(Printed in the United States of America)

LITTLE SWEETHEART

OR,

NORMAN DE VERE’S PROTEGEE.

BY

MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER.

HART SERIES No. 49

COPYRIGHT 1889 BY GEORGE MUNRO.

PUBLISHED BY
THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY
Cleveland, O., U. S. A.

LITTLE SWEETHEART.

[CHAPTER I.]
[CHAPTER II.]
[CHAPTER III.]
[CHAPTER IV.]
[CHAPTER V.]
[CHAPTER VI.]
[CHAPTER VII.]
[CHAPTER VIII.]
[CHAPTER IX.]
[CHAPTER X.]
[CHAPTER XI.]
[CHAPTER XII.]
[CHAPTER XIII.]
[CHAPTER XIV.]
[CHAPTER XV.]
[CHAPTER XVI.]
[CHAPTER XVII.]
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
[CHAPTER XIX.]
[CHAPTER XX.]
[CHAPTER XXI.]
[CHAPTER XXII.]
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
[CHAPTER XXV.]
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
[CHAPTER XXX.]
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
[CHAPTER XXXVII.]
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIX.]
[CHAPTER XL.]
[CHAPTER XLI.]
[CHAPTER XLII.]
[CHAPTER XLIII.]
[CHAPTER XLIV.]
[CHAPTER XLV.]
[CHAPTER XLVI.]
[CHAPTER XLVII.]
[CHAPTER XLVIII.]
[CHAPTER XLIX.]
[CHAPTER L.]
[CHAPTER LI.]
[CHAPTER LII.]
[CHAPTER LIII.]
[CHAPTER LIV.]
[CHAPTER LV.]
[CHAPTER LVI.]
[CHAPTER LVII.]
[CHAPTER LVIII.]
[CHAPTER LIX.]
[CHAPTER LX.]
[CHAPTER LXI.]
[CHAPTER LXII.]
[CHAPTER LXIII.]
[CHAPTER LXIV.]
[CHAPTER LXV.]
[CHAPTER LXVI.]
[CHAPTER LXVII.]
[CHAPTER LXVIII.]
[CHAPTER LXIX.]
[CHAPTER LXX.]
[CHAPTER LXXI.]
[CHAPTER LXXII.]
[CHAPTER LXXIII.]
[CHAPTER LXXIV.]

CHAPTER I.

The smoking-car was draughty and ill-smelling; the three commercial travelers, with their cards and whisky, noisy to the point of rudeness, and the view from the windows of the slowly moving train was not interesting to one who had gone over the route to Jacksonville a dozen times before. The rocking motion of the train hindered reading with any comfort, and Norman de Vere flung down his newspaper impatiently and went into the ladies’ car.

“There may be some pretty women in there to look at,” he thought, idly, having an artistic taste that could interest itself for hours in traveling in watching the delicate profile of some beautiful face with a ravishing turn to chin and throat, or round cheek shaded by the curled fringe of a long, dark eyelash.

For the matter of that, any woman might have looked twice at him, too, if she had any feminine penchant for manly beauty.

Tall, broad-shouldered, symmetrically formed, with olive skin, large, flashing, dark eyes, wavy dark hair, clear-cut, handsome features, and a mouth so beautifully shaped that the absence of the conventional mustache from the short, curled upper lip seemed almost an affectation to display its beauty. Norman de Vere at two-and-twenty was a magnificent specimen of young manhood, combining in his fine person all the best elements of strength and beauty. You saw, too, from the cut and quality of his well-chosen traveling garments, and from his very air of easy indifference, that he was Fortune’s favorite—beloved of Plutus as well as Apollo.

He dropped languidly down into a seat some little distance back of the woman and child who were the sole occupants of the ladies’ car.

“Wonder where they got on? They were not in here two hours ago when I went forward to the smoking-car,” he thought, with idle curiosity, having nothing better to attract his attention.

The slight, black-robed figure sitting in front of him had its head and face hidden in a little black poke bonnet and black lace veil. The face, turned steadfastly from him, as if gazing through the window, was propped against a small hand in a trim, black kid glove. Before her, on a seat which the accommodating conductor had turned over to face her, slumbered a lovely child of about four years. By contrast with the somber black garments of the lady and the rich crimson velvet of the cushions on which it was lying, the little creature, in its white dress, its tangle of rich golden curls, its round cheeks warmly flushed with happy slumber, its half-parted, dewy red lips giving glimpses of pearly baby-teeth, looked like a beautiful human flower.

But Norman de Vere’s handsome face had assumed a rather rueful expression when he looked over and saw the pretty sleeper.

“Presently it will wake up and squall. Then I shall beat a retreat into the smoking-car. The drummers could be no worse,” thought he, testily.

But pending the meditated retreat he fell to speculating over these chance companions of his railway ride.

“Some poor little widow who has buried her husband among strangers and is going home to her people with her little child,” he decided from her garb of somber black.

And as men always take a peculiar interest in young and pretty widows, our hero began to wish that she would turn her head and let him see her face. That she was young he felt quite sure from her erect shoulders and slight and delicate shape.

But the young widow remained motionless, with her cheek in her hand and her head turned toward the window, seemingly intent on the flitting landscape, with its dreary dead-level clothed with forests of pine, cedar, and cypress, while here and there the glittering leaves and magnificent white flowers of the magnolia-tree divided admiration with the long, swaying wreaths of funereal-looking moss somberly draping the great live-oaks. Perhaps the tropical growth lying under the soft, velvety drizzle of a steady October rain pleased her fancy or held her interest, or perhaps hot, silent tears were falling under the little black veil, for she never stirred from her statue-like quiet even when the door opened noisily presently, admitting the jolly commercial travelers whose loud talk and laughter immediately startled the smiling baby sleeper from her dreams.

There was a low, startled whimper of fear, and the little darling sat erect, first digging dimpled, chubby fists into her eyes, then staring at the heartless disturbers of her dreams with the brightest, bluest, most reproachful orbs they had ever seen.

“She is going to squall! The widow will have to move at last!” Norman de Vere muttered, with triumphant curiosity.

He was right, and wrong. The baby did not squall, but the lady moved. She leaned forward, patted the child with her little gloved hand, murmured some low, soothing words, and immediately returned to her musing position at the window without any one ever having seen her face.

The travelers were staring with all their might. Every heart went out to the little angel in the white dress.

One of them—rough fellow and hard drinker as his red face showed him to be—had pretty little children of his own at home. He uttered a caressing sound and held out eager arms.

The baby shook her golden head archly and made him a little grimace of disdain that set the other two laughing. She climbed down from her seat and up again upon the lady’s, where she stood erect, the sweetest thing alive, already full of innate, unconscious coquetry. The big, cloudless blue eyes wandered guilelessly over their faces as she clung with her tiny dimpled fists to the back of the seat, scanning each face in turn with pretty, fearless curiosity.

By this time every man in the car was in love with the beautiful, bright little thing, and the drummers began to rummage their pockets for something pretty wherewith to tempt her to come to their arms. Their boisterous mirth had already softened to something more respectful, and when one actually found a paper of peppermint lozenges about him, his eyes gleamed with triumph.

“Come, sit on my knee and you shall have candy,” he called out, persuasively.

The little beauty did not notice him. She was watching the face of Norman de Vere and making eyes at him with the sweetest baby coquetry, so “innocent arch, so cunning simple,” that the gazers were transported with delight. The young man, on his part, was regarding her with a gentle gravity of expression that puzzled her guileless mind. The three drummers she recognized instinctively as being already her slaves. What of this silent man who made no effort to attract her, who returned her inviting, wistful gaze without a smile, unless that sparkle in his large dark eyes could be called one?

Was it his seeming indifference that attracted her, or his wonderful, god-like beauty? There awoke in the young mind something of that pain which we of older growth term the yearning for the unattainable.

She sprung down into the aisle unheeded by her silent female companion, and the drummers each reached out for her. She stopped a minute to look at the unique watch-charm that one dangled before her eyes, laughed gleefully as she eluded the outstretched arm of the second, and promptly accepted the lozenges from the third, turning from him with a polite “Ta-ta,” and going straight to Norman de Vere.

“Wretched little flirt!” ejaculated the giver of the candy, with mock indignation, as he saw her climbing upon Norman de Vere’s lap with the most engaging confidence.

Then:

“Don’t oo want some of my tandy?” she inquired, cooingly, as she offered him the paper.

Norman de Vere’s thoughtful gravity relaxed into a laugh, and he promptly put an arm about the plump form that had enthroned itself on his knee.

“I don’t want any candy, please,” he said, shutting his lips tight against the small thumb and finger that were conveying a pink lozenge to his lips; “but I’ll take a kiss.”

No sooner said than the rosebud mouth was pressed eagerly, softly upon his, sending an odd thrill through his whole frame, then she half whispered:

“I ’ove oo.”

“A case of love at first sight,” haw-hawed one of the irrepressibles across the aisle, and the baby shook her tiny pink-and-white fist at him and cried out, disdainfully:

“Go way! I don’t ’ove oo! Oo ain’t pritty!”

Everybody laughed except that slight, silent form like a statue of black marble in the front seat, and Norman de Vere asked with a smile:

“Won’t you tell me your name, little one?”

She beamed upon him with her sunny blue eyes, and answered:

“Sweet’art.”

There was more laughter from across the aisle. The young man reddened in spite of himself, but persisted:

“Yes, I know you are my sweetheart, but what is your other name? What does your mamma call you?”

“Nuffin, only des Sweet’art,” she replied, amiably, reaching up and patting his cheek with a warm, sticky little palm, with a lozenge glued to it by its own sweetness.

“That is her name for you when you are very good, I suppose, but when you are bad—when you cry and scold your doll, what name does she call you then?” he queried, and she replied, intelligently:

“‘Naughty yittle Sweet’art.’”

“I give it up,” he said, carelessly; and then she asked, in her innocent, confiding manner:

“Don’t oo want me to sing mamma’s yittle song all ’bout me myse’f?”

“Yes, please.”

She threw back her curly golden head, swelled her soft, white throat, opened her rosebud mouth, and sung, with bird-like sweetness, these words:

“Yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,

Des once mo’ before I go;

Tell me truly, will you miss me

As I wander to and fro?

Yet me feel ’e tender p’essing

Of oor wosy lips to mine,

Wif oor dimple’ hands cawessing,

An’ oor snowy arms intwine.

“Yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,

We may ne’er meet adain;

We may ne’er woam togedder

Down ’e dear ole shady lane.

Uvver years may bwing us sowow

Yat our ’arts but yittle know;

But if tare we s’ould not bo’wow,

Tum an’ tiss me ’fore I go.

“Ah! yittle sweet’art, tum an’ tiss me,

Tum an’ whisper sweet an’ low;

Tell me yat oor ’art will miss me

As I wander to an’ fro.”

No words could describe fitly the wonderful, wooing sweetness, the bird-like melody of the little one’s voice as it rose soft and clear above the clatter of the moving train—every word, though uttered in broken baby dialect, distinctly audible to the listeners.

The innocent little child, absorbed in the delight of her own performance, appeared as unconscious of them all as some wild-wood bird caroling alone upon its leafy nest, and produced as pure an effect upon her hearers.

When she stopped no one moved or spoke for a minute, then the red-faced drummer chuckled:

“Sweetheart, you’re an out-and-out prima-donna!”

The others were touched and silent.

CHAPTER II.

Sweetheart herself remained quite silent and pensive for a moment after her little song, as if it had touched some chord of sadness in her heart. Then she nestled her curly head softly against Norman de Vere’s broad breast.

“Sweet’art tired, Sweet’art s’eepy,” she lisped in a plaintive tone, and shut her eyes.

He held her closely in a tender clasp, looking down admiringly at the lovely baby face, fair as carven pearl, and tinted warmly yet delicately as a Mme. de Watteville rose. How richly fringed with thick gold were the full white lids; how lovely the curve of the scarlet lips; how deep the dimple—a perfect Cupid’s nest—in the exquisite chin! His eyes dwelt long and lingeringly on every perfect outline, and he said to himself, with a half smile:

“If she grows up like this, she will give many a man the heartache.”

A sigh chased away the smile, and a cold, cynical look came into the dark eyes, as if some unpleasant memory stirred within him.

The train rushed on through the rainy afternoon, past the swamps and forests, past the unfrequent little towns where they seemed to make the most unconscionably long stops, considering the small additions received to the stock of passengers, and presently it seemed to Norman de Vere that every one was asleep but himself.

The drummers had each taken a double seat to himself, and with silk handkerchiefs over their faces, snored sedately. Even the “little widow,” as Norman called her in his thoughts, had let her arm and head slip down to the back of her seat, and seemed to be quietly sleeping. Sweetheart still lay close in the fold of his strong arm, and though presently the plump little thing began to feel warm and heavy, he would not rouse her, lest he should call her back from her wandering in the beautiful Land of Nod.

“But what a careless little mother!” he thought. “She takes small concern over her baby, leaving her to be nursed and cuddled by utter strangers. Still,” with an excusing thought, “she must be fond of the little one, she has trained her to sing with such wondrous sweetness and accuracy. It is only that she is tired or ill—broken down with grief most likely—and she knows that even rough men are only too proud to play the nurse to her little pet.”

He wondered vaguely if the face hidden under the little poke bonnet and veil were one half as lovely as the one slumbering so peacefully on his breast, and gazing down at little Sweetheart, tried to fancy the cherub face grown older, and the innocent soul grown wise with woman’s lore; but again a heavy sigh heaved his breast and a frown of deep cynicism drew ungracious lines on his high, white brow.

“Heaven forbid! Heaven forbid!” he muttered, with something like impatient wrath. “It seems a pity for this dear little one to grow up so. Yet,” bitterly, “how else could it be, and a woman?”

The early autumn twilight, hastened by the steady rain, began to darken in the car, and the brakeman came in and lighted the lamps.

“A bad spell o’ weather, sir,” he said, loquaciously, to the occupant of the car who had his eyes open. “Uncommon rainy for Florida; been fallin’ stiddy for two days and nights. ’Counts for the few passengers, I ’spose. Well, ’tis er ill wind blows nobody good. Better sleepin’ ’commodations for the passengers,” glancing around humorously; for this was twenty years ago, reader, and before the luxurious era of Pullman sleepers and parlor cars and fast-flying vestibule trains.

Norman de Vere was about to make some brief, courteous answer to the man’s remarks, but he was prevented by a sudden terrible rumble and rocking of the car—the swift precursor of one of those dreadful railway accidents due to heavy rains and weakened bridge foundations that desolate so many hearts and homes. With a swift instinct he clasped his sleeping burden tightly to his breast just as the doomed car reared upward a moment, like a maddened, living creature, only to collapse the next instant with its freight of human souls and go crashing down through a broken bridge into a mad hell of seething, foaming water.

A little river ordinarily insignificant enough, but swollen now to a torrent by incessant rains for several days, had washed all the mortar from the stone foundations of the railroad bridge and weakened it so that the weight of the locomotive had carried it down crashing to the bed of the river and telescoped the train.

When Norman de Vere realized that, but for a sharp blow on the head from a heavy timber, he was unhurt, and that he held the struggling child safe in his arms, it seemed to him that he must have been saved by a miracle, nothing less.

The whole train was a wreck, and but for the fact that the ladies’ car was on top of the débris, he could never have escaped alive. He was wedged between two seats of the car, which lay on its side, the windows uppermost, and over and around surged the raging water, churned into foam by the rapid descent of the train, and by the explosion of the locomotive’s boiler as soon as it touched the river. To add to the horror of the position, the lamps just lighted by the brakeman had exploded and caught fire, affording a lurid light within the interior of the wrecked car.

The child in his arms waked and screamed with sudden terror. He hushed her with a tender word, and listened appalled for another human sound in that terrible tumult of crashing timbers and raging waters.

But no sound came.

He saw the brakeman’s legs sticking out from under a pile of timbers that had instantaneously crushed the life from his body. Turning about in his cramped position, he looked for Sweetheart’s mother and the drummers.

There was no sign of the slender little black-draped figure, but a pair of masculine arms protruded from under an overturned seat. He put Sweetheart down and went to work manfully to extricate the owner.

To his joy, he dragged the man out, stunned, but alive—one of the jolly drummers. Rapidly as he could, he resuscitated him and made him understand their position.

“We will either be burned or drowned if we do not speedily escape,” he said. “But before we think of ourselves we must see if there are any more alive in the car.”

“I’m with you to the death!” the other cried, heartily; then he shuddered. “But this is horrible! How the water seethes over the settling wreck! And it will be on fire inside presently.”

“Be good, little darling!” Norman cried to the whimpering, frightened baby, who sat very still where he had placed her, with a dazed look in her big blue eyes.

Obeying a pitying impulse, he kissed her lightly, then turned to his grewsome task.

The two other drummers were soon discovered, both stone dead, and one horribly mutilated.

“God rest their souls!” cried the drummer, who was a devout Catholic.

He crossed himself, his face pale with grief and horror, then went on with his task. The mysterious woman had not been found yet.

A few steps further on and they began to pull away great fragments of the roof where it had crashed in over the seat where she had been reclining. They were obliged to work very carefully lest she should be pinioned under them yet alive, and they must not crush out the faintest spark of life.

And above them and around them the fierce and swollen river roared like a tiger eager for its prey, while within the narrow compass of the wrecked car the air began to grow hot and dense with smoke from the burning lamp that had sent its blazing oil running about like tongues of flame, devouring all it touched.

A minute more and they found her, dead. Norman de Vere was never to know whether the face over which he had wondered was beautiful or homely. The heavy timbers had mutilated it beyond all semblance of humanity, and he reeled and sickened at sight of the bloody corpse.

“Oh, my God, how terrible!” he cried, and the Catholic crossed himself again. “God rest her soul!” he muttered, then eagerly: “We can do no more. They are all dead. Let us try to save ourselves. We shall suffocate if we remain in here five minutes longer. See the child!”

Little Sweetheart had suddenly succumbed to the heat and smoke, and fallen senseless.

