Rufus uttered a low moan, and sat down abruptly upon a shop bench. Mrs. Peters glided out and entered the carriage, giving the order to return home.

“I told him a lie, God forgive me!” she muttered, as she looked at Lally, who lay back upon the cushions, faint and white. “I told him that you were a governess, Miss Lally. Let him once get wind of your good fortune, and he’ll abandon his heiress and come back to you. Let us start for the north to-night, dear Miss Lally, and you will not see him if he comes to Mount street. We can take the night express, and sleep comfortably with our lap robes, and to-morrow night we will sleep at Edinburgh.”

“We will do as you say, Peters,” said Lally wearily. “Only don’t speak to me now.”

She buried her face in the cushions, and was silent with a stillness like death.

Meanwhile Rufus Black sat for some minutes in a sort of stupor, but at last raised his haggard eyes and said to the shopkeeper:

“The—the lady who passed out, Benson, was my wife. I had heard she was dead. Can you give me her address?”

The shopman was all sympathy and kindness. He knew Rufus Black had come of a good family, and he suspected, from the scene he had just witnessed, that he had experienced trouble through his marriage. He picked up the mourning card Lally had laid down and read the address aloud.

“‘Miss Wroat, Mount street, Grosvenor Square,’” repeated Rufus. “My wife is governess in that family. Thanks, Benson. I will go to Mount street.”

He went out with staggering steps, hailed a hansom cab, gave the order, and was driven to the Wroat mansion in Mount street. The boy called Buttons waited upon the door in Toppen’s absence. He was a shrewd lad, and had received private instructions from Peters, who had just come in with her young mistress.

“I want to see Miss Bird,” said Rufus abruptly, making a movement to enter the hall.

The boy blocked his path.

“No such lady here, sir,” he replied.

“Mrs. Black perhaps?” suggested Rufus.

“No such lady,” persisted the boy.

Rufus offered him a bright coin, and said desperately:

“I want to see the governess—”

“No governess here, sir,” said Buttons, pocketing the coin. “No children to teach, sir. There’s no lady in the house but the mistress, Miss Wroat, and she don’t see no one, sir.”

Rufus stood amazed and bewildered.

“Can I not see Miss Wroat?” he asked. “I wish to inquire after a young lady whom I supposed to be here—”

“Miss Wroat can’t be disturbed, sir, on no account,” said Buttons. “She’s not well, and don’t receive to-day.”

“I will call to-morrow then,” said Rufus, with increasing desperation. “I must see her.”

He descended the steps, and the door closed behind him.

“Benson must have picked up the wrong card,” thought Rufus. “Or Lally might have given a wrong card. Why should she give her employer’s card, unless indeed she was buying a picture for her employer? I’ll go back and see Benson.”

He went back, but the picture dealer affirmed that Lally had given him the card with Miss Wroat’s name upon it, and Rufus said to himself:

“I have it. Miss Wroat is the sour-looking, servant-like woman in black, some parvenue grown suddenly rich, and Lally is her companion. This Miss Wroat knows Lally’s story and despises me. I’ll go back to Mount street this evening, and see Miss Wroat. When I tell her the whole truth she will pity me, and allow me to see Lally, I am sure. I won’t care for poverty or toil if I can have back my poor little wife. I will fly with her to some foreign country before my father comes back. But what did Lally mean by my ‘marriage with an heiress?’ My father must have told her of Neva. Why, I’d rather have my poor little Lally than a thousand haughty Nevas, with a thousand Hawkhursts at their backs.”

Early in the evening Rufus returned to Mount street, and Buttons again answered his double knock.

“Family gone away, sir,” said the lad, recognizing the visitor.

“Where have they gone?” inquired Rufus in sudden despair.

Buttons declined to answer, and was about to close the door, when Rufus placed his knee against it and cried out:

“Boy, I must see Miss Wroat, or her young companion. If they have gone away, I must follow them. My business with them is imperative. Tell me truthfully where they have gone, and I will give you this.”

He held up as he spoke a glittering half sovereign.

Buttons hesitated. Clearly he had had his instructions to betray to no one the course his young mistress had taken, and just as clearly his virtue wavered before the glittering bribe offered to him. He reasoned within himself that no one need ever know that he had told, and here was an opportunity to make ten shillings without work. He yielded to the temptation.

“Miss Wroat and Mrs. Peters,” he began, with his eyes fixed on the coin—“they—”

“Mrs. Peters? That is what the young companion calls herself? Go on.”

“Miss Wroat and Mrs. Peters,” repeated the boy, “they have gone to Heather Hills to stay a month—that’s where they’ve gone. Now give me my money.”

“In one moment. As soon as you tell me where is Heather Hills.”

“Scotland,” said the lad. “Inverness. I don’t know nothing more, only I know the boxes and trunks were labelled Inverness, for I looked at ’em. The money!”

Rufus paid it, and hurried away, proceeding to the Great Northern Railway station. When he reached it, the night express had gone!

CHAPTER XIII.
AN ACTIVE RESISTANCE.

Neva Wynde was not one to waste her strength in useless repining, nor to give way to weakness and tears at a time when she needed all her keenness of wit and vigor of body, in the contest begun by her enemies. She was a brave, resolute young girl, and she did not lose her bravery and resolution even after matters had been so singularly precipitated to a crisis, and she knew her enemies as they were. She retired into her own room, as we have said, and was locked in. As the bolt shot home and Neva comprehended that she was an actual prisoner, her cheeks flamed with her indignation at the indignity practised upon her, but she did not weep or moan.

She quietly laid aside her fur jacket and hat and went to her window, essaying to look out. The baying of the dogs in the yard below reached her ears, and she went back to her fire, smiling bitterly.

“I see no way of escape,” she murmured. “The night is cold, and I might die on the mountains in my wanderings, should I get out. I am in lonely Scottish wilds, but I am in the hands of Providence, and I will fear no evil. Surely Arthur will find me out. Craven Black may be keen-witted, but Arthur is keener. He will find me.”

Neva's choice / A sequel to "Neva's three lovers"

Transcriber’s Notes:

NEVA’S CHOICE

SYNOPSIS OF “NEVA’S THREE LOVERS.”

CHAPTER I.NEVA’S ANSWER TO LORD TOWYN.

CHAPTER II.THE PUZZLE OF NEVA’S WHEREABOUTS.

CHAPTER III.AN ADVERTISEMENT QUICKLY ANSWERED.

CHAPTER IV.LALLY AND MRS. WROAT.

CHAPTER V.NEVA AND HER ENEMIES.

CHAPTER VI.WHERE NEVA’S TRAVELS ENDED.

CHAPTER VII.HOW LALLY TOOK HER DEPARTURE.

CHAPTER VIII.LALLY’S NEW EXISTENCE.

CHAPTER IX.A SURPRISE FOR MISS WYNDE.

CHAPTER X.THE INAUGURATION OF HOSTILITIES.

CHAPTER XI.MRS. BLIGHT ENTERS UPON HER MOURNING.

CHAPTER XII.A FREAK OF DESTINY.

CHAPTER XIII.AN ACTIVE RESISTANCE.