CHAPTER XLIII.
THE LOVE THAT WILL NOT DIE.
In after years, when John Dinsmore looked back at that moment, it always seemed like a memory of a hideous nightmare, standing there with Jess’ letter in his shaking hand; the letter in which she told him that she, his wife, had eloped with a former lover. In that hour the sympathy of Queenie seemed like balm to his bleeding heart.
“Mr. Dinsmore,” she said, in that sweet, smooth, silvery voice of hers, that had always had the power to thrill him to the heart’s core, “my heart is bleeding for you. What can I say, what can I do to comfort you?”
He sank into the nearest seat, covering his face with his shaking hands. Queenie advanced a step nearer, and her soft, white hands, cool and white as lily leaves, fell on his bowed head lightly.
“I know, I can understand how deeply your pride is wounded,” she went on, hurriedly. “But instead of wasting one thought over her, you should be rejoicing at getting rid of her so easily—remembering that her action sets you free from the bond which galled you, leaves you free to woo and wed one whom you can love. Do you not realize it?
“She was never a fit companion for you,” continued Queenie, eagerly; “you knew that. You should never have expected anything else from a girl such as she was—a wild, gypsyish creature, without even a name to face the world with. Of course she came from a source where her parents dared not own her, and one should not be surprised that she has developed evil tendencies; it is easy to surmise that they are bred in the bone, and she acted upon them at the first opportunity which presented. I predict that she will reach the lowest level that such a low-born creature——”
The sentence never was finished. With a bound John Dinsmore sprang to his feet, his face white as death, his eyes blazing like coals of fire.
“Stop, madam!” he cried, in a hoarse voice. “Not another word, I command you. Remember it is my wife whom you are reviling so cruelly!” and he towered before her, the incarnation of cold, stern, haughty anger.
For a moment only Queenie loses her self-possession, the next instant her face is wreathed in a cruel sneer, as she answers, defiantly:
“Am I mad, or do my ears deceive me? Are you really championing the cause of the girl who has betrayed you so shamefully? made your name, of which you were so proud, a byword for the sensational press when they learn what has happened? Most men would resent her action with all the pride in their natures, and despise her accordingly; being glad to be rid of such a——”
“Again I cry hold!” cut in John Dinsmore, in ringing, sonorous tones. “I will not hear another disparaging word of the girl who bears my name!”
“I suppose that you will search for her, and when you have found her, you will forgive her freak of mad folly, take her back to your heart and home, and be happy ever afterward, as the story-books say.”
“That is precisely my intention,” announced John Dinsmore, coolly, and in a determined voice. “The fault was mine. I alone am to blame for what has transpired. I wedded her, and instead of cherishing the impulsive child as I should have done, I sent her from me—cast her out a prey to just such vipers as the one who has crossed her path, and led her from the right path. She was young, and craved and needed love and protection, neither of which she received from me; the lesson I have learned is a most bitter one. I will spend my life in trying to find my little Jess, and when I have found her, I will atone to her for my fatal mistake in sending her from me.”
As Queenie listened, all in a moment the realization that he meant that he would never be anything to herself swept with full force over her heart.
“John Dinsmore,” she cried, pantingly, “you must not search for her; let her go where she will!” and with a flame of crimson rushing over her face from chin to brow, she whispered: “If you will you shall have me—and my love! Fate parted us two, who were intended for each other, once before; let us not let her part us a second time!”
“I am sorry to speak harshly to a lady,” he returned; “but you force the words from my lips, and therefore you must hear them; and not only hear, but heed them.
“You can never be any more to me than you are at the present moment, madam. I acknowledge that there was a time when such words as you have just uttered would have filled me with the keenest rapture; but that time has long since passed; for you no longer fill the remotest niche in my heart. My love died for you long ago, and to-night my respect goes with it; for the woman who would counsel me to turn from my wedded wife, no matter what she has done, and find consolation with her, is one whom I do not desire even to know.”
As he uttered these words he strode from the room, leaving Queenie staring after him, the very picture of a fiend incarnate, with her eyes blazing like two coals of yellow fire, and her face and lips bloodless.
“Foiled!” she shrieked. “Foiled! and I had set my heart and soul upon winning him, and the way seemed so easy!”
But one thought occurred to her; if it was indeed so, she would take a terrible vengeance upon him, a vengeance that he would never forget, or get over to his dying day.
She made up her mind that she would strike at his heart through Jess, for whom he was going to search the wide world over.
“You may search, but you will never find her, John Dinsmore!” she cried, hoarsely, beating her breast fiercely with her clinched hands. “I will look to that. You are parted as truly as though the grave yawned between you!”
When she reached her boudoir, and a little later looked in at Jess, she found her still lying in the same dead faint upon the floor.
She bent over the girl, gazing long and bitterly at the lovely, upturned young face, her eyes glowing luridly as she noted how perfect was the loveliness of her every feature.
“Yes, he has learned that he loves you, when it is too late!” she muttered, catching her breath hard. “I will strike his heart through you!”
She was not long in maturing her plans; she set to work to revive the girl without calling any of the servants to assist her in the operation, believing what they did not know they could never repeat to any one.
Her labors were soon rewarded by seeing Jess open her large, dark eyes slowly.
“What is it, Queenie?” she murmured, vaguely; then, in the next breath, before her companion could vouchsafe a reply, she cried bitterly: “Oh, Father in Heaven, I remember all now—the awful intelligence you brought me, that my darling husband, to whom I was to go to-morrow, is dead—killed by an awful accident! Oh, God pity me, how can I ever bear it? I had loved him so well, with all the strength of my heart and soul!”
To an enemy less relentless than the beautiful fiend who bent over her, the ghastly change in the lovely young face, looking so appealingly up into her own, would have drawn forth pity.
If she had had her own way, she would have let the girl die then and there of a broken heart; but that was not a part of the programme she had laid out for herself. It seemed that she was not to win John Dinsmore and his fortune, and her funds were running terribly low; the only way that she knew of to gain a share of the Dinsmore millions, which had slipped by her, was to aid Raymond Challoner to wed this girl, Jess, just as soon as her grief was sufficiently assuaged to allow her to be talked—even coerced—into it.
What the outcome of the affair would be she did not know or care. They would have a lively time recovering her share of the wealth, if the nefarious scheme ever came to light.
She resolved that it would never do to tell Raymond Challoner that John Dinsmore was alive, and had been in New York; and, furthermore, to acquaint him with the startling information that Jess had met and wedded John Dinsmore under the name of Mr. Moore.
She would keep all that from Raymond Challoner; what he did not know would not worry him.
And last, but by no means least, as soon as Jess was in a fit condition to be prevailed upon by argument, or persuasion, to keep the past a profound secret, and marry the man to whom she was engaged, to secure the Dinsmore millions from going to waste, it should be accomplished.
Queenie determined that if she could not wed John Dinsmore and secure his fortune one way, it should be done in another manner.