Norman de Vere caught her up in his arms with a cry very like despair.

“Now don’t give way!” cried George Hinton, the drummer, eagerly. “What do you propose to do?”

“Can you swim?”

“Like a fish.”

“So can I. We must knock out that window there. The water will pour into the car, but we must climb through the opening and commit ourselves to the mercy of the river.”

The hour of deadly peril under the gloomy night sky on the wild, swirling river, battling fiercely with the elements in the effort to reach the lights that glimmered on shore, would the two nearly exhausted men ever forget it?

Norman de Vere’s efforts were greatly hampered by the little unconscious burden in his arms, but he would not listen to the shouts of the other.

“She is dead, poor little one! She was suffocated in the burning car. Better let her go and save yourself.”

“Never! We sink together rather than so cowardly a deed!” Norman de Vere replied above the roar of the water; and by the most heroic struggles he neared the land, where a rope was thrown by friendly hands of excited watchers along the shore. A moment more and safety was assured to them, and a loud, solemn shout of thanksgiving went up from fifty throats for the three solitary survivors of the wrecked train.

CHAPTER III.

Twenty-four hours later it was night in Jacksonville—night, all lovely with countless stars and a full October moon.

“The light of many stars

Quivered in tremulous softness on the air,

And the night breeze was singing here and there.”

Before the gates of a palatial home, whose white walls glimmered like a fairy palace through the dark-green shrubberies of the extensive grounds, stood a line of carriages. The mistress of that Eden-like home had been holding her weekly reception—not a garish ball or a weary crush of uncongenial people, but an assemblage of choice spirits, her most intimate friends, only fifty people all told; and now on the stroke of midnight, after two hours most charmingly spent, they were decorously taking their departure.

The echo of their gay voices came floating out on the orange-perfumed air as they lingered on the pillared portico.

“Oh, Mrs. de Vere, you must be proud of your husband. Such a hero! They say he saved two lives!”

“I am proud of him!” the musical voice of the fair hostess replied, with a note of tenderness breaking through its proud ring; then she bowed good-night to her friends and went back to the deserted drawing-room, around whose door hovered sleepy servants anxious to put out the lights, shut up the house and retire.

Their proud mistress paid no attention to them. She pushed to the door, and began to walk slowly up and down the floor, the rich Turkish carpet giving back no echo to the fall of her silken slippers.

A woman in the early prime of her rich beauty, thirty-three years old, but looking barely twenty-five—beauty is always young—tall, with a magnificent figure draped in black lace that set off with its somber elegance her peculiar type of beauty.

Red hair—rich, dusky auburn red, with soft natural waves in it from where it was drawn simply back from its parting on the low white brow to the loose coil at the back of the shapely head; the clear, colorless, dazzling skin that goes with such fiery locks; eyes of sparkling reddish hazel with full, white lids and long, curled lashes; a Grecian nose long enough to indicate decided characteristics; a rather large mouth, with thin red lips that could express cruelty when they chose, but whose smile could dazzle and betray—such she stood in her somber garb, with diamonds flashing on her bare white arms and throat, looking the siren that she was by right of beauty, passion and power, yet all inconsistency, capable of heights and depths, and predominated by something subtle and tigerish in her animal nature.

“Will he come to-night?” she muttered, half bitterly, as she paced from one end to the other of the splendid room. “It is more than two weeks since I came to our winter home in Jacksonville. Why did he wish to linger, unless it was to be rid of me, to be from his chains, as no doubt he calls them in his secret heart? What has he been doing all this time? I will not believe it was business, as he writes. Had he loved me as he pretends, he would have come with me; he—”

The door opened quickly, arresting the querulous complaint. She turned and saw her husband coming toward her with an eager face, and his name fell from her lips in a tone of mingled reproach and rapture:

“Norman!”

“Camille!” he answered, in a deep voice; and as he paused by her side his dark eyes swept the dazzling face searchingly, and somewhat plaintively, as if doubtful of a welcome.

But she flung herself upon his breast, and her round, white arms clasped his neck with passionate abandon.

His momentary doubt dispelled, he embraced her with an ardor equaling her own, and pressed kiss after kiss on her upturned face.

“You are glad to see me again, Camille,” he murmured, happily. “Ah! this pays for the dreary days of absence from your side.”

Mrs. de Vere half withdrew herself at those words from her husband’s arms, and looking up at him, cried out, reproachfully.

“If you had loved me you would not have stayed so long!”

“Did you miss me, darling?”

She pouted mutinously as a school-girl for an instant, then, as if impelled to the truth in spite of herself, hung her graceful head and murmured, bashfully:

“Yes—bitterly.”

Norman de Vere’s dark eyes beamed with a sort of loving triumph as he answered:

“It was to win this sweet confession that I stayed behind. I know that in your heart you love me well, but when I am with you constantly you madden me with your caprices and humors, your unfounded jealousies and wounding suspicions. Why, you never give me a loving word or an involuntary caress, and you degrade yourself and me with such cruel charges as I can scarcely endure. But when I am away from you, you judge me more kindly, perhaps, and so I find an intoxicating welcome awaiting me. It was no business that detained me, my darling. Maddened by your coldness and distain, I remained away from you, hoping you would think more kindly of me and meet me with just this charming welcome,” drawing her again into his arms and kissing the curved red lips with eager passion.

She returned his kisses ardently, murmuring the while:

“You were cruel—I love you so—I can not bear you out of my sight! I will not bear it—your taming me by so cruel an absence—as if I were a real shrew!”

“I will never do so again—that is—if you will always be like this,” he answered, feasting his eager eyes on the rare beauty of the face that lay against his breast, his tone almost pleading in its earnestness.

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes with a shadowed gaze.

“How can I promise you?” she asked, half resentfully, half sadly. “You do not make due allowance for me, Norman; yet you know well the miserable doubt of your love that turns me sometimes into a fury. How can I be quite, quite sure of your heart, remembering, as I do every hour of my life, that I am quite thirteen years older than you, and that the royal dower my father gave me might have tempted many a man to forget that disparity.”

There was sudden, swift anguish in his face and voice, bitter pain and humiliation in the tone with which he cried:

“Oh, my love, that old complaint again—and so soon, so cruelly soon! You do injustice to yourself and your own charms. It was yourself that won me, not your splendid dowry. For those few years between us, bah! I never remember them unless you remind me. If I had been Cophetua and you the beggar maid, I should have implored you to share my throne.”

“But you were only a boy when you married me—barely twenty. By and by your fancy will change—you will repent.”

“Hush! you will be in hysterics presently,” he said, warningly. “Come with me, darling. You will forget these morbid fancies when you see the sweet little pet I have brought you.”

He drew her into a small anteroom adjoining, and she saw on a velvet sofa, fast asleep, a golden-haired little fairy.

“It is a little child I rescued from the wrecked train,” he said. “I brought her home with me until I could find her friends.”

To his amazement, her thin red lips began to curl into the cruelest sneer.

“Are you displeased, Camille?” he asked, anxiously. “Why, I thought any woman would be delighted with so lovely a pet. I assure you she will win your heart as soon as you look into her sunny blue eyes.”

She flung off his caressing hand as if it were a serpent, and with blazing eyes, hissed out:

“A likely tale! Rescued from the wreck—ha! ha!”

“My God, Camille, what do you mean by your scorn?” he cried, aghast.

She turned on him like a beautiful tigress.

“I mean, Norman de Vere, that you can not deceive me with such a trumped-up tale! How dare you, dare you, think to bring home your base-born brat, issue of some shameless clandestine affair, to the shelter of this honest roof?”

CHAPTER IV.

Norman de Vere was by no means unacquainted with the passionate and jealous temper of his wife, having experienced its evil effects many times during the two years in which he had been her husband.

But her present outburst was so unexpected and so reasonless that he almost recoiled in terror from the fierce and angry glitter of the hazel eyes and the bitter sneer that distorted her lovely mouth.

He could not speak. Sheer indignation and amazement held him silent, and pointing a disdainful finger at him, the angry woman continued:

“No, I am not so easily duped as you expected! I know too much of the world and its wickedness! Your pretense is a very clever one, but I can see through it!”

“Good heavens!” the young man exclaimed, in a shocked voice. His dark eyes blazed with indignation.

She went on, sharply:

“I wish you to understand that that brat can not remain under this roof to-night! You will send it away at once!”

Norman de Vere, by humoring the caprices of a selfish woman, had made himself almost a slave to her despotic will. With her to speak had always been to be obeyed, and she expected no less now.

“But, Camille, think,” he said, remonstratingly. “The child has no friends that I know of. Her mother perished in the wreck. I saved the child’s life, and I must take care of her until I hear from her friends. The charge you bring against me is utterly without foundation. Look at the little one. She is at least four years old. Remember, I was but a boy when I married you, two years ago.”

“I have heard that you were very wild when you were at college,” she replied, tauntingly. “This, no doubt, is the outcome of your youthful folly. The wretched mother has no doubt deserted the child, and you, with a foolish sentimentality, dared bring it under this roof to rear. Or perhaps,” her voice rising almost to a shriek of rage, “you had a double purpose in bringing it here! You wished—wished,” with a hysterical sob, “to taunt me with my childlessness!”

He stood staring at the beautiful fury, asking himself in wonder if this could be the same woman who such a little while ago had lain in his arms, clasping his neck, and giving him kiss for kiss. It scarcely seemed possible; such a fury she looked now with her blazing eyes and distorted features quivering with jealous rage. Yet he had seen her before in fits of jealous anger that usually culminated in hysterics.

Dreading this effect, he endeavored to soothe her; but all in vain, and only his remonstrance that she would be overheard by the servants had any effect in moderating her loud, shrewish tones. But she reiterated, though in a lower voice, her resolve that the child should be sent immediately away.

Her furious tones had already awakened little Sweetheart. She sat up on the sofa without a word, staring drowsily from one to the other with her sleepy blue eyes under her tangle of golden curls.

Mrs. de Vere, in her fury of wrath, shook her jeweled fist threateningly in the child’s face, and the baby shrunk back with a startled cry.

“Camille!” cried her husband, sternly. He caught back her menacing hand. “Would you be cruel enough to strike that innocent baby?”

She laughed insanely.

“Yes, unless you take her away, and at once!” she answered, struggling to free herself.

But he held her firmly.

“You are mad!” he cried, hotly. “You exhaust my patience by your words and manners, which are alike disgraceful. I will no longer bear your exactions. The child shall remain here until her friends can be found. You force me to remind you that this house at least is mine—all that was left me when the war deprived me of my father, the brave soldier, who died for the South, and all our wealth. Here, at least, I am master, and here my poor little protégée shall find shelter!”

She was so dazed with his defiance that for a moment she could not speak, only writhe impotently under the firm but gentle grasp in which he held her wrist, while a low, hissing sound issued from her lips.

Little Sweetheart, who had been watching them in doubt and terror, now slipped down from the sofa, and running to her friend, clasped his leg tightly with her little arms, crying out through frightened tears:

“Oh, p’ease, p’ease, don’t hurt the yady! don’t make her ky!”

“Little angel!” he cried, and released the wrist he was holding.

Instantly Mrs. de Vere flung herself full length upon the floor, screaming and kicking in hysteria.

Norman de Vere picked up Sweetheart in his arms and strode to the door. He expected to find several frightened servants listening, and he was not mistaken.

“Your mistress is ill. Go in and attend to her at once,” he said to the French maid, whom he detected among them.

“Oui, monsieur,” answered Finette, with a courtesy of her capped head.

Then she ran in to her mistress, and Norman de Vere went up the broad, shallow stairs toward the sleeping apartments, still carrying the child.

A dim light burned in the upper hall. He knocked several times at a door near the head of the staircase, and presently a drowsy voice, sounding as if muffled among pillows, inquired:

“Who is that? What do you want?”

“It is Norman, mother. Can I see you, please?”

“Of course, my son;” and in a few moments the door opened and an elderly lady in a dressing-gown invited him in.

CHAPTER V.

“I hope you are well, mother?” the young man said, kissing her tenderly, and as the light fell on her face one saw features still handsome in spite of the silver hair that set off the blackness of her large eyes.

“Yes, I am well. And you, my dear son?” fondly; then she started in amaze: “Good gracious, Norman! where did you get that child?”

He would have laughed at her amazement if he had not been so perturbed by the exciting scene through which he had just passed. As it was, he sighed as he put Sweetheart gently down on a low ottoman.

“It is a child I saved from the wreck and brought home with me until I could find her friends, mother.”

“Oh, poor little one!” said the lady, tenderly. She sat down and held out her arms. “Come here, you little beauty, and let me kiss you.”

Sweetheart ran eagerly to her new friend and held up her rosebud mouth; then she climbed into the lady’s lap with childish confidence.

“Sweet’art so tired an’ s’eepy!” she sighed, dropping the curly head on that motherly breast.

“Poor little thing! she must be put to bed,” said Mrs. de Vere.

She undressed the weary, drowsy child and laid her gently down in her own bed. In a minute she was fast asleep.

“God bless you, dear little mother! Oh, what a relief this is to me!” exclaimed the young man.

“Was she so very troublesome?”

“No; I did not mean that. I—I—But, mother, perhaps you are too tired for me to talk to you to-night?”

“No, indeed: I could sit up for hours. But have you seen Camille yet?”

“Yes, I have seen her. I will describe to you, mother, the charming interview I have just held with my wife,” he replied, in tones of bitter mockery.

She listened while he went over the painful scene, and her eyes reflected the indignation that flashed from his.

“How could she be so unjust, so cruel? Oh, I never dreamed that the daughter of my old friend could be so jealous and so suspicious,” she cried, in real distress, for the mother knew that she was in some degree responsible for her son’s misery.

She had fostered and encouraged the boy’s passion for the mature siren.

The close of the war had left her an impoverished widow with an only son, and it had taxed her shallow resources to provide means for him to have an education such as befitted a De Vere who had some of the best blood of France as well as of the South in his veins. But she sent him to college, and it was on a visit home at Christmas that she took him to call on a lady who was wintering in Jacksonville—a Miss Acton—the daughter of an old friend of hers. Miss Acton was an orphan, and had inherited a million of dollars from her California father and a beautiful face from her mother. She was alone in Florida, except for her fashionable friends and her French maid. She told Mrs. de Vere, who had sought her out for her mother’s sake, that she was unmarried still, because she could put no faith in the disinterested love of any man.

Mrs. de Vere took her son with her when he came home at Christmas to call on the distrustful heiress. He was young and impressionable, and Camille Acton did not look twenty-five. Her beauty, her style, her Parisian costume, all combined made so strong an impression that he fell ardently in love, and as he had the beauty of an Adonis, it was no wonder that her fiery heart was thrilled in return. The ambitious mother saw all with astonishment and delight. She invited Miss Acton to winter at Castle Rackrent, as she often bitterly termed it, and between the two maneuvering women the fatal match was made.

A European tour followed upon the brilliant wedding that took place in a few months, and they remained abroad for a year, during which time the Jacksonville home was put into perfect repair and elegantly refurnished with the bride’s money for a winter residence. In due time they came back, but not before the boy had discovered that he had wedded a beautiful Xanthippe.

Camille de Vere had a jealous passion for the boy she had married that drove her into excesses of rage without reason. Added to this was a distrust of his love, a horror lest he had wedded her from a mercenary purpose alone, for with all her faults she was quite free from vanity. She hated her peculiar type of beauty, and she would not permit flattery. She believed it was addressed to the heiress, not the woman. Proud, jealous, despotic, she yet underrated her own attractions, and made herself wretched in consequence.

The bitterest taunt, the one that cut most deeply into the sensitive spirit of Norman de Vere, was one that she only ventured upon in the most towering flights of rage.

“You never loved me! You could not have cared for a woman thirteen years older than yourself, and with red hair. You married me for my money, and now you are trying to break my heart so that you may enjoy it without incumbrance!” she would cry out, coarsely; and all his protestations would be useless until she relented of herself, touched by his white face of misery. Then she would atone after her fashion by intervals of almost slavish devotion, and by costly gifts, trying to buy the forgiveness she was ashamed to beg.

Norman’s mother knew in her heart that by her ambition and her adroit management she had brought about this misery, but she dared not utter her repentance aloud. She knew that she had to remain perfectly neutral, or her rich daughter-in-law would find means to separate her from the son she idolized.

When she had heard Norman’s story, her motherly heart thrilled with indignation at the false and unjust charge brought against her idolized son.

Angry words rushed to her lips, but she crowded them back. She must not foment strife between husband and wife. The least she could do to atone for her share in their misery was to act the part of peace-maker.

She waited a few moments to quell the indignant words that swelled in her throat, then began to talk to her son in kind and soothing terms, making every excuse that she could for the erring wife.

“She was an only daughter. She has been spoiled all her life, and she can not know how her tempers appear to us. We must try to soften her by repeated kindnesses and by continual forgiveness,” she ended.

Her son’s eyes flashed darkly under the straight, black brows.

“I have already given up to her to the extent of debasing my manhood by almost dog-like humility,” he replied. “‘Forbearance has ceased to be a virtue,’ and the issue now raised between us may become a battle-ground on which her insolent pride of power must be humbled, for I shall never yield.”

“The issue?” she repeated.

“The child,” he replied.

“I do not quite understand,” she said.

“I mean that she has vowed that my protégée shall not pass the night beneath this roof. I am determined that Sweetheart shall remain until I restore her to her friends.”

The pale determination of his handsome face was so marked that she trembled with dread.

“But what if her friends should never be found? What then, Norman?”

“She would have to remain my protégée,” he replied, firmly.

She trembled at the firmness of his tone. Her prophetic mind saw endless vistas of perplexity and trouble looming dimly in the future. The thought came:

“Better, perhaps, if the child had perished with her mother!”

Then her heart smote her as a low, grieving sob broke from the little cherub in its sleep.

“Heaven forgive me!” Mrs. de Vere muttered to herself humbly.

Norman looked at her wistfully, and continued:

“I suppose you can not quite enter into my feelings, mother. I saved the little thing’s life, and somehow she almost seems to belong to me. You can not think how sweet and winning she is, too. What a sunshine she would make in this quiet old house!”

“You can not dream of adopting her!” she cried, appalled.

“Certainly not—under the circumstances,” he replied, grimly. He paused a moment, then added: “Otherwise, nothing would give me more pleasure than to claim my protégée as an adopted daughter.”

“You are mad!” she cried, in dismay.

“I do not think so,” he replied, gently. A slight flush crept up to his temples as he added: “I do not believe that my wife will ever give me a child of my own to love, yet it is but natural I should desire one.”

The same pang, the same regret had touched her own heart, but she had borne it in silence. The tears started to her eyes as she said:

“We must keep on hoping, keep on waiting. In any case, Norman, think no more of this wild fancy. It is impossible you should defy Camille in this affair. Take my advice and carry Sweetheart away early to-morrow to some friend who will take care of her until her friends are found. She will be safe with me to-night.”

“Safe!” he cried, in a startled tone. “Mother, you do not mean—”

“I mean nothing only that I will keep Sweetheart with me to-night, but that you must take her away to-morrow,” she replied, firmly, adding as he moved to the door: “Remember your first duty is to your wife. Go now and try to make your peace with her, dear boy.”

The dark eyes flashed.

“Good-night, mother,” he said, with sudden coldness, and went out.

The shrill screams that had gone with him up the stairway a little while before were silent now. He had heard a bustle in the hall shortly before, and he knew that the servants had carried their hysterical mistress upstairs. He went softly along the hall and tapped at the door.

It opened quietly. Mlle. Finette showed her sallow face, beady black eyes and smart cap in the crevice of the door.

“How is your mistress?” he asked.

“Vair mooch bettaire, and asleep, m’sieur.”

“Did she leave me any message?”

“Non, m’sieur; but she ordered me to stay by her bed all the night,” her eyes snapping maliciously.

“Very well,” he said, calmly, turning away and going down the hall toward the stairway.

He was eager to get into the open air. The house seemed stifling.

The night breeze struck coolly on his heated brow as he let himself out at the back door and walked wearily toward a beautiful grove of orange-trees now in the full glory of blossom and fruit. Their tropical fragrance blended deliciously with the odor of Maréchal Neil roses that clambered over a picturesque summer-house near at hand.

He went inside and sunk heavily into a rustic chair.

“My God, and this is the home-coming to which I have looked forward so longingly for two long weeks!” he muttered, with a laugh that was half self-mockery, half despair. Then a moment later: “Why did I battle so eagerly for life that night? Was it worth it?”

CHAPTER VI.

When Norman de Vere turned away from his wife’s door the maid locked it quickly, and crossed the room to the bedside of her mistress.

Mrs. de Vere had half risen from the luxurious nest of linen and lace, and with her wavy red locks falling backward like a veil, was leaning on her white elbow listening eagerly.

“He did not ask to see me, Finette?” she whispered, half longingly.

“Non, miladi—only about your health.”

“You told him I was asleep—that you were ordered to remain by me all night?”

“Oui, madame.”

“Finette, I wish you would quit your bad habit of falling into French. It is annoying, after the pains I took to have you taught good English years ago!” Mrs. de Vere cried out petulantly.

“Pardon, madame. C’est—that is, ’twas slip of the tongue,” Finette replied, meekly.

“Very well. Try to command your tongue. Now, tell me, what of the brat?”

“He left it with the old lady, madame, as I told you.”

“You heard nothing of what they said when you listened at the door?”

Finette’s beady black eyes glistened malevolently.

“Not vair mooch—they spoke too low,” she said. “As well as I could understand English—which I speak but imperfectly, madame—my master he complained bitterly of you. His mother she said it was one vair great shame you was so jealous and so cruel to him.”

The hazel eyes shot forth red lights of fury.

“Very well; I will pay her out for her interference!” she cried, in a hissing tone of rage; then she lay back on her pillow, gasping with anger.

“Oh, madame! these moder-in-laws they be marplots between the young married ones,” cried Finette, lugubriously.

Having cast this lighted match into the gunpowder of her lady’s wrath, the artful and malicious French maid became discreetly silent.

Her mistress too was very quiet. She was divided between bitter wrath and inconsistent pique. She had forbidden her husband’s presence, yet she fiercely resented the fact that he had not insisted on coming into the room—that he had taken her dismissal so calmly and gone away.

“If he had really loved me, he would have insisted on seeing me,” she burst out, bitterly, and the wily French maid answered:

“Madame, he loves you—be sure of that. But he is too young; that is my master’s great fault. He is just from his books; he understands not, like a man of the world, the caprice of the woman. He knows not that her no means yes, and that her stay out means come in.”

Mrs. de Vere flushed at hearing herself so correctly analysed by the crafty French maid, but she did not contradict her. She remained silent for a few minutes, and Finette waited patiently. At last:

“He defies me; his mother defies me; the ungrateful beggars that I raised from penury to wealth and luxury!” Mrs. de Vere burst forth, wrathful, unheeding the presence of the attendant. “They keep the little wretch here, despite the fact that I ordered him to take it away! Strange! Strange! But I will show them what stuff Camille de Vere is made of! Finette!”

“Madame!”

“Do you not believe with me that this mysterious child is Norman de Vere’s own?”

Finette shrugged her narrow shoulders expressively.

“Dear madame, if I agree to any of the hard things you uttaire against your husband now, you will be indignant with poor Finette when you make up your love quarrel with him.”

Finette had not attained the age of forty years without becoming a clever student of feminine nature. She was too astute to abuse her master. She knew well that the capricious woman before her would like her better for defending him.

Mrs. de Vere bit her lip and answered sharply:

“You are too pert, Finette; but it matters not what you believe—I have my own opinion, and it is unchangeable.”

“Pardon, dear madame,” replied the polite and indefatigable maid.

Mrs. de Vere scowled at her, but smiled a minute after, and asked eagerly:

“Finette, would you like to earn a hundred dollars to-night?”

“Only tell me how, madame!” cried the woman, her small black eyes glittering avariciously.

“Very well. Steal that child from my mother-in-law’s room, take it away from here and place it with some one who will keep it forever away from Norman de Vere, and I will pay you a hundred dollars in the morning.”

“But, madame, it is so late! It is now long past the midnight hour. There is scarce time.”

“‘Where there is a will there is a way,’” Mrs. de Vere replied, sagely.

“Let me think,” said Mlle. Finette.

She stood so long with down-dropped eyes that Mrs. de Vere cried impatiently:

“I will make it two hundred if you will consent, Finette, and I will always be grateful to you for helping me to outwit these tyrants who have tried to impose upon me with their infamous plot.”

Finette smiled.

“I will try,” she said.

Mrs. de Vere showered praises upon her confederate, and then Finette bent down, whispering a question that made her mistress recoil with blanched cheeks.

“Ah, no, no! not that!” she cried, with a horrified gesture of her white hand. “Only let me be rid of her—that is all I ask.”

“Very well, madame—as you wish it, of course. I think I know the woman that will do what you want—a wretched old miser of a rag-picker. But she lives a long way from here. If I might have your saddle-horse—”

“You are welcome to it.”

“Oh, many thanks, madame! The little one will be asleep, you see. I shall have to chloroform both her and the old lady to get her, you know.”

“Do not annoy me with the details. Only do your task as silently and efficiently as possible, and look to me for your reward as soon as you return!” Mrs. de Vere exclaimed, with haughty impatience.

“I go then at once,” Finette answered, in a cringing tone.

“My blessings and my thanks go with you!” exclaimed her wayward mistress.

“I don’t know about that,” the clever maid muttered, when she found herself alone in the darkness of the hall. “You’re a capricious one as ever I see. Maybe by to-morrow you’ll make up your quarrel with your boy-husband and want to undo all I’ve done to please you to-night.”

She crept softly along the hall, and knelt down and applied her ear to the key-hole at the old lady’s door. There came to her distinctly the deep breathing of one asleep.

“Deep in the arms of Morpheus!” she muttered, grimly. “And she never locks her door at night. Come, I do not think I’m going to have vair mooch trouble getting the brat away.”

She slid along the floor and went softly down-stairs to prepare for her evil errand. To do so she had to go out to the stables to saddle a horse.

As she was going softly past the summer-house, she started on coming face to face with a female figure in white with a shawl thrown over its head.

“Oh, Miss Finette, don’t holler, please! ’Tain’t nobuddy but Nance! I’se been to an ebenin’ party, an’ gwine to slip inter de back do’ easy,” half whispered the voice of one of the negro house-maids.

“I don’t know but I ought to report you to the housekeeper, Nance, for keeping such late hours,” Finette answered, jokingly.

“Per’aps I’ll ’port you to your young missus fer de same t’ing!” cried Nance.

“‘Sh! I was fooling, Nance. I had to come out for some fresh air before I went to bed. I’ve been up all night with my lady.”

“In ’nuther tantrum?” inquired Nance, intelligently.

“Yes.”

“Whut’s up now?”

“Master came to-night, and they quarreled as usual.”

“I wonder he don’t leave her for good and all, she’s so aggervating, and he’s the most patientest soul alive,” cried the house-maid, indignantly.

“Well, she is a high one,” giggled Finette, some secret memory seeming to amuse her. Presently she said, confidentially: “Well, she’s been in an outrageous temper since yesterday morning.”

“Fer why?” queried Nance.

“Well, she was looking in the glass at herself, and whatever do you think she found?”

“Oh, whut?” gasped Nance, breathless with eagerness.

Finette, whose coarse, unscrupulous nature always took revenge in private for the snubs her mistress often gave her, giggled softly again and answered:

“The first gray hair in that red hair of hers.”

“Oh, my! she is a-gitten old.”

“Yes; and she cut a caper, I tell you! Actually threw herself down and cried like somebody was dead. Then she got up, glared at herself, and made me pull the gray hair out and burn it in a hurry. She was as cross as could be after that.”

“Lordy!” giggled Nance, who had no love for her young mistress.

“Yes, indeed,” said Finette. “Oh, it cuts her to be so much older than the boy she married. She hates it. She’s as jealous as—a—a—tigress!” said Finette. “But it’s cool, ain’t it? Let’s go in,” and she turned back, saying to herself: “I’ll have to slip out after she’s abed, drat her!”

They both vanished, and the next moment Norman de Vere appeared in the door-way of the summer-house, from whose shelter he had heard every word that had passed outside.

His eyes blazed with indignation, and it was with difficulty that he had restrained himself from confronting the treacherous maid and sternly rebuking her for her flippancy.

“The coarse, ungrateful, shameless creature! It is thus that she repays the confidence her mistress has reposed in her for years!” he thought, and he resolved that to-morrow Camille should hear the story, when he did not doubt that she would rid herself of the woman.

Although smarting with resentment at the false and cruel charge Camille had brought against him, Norman de Vere was touched to the heart by the fact that Finette had betrayed. The story of her grief at finding in her rich, abundant tresses the first gray hair had a deep pathos for the man who loved Camille still, in spite of her caprices and cruelties.

As he thought of her weeping over her misfortune before the hard, unsympathetic eyes of the secretly amused French maid, he forgot for a moment his own grievances; his manly heart grew warm with pitying love.

“Poor Camille! Poor darling!” he murmured, “how cruelly sensitive she is over the slight disparity between our years! It is because she loves me well, in spite of her morbid fancies, and I wish I had been with her yesterday, instead of Finette, when she found that little silver thread. I would have taken her in my arms and kissed that hair so many times she would not have had the heart to remove it from her shining tresses. Perhaps she is grieving over it now, and I might comfort her. I will go to her now; I will risk another rebuff in the endeavor to make peace with that proud heart,” turning hurriedly toward the house.

CHAPTER VII.

Clever Finette found out long before she was summoned to dress her mistress next morning that a reconciliation had most probably taken place between the young husband and his jealous wife, and she was surprised to find her when she entered in one of her most captious moods. She made herself as disagreeable as possible, and when Finette was brushing out the splendid lengths of her waving hair, burst out suddenly:

“If you find another gray hair, Finette, you need not gossip with Nance over it, taking ungrateful pleasure in ridiculing the mistress to whom you owe everything.”

“Madame!”

For once the wicked, imperturbable maid was taken by surprise. The ivory-backed brush fell from her nervous hand, and she recoiled in fear, realizing that her mistress had found her out for once.

“Madame!” she exclaimed, shrilly, and Mrs. de Vere answered, angrily:

“You understand me. I know all your malicious gossip to the negro house-maid last night.”

“So Nance has been telling lies on me, madame? I thought you trusted your faithful Finette better than to listen to those miserable negroes, my lady,” reproachfully.

“Go on with my hair,” Mrs. de Vere answered, shutting her red lips with an angry click. She spoke no more until the last hairpin was pushed into the wavy coil of shining hair.

“Well, did you succeed?” she inquired, in a low, significant voice.

“Yes, madame. The leetle one is far away—far away and safe. Monsieur will nevaire find her again.”

“That is well. You shall have your reward,” Mrs. de Vere said, coldly. She waited until Finette, with a rather sulky face, had finished dressing her in an exquisite morning-dress of soft white mull and lace, with a quantity of fluttering pale-green ribbons; then she unlocked a drawer in her dressing-case, and took out a purse from which she counted out two hundred dollars into the eager hands of the avaricious maid.

“You are paid now for what you did last night; and remember you are to hold your tongue about that forever,” she said.

Finette protested that the secret should never pass her lips.

All this time Mrs. de Vere had been trembling with suppressed anger, which now she could hold in no longer. She turned angrily toward Finette, and cried:

“Now I am going to pay you a month’s wages in advance and discharge you!”

“Discharge me, madame? Oh!” cried Finette, in amazement.

“Yes—for your odious tattling last night. You ridiculed me—held me up to the derision of my own servants—and I shall punish you by discharging you without a character!” Mrs. de Vere retorted, violently.

“And all for the lies of that black hussy, Nance! Oh, madame! I nevaire could have believed this, after all my years of faithful service. But I shall punish the false negress—I will pull the black wool from her head!” stormed Finette, in a towering rage, and in a mixture of French and English impossible to transcribe.

“Be silent! How dare you behave so rudely in my presence?” cried Mrs. de Vere, with a stamp of her slippered foot, her hazel eyes flashing indignantly.

“But such lies! How can I bear it? Not a word of truth in it! That Nance envies me—lies to get me out of my place and turned away homeless. But I will tear her eyes out!” hissed Finette, viciously.

Mrs. de Vere smiled scornfully at the theatrical gestures of the excited French woman.

“You can spare yourself all these denunciations of the poor house-maid,” she said, impatiently. “It was not she who betrayed you; it was my husband, who was sitting in the rose arbor and overheard you and Nance.”

Finette stared—then leered.

“In the rose arbor! Ah, but that is strange!” she cried. “Why, it was just outside the rose arbor I met Nance. The hussy! she told me she had just come from a party. She led me on to talk about you, and all the time laughing in her sleeve, knowing he was there!”

The wicked significance of her looks and tones were most insulting to her mistress. Mrs. de Vere flushed burning red up to her temples.

“Be silent, you miserable wretch! How dare you traduce my husband?” she exclaimed.

“You traduced him yourself last night,” muttered Finette, sulkily.

Mrs. de Vere chose not to hear the retort, and continued:

“Nance did not know my husband was in the arbor.”

“Oh, certainly not, madame,” Finette replied, with a sneer; but her mistress took no notice and went on:

“Mr. de Vere was so indignant at your treachery that he came at once to tell me, and he desired me to send you away this morning.”

“Monsieur is very kind,” said Finette, with a ghastly smile. “I will try to forgive him. I will repay good for evil.”

Mrs. de Vere gave a slight start—the tone was so significant.

“When does monsieur wish me to go?” added Finette, plaintively.

“To-day,” curtly.

“And you, madame?” more plaintively still.

“I agree with my husband,” Mrs. de Vere replied, still smarting under the pangs of wounded pride, and quite ignoring the gratitude she had professed for Finette last night.

She could remember nothing but the fierce shame and anger that had thrilled her when she heard how Finette had held her up to the coarse ridicule of her negro servant.

“Very well,” said Finette, courtesying with pretended meekness; then she whimpered: “Oh, madame! let me stay. I will never tattle again.”

“I wish you to go. No pleading will move me to retain you in my service after your treachery of last night,” was the cold reply.

A malicious light crept into the beady black eyes beneath the downcast lids, and Finette crept servilely toward the door.

“I am very sorry,” she murmured, audibly; then, as if struck by a sudden thought: “Oh, I think I can undo some of my bad work of last night. I will go to monsieur; I will confess—”

“What?” quavered a frightened voice close beside her, and Mrs. de Vere clutched her arm. “What is it you are going to confess to my husband?” she demanded.

Finette turned upon her boldly.

“The abduction of his child at your instigation, miladi,” she replied, with insolent triumph, and she felt herself well revenged for Mrs. de Vere’s contempt when she saw how she had frightened the proud beauty.

The haughty woman recoiled in horror, her cheek grew ashen pale, her hazel eyes darkened and dilated with fear.

Finette smiled maliciously when she saw that she had reduced her domineering mistress to a condition of speechless fear and indignation. She waited a moment, and then continued, coolly:

“You see you are in my power, madame. Turn me away, and you make me desperate. I have always pitied monsieur for the match he made, and I will do him one good turn before I go by telling him what you made me do last night.”

“I paid you well—you promised to keep it a secret forever!” Mrs. de Vere uttered, reproachfully.

“‘A bad promise is better broken than kept,’” quoted Finette, with airy unconcern and audacity.

“What is it that you wish me to do then? Give you a good character when you leave, that you may deceive some other woman?” inquired Mrs. de Vere, angrily.

“You will keep me in your service, please,” was the unblushing reply.

“As the price of your silence?”

“As you please, madame,” with a mocking courtesy; and Mrs. de Vere now realized fully that from henceforth Finette was the mistress, herself the slave. Her secret had placed her entirely at the unscrupulous woman’s mercy.

With a sinking heart she cried:

“What am I to tell my husband?”

“Say that Finette begged a thousand pardons, wept, tore her hair, refused to be comforted until you promised to forgive her and try her again.”

Mrs. de Vere could not repress a slight smile at the cool impudence of the creature.

“Stay, then, and try to hold your tongue in future,” she said, ungraciously, and Finette pretended the most abject gratitude, ending with:

“After all, dear madame, what could you do without your poor Finette? Who could dress you so as to set off to the best advantage your exquisite face?”

Mrs. de Vere knew that Finette spoke the truth. If she had sent her away she would have sorely missed her, but she was too angry and too humiliated to own her dependence. She waved her hand without reply, and swept down-stairs in search of her husband.

He was waiting for her in the breakfast-room. She went up to him and said:

“I find it impossible to get rid of that treacherous Finette. She has begged a thousand pardons, and entreated me to try her again. After all, Norman, I could not do any better if I sent her away. Another servant would be just as deceitful, and would not have the advantage that Finette has of knowing all my ways.”

“Please yourself,” he answered, a little coldly.

CHAPTER VIII.

The entrance of a servant with breakfast hindered further conversation. They took their places, and Mrs. de Vere poured her husband’s coffee. She saw him glance inquiringly at his mother’s vacant chair, and said, carelessly:

“Mrs. de Vere sleeps late this morning.”

A thought of little Sweetheart came to both, but neither uttered it aloud. Last night they had patched up a weak fabric of peace, and both shrunk from the mention of the child’s name.

But Norman de Vere remembered that he had kept his mother awake so late last night that she was tired and weary this morning; so, without any uneasiness over her absence, he finished his breakfast and followed his wife out into the beautiful grounds. She, with the guilty consciousness upon her that as soon as he returned to the house he must find out the absence of his protégée, detained him as long as she could, winding about him anew the siren fetters in which she had bound him two years ago.

“Oh, Camille! how charming you are to-day!” he cried. “You make me almost forget last night. Oh, if only—”

He paused and sighed.

“If only what?” she asked, with a slight frown.

“If only you would be reasonable—if you would repent your absurd suspicions of me last night, and show a woman’s pity for that poor, motherless child,” he said, gently, pleadingly.

She hung down her head, and a slight smile parted her scarlet lips. He thought it was one of tender yielding; he did not dream it was of diabolical triumph.

“Camille!” he cried, eagerly.

Her smiling hazel eyes lifted to his, and she held out her slender, beautiful white hand all glittering with costly rings. He took it and pressed it fondly to his warm lips.

“You relent, my darling?” he exclaimed; and she answered, with a coquettish glance:

“How can I refuse you anything, Norman? You always conquer my will in the end.”

He caught her to his breast, showering thanks and kisses upon her, thankful that the disagreement of last night had not brought about a lasting breach between himself and Camille.

As for her, she despised herself for her double-dealing; yet she would have done the same thing over again, and deep down in her heart there remained the same jealous resentment for the stand he had taken against her last night. She glossed it over with smiles and caresses, but the anger was there still—“the little rift within the lute.”

All unsuspecting, the young lover-husband accepted her pretended relenting for the truth, and entreated her to go with him at once to his mother’s room.

“It is so lovely out here that I hate to go in,” she said, with a sweet, languid smile, for her breath began to come in faint, panting gasps. “Suppose you go, Norman, and bring your little pet out here?”

He agreed to do so, and with a parting caress turned away. Beautiful, guilty Camille sunk into a seat, panting with fear.

“Oh, what will he say? Will he be very angry? Will he suspect me?” she asked of her wildly beating heart.

She knew that she had done wrong, but not for worlds would she have restored the child to her husband, and not for worlds would she have had him cognizant of her sin. All her anxiety was for herself, and she cared nothing for the fate of the lovely child that she had consigned to the hard mercies of Finette.

“I do not care what becomes of it so that it never crosses my path again!” she thought, vindictively, and just then she lifted her eyes and saw her husband before her.

“Why didn’t you bring the little one with you?” she asked, with pretended anxiety.

“Camille, I do not know what to think. Little Sweetheart is gone. She disappeared in some mysterious fashion last right,” he answered, with a groan.

“Norman!” amazedly.

“It is true,” he said. “I found my mother in the greatest distress. She had slept later than usual this morning, and when she awoke the child was gone.”

“Gone!” she echoed, faintly.

“Yes. She thought at first that the little one had slipped out and gone down-stairs, but on making inquiries she could find no trace of her anywhere.”

“I would have the grounds searched. She may be a somnambulist. Perhaps she has wandered off somewhere in her sleep,” suggested his wife.

“Perhaps so,” he said, then he looked at her keenly. “Camille, I am tormented with a dreadful suspicion!” he exclaimed.

“A sus—picion!” she faltered, growing deathly pale.

“Yes.”

“Of—of—whom?” she asked, in feeble, halting accents.

“Of—alas! that I must speak it—of my mother!”

She started and drew a long breath of relief.

“Last night,” he continued, “I told my mother frankly of your opposition to my keeping the child. I could see that she took your part against me. She advised me to take the child away, but allowed me to persuade her to keep it till this morning. What if my mother, out of a mistaken sense of loyalty to you, Camille, has spirited away Sweetheart, lest she should stir up strife between us?”

Her heart leaped with joy as she realized that it was his mother, not herself or Finette, whom he suspected. No pity stirred her heart for the kind mother-in-law of whose loyalty to herself she had just been assured by Norman. She caught eagerly at the loop-hole of escape opened to her by Norman’s suspicions.

“Your theory looks plausible,” she said. “It was very kind of her to take my part, but perhaps she will restore the child when she learns that I have changed my mind about it.”

CHAPTER IX.

A week passed away, and again it was the night of Mrs. de Vere’s weekly reception.

The magnificent house was ablaze with light, and a band of music in the broad hall filled the air with strains of sweetest music.

In the drawing-room the friends of the hostess—fair women and gallant men—were dispersed in social groups, having just returned from the supper-room.

Mrs. de Vere was looking stately and beautiful as usual in a costume of trailing dead-white silk, with a necklace of pearls. The trying costume was relieved by the warm hue of her eyes and hair, and her admirers declared that she was looking her loveliest.

The mother-in-law, too, stately old lady that she was, came in for her share of admiration. Her handsome, high-bred face, with its large, dark eyes and frame of wavy, white hair, gave her a very distinguished air, and her black silk dress with point-lace fichu and diamond pin were very becoming.

But the handsome old face was clouded with pain and grief this evening, for in some way she had become aware of her son’s suspicions, and her loving heart was almost broken by his coldness. Her eyes followed him wistfully as he stood apart from her, trying to do his part in the gay scene, but with a brooding trouble in his deep, dark eyes, for the fate of little Sweetheart rested heavily on his mind.

In the week that had elapsed since the child’s disappearance, no clew to her whereabouts had been discovered. Unknown to any one, he had placed a clever detective on her track, but as yet he had received no tidings, and the suspense began to grow unbearable.

The lovely, winning child had wound herself around his heart in the two days when she had been his sole care. He who had saved her life felt himself responsible to her friends for her safe guardianship.

Already he had had inserted in several newspapers the story of the finding of the child and her mother’s tragic death. He hoped by this means to find Sweetheart’s friends.

But as days went by bringing no news from those to whom the child belonged, he began to feel a sort of relief at the silence, for if any one came to claim her, what was he to do, how answer for her loss?

To-night he was restless and ill at ease in spite of the fact that his capricious wife had been all sunshine for a week. Somehow her smiles and gayety seemed heartless, for she showed no anxiety, no sympathy over the loss that weighed so heavily on his conscience.

He glanced at her as she stood, the center of an admiring group, tall, stately, queen-like in her rich dress and jewels, and turning away with a heavy sigh, sought the seclusion of the grounds, eager for a few moments of solitude that he might drop the conventional smile that social courtesy demanded.

How sweet and cool and silent it was out there in the beautiful moonlight among the flowers! He drew a long breath and murmured:

“Ah, Little Sweetheart, where are you to-night? Are you living or dead? What would I not give to feel your soft little arms about my neck again, and see your sunny blue eyes looking into mine!”

Suddenly he saw the tall figure of a man advancing up the path toward the house. He thought he recognized him, and went hastily forward. It was, as he had thought, the detective he had employed to trace the missing child.

The man lifted his hat with a cry of pleasure.

“Ah, Mr. de Vere, I should not have ventured in so late, but I saw that you were entertaining company, so I thought I would wait about the grounds in the hope of seeing you.”

“You have news?” the young man exclaimed, eagerly.

“Yes. I have found the little girl.”

CHAPTER X.

The guests were beginning to take leave. Already their gay farewells floated out upon the air of the night where Norman de Vere had been walking alone since the detective had left him.

He went back to the house, deathly pale, but calm.

When the last good-night had been uttered, when the echo of the carriage wheels had died away in the distance, the young man turned back into the house.

His mother and his wife were going up the broad stairway to their rooms. He called them back.

“I wish to speak with you in the library,” he said.

His face was so white, his eyes so stern that they followed him in awe-struck silence. He locked the door and placed chairs for both.

Beautiful Camille began to grow a little frightened. She cried out, half defiantly:

“I wish you would wait till morning, Norman. I am tired and sleepy.”

She flung herself indolently back in her chair, with her white arms upraised over her head, yawning lazily.

Her husband paid no attention to her complaint. He had fallen on one knee before his mother. He lifted her soft, white hand to his lips.

“Mother, I have deeply wronged you. Forgive me!” he exclaimed.

“My son,” she faltered.

“I am ashamed to confess it; but perhaps you have suspected—I feared—nay, believed—that you, out of sympathy with Camille, had hidden Little Sweetheart away from me.”

Yes, she had suspected—had guessed his thought—had grieved in silence over his proud coldness to her, his mother. She could not answer now save by a low, pained sob.

Still on his knees before the gentle mother he had wronged, he turned his face toward Camille.

“I was base enough to confide my suspicions to you,” he said, bitterly. “You, Camille, fostered and encouraged them. To save yourself you turned traitor to her who was your mother’s dearest friend, and who for that at least should have been sacred from your treachery. What have you to say for yourself?”

“That I am no worse than you. You first suggested it to me. It—it seemed plausible!” Camille replied, with a defiant face.

A low groan broke from him, and he gazed at her for a moment in steady scorn; then he turned back to the agitated elderly woman.

“Mother, I wronged you,” he said again, in a voice of deep contrition. “Can you forgive me?”

“Freely, Norman,” she replied, tenderly.

“If this was all you wanted, it might have waited until to-morrow. Unlock that door; I am going,” Camille said, sharply, eager to escape, for she began to fear that his suspicions were now directed against herself.

He did not obey her haughty command, but rising, stood looking at her, his arms folded over his breast, a gleam of fierce anger in his eyes.

“You will wait a moment,” he said. “I have news for you. The missing child is found.”

“Really!” she sneered; but an icy shudder shook her from head to foot, and a silent malediction against Finette’s bungling trembled on her lips.

“Yes, she is found, Camille,” he said. “And, oh, Camille, Camille, imagine my feelings when I found that you had deceived me—that you were the guilty party!”

“How dare you accuse me?” she stormed, springing to her feet, wrathfully beautiful, determined to brave it out to the end; but he answered her with that smile that was half sorrow, half scorn:

“Denials are useless. You worked through Finette, your diabolical French maid. She took the child from my mother’s arms while she slept. She went on horseback with her captive to one of the worst quarters of Jacksonville, where she gave her to a miserable, brutal old rag-picker, who has half starved that innocent little angel, beaten her till she is covered with stripes, and forced her to stand in the streets and beg for her food! Oh, my wife! how little I dreamed that you could be capable of such cruelty!”

While he spoke the guilty woman stood her ground, facing him defiantly, her white face twitching with sneers, her jeweled hands clinching and unclinching themselves in impotent wrath, as the young man went on, scathingly:

“It is no wonder you will not part with your clever maid. She is too useful to you. But her time has come now. She shall go!”

“Norman!” cried his mother, beseechingly; but neither of them heeded her. Camille was crying passionately:

“Who is my accuser?”

“The detective whom I employed to unravel the mysterious affair. He dragged it out of the miserable old rag picker with whom Finette made her bargain.”

She stood still a moment, looking at the white set face of the man she loved with such jealous passion, and a feeling like death stole over her at the thought of losing him.

Despite all her caprices, all her taunts, all her jealous madness, she knew that Norman de Vere had loved her well and truly in their two stormy years of wedded life, and she, ah! she—she adored him in her wild, strange fashion. To lose his love were to lose heaven, she thought, impiously.

Yet in the dark, burning eyes that he fixed on her face, in the curl of his beautiful lips she read something that she feared and dreaded—the dawning of that hour when, goaded by her injustice, her jealousy, her cruelty, he should throw off the fetters of love that bound him, and regret the fatal hour that made their two lives one.

As white as death she stood facing him, wondering how she should extricate herself from her terrible strait, how escape from the web of fate her own reckless hands had spun, for escape she must, or bear his stinging contempt to her life’s end.

The passionate, undisciplined creature flung her jeweled hands up to her face, and her slender, graceful figure shook for a moment like a leaf in a storm, then as suddenly she withdrew them, and, with a gesture of infinite pathos, fixed her blazing eyes upon the face of the angry man.

“This from you, Norman—this from you? Oh, Heaven, it is too cruel!” she cried out in accents of reproach and pain.

He did not answer; he stood staring at her dumbly, while she continued:

“Poor indeed must be the quality of your love for me if you can credit such a charge against my honor!”

“There is proof,” he answered, icily.

“There is no proof! There can not be, for I am not guilty of this thing!” she cried out, wildly. “Oh, send for Finette! Surely there is some horrible mistake.”

He crossed to the door and said something to a servant in the hall.

In a few moments Finette made her appearance among them, and the door was again shut and locked.

“Oh, miladi, are you ill again?” cried the deceitful French woman, pretending the liveliest anxiety.

She went eagerly forward to Mrs. de Vere, and a swift, telegraphic glance passed between the two unnoticed by the others.

“No, Finette, I am not ill. It is worse—far worse! My honor is assailed! We are charged—you and I—with being the parties who abducted that child from Verelands a week ago!”

“Oh, miladi!” recoiling in amazement.

“Do you not understand, Finette? My husband employed a detective to find the child. He succeeded in doing so, and now declares that you were the abductor, and that you were doing my bidding. Speak, Finette; tell our accusers that we are innocent.”

Her burning hazel eyes seemed to shoot red lights of indignation and fury, and clever Finette caught the clew at once.

“Oh, my mistress! who has dared accuse you?” she exclaimed, calculating rapidly that if she cleared her mistress from this charge, unlimited opportunities of blackmail lay before her in the future. She assumed an appearance of virtuous indignation, and went on: “I will confess all, miladi! I took the child away, indeed, but I swear it was not done at your bidding. You suspected nothing; but Finette, in her devotion to her mistress, took on herself the responsibility of the abduction. Alas! it has failed, and I am désolé. You will never forgive me—you will drive me from you!”

“Yes, Finette, I will send you away to-morrow. Your sin is too great for me to pardon. Oh! how could you think to please me by so vile a deed?” Camille exclaimed, angrily.

“Miladi, I beg ten thousand pardons! It was a mistake. I thought to serve you, but I erred. I will go to-night. But, sir”—turning to her master—“Mrs. de Vere had nothing to do with that—I swear it. Punish me, but not her; she is innocent.”

He turned to Camille, and saw tears standing thick in her lovely eyes.

“You wronged me,” she said, sadly, reproachfully. He stood undecided, doubting, and she went on, in the same sad voice: “I am innocent, Norman. To prove it, I bid you bring the child back here to Verelands, and no mother could be kinder to her child than I will be to your pretty little protégée. I was mad with jealousy that night, and scarce knew what I said. Whatever wild words I uttered, I take them all back and crave your pardon.”

Her sweet humility, her tender yielding, did what all her defiance had failed in—they melted the ice about his heart. One moment he gazed in silence, then, springing to her side, clasped her closely to his breast, exclaiming, gladly:

“Forgive me, darling, for my unjust suspicions! I will atone for them by deeper devotion than in the past.”

CHAPTER XI.

Norman de Vere did not dream of the depths of duplicity hidden in his wife’s nature. He believed that she was honest in the repentance she professed, and accordingly he had Little Sweetheart brought back the next day to the home from which she had been so rudely torn by the wily French maid, whom Mrs. de Vere had now sent into brief exile to carry out the plot by which she had saved her guilty mistress.

A great change had been wrought in the pretty child by her week with the wretched, heartless old rag-picker. Beaten and starved, her pretty clothes taken from her and replaced with filthy rags, she was a pitiable object when she returned to Verelands, and the big blue eyes staring out of the wan little face were bright with fever. She was given a warm bath, clothed in new and pretty garments, and laid in a little bed beside that of Norman’s mother. There she lay for weary weeks, consumed by scarlet fever. Norman’s wife fled in terror to a fashionable hotel, leaving her mother-in-law to nurse the little invalid, quite ignoring all the protestations she had made so recently.

“I have never had the fever; I should die if I contracted it!” she cried, wildly; and although Norman tried to explain to her that grown people rarely contracted the disease, she paid no attention.

“I am going; you must come with me,” she said, imperiously.

“And desert my mother and the child?” he asked, reproachfully.

“Your first duty is to me,” she exclaimed, throwing her superb arms about his neck and kissing him with pleading fondness.

She conquered, and carried him off in her train, although he said:

“I shall come back to Verelands every day to help my mother. I had scarlet fever when I was a child, so I am not afraid of it.”

She insisted that he would carry the contagion in his clothes.

“I will always change them before entering your presence,” he said; and then she saw that he was obstinately bent upon his purpose. No words of hers, no blandishments, although he loved her dearly, could turn him from what he conceived to be his duty.

She had to acquiesce with smiles, although she was furious with secret rage. She dared not push him to the wall.

“But I will punish him for this in my own fashion,” she raved, wildly, when alone, clinching her jeweled hands in impotent rage, hating and loving Norman de Vere in one and the same moment, so wild was her jealousy, so fierce her love.

“It is his child! Who could doubt it after this?” she muttered. “For naught else would he run so great a risk—for naught else would he defy my wishes. He loves the little beggar—loved her mother, perhaps—and out of some foolish remorse is trying to atone for his sin by devotion to the child. Oh! how I hate the little wretch! I hope it may die of the fever! If only I had the courage to stay and pretend to nurse it, I should give it such careless attention it could not possibly live!”

But she was too great a coward to remain and take the risk of contracting the fever. She thought of recalling Finette to take the place of nurse to Sweetheart, but the fear of opposition to her plan deterred her from carrying it into execution.

“Norman would not approve—might refuse my request. I must give that up, and only wish the brat dead,” she muttered, shrinking sensitively from the thought of committing a crime, and little dreaming how soon those jeweled white hands would be stained crimson with human blood.

CHAPTER XII.

The gay season was just beginning at the fashionable hotel where the De Veres had taken rooms, and Norman’s wife proved a great acquisition to the social circle. Scores of Northerners were arriving every day, fleeing from wintery blasts to the blue skies and warm airs of the Southland, and in the brilliant coterie of fashion and intellect combined she became at once a leader by right of her royal dower of wealth, beauty, and fascination.

And her husband?

He veered back and forth between Verelands and his capricious wife. All the time that he could snatch from the exacting Camille was spent with his mother and the little child whose disease had assumed such a malignant form, and whose life was wavering in a balance so evenly cast that at any moment it might drop her into the yawning grave.

“Is it not sad, poor little one! to have been saved from the wrecked train and the perils of the river, only to die like this?” Norman’s mother said to him, with tears in her eyes, one day as they hovered over the little couch where Sweetheart lay muttering in delirium, her skin covered with patches of the scarlet eruption, her pretty golden curls cropped short by the doctor’s orders, her heavy blue eyes half shut and recognizing no one—strange contrast to the lovely, coquettish little fairy whose baby wiles had won their way to the young man’s heart.

“Mother!” he cried out, in a pained, incredulous tone, and she answered, sadly:

“She is very ill, Norman. It is the malignant type of fever, and it is but very seldom any one recovers from it. Doctor Hall is doing his best, I know, but from his face to-day I do not believe he has much hope.”

His handsome face grew pale, and by the pang that pierced his heart he realized how dear the child had grown to him—dear as a little sister. From his stricken heart there arose a silent prayer:

“Dear Lord, spare this sweet little life. Amen!”

“You have heard nothing of her friends yet, Norman?”

“Nothing,” he answered, huskily; then stood silent, looking down at the poor little creature, who in her delirium was trying to sing her favorite song, but the sweet loving words rose hoarse and tuneless from the sore and swollen throat.

“It is very strange that we can hear nothing of her friends,” Mrs. de Vere said, thoughtfully. “Poor little darling! she will have to lie in an unnamed grave.”

“Don’t, mother—you hurt me,” the young man said, pleadingly.

He was scarcely more than a boy, and could not control his emotion. With a long, deep sigh he added:

“I have so longed that she should live to be a dear little sister to me. You know, mother, how I always wished for a sister’s love.”

“I thought you had got over that—since you married,” she said, with some uneasiness.

Somehow the thought of his fondness for Sweetheart was not pleasant to his mother. There hung over her always the dread of Camille’s jealous anger. She said to herself:

“Foolish boy! He does not understand his wife, else he would not display such fondness for the child she hates.”

But she dared not breathe her thoughts aloud, lest he should reproach her for her share in his marriage. Her cue was silence.

He did not answer her half-questioning words save by a long, deep sigh, and presently he went away from the darkened room and the suffering child back to his beautiful wife, who was so deep in a flirtation with a new-comer at the hotel that she barely nodded to Norman, and did not think it worth her while to ask after the welfare of the sick child. The only news she would have cared to hear would have been that Sweetheart was dead.

The proud, passionate, undisciplined nature was bent now on punishing Norman for every jealous pang she had suffered over innocent Little Sweetheart. To wound him with her indifference, to torture him by the smiles she gave to others, in this she found a bitter balm for the indignity she felt she had suffered at his hands when he had taken Sweetheart’s part against her—his wife.

He sat apart with sad eyes and watched the beautiful, vivid creature as she coquetted with the flattered Englishman whose admiration was plainly written on his face, and wondered if it could be true that she really loved him, her boy-husband, or had she wearied of him long ago? Did she chafe at the fetters that bound their two lives in one?

“I believe that in her heart she despises me; that she believes me a miserable fortune-hunter, who loves her gold more than her charms,” he said to himself, miserably, with a pang of shame so great that it seemed to him he could almost have died to assure her of his innocence of all mercenary designs upon her fortune.

She stole furtive glances at him, and she knew by his pale, stern face that he was suffering intensely. Her beautiful lips curled into a smile of triumph. Had she not vowed to pay him back?

“Let him suffer,” she said to herself, with cruel firmness; but by and by, when a beautiful young girl sat down near Norman and began to talk to him, she grew restless and ill at ease. She did not want him to be consoled, so she soon found a pretext for dismissing her companion and joining her husband and the fair girl who seemed to find such pleasure in his company.

The young girl—an heiress from New York—smiled mischievously as Mrs. de Vere came near. Her jealousy of her young husband was an open secret.

“Mrs. de Vere, I was just telling your husband that we are going to have a real live lord here to-night,” she said, vivaciously.

“Indeed, Miss Spaulding? Why, how delightful! What is his name?” exclaimed the lady, pretending great interest in the subject.

“He is Lord Stuart, and is said to possess vast estates in England. He has engaged a suite of rooms here for a month, the landlord says. All the girls are in ecstasies! There will be great fun seeing them pullings caps for him, won’t there? But of course I shall be as bad as any!” said Miss Spaulding, candidly.

Mrs. de Vere made up her mind that she would be before any of those silly girls in winning the admiration of the titled Englishman. She would show Norman de Vere how she could be adored by others. It would teach him a needed lesson. When he began to realize that she could be happy in the society of other men, his jealousy would be aroused—he would be more careful how he offended her, lest he should lose her love.

She made her toilet with the greatest care for the ball-room that night. Her dress was of dead-white silk; her ornaments were of emeralds set in pearls. It was very effective, as she meant it should be. Every one gazed at her admiringly as she swept gracefully into the ball-room, leaning on the arm of her handsome husband, and carrying in her hand the superb bouquet of white camellias he had brought her from Verelands that day. There was a glow on her smooth cheek and a fire in her hazel eyes, brought there by the praises he had just been whispering in her ear.

Lord Stuart was there, looking on with the rest—a rather common-looking man after all, and fifty if he was a day old. But he was dressed in the extreme of English dude fashion, and was attracting his full share of attention from title-hunters, Miss Spaulding foremost among them, as she had declared she would be.

His lordship started with surprise and admiration when he saw Camille de Vere in all her stately beauty.

“What a magnificent beauty!” he exclaimed, in some excitement; and it was not long before he managed to secure an introduction to Mrs. de Vere.

“Will you dance with me?” he asked; and she lifted her eyes and looked at him with a puzzled gaze.

His voice sounded strangely familiar.

“But I certainly can not have met him before,” she decided; and she acceded to his request with a winning smile.

“You have been abroad, Mrs. de Vere?” he asked, in a pause of the dance.

“Several times,” she replied; and she wondered to herself if she had ever met him before.

Certainly there was something strangely familiar to her in his voice and eyes.

But she did not intimate to him that such was the fact. Something deterred her, for Camille de Vere shrunk from the memory of one past episode in her life. If Lord Stuart belonged to that time, she would not dare recall it to his mind.

“But I need not be afraid. It is so long ago, and all is so different now. No one would know me for the same,” she said to herself, with a sensation of keen relief, though her hands turned icy cold with the bare memory of that never-to-be-forgotten time.

CHAPTER XIII.

Days passed, and no matter how angry it made the young girls at the hotel, no one could deny that Lord Stuart admired the married coquette more than any of the others. He was always to be found in Camille’s train. He danced with her at the balls; he was only too proud to carry her fan and her bouquet. If she had been free, she might have become Lady Stuart at any time, said the gossips.

It was no wonder that every one was indignant with the red-haired siren, for every single woman at the hotel had had hopes of his lordship. It was a shame for them to be disappointed for the sake of a married woman who had made a conquest of him simply to gratify her own vanity. Her dear five hundred friends said hard things about her behind her back—spiteful things that when they came to the ears of Norman de Vere made him grind his white teeth in fury.

He had watched Camille’s course with bitter disapproval all these weeks, but when he remonstrated with her, she flung her white arms about him, vowing that she loved him only, that she was but amusing herself with my lord to show those spiteful women her power.

“They are only angry because I have rivaled them, that is all,” she said, caressing him fondly, for she began to think that she had punished him enough.

He had suffered, and she knew it. Her wayward heart had been touched by the look she had sometimes seen in his eyes. She began to relent—to feel ashamed of herself.

“Camille, will you not come home now? The child is almost over the fever. I do not think there can be any fear of infection now,” he said, pleadingly.

She started and frowned. Her white arms fell from his neck.

“I thought you told me the child would die!” she cried, sharply.

“We feared so. The doctor had but little hope during those days when Sweetheart lay in that deep stupor without taking food for so long. But thanks to my mother’s excellent nursing, she survived the terrible disease, and is now on the way to recovery.”

The frown on the beautiful face, half turned away from him, grew dark and deep. There was murder in Camille’s heart.

“Oh, God! how I hate the little wretch!” she thought, feverishly; and turning to him, she asked: “Have you never had any answer to the advertisements you sent to the papers?”

“None,” he replied.

“And so it is quite settled that I am to be taxed with the little foundling’s support!” she exclaimed, malevolently.

A deep-red flush came to the young man’s handsome face.

“No, Camille; the expense of the child’s maintenance will fall upon my mother, who has a small income of her own, you know. It is her wish.”

“She is very foolish,” Camille said, bitterly.

Then she paused abruptly. She remembered that she had to keep up some pretense of kindness toward the child, else Norman would discredit Finette’s clever story by which she had saved her mistress.

She put on her sweetest smile, and promised that she would go back to Verelands as soon as he wished.

“Of course I will keep away from the child’s apartments until she is quite well, for I am horribly afraid of that fever,” she said. “But I am heartily tired of the life here, and long to be at home, where I can have more of your society, Norman. Indeed, you ought not to blame me for amusing myself with other men, when you have been spending half of your time at Verelands with your mother and Little Sweetheart.”

“Come back with me, and you shall not have to complain of any lack of my society,” he replied, gayly; and she agreed to go that very day.

The ladies at the hotel were heartily glad to hear of her going, but Lord Stuart declared that he was désolé.

“I shall haunt Verelands,” he declared.

“Oh, pray do not threaten anything so ghostly. I give you leave to call in the orthodox fashion,” she replied, carelessly.

In truth, she did not care in the least whether she ever saw the infatuated nobleman again. He had served her purpose—helped her to punish Norman—and now she was ready to fling him aside like a worn-out glove.

But her grace and beauty, her coquettish wiles, had thrown a glamour over the mature man’s heart. He believed that she was weary of her boy-husband; he pitied her and despised Norman de Vere. What right had that boy to appropriate this peerless creature?

So strong was his passion that he began to indulge dreams of winning her for his own—honorably, of course. Lord Stuart was the soul of honor. But what was there to hinder a divorce? She no longer loved that smooth-faced boy, and he fancied that she had shown signs that she cared for himself.

Carried away by an irresistible spell, the nobleman thought of no rights but his own. The withdrawal of Camille’s constant presence from the hotel almost made him frantic. He began to make daily calls at Verelands, but these brief glimpses of her did not satisfy his craving. It occurred to him one day that it would be romantic to send her flowers daily—flowers whose delicate petals should hide dainty notes with love verses written within them.

Camille had great gardens full of flowers, but that did not matter to Lord Stuart. Perhaps one flower from his hand would be dearer than all the rest. He was mad enough to think so.

He spent a whole afternoon with the poets choosing an appropriate verse to accompany the bouquet of deep-red roses he had selected. At the witching hour of twilight he dispatched his valet, a handsome, saturnine-looking fellow, with the fragrant offering.

Camille was walking that twilight hour by the river which skirted the lawn at Verelands. She had left the house in a rage because her husband had excused himself for an hour that he might spend some time with the little invalid in his mother’s room.

Lord Stuart’s valet had never yet seen the lady his master adored. Indeed, the valet was a reserved, unsociable fellow, and did not have much to do with the other servants at the hotel. He spent the greater part of his time in his master’s rooms attending to his wardrobe, and he did not seem to take any interest in anything else, said the aggrieved maids at the hotel. If he had not been so good-looking they would not have minded it so much, but the fellow, with his black hair and eyes and silky black beard, was handsome in an evil, morose sort of way, and not one of them but would have been charmed if Robert Lacy had noticed her. But he did not seem to care for any one. He was gloomy and morose always, as if brooding over some secret trouble.

But when Robert Lacy heard it whispered at the hotel that his master was in love, he woke up to a feeble sort of curiosity, coupled with vexation. He had a good place as valet to a bachelor, and he felt that he would be sorry indeed if the condition of affairs was changed. Life could not be half so pleasant for him should Lord Stuart marry. When he found out later on that his master was enamored of a married lady he did not feel much easier in his mind. There was no telling what would happen. They might take it into their heads to elope. That would be quite as bad as a marriage.

He became possessed of an ardent curiosity to see the lady who threatened to spoil the ease and comfort of his life with indulgent, easy-going Lord Stuart.

But Mrs. de Vere had returned to Verelands. There was small chance for Robert Lacy to see her now, so he hailed the errand to Verelands with secret delight.

When he made his appearance at Verelands he refused to surrender the magnificent bouquet to the servants. He told them, with unblushing audacity, that his orders were to give the flowers to no one but the lady herself.

Mrs. de Vere was walking in the park, they told him, and Robert Lacy replied that he would find her himself. He turned from the curious negro servants and went into the grounds that now, in the latter part of November, were a wealth of tropical growth and flowers, with here and there a statue gleaming whitely through the twilight gloom and the luxuriant shrubbery.

Camille was walking by the river-bank. It looked weird and gloomy there in the fast-fading light. Tall cypress-trees grew along its banks, and the water, swollen by recent rains, rushed along with a sullen sound. The proud, jealous woman stood leaning against the trunk of a tall cypress-tree, thinking perhaps that the angry, brawling river typified her feelings, when a step near by sent the quick blood to her face with the thought that her husband had followed her there. She turned with a swift smile of eager welcome, but recoiled in terror when she saw beside her a tall, dark, saturnine-looking man with a bunch of red roses in his hand. One swift glance into his face, and a cry of wild alarm and horror issued from her lips.

The dark face of Robert Lacy had arisen like a ghost from her dead past—that past from which she shrank with loathing indescribable.

As for the man, his recognition of her had been swift and instantaneous, too. The red roses dropped from his hands as he flung them up, and her name fell from his lips in accents of wolfish menace, strangely blended with a sort of fierce, angry joy: “Camille!”

Mrs. de Vere fell upon her knees, and crouching, with uplifted hands, wailed, tremulously: “Vanish, in the name of God!”

“Ha! ha! so you take me for a ghost, do you?” jeered Robert Lacy. He bent down and looked into her frightened face and staring eyes with an evil smile, continuing: “Well, it isn’t strange that you do, seeing that the last time we met I was hanging on a gallows-tree, betrayed into the hands of Judge Lynch by you, madame—by you, you false jade! You went away with the rest and left me there for the buzzards to pick my bones, while you fled so fast from the scene that perhaps you never heard how one spectator—one man with a heart—cut me down and saved me from my awful fate. My neck was not broken, and he brought me back to life again. Then I fled from California with him, and have been in his service ever since, with but one thought in my heart, and that was to find my heartless wife and punish her for her perfidy!”

She crouched on the ground, muttering fearfully, with chattering teeth:

“You—you—are mistaken—in the person! I—I—never saw you before, sir!”

Robert Lacy laughed most bitterly.

“That is a lie, madame!” he retorted, scornfully. “You recognized me the moment you saw me, in spite of the twelve years that have passed since those days in California when you loved me at first with a fierce love that turned to a fierce hate—a hate that compassed my death, as you thought. But I am alive, no thanks to you, Camille. And I have found you at last. Should I not know that red head and those hazel eyes in a thousand, madly as I once loved them—cruelly as I have hated them all these years? Do not dare deny your identity to me! Get up and tell me what you have done, and where you have been all those long years when you believed that my bleached skeleton was swinging still in the wind on the Californian hills!”

He bent threateningly toward her with so fierce an expression that she dragged herself fearfully up to her feet, clinging with both hands to the tree, while she muttered defiantly:

“I will tell you nothing, you miserable horse-thief, only that I am sorry you are not dead as I believed! Go away and leave me. I have naught to do with such as you!”

“We shall see,” he said. “Come, tell me, what you are doing here; why are you so richly dressed? Did you go back to your father in San Francisco and tell him that the handsome book-agent with whom you eloped turned out to be a horse-thief and a desperado, that you betrayed him to the vigilantes, and had him hanged? Did he forgive your disobedience, commend your treachery, and take you back?”

“Hush!” she whispered, fearfully, glancing about her in the purple twilight. “You will be overheard. Nor—Some one will be coming to look for me.”

“You belong here, then?” hissed Robert Lacy, excitedly. “Perhaps you mean to tell me that you are mistress of Verelands—that you are Mrs. de Vere?”

“Oh! no—no! I do not belong here!” she cried out, wildly; but the valet lifted a heavy hand and struck her in the face.

“Quit your lies, Camille Lacy!” he said, brutally. “You’ve known the weight of that hand in the past, and you’ll feel it again if you don’t shut up! Oh, yes, I know you, Mrs. de Vere,” mockingly, “and I’ll tell you what I mean to do to punish you—you false, heartless wife! I always meant to kill you on sight. I’ve carried a knife for your heart for years, but I won’t use it just yet. I will take you to my heart again. Ha! ha! I’ll show you to Lord Stuart, who sent me here to bring you flowers, as the false wife who brought me to the gallows from which he saved me. And this gentleman—this Mr. de Vere that you’ve married, thinking yourself a widow—I’ll show you to him as a traitoress—a woman who hounded her husband to death!” fiercely.

She lifted her bruised face from her hands and moaned:

“Spare me, for God’s sake! I am rich; I will divide the whole of my fortune with you if you will only go away and leave me in peace.”

“I hate you! I would not forego my sweet revenge for the wealth of a Rothschild or a Vanderbilt,” was the sullen, evilly triumphant reply, and suddenly she flung herself upon him, whether in love or wrath it was so swift he could not determine for a moment. In that fatal moment of indecision Camille’s stealthy hand found the knife in his belt—the knife he meant for her heart. She drew back her hand and struck furiously once—twice—at his breast. The hot blood spurted into her face as she recoiled and flung him from her—flung him so skillfully that his limp form fell into the swollen river and went hurrying away with the blood-stained tide.

CHAPTER XIV.

While that terrible scene was transpiring by the river, Norman de Vere was sitting quietly in his mother’s room with pretty Little Sweetheart on his knee, talking to her of the nice ride that the doctor said she was to have to-morrow in the pretty pony-phaeton with his mother. The wan, pathetic little face brightened into smiles at the prospect, for the poor little one was very weary of her close confinement to the house.

Norman was very glad to see a smile in the little invalid’s face again. She had been so ill and weak that with the first return of health she had become petulant and fretful, sobbing bitterly sometimes when Norman had to tear himself away to rejoin his exacting wife, who begrudged every moment spent with his little protégée.

“Why don’t the pritty yady tum to see me?” she had asked, wistfully, more than once, and Mrs. de Vere had been obliged to explain to her that Camille feared infection from the fever. The child was quite intelligent, and comprehended so clearly that she asked no more for the proud woman, only looked with wistful longing for Norman’s daily visits, and the pretty gifts of toys that he always brought to amuse her in her loneliness. She had one formula always for thanking him, and that was the simple one, “I ’ove oo,” with which she had charmed him on their first acquaintance. That she truly meant it was quite evident from the confiding way in which it was said as she leaned her dear little head against him and looked up at him with the beautiful deep-blue eyes that looked so large now in the little pearl-fair face. She loved Mrs. de Vere, her faithful, tender nurse, too, but not in the absorbing way that she did Norman. When he was with her she seemed to care for no one else, and his mother sighed even while the little one’s devotion amused her, for she felt that this strange bond of tenderness between her son and the child whose life he had saved only lent color to Camille’s degrading suspicions of her husband. The mother knew her son too well to share in these suspicions, and the knowledge of them in her daughter-in-law’s breast was hard to bear.

“The child will live. What will be her future if her friends are never found?” she said to herself after the crisis of the fever had passed, and Sweetheart had lived instead of dying, as every one expected.

She prayed daily that Sweetheart’s friends might be found, for she did not trust Camille’s protestations of regard for the child. She had not been deceived like Norman by Finette’s clever lie. She comprehended all Camille’s jealous hatred and deceit, yet not for worlds would she have whispered her suspicions to Norman. No, let him go on living in his Fool’s Paradise as long as it would last, she thought, sadly.

“And it will come to an end the sooner if this beautiful little one remains here. His penchant for the child will drive Camille desperate,” thought the clear-headed woman, and she prayed all the more earnestly that Sweetheart’s people might be found.

All unconscious of the trouble she had brought into Verelands, Little Sweetheart lavished a full heart’s affection on these two who were so kind to her, never seeming to think of the past until this twilight hour when she sat on Norman de Vere’s knee, with her golden head against his breast.

There was a thoughtful expression on the sweet little face, And all at once she murmured, pathetically:

“I want Mattie.”

Mother and son bent eagerly to hear, hoping to gain some clew to the mystery that seemed to surround the little one.

“Do you mean the lady that was on the train with you?” asked the young man.

“Yes—Mattie,” eagerly.

“Was she your mamma, dear?” Mrs. de Vere inquired.

“No, no!” said Sweetheart, quickly. “Not mamma; only Mattie!”

“Your nurse, perhaps?”

“Only des Mattie, dat’s all,” was the uncompromising reply; and although they questioned her closely, they could get nothing definite from her. She had only some vague ideas of a beautiful mamma, who called her Sweetheart, and who taught her to sing some pretty little song. The shock of all she had gone through had somehow blunted the keenness of her memory, and after that one flash of recollection when she had called for Mattie so eagerly, she said no more of the past, and presently the tired head drooped to Norman’s arm and she slept heavily.

The young man laid her softly on the bed, kissed the sweet little sleeping face, and turned to go.

“Mother, won’t you join us in the drawing-room this evening? I should think Nance might sit awhile with Sweetheart,” he said.

“Perhaps,” she answered, evasively; and then he went away, wondering uneasily whether Camille would be angry because he had stayed longer than he had intended, for the simple reason that he had feared to put the sleeping child out of his arms, lest she should be awakened.

To his relief, Camille was not yet in the drawing-room.

“She has not yet finished dressing for dinner,” he thought, and rushed upstairs to make his own toilet for the eight-o’clock dinner. He hurried some, but he looked wondrously handsome when he came down again.

“No Camille yet!” he exclaimed, in wonder; and it was several minutes more before the queenly woman entered the room, elegantly attired as usual, her eyes glittering with excitement, her cheeks even more colorless than their usual wont.

CHAPTER XV.

“You are rather late,” the young man said, smilingly, as Camille came up to him for a caress.

“I had a new novel, and I was so interested in it that I could scarcely put it down to dress,” she replied, and just then the dinner-bell rang.

Norman gave his arm to his beautiful wife, and she went with him to the elegant dining-room, where they dined tête-à-tête, for the elder Mrs. de Vere had had her own meals served upstairs ever since she had been nursing the little invalid.

Never had Norman’s proud, beautiful wife been more charming than to-night. She was restless, brilliant, and more fond of her husband than she had ever seemed before. Her hazel eyes shot gleams of passion as they rested on the handsome face opposite her, and she seemed to realize more fully than ever the strength of her love for the husband who adored her, although he had had to bear so much at her capricious hands.

Despite her jealousy, despite her caprice, Camille adored her young husband; and as the thought of what had happened awhile ago rushed over her mind, and she realized how nearly she had lost him, she did not regret the terrible deed she had done. She rejoiced rather in the cleverness with which she had rid herself of her terrible foe.

Now and then, in the pauses of their talk, there came to her a thought of Robert Lacy, and she wondered if his dead body would ever be found. Would Lord Stuart ever know what had become of his servant? for such she had gathered from his words he was. She shuddered violently at thought of the danger she had been in at the hotel. Well, it was all over now. She was free—safe! The swirling river was swiftly bearing away all evidence of her ghastly crime. Oh, God! how cruelly she had hated the man whom she had sent to his death; yet she would not have had his death on her hands could she have helped it.

“But there was no other way.” She shuddered over and over as she lay sleepless by her beloved’s side through the long hours of the night, for the horror of bloodshed was upon her. She would never sleep sweetly again. She would wake trembling many a time with the sound of the river soughing in her ears, to live over in memory that scene beneath the cypress-trees; to see the dark, fiendish face of Robert Lacy; to feel him struggle in her arms as she struck the knife into his breast; to sicken as the hot blood spurted into her face and deluged her dress. She would remember always how much water it had taken to wash the stains away, and how guiltily she had stolen home in the twilight gloom, thankful for once that Finette was gone, and that she had no prying maid to take notice when she crept into her own room of the wet and draggled clothes she wore, and of the shivering fit that seized her as she fell on the floor, moaning faintly:

“Oh, God, I did not think I would ever be a murderess! I betrayed him to the vigilantes, I know, but their hands drew the fatal rope, not mine. I believed him dead so long that even his memory had grown dim in my mind till I saw and knew him again. But I would not have killed him if I could have bought him off. It was his own fault—brutal and relentless ever, he brought his fate on himself. I—I—did not let Finette murder that child, much as I hated her. It seemed too horrible. But sin has fallen on me, anyway. Ah! now I know why Lord Stuart’s face was so strangely familiar. He was in the crowd around the gallows-tree. I wonder if he saw my face there? But, thank Heaven! no, for I remember that I fled from the scene as if pursued by fiends, and soon made good my escape to my father.”

From those wild mutterings she had to drag herself up to dress and meet her husband, who was coming straight from the presence of innocent Little Sweetheart, to meet the wife who had rushed wildly from that terrible scene by the river, with blood-stained hands, to his embrace.

She spared no pains to make herself beautiful—she placed a strong guard upon her feelings. Never had she been more charming, but she was glad when the strain of the evening was over and she could put her head down on her pillow in the friendly darkness and let the lying smile fade from her lips.

The slow hours of the night wore on, bringing the morrow—the morrow, and what?

Would the river give up its dead? Perhaps—but surely there could be no clew connecting her with the secret of the murder. Why should she keep on thinking of that? It was impossible.

Ah, if only she could sleep! If only to-morrow did not haunt her so! At last, just before the faint dawn-light crept into the eastern sky, the tired lids dropped and she slept heavily—so heavily that hours went by unheeded and the sun was high when she awoke again. To-morrow was here, and with it sensational tidings. A dead man had been found in the river a mile below Verelands—a murdered man, and he had been identified as Robert Lacy, the valet of Lord Stuart.

Norman himself told her this when she came down to a late breakfast, and she asked eagerly, with an appearance of interest:

“Murdered? Who could have done it?”

“That is the strangest part of it. There is not the slightest clew to the murderer. The man was a stranger here. He had made no friends nor enemies in the place so far as known. An inquest will be held to-day, and if any one knows anything it will probably come out there,” he said.

“What does Lord Stuart think? What does he say?” she inquired, eagerly.

“He thinks it may be a case of suicide. He says the man was morose and unhappy. It would have been quite natural for him to tire of his life and throw it away.”

“Of course,” she said.

Her heart throbbed with relief. She blessed Lord Stuart for his clever thought.

“I am going now to attend the inquest,” Norman continued.

“Oh, pray do not! How can men have the heart to care for such horrible things?” cried Camille.

But all her blandishments could not keep him away.

“I will come back as soon as possible and tell you all about it,” he said, as he kissed her and went away.

Camille flung herself upon a sofa and waited in wild suspense for his return. Presently some callers came in. They could talk of nothing but the murder of Lord Stuart’s handsome valet. She was glad when they went away. It was so hard to keep up an appearance of careless interest when her head was burning and her feet and hands were like ice.

Oh! when would Norman come back? She longed yet dreaded for him to return with the verdict of the coroner’s jury.

Suddenly he appeared before her, pale and with a troubled light in his dark eyes.

“Camille, they have sent me for you. You are wanted as a witness at the inquest,” he said, abruptly, and a low cry of alarm burst from her ashen lips.

“But I know nothing about it—I have never even seen the man!” she exclaimed, hoarsely.

CHAPTER XVI.

Norman de Vere looked eagerly into the beautiful, startled face before him. It was ashen pale, and the hazel eyes were dilated with terror.

“Camille, try to be calm. No one accuses you of knowing anything about it, but the coroner wishes to ask you a few questions—that is all,” he said, reassuringly.

She tried to subdue her traitor nerves—to appear calm and disdainful.

“I—I refuse to appear before a vulgar crowd like that. How dare they summon me?” she panted.

“Sit down, Camille, and I will tell you the truth. Your name has most unfortunately been connected with this affair, because Lord Stuart swears that the last time he saw his poor devil of a valet alive was yesterday at twilight, when he sent him to Verelands to bring you some flowers.”

“Flowers—to me! Oh, there is some mistake! I never received them. The man did not come to Verelands.”

“Yes, the man came to Verelands, Camille. Two of our servants, to my great surprise, were present at the inquest. They identified the corpse as a man who came to Verelands yesterday at twilight with flowers for you. He refused to give them into any hands but yours, and when they told him you were walking in the grounds, he went in search of you. No one ever saw him alive afterward unless you did.”

“Good heavens, Norman! I never saw the man in my life, either alive or dead. Do they think I murdered him?”

“Certainly not, Camille. Pray do not get so excited. Then you did not meet Robert Lacy anywhere in the grounds?”

“No, I did not. I only stayed out a few minutes. I came in and went to reading. You know I told you, Norman, how interested I was in my book last night.”

“Yes, I remember,” he said, in a strained voice.

She noticed it with a throb of fear at her heart. Why did he look at her so strangely?

“I suppose I need not really go. You can tell them that I never saw the man, can’t you, dear?” she pleaded, laying an entreating hand on his coat-sleeve; but he answered almost impatiently:

“I’m afraid you must come with me, Camille, or they will send an officer of the law for you. I promised I would bring you. You need not feel so nervous over it. They will only ask you a few questions. Of course, no one has any thought that you harmed the man. They are only trying to find out who saw him last in life.”

With bitter reluctance she went with him, trying to steel her nerves to the cruel ordeal.

Were they going to make her look upon the face of the dead man and swear that he was unknown to her—that she had never seen him before? Must she add perjury to the list of her sins?

When it was all over she wondered at the calmness with which she had gone through it all. How had she ever done it. How had she borne so unflinchingly the keen questions, the suspicious looks, and beaten down all with that air of complete innocence? If for a moment her heart had trembled within her on looking at the dead and ghastly face of the man she had slain, there was no one to know. She took credit to herself afterward for the hardihood with which she had denied everything, making so strong an impression on the coroner’s jury that, after a very brief deliberation, they brought in a verdict that Robert Lacy had compassed his own death, first by stabbing with a knife, which Lord Stuart affirmed he habitually carried on his person, and had made sure of his work by casting himself into the river. Suicide, not a doubt of it.

CHAPTER XVII.

Camille could not get home fast enough, she was so eager to go down to the river and search for the fatal bouquet that Lord Stuart had sent her. It had rushed over her suddenly that when Robert Lacy had come upon her he had carried something in his hand—the flowers, of course—and in his astonishment at seeing her they had fallen from his grasp. They must be lying there now, and she must hasten to destroy them before they were found.

She sprung hastily from the carriage, and went into the house with eager footsteps.

“Norman, I am going upstairs to rest,” she said. “This affair has completely unnerved me. To think that that poor man should have destroyed himself when upon an errand to me. It is simply horrible. I shall take some valerian and lie down for an hour. And you, I suppose, will go and sit awhile with your mother and the little invalid?”

“Yes,” he replied, mechanically, and they went upstairs arm in arm. Then they paused, for Camille had put up her face to be kissed.

He stooped and pressed his lips gently to hers.

“I am sorry you are so unnerved. Do not forget to take the valerian, dear,” he said, and held her in his arms tenderly for a moment.

If she had known that this was the last, last time they would hold her, would she have been so impatient to be gone?

But she could think of nothing but the tell-tale flowers lying on the river-bank ready to betray her at any moment. She felt as if she could fly to the spot.

She turned quickly from him and sought her own apartments, but she only remained long enough to make sure that he had entered his mother’s room ere she fled from the house, as if driven by pursuing fiends, to the river-bank.

Then ensued a frenzied search for Lord Stuart’s flowers—a hopeless search—under the shade of the dark cypress-trees, for the tokens of Robert Lacy’s presence here that might betray her crime.

Camille flung herself at last upon her knees, crawling about in the long grass, peering here and there with pitiful intentness for the missing flowers. She did not hear a light, quick step coming toward her. The murmur of the river drowned every sound. She did not feel the glance of the dark eyes fastened upon her in a kind of horror. She believed herself utterly alone in this secluded spot. The Verelands grounds were private.

“Good heavens! what if some one has found it!” she muttered, fearfully. “But, no, it must be here; or if any one had found it, I should have heard of it from Norman. It is here somewhere.” She continued groping about on her hands and knees until all at once she came upon a little pool of blood in the damp grass. “Blood!” she cried, in a startled tone of horror, and fell to work dipping water from the river in her jeweled hands and flinging it on the crimson spot till the clear water mingled with the gory stains and flowed away in a tiny stream through the grass. Then Camille began to collect handfuls of dead leaves which she flung hurriedly on the fatal spot. All the while her face and actions were so full of guilty consciousness that the unseen watcher behind a neighboring tree gazed and listened appalled.

She paused at last in her frenzied search, and muttered:

“What am I to do? I can not find it, yet it must be here. Oh, God, how wicked I feel! Why do I keep thinking of Lady Macbeth washing her hands and crying: ‘Out, out, damned spot!’ He might have been alive now, if he would have let me make terms with him, the brutal wretch! for the keeping of that hideous secret. Oh, God! his dead face will always haunt me; but there was no other way—no other way!”

She sprung to her feet, wringing her hands despairingly.

“I can not find it. Pray Heaven no one else will; for I can stay no longer—I must go. My husband will be seeking me. He must find me at home—he must not suspect this!”

She caught up her pretty beaded wrap, that had fallen in a glittering heap on the grass, flung it about her shoulders, turned to go, then recoiled with a piercing cry.

“Norman!”

For it was her husband who had come upon her in the solitude where she groped wildly for the missing flowers—her husband who had been gazing in horror at the pale, distorted features of the guilty woman—who had listened in shocked silence to the utterances by which she had convicted herself of her terrible sin. It came upon her with a shock like that of doom that Norman knew all her guilty secret—that he had been a witness of her frenzied search and her bitter disappointment.

So terrible was the shock that Camille thought she was going to fall down dead at her husband’s feet, slain by shame and despair at her own ignominy.

But her heart kept beating on, though wildly and tumultuously. Her trembling limbs still upheld her, and by degrees, as he forbore to speak, some of her native audacity returned to her. She determined to make one bold effort to regain lost ground.

She lifted her drooping lids, gazed at him appealingly, and cried:

“Oh, Norman, how you startled me! I—I—did not know you were here! I have lost one of my diamond rings—the prettiest one I had—and I’ve been searching for it everywhere. You haven’t seen it, have you, dear?”

CHAPTER XVIII.

Camille waited breathlessly for her husband’s answer. After a moment’s silence it came, sternly, yet with infinite sadness:

“Camille, have pity on your immortal soul, and do not blacken it further by such terrible perjuries! You have lost no ring. You were searching for the bouquet that Robert Lacy brought to you at this spot yesterday—the bouquet that I found when I came back this morning to escort you to the inquest.”

“You—you!” she almost shrieked.

“Be quiet, unless you wish to draw listeners to the spot,” he said, sharply. “Yes, I found the flowers, Camille. When I heard the evidence at the inquest I wondered what had become of the flowers Lord Stuart had sent you. I thought they would form an important link in the chain of evidence. Some instinct drove me to search for them on my way home. I found them. There were clots of blood on the green leaves redder than the fading red roses, and the note among the flowers was dyed crimson, too. In this cool and shady spot the stains were scarcely dry. I was frightened, Camille. I took the bouquet home and hid it, and at the inquest I dared not say one word about it. Yet I hoped that the man had committed suicide—”

“Oh, he did—I swear he—” Camille interrupted, eagerly; but he frowned her coldly down.

“Hush! denials are vain! By your own lips you stand convicted of your guilt. Almost as soon as I entered my mother’s room there came to me a fear that some clew might have been left at this spot by which the world might find out that Robert Lacy met his death at Verelands. With a shrinking from the notoriety such knowledge would entail on the De Veres, I hurriedly left the room and hastened here. You know the rest.”

“You spyed upon me! You did not make your presence known!” she muttered, hoarsely.

“I was dazed with wonder and with horror. My feet refused to move, and my tongue grew stiff as I realized the awful truth. I seemed at first to be turned to stone by the horror of my discovery,” he answered, in a slow, troubled voice, and in a minute he added: “Some one may come upon us here. We will go back to the house, Camille. I must speak to you in private.”

She pulled the small lace veil down over her face and followed him in dead silence to the beautiful mansion among the trees.

He went to the library: she followed in dumb misery and despair. The door was locked, and he pushed forward an easy-chair for her to sit down. She sunk into it, glad to rest, for her limbs were trembling and weak.

“Now tell me, Camille,” he said, sternly, “what was Robert Lacy to you that you should take his life?”

She attempted to deny the accusation, but he would not permit her to do so.

“I heard you confess your guilt when you thought yourself alone,” he said. “You said that if he would have made terms for the keeping a secret, you would have spared him, but that there was no other way.”

She sat silent and sullen, feeling her doom sealed.

“Shall I tell you what my suspicions are, Camille?” he asked, after a moment’s pause.

She nodded without looking up at his white, awfully stern face, and he continued:

“You had been carrying on with Lord Stuart a flirtation more shameless than I suspected, and this valet became cognizant of the truth and threatened you with exposure. To save your good name you murdered him. Hush! do not perjure yourself with useless denials. I shall not betray you. I will keep your hideous secret for the sake of the love I had for you in the past.”

“Oh, my God, do not desert me, Norman! I am innocent! Lord Stuart will tell you that it was the most harmless flirtation,” she cried, in terror and entreaty.

He unlocked a drawer and took out a bouquet of faded red roses with their awful stains, shuddering as he touched them. From among them he took out a sheet of blood-dyed paper on which was the crest of a noble house. Unfolding the paper, he said:

“I can not believe, Camille, that any man would dare write such lines as these to a married woman unless there was some secret guilty consciousness between them.”

He read aloud, in tones vibrant with scorn:

“‘Ah! one thing worth beginning,

One thread in life worth spinning;

Ah, sweet, one sin worth sinning

With all the whole soul’s will.

To lull you till one stilled you,

To kiss you till one killed you,

To feed you till one filled you,

Sweet lips, if love could fill!’”

He paused, and she cried out, passionately:

“How dared he? I gave him no cause for this insult.”

A smile of bitter scorn and anger crossed his deathly pale face as he said:

“Untrue wife and guilty woman, we must part! You have slain all love between us by your sins. The murder of Robert Lacy I will never betray, but in order that the world may have an excuse for the divorce I shall procure from you, I shall publicly chastise Lord Stuart to-night. In a few hours I shall leave Verelands. I presume my mother will accompany me. Our divorce I will manage with as little scandal as possible for both our sakes.” He bowed, and, without giving her a chance to reply, abruptly quitted the room.

CHAPTER XIX.

Left alone by her angry, outraged husband, Camille flung out of her chair and dragged herself upstairs to her own room. There she locked the door and threw herself down upon the bed in tearless despair.

Hours passed over her head, and still she lay there mute and still as though stunned by the awful shock she had received. The dainty bonnet, now crushed and spoiled where it was pressed upon the pillow, still adorned her head, the jetted wrap clung about her regal shoulders. She had removed nothing; she had thought of nothing save the awful fact that the husband she loved in her jealous, tigress fashion had found her out in her sin, and was going to put her away from him forever. She lay there a long, long time so dazed and wretched that she was conscious of but one thought—a sick longing to die at once and be out of her horrible trouble.

At last her cramped and uncomfortable position began to make itself felt in tired and aching limbs, recalling her to bodily consciousness. Rising slowly to a sitting posture, she flung off the bonnet and wrap, and drew out the pins from her tawny tresses, letting them fall loosely on her shoulders.

A strange sense of desolation, of friendlessness, stole over her, as her heavy eyes roved about the room. Out of all her fashionable acquaintances she had no bosom friend, no one to turn to in this terrible hour. She thought for an instant of her mother-in-law, then a shamed consciousness stole over her that she had taken no pains to retain the love of that good woman since she had married her son. She could not look to her for consolation.

Suddenly a new idea presented itself to her mind.

“Finette!”

The French maid had, in many respects, been to her a trusted friend as well as a servant. She was clever and crafty, and Camille had bitterly missed her since she had gone into a temporary exile with the understanding that she should be recalled as soon as her mistress could cajole Norman de Vere into willingness for her return.

“Oh! if Finette were only here, she would advise me what to do—she might suggest something,” the unhappy woman muttered; and with the thought a tiny little ray of hope began to flicker into life within her breast. She continued: “I will send for my maid. I need not ask his permission now. I have a right to claim the presence of my best friend in this dark hour.”

She crossed to a small writing-table, and, sitting down, hastily scrawled a note in French to Finette. Sealing and addressing the envelope to an address in Jacksonville, she touched a bell, and in a few minutes it was answered by Nancy, the house-maid.

“Take this letter down to Sam and tell him to deliver it immediately,” she said, curtly; then, as Nancy stared in surprise at her heavy eyes and colorless cheeks, she slammed the door quickly in her face.

The house-maid went down to the errand-boy, and dispatched him on his mission with the remark:

“You better make dem black legs fly, too, ’cause madame’s in a towerin’ rage, her face as white as snow, her eyes a-blazin’, and her hair hangin’ down her back all tangled up like she been a-tearin’ of it out by de han’fuls. ’Spect dat’s why she done sent for Mamzellie Frenchy to come and fix it up in style like she useter.”

CHAPTER XX.

It seemed to Camille that she would go frantic with suspense, it was so long before Finette came.

Never had the thin, sallow face and beady black eyes of the French maid looked so welcome.

“Finette, I am in bitter trouble. I sent for you to come back in defiance of my husband’s wishes, for I shall need your help—if, indeed, there is any help for me,” she said, quickly.

Finette protested that she was ready to go to the ends of the earth to serve her generous mistress.

“I will tell you all my trouble,” said Camille. “I stayed at the Hotel Française while my husband’s protégée was ill with scarlet fever. There was a nobleman there, Lord Stuart. He seemed to admire me very much, and paid me more attention than any other lady there. We became great friends. I own I flirted with Lord Stuart, but it was an innocent affair—nothing culpable, I vow.”

“I understand. But m’sieur became jealous,” Finette said, intelligently, as her mistress paused.

“Exactly, Finette. We had a stormy interview to-day. My husband accused me of the worst. He swore that he would chastise Lord Stuart to-night in order to publish my alleged disgrace, and that afterward he would take steps to procure a divorce from me.”

“And miladi—she is against the divorce?” asked the maid.

“How can you ask such a question, Finette? Surely you know I love him more than life itself. If I lose him I shall die.”

Finette looked with polite cynicism at the burning dark eyes in the marble-white face. She did not believe that any one was likely to die for love. She had read Shakespeare:

“Men have died and worms have eaten them,

But not for love.”

“But, then, what can you do with that silly boy?” she said, curtly.

“That is for you to tell me. I depend upon you, Finette, to help me, you are so worldly wise, so clever. Oh, try to keep him from getting a divorce, and I will make you rich, Finette!”

“If madame would take my advice she would jump at the divorce from that proud and silly boy—she would marry the nobleman,” insinuatingly.

“Finette, you are stupid, you are ridiculous! Do I not tell you I adore Norman de Vere? I want you to help me regain his love and ward off a divorce, not to advise me to marry some one else!” Camille cried, stamping her dainty foot in sudden fury.

Finette smiled a little contemptuously, but with a few well-chosen words she smoothed the beauty’s ruffled feathers, and inspired her with some degree of hope.

“Now, let me do up your hair, and I will try to think how I can help you,” she said.

She brushed and arranged the long, wavy red hair with deft fingers, her fertile French brain busy.

“You are sure, miladi, you have told me all the cause of disagreement?”

“Yes,” unblushingly.

“Monsieur will not believe you are innocent?”

“No; he is so furious with anger, so blinded with jealousy, he will not listen to one word.”

“And he will sue for a divorce on grounds of a guilty flirtation with milord?”

“Yes.”

“You will plead not guilty?”

“Of course.”

“Then you will file one counter-charge against votre mari—infidelity, of course, and cruel outrage, bringing dat child—dat illegitimate—under your roof, refusal to take it away, brutal disregard of your tender feelings,” Finette mused, softly; and there was silence for a few moments.

Then Camille said, petulantly:

“But I do not see how that is to prevent the divorce. I—I—do not want to villify my husband publicly. I would rather make up our quarrel quietly. I have been hard upon him always. I can see that now, and I can hardly blame him for resenting it at last. Oh, God! I will humble myself in the dust at his feet—I will hear anything rather than to be put away from him forever.”

“Even to a temporary separation?” Finette hazarded.

“Even that—so it should be temporary alone,” agreed Camille.

“Then, miladi, I think we can manage it.”

“How?”

“You must write m’sieur a letter. Plead all your love and innocence. Tell him you will consent to a separation, but not a divorce. Threaten to make a scandal about the child, and blacken his name unless he agrees to your terms. You know his family pride. He will shrink from exposure—he will agree to your terms.”

“Clever Finette! Oh, what a brain you have! But after—what then?”

“We will go abroad, you and I. We will let your boy-husband severely alone for a little while. He adored you once—he will not forget you. The scandal will die out, and you will lead a nun’s life. He will be touched, sorry; he will hear of you at last breaking your heart in seclusion for him, and, voilà! there will be a reconciliation.”

Finette had poured out those sentences excitedly, with a mixture of French gestures and phrases impossible to translate. Camille listened breathlessly, her eyes on fire, her cheeks aglow.

“Oh, you give me new hope, you clever creature! Only help me to bring it about as you say, and I will make you rich!” she repeated, appealing to the maid’s ruling passion.

CHAPTER XXI.

“But, Norman, you will forgive her. Surely it can not be so bad as you think. These flirtations of married women are so distressingly common in high society, and Camille is too proud to run any risk of her good name. Besides, she loves you.”

Mrs. de Vere looked distressfully into the white, drawn face of her handsome son as she pleaded eagerly for Camille, but by the way in which he shook his head she knew it was all in vain.

He had confided to her the story of the flirtation with Lord Stuart and his resolution to have a divorce, and the gentle woman had been shocked and incredulous. She knew all Camille’s faults and follies, but she did not think the wife had done sufficient wrong to be put away from her husband.

“Think better of it, Norman. You were not wont to be so stern and unforgiving. Camille has been imprudent perhaps, but not criminal, I am sure,” she kept on; and her son was compelled to see that she disapproved of his resolve. He sighed and resigned himself to bear it. He could not betray Camille’s hideous secret—not even to his mother.

He sat there some time pale, silent, and abstracted, without noticing the pretty gambols of Sweetheart, who was rapidly regaining strength and spirits. As he sat there, the child’s sweet, familiar little song fell unheeded on his ears:

“Yittle Sweet’art, tum and tiss me,

Whisper to me sweet an’ low,

Tell me yat oor ’art will miss me,

As I wander to and fro.”

“Be quiet, dear. Norman does not feel well,” the mother said, gently.

Sweetheart ran to his knee, and stood very quietly, peering up into his face with her large, wondering blue eyes.

“Sweet’art sorry oo sick,” she said, cooingly, wistfully; and with a sigh he lifted her up in his arms.

“Poor little angel! I wonder if you will ever grow up to be cruel, false, and wicked as some of your sex?” he muttered.

“No,” she replied, shaking her bright little head intelligently, as if she understood every word. Then she slid down from his lap, and ran to chase her little spotted kitten around the room.

Norman forgot her in an instant, and returned to his wretched thoughts.

Presently there was a light but decided tap upon the door.

Mrs. de Vere colored with surprise and displeasure when she met the impudent, leering gaze of the discharged French maid.

“Nance told me I sall find m’sieur with you,” she said, her keen, serpent-like eyes peering past Mrs. de Vere into the room. She scowled at Sweetheart and the kitten, then pushed past Mrs. de Vere and went up to her son.

“My mistress sends you dis lettaire,” she said; and as Norman took the scented envelope into his hand she flounced out of the room.

Norman tore off the covering of the letter and began to read.

His mother sat waiting anxiously. She guessed that Camille had sent some passionate petition for pity and pardon to the husband she loved. She prayed silently that it would melt his heart.

Mrs. de Vere was a proud woman. She could not endure to think of the notoriety that must inevitably attend upon her son’s divorce. She pitied Camille, whose caprices had brought her to this shameful pass.

She saw a tempest of emotion sweep over Norman’s darkly handsome face. It grew alternately pale and crimson, the lips worked with passion, the dark eyes shot gleams of fire.

He finished at last, and flung the letter into his mother’s lap.

CHAPTER XXII.

Camille had written from the dictation of the infamous French maid. She had alternately implored and threatened, vowing that Norman’s little protégée should serve her turn to point an infamous charge against him if he persevered in his resolve to procure a divorce.

The delicate cheek of the matron flushed indignantly as her dark eyes traveled over the paper. Meanwhile, the observant child had secured the envelope, which had fluttered to the floor, and sitting down, she cut it into bits with her tiny scissors. She waited silently but patiently for the letter, turning her blue eyes with bird-like eagerness toward the reader. When at last Mrs. de Vere finished and handed it back to her son, and he crumpled it in his hand and flung it disdainfully from him, Sweetheart pounced upon it unnoticed and sat down to destroy it with the aid of her little scissors.

She spread out the pretty pink sheet, but the delicate fragrance exhaling from it arrested her olfactories, and after holding it pensively to her nose a moment, she concluded not to immolate it yet; so, quite unobserved by her elders, she crossed the room to her box of toys, and hid Camille’s letter among the leaves of a picture-book.

Mother and son stood looking at each other in wordless dismay, unmindful of the child at her play. Neither could bear to speak.

At last the mother said, sadly:

“You see now that you must give it up, Norman. You can not drag our proud old name through the mire. She will consent to a separation, she says. Will not that content you?”

“No,” he replied, bitterly.

“But, Norman, this is horrible! Will you not think of me? How can I bear it that this shame should fall on you and on the proud name that was your father’s pride? Have pity on my gray hairs,” she faltered.

“Mother, you torture me,” he cried, for it seemed most cruel that she should misjudge him—should deem him careless of her happiness. But he could not tell her the truth. He must bear his pain in silence.

She went on, pleadingly:

“I am old. I should not live long to bear the burden of shame; but, Norman, think of that sweet and lovely little child. The mystery that surrounds her may never be penetrated, and this horrible scandal, if promulgated, may cast an ineffaceable blight upon her future. Think of all these things, Norman, before you proceed further.”

He was thinking of them. The white agony of his face showed it. In the face of his despair he silently wished himself dead and at rest from the war of emotions raging within him.

That he must break with Camille he knew. Her sin had placed an insurmountable barrier between their lives.

He would gladly have parted with her without giving cause for scandal, but it was impossible. The curious world must have reasons or it would make them. Better they should say he was jealous—unreasonably jealous, of Lord Stuart than that there was some guilty secret hidden behind the death of Robert Lacy, who had carried flowers to Camille the last hour of his life. Her safety hung in the balance. Between her two sins he must choose the lesser for her own sake, for part they must. The mad, feverish love he had borne Camille was dead and cold. It had fallen down in ruins in the moment when his appalled ears had heard her own lips admit her guilt.

He owed it to his mother’s gray hairs to save her from shame, and no less to Sweetheart yonder in her innocent youth and helplessness. What under heaven was he to do?

The sad, anxious voice of the mother broke in again:

“Norman, if you feel that you can not live longer with your wife, why not consent to a separation, as she wishes? Put off the thought of divorce. Who knows but that in the future you may learn she was innocent? Then there may be a reconciliation.”

“Mother, you madden me!” he cried, hoarsely. He knew how vain was that hope.

But he began to think seriously of her words. Might it not be best to cut loose quietly as possible from his guilty wife for the sake of his mother and Sweetheart?

His heavy eyes wandered to the child who was playing with her kitten in sweet unconsciousness. A deep sense of his responsibility suddenly overwhelmed him. He had saved her life, and it had been thrown on his hands in all its sweet helplessness. He would be answerable for her future.

He sat thinking, miserably, intently, his mother watching with anxious eyes. Suddenly he spoke:

“Mother, you comprehend the cruel malignancy with which Camille means to stain the name and future of this innocent child?”

“She will relent if you accede to her request, Norman.”

“I have come to a sudden but wise conclusion, mother. I know that the child can expect no mercy from Camille’s cruel heart. I must send her from me for her own good.”

“But where, Norman?”

“I will tell you, mother. In the wreck with me—indeed, the only person saved with Sweetheart and myself—was a man, a commercial traveler, named George Hinton. He took a strange fancy to my little protégée, and begged to have her if her friends were not discovered. He was a married man with a small family—two boys, and a girl of seven who longed for a sister.”

“A good man, Norman?” anxiously.

“Rough, perhaps, but with a good heart, I am sure. He gave me his address. His home is in a little Virginia town on the line of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway. Mother, what if you were to take Sweetheart to him? Then you could satisfy yourself as to whether the Hintons would be proper people with whom to leave the child. I would make them an allowance for her support and education, of course. I should like it if you could go very soon.”

“To-morrow?”

“Yes, if possible. We must go away from here for awhile, you know, dear mother. You remember it was Camille’s money with which we improved Verelands. Unless she decides to live here, the place must be rented out until sufficient money is realized to repay the debt. Dearest little mother, you know we are poor again, now. I shall have to work for us both.”

“There is my little income. It is more than enough for me. All I can spare shall go to help the Hintons if they take Sweetheart,” she said, but her voice was hoarse with tears. How could she leave the dear old home, and how could her son sit there and talk of it with that calm, white face? It was cruel! He might have borne with Camille, if only for his mother’s sake.

Hard thoughts of her son came to her for the first time in her life, but she did not utter a single reproach. Perhaps it would all come right soon, and she could come back to Verelands.

“You will want to answer your wife’s letter,” she said, looking around for it; then she saw the fragments of the pink envelope strewing the floor. “Naughty Little Sweetheart, you have cut it up with your toy scissors!” she cried.

Sweetheart looked solemn and rueful over the detection of the mischief she had wrought.

CHAPTER XXIII.

“It does not matter in the least, mother. I am glad Sweetheart destroyed the infamous thing. I only wish she could blot it out from my mind, too,” Norman said, impatiently.

He rose, shook himself—for he had been sitting still until he was cramped and weary—and continued:

“I will not write to her, mother. I will ask you to deliver a message to her. Say that I accept her terms—separation instead of divorce. It will amount to the same thing in the end,” curtly. “For the rest, she has her choice—to live at Verelands or rent it out. You and I will be gone away—that is”—bitterly—“if you elect to follow the fortunes of your erring son.”

“I shall go with you, dear. You are all I have, and I can not part with you. I will carry your message to Camille; yet, poor soul, I pity her, and I fear you are making a great mistake, my son,” she ventured.

But he went without a word.

When she saw Camille’s tears—when she heard her passionate protestations of innocence, her wild prayers for her husband’s pardon—Mrs. de Vere could not help but pity the passionate, undisciplined creature. She spoke only the kindest words to her; she promised her that in time she would win her husband’s heart back to her, if it had not turned to ice.

“Only be prudent and good, Camille. Shun all other men and live only for your husband, and all will come right,” she advised, in her ignorance of Norman’s true reasons.

Camille clung to her, protesting passionate gratitude. Indeed, she was eager to enlist her mother-in-law’s influence on her side.

“You will let me settle some money on you? I will be so glad to do something to show my gratitude!” she pleaded; but Mrs. de Vere gently declined the offer, and went back presently with the news that Camille would leave Verelands in a few hours.

Norman received the news with icy calmness—calmness that filled his mother with wonder. She knew how deeply he had loved his beautiful bride, how patiently he had borne with her caprices and reproaches. Had love failed at last under her ceaseless exactions, or was this the calm of a terrible despair—

“Despair that spurns atonement’s power?”

He made no comment on the news she brought.

“I shall stay at the Hotel Française to-night,” he said. “In the morning I will come back to Verelands, and if you can get ready to go with me we will go to Virginia and leave Sweetheart with the Hintons. Then,” half bitterly, “the world will be all before us where to choose. But I think I shall go to New York, for I must find work now. I shall no longer be that ignoble thing—a man dependent on a rich wife.”

The bitterness of the closing words gave her a passing glimpse into the pangs his pride had suffered in his marriage. She sighed, but did not reply. She had the bitter memory always with her that she had helped to forge his chains. Ah, if she only had it all to go over again, how changed all would be! But the glitter of gold had blinded her to all she should have known.

She went about her duties in a dazed, miserable fashion, unable to see any light fringing the dark cloud that hung over Verelands. When Camille, deathly pale and wretched-looking, came to bid her farewell, she could not restrain her tears at the breaking up of their domestic life.

“I am going abroad,” said Camille. “Finette goes with me. I had to take her back because she is devoted to my interests, and is the truest friend I have now. I will write to you, dear Mrs. de Vere, and you shall always know where I am, so that if Norman relents, he will always know where to find me.”

Mrs. de Vere was sorry for the desolate creature, in spite of her glaring faults. She tried to impart some consolation to her, and if Camille knew how vain her hopes were, she made no sign. She kept up a faint pretense of clinging to hope.

“And as for the child, my dear, I believe you were all wrong about that. Norman is going to send her away. There was another man saved from the wreck who wanted Sweetheart very much, and she will be sent to him,” said the elder lady, believing that this news would comfort Camille very much.

It did, for she saw in it a concession to her prejudices, made by Norman even while he pretended to defy her. She had rendered it impossible for him to keep the child. She listened with silent exultation.

“I have triumphed although driven away in disgrace, and I will yet return to his heart and home. He has no real proof of my guilt, and time will make his impressions fainter until they seem mere illusions,” she muttered, as she turned away from the beautiful home in which she had made such cruel havoc of Norman de Vere’s happiness.

Night fell darkly over the fairy-like home, and a strange, heavy silence seemed to settle down about it. Toward ten o’clock the silence was broken by a startling ring at the door-bell. When the door was opened a group of men came in, bearing among them the unconscious form of the master of the house.

Shrinking sensitively from scandal as he did, Norman de Vere could not forego the chastisement of Lord Stuart. It must be done to lend color to the cause of his parting from his wife.

Armed with a small whip, he had proceeded to the Hotel Française and publicly lashed Lord Stuart, alleging his flirtation with Mrs. de Vere as the cause. Lord Stuart drew a pistol and deliberately shot his assailant.

Then he fled.

Norman de Vere’s wound was in his breast, narrowly missing the heart. He was borne home to his anguished mother, and long weeks elapsed ere he was well again. Meanwhile, Lord Stuart had never been apprehended. Popular rumor declared that he had gone abroad and joined the false wife of the man he had wronged.

It was spring before Norman’s physician agreed that he should quit Jacksonville for the colder climate of New York, so much had his wound and the long fever it caused enfeebled his frame. Heaven only knew what the young man had suffered physically and mentally in that time. His pain could only be measured by the depth of the love he had felt for the woman who had proved so unworthy.

“I lived, if that may be called life

From which each charm of life has fled,

Happiness gone, with hope and love—

In all but breath already dead.”

While he lay suffering, an odd little letter had come to him from Paris, from Lord Stuart:

“My dear fellow, I hope you will forgive me for the suffering I caused you. My aim was bad. I only meant to give you a slight flesh wound in the shoulder, but I learn from American papers that you came near losing your life. I hope you will live. Camille was not worth the sacrifice of your strong young life. She is not with me, as I see it rumored in the papers. I have got over my fancy for her. I hear she is in London, but I do not know. I hope you will never make up your quarrel with her, for you are too good for such a woman.”

Camille had written, too, from London, begging to be allowed to return and nurse her husband. Mrs. de Vere was compelled to write that her son refused the offer.

CHAPTER XXIV.

“Sweetheart, will you go with me to the dance this evening?”

“I’ve promised to go with Frank—so there! And I wish, Tom Hinton, you wouldn’t call me that babyish name, Sweetheart. I can’t bear it!”

“What then?” asked Tom Hinton, a dapper young man, with dry-goods clerk written all over him too plainly to be mistaken.

“Why, Thea, of course,” said the beautiful golden-haired girl. “You knew when I went away to school we made that name up out of Sweetheart. I was called so by every one at school, and I want to be called so by my home-folks, too.”

“Sweetheart is so—much sweeter. I like to call you that,” said the young man, giving her a tender look.

“No matter, I won’t have it! Mind that, please,” the girl answered, saucily tossing her long golden curls and pouting her ripe red lips in a sort of disdain.

“What made you promise Frank? Didn’t you know perfectly well that I was going to ask you?”

“Maybe I did, and maybe that’s the reason I asked Frank to ask me first. Ha! ha!”

No words could describe the exquisite unconscious coquetry of the girl’s looks and manner—coquetry blended with airy contempt of the tenderness that shone in the man’s blue eyes—maidenhood is so cruel.

Tom Hinton’s face flushed deeply, and he chewed the ends of his small, fair mustache uneasily.

“Do you mean that you prefer my brother to me?” he asked, angrily; and Thea laughed again, and answered, with inexcusable slang for a boarding-school miss:

“That’s about the size of it, Mr. Hinton.”

The young man regarded her wrathfully a moment, then answered with an irrepressible sneer:

“Maybe you don’t know that Frank’s got a sweetheart already when you’re throwing yourself at his head so boldly?”

The exquisite creature laughed again. She seemed fairly bubbling over with mirth and gayety. Her blue and brilliant eyes sparkled with mischief.

“Oh, yes, I know it, thank you,” she said, nodding her bright head with a bird-like motion. “That’s the very reason I like him,” she continued. “His heart is set on some one else, and he isn’t always making me sick by talking love to me, as you have done, Tom Hinton, the whole three weeks since I came back from school.”

“Oh, come, you needn’t pretend you don’t like to be made love to. All girls do,” the young man answered, a little sulkily; but Thea fired up in a minute, and answered with childish petulance:

“That’s a story. I don’t, for one. I like to go with young men and have a good time, just as well as any other girl does, but if a fellow begins to talk love to me—faugh! it makes me sick!” disdainfully.

Tom Hinton was watching her doubtfully. He did not half believe in the indifference she professed. He believed it was more than half coquetry—girlish coquetry—that invited pursuit.

“See here, Thea,” he said, half wistfully, half with a man’s masterful air, “I don’t believe you mean half you say. If I did I should feel mighty bad, I tell you, for I’ve got my heart set on you, and I made up my mind as long as three years ago that I’d have you for my wife if I could get you.”

Thea stared. Her short upper lip curled in scorn.

“Tom Hinton, you must be crazy! The idea of picking me out, when I was only fourteen years old, for your wife! Well, I like your impudence!” she ejaculated.

“I am glad you like it. I thought you would,” he answered, falling into her mood of wicked banter. “Well, what do you say, my darling? Will you marry me?” tenderly.

“Not to save your life, Tom Hinton!” answered she, heartlessly, darting away.

CHAPTER XXV.

Thea West, for such was the pretty name the young girl had made out of her pet name Sweetheart, bounced into the house and flung herself down at the piano, leaving her discomfited lover alone on the porch of his cottage home. In a minute a flood of music poured out through the open windows, and the girl sung sweetly, saucily, cruelly:

“The Laird of Cockpen, he’s proud an’ his great.

His mind is ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the state;

He wanted a wife his braw house to keep,

But favor wi’ wooin’ was fashions to seek.

“He took the gray mare and rode cannilie—

And rapped at the door o’ Clarverse-ha’ Lee,

’Gae tell Mistress Jean to come speedily ben;

She’s wanted to speak wi’ the Laird o’ Cockpen.’

“Mistress Jean, she was making the elder-flower wine;

‘An’ what brings the laird at sic a like time?’

She put aff her apron and on her silk gown,

Her mutch wi’ red ribbons, and gaed awa’ down.

“And when she cam’ ben he bowed full low;

And what was his errand he soon let her know.

Amazed was the laird when the lady said ‘Na,’

And wi’ a light curtsey she turned awa’.

“Dumfoundered he was, but nae sigh did he gi’e;

He mounted his mare and rode cannilie;

And after he thought, as he gaed through the glen:

‘She’s daft to refuse the Laird of Cockpen!’”

The pert song was followed by a brilliant waltz, a march, a sonata, then some sentimental songs. Evidently, Thea West was in the highest spirits. No sympathy did the rejected suitor get from his heartless lady-love. She had forgotten him long before he turned away from the sound of her maddening melody and went back from his suburban home to the chief dry-goods store in the village, where he was employed as clerk, and where so many pretty faces smiled daily on the good-looking, well-dressed young man that he could not help knowing that he was a favorite beau—a knowledge that made Thea West’s insouciant scorn sting even more bitterly.

His proposal had had an undreamed-of listener—his sister Emmie, a tall, rather pretty brunette of twenty years. The young lady had been sitting at a vine-wreathed window, close to the porch, unnoticed by anyone, and every word had plainly reached her ears. Her cheeks crimsoned with mortification as she realized that Thea West had rejected the hand of her elder brother, whom Emmie loved so dearly, and of whom she was so proud, knowing well that there were a score of girls in the village who would have gladly said yes to his offer. Beaus were scarce and young girls plentiful in the town of Louisa.

“The pert thing! Refusing Tom, just as if he wasn’t ever so much too good for her, and making fun of him into the bargain! I suppose it’s because she’s dead in love with Frank, and he as good as engaged to Maude Fitz, although it’s true he has hardly been near her since Thea came home from Staunton. I suppose he’ll marry Thea and give Maude the go-by now. I declare, I never will like Thea as well as I used to, after this, and I’ll give her a piece of my mind, too, about her boldness in asking Frank to take her to the party, and I think I’ll give Charley McVey a hint about her carryings-on, as I fancy he was beginning to get sweet on her, too,” Emmie muttered, irately, for Charley McVey had been her favorite beau for some time, and it was here that she suffered most deeply in her pride.

For thirteen years Thea West, as she was called by her own desire, had been a well-beloved inmate of George Hinton’s home, petted by all, and happy in their kindness. Mrs. de Vere had sent regularly a sum sufficient for her maintenance, and when she was eleven years old had directed that she should be sent to boarding-school at Staunton, a city about twenty-five miles from where the Hintons lived.

Emmie had also attended the same school, but had graduated two years before. Thea had spent all her vacations at the home of Uncle George, as she called Mr. Hinton, and upon her graduation this summer had come back there to stay.

She was seventeen years old now, and the cherubic beauty of her childhood had fulfilled its rare promise. She was lovely in a bright, bewitching fashion that carried all hearts by storm. Piquant features; large sapphire-blue eyes with long, curling lashes of chestnut brown, and slender, arched brows of the same lovely color; dimples; a skin like the velvet petals of a tea-rose; an arch, red mouth; a wealth of golden hair; a form divinely molded; feet and hands of the most aristocratic beauty and delicacy—no wonder that the dazzled youth of Louisa could look at no one else when she was by. Yet in no sense was Thea a flirt, although her high spirits, her charming cordiality and engaging frankness of manner, coupled with her striking beauty, had begun to earn for her that unenviable reputation.

She was only a lovely, high-spirited, noble young girl, with strong capabilities for enjoying life, and eager to do so—a fair type of bright, happy maidenhood—

“Young, innocent, gay,

With the wild-rose of childhood yet warm on her cheek,

And a spirit scarce calmed from its infantine play

Into woman’s deep feeling.”

In the three weeks since Thea had been home from school, time had passed very pleasantly. Parties and picnics had rapidly succeeded each other in this charming Virginia town, and not one had Thea missed. Withal, she had turned the heads of half the marriageable men in town—a fact which afforded the careless child nothing but amusement.

She knew nothing of love, save from poetry and novels, and she had a fearlessly open opinion that love was tiresome in real life. She did not scruple to tell Tom Hinton that he was not half so nice as he had been when she was only a little girl.

“And you brought me candy and nuts and raisins, and all the things that Aunt Hester said were not good for little girls. You bring them still, and I enjoy them, but not as much as if you didn’t talk nonsense to me,” she said, candidly.

Emmie Hinton had always been fond of the girl, but she was in danger of forgetting it now in her resentment over Tom’s rejection.

“As if it wasn’t really better than she had any right to expect, for who knows who she is, anyhow?” ran on the tenor of her angry thoughts. “She was found in a railway wreck, and she hasn’t even a name but the one she made up herself out of a silly pet name. She can not have any people that amount to much, or they would have answered some of the advertisements papa says Mr. de Vere put into the papers. I wish he would come and take her away. I—I—wish she had never come here!” finally boo-hooed Emmie, spitefully, for she was growing miserably uncertain over the tenure she had upon Charley McVey’s heart.

That night, when the girls were dressing to go to the dancing-party, Emmie’s wrath broke out.

“Thea West, you ought to be ashamed of youself, asking a young man to escort you to the dance. If no one asked you for your company, you ought to stay at home.”

Thea was dodging behind Emmie’s shoulder, trying to see if she had tied her blue sash properly over her airy white mull dress. She gave a gasp of surprise.

“Oh, you needn’t pretend you didn’t!” Emmie continued, angrily, her cheeks as red as the roses she was pinning on her corsage.

“Who says I did?” Thea asked, quickly.

“No matter; I happen to know that you asked Frank,” snapped Emmie. “I should think you’d know Maude Fitz wouldn’t like it, and he as good as engaged to her. Why, before you came from school they went everywhere together. Now you keep him running after you all the time, the same as if he were your beau.”

“Frank is the same as my brother. Maude knows that I didn’t think she’d care,” Thea said, flushing, and keeping back two started tears that wanted to fall.

Emmie had never scolded her before.

“I suppose Tom is the same as your brother, too, but he didn’t think so this afternoon when he was asking you to marry him,” snapped Emmie.

She moved aside from the mirror, but Thea did not want it now. She had forgotten about the sash.

“Did Tom tell you that?” she asked, in a low voice.