Jaquelina

"Lina, hush," he said, impulsively, when she had sung that first verse. "That is too sad a song. Choose something gayer and more suited to our bridal eve."

"I do not know any gay songs, Ronald," she replied, with some of the sadness of the song yet lingering on her face.

"That is strange," he said. "Did you learn nothing bright and lively at school, Lina?"

"No, I do not believe I did," she answered, musingly. "It seems to me that I always chose songs with a touch of sadness in them. Somehow I liked them best."

But after a minute's thought she sang lightly:

"Do you like that one any better, Ronald?" she said, with a smile, when she had finished.

"It is a pretty song," he said, "but, do you know, Lina, you keep selecting songs that hint of separation and sorrow; I do not like to hear you. Darling, do you begin to realize that after to-morrow we shall be separated no more 'until death us do part?'"

He took both her small hands in his as he asked the question.

She lifted her eyes to his, and he saw that they were full of bright, unshed tears.

"No, Ronald," she said, in a faint, fluttering voice. "I do not quite realize my happiness. It seems too bright to be real."

She shivered slightly as she spoke, and gave a swift, nervous look around her.

The soft sigh of the evening breeze, the rustling leaves seemed to whisper threateningly:

"In the moment that is the happiest of your whole life I shall take my revenge!"

"Lina, I do not believe you are well," cried Ronald Valchester, anxiously. "I saw you shivering that moment."

"The twilight is coming on, and these September evenings are chilly," she answered, rising. "Let us go to the house and sit on the porch. Uncle Charlie will be very glad to see you."

When they had crossed the purling brook and gone into the little vine-wreathed porch, Jaquelina felt easier. She was nervous out in the orchard among the whispering grasses.

She fancied a dark, demoniacal face peering at her behind the trees.

When she crossed the brook it seemed to be singing loudly:

"In the moment that is the happiest of your whole life I shall take my revenge."

The shadow of Gerald Huntington's vengeance was already upon her.

But on Ronald Valchester's love and happiness there fell no cloud from the near future.

To his ardent and poetic imagination life lay before him fair and lovely like a dream of summer.

Mr. Meredith came out and welcomed his niece's lover cordially, and after a brief conversation prudently retired into the house to the companionship of his wife and Dollie.

Mrs. Meredith, persuaded into amiability for once in her life by her husband, spread a dainty and neat-looking supper upon the table.

The lovers went through the form of eating, and then returned to the porch again where the air was spicy and sweet with the breath of late-blooming roses, and the new moon rose over the misty hills, smiling on these two lovers who were all the world to each other.

"This time to-morrow night you will be my bride," Ronald said to her fondly. "Then we will immediately take the train for Richmond. Oh! Lina, how often I have dreamed of that home-going. Often and often when I think of taking you with me, I recall the beautiful words in which Longfellow describes the home going of Hiawatha and his bride. Do you remember, Lina?"

She repeated a few lines softly:

Then Lina's small hand stole softly into her lover's. She raised her dark, passionate eyes to his face, and he read in their starry depths the deathless love that filled her heart.

"Lina, you do love me very much—do you not?" he said, lovingly.

"Ah, I could not tell you how much," she murmured. "If I were a poet like you, Ronald, I might put my tenderness into glowing words. But it is locked deep within my heart. I think if anything happens to part us I should die."

"Nothing can happen to part us, Love," he answered. "To-morrow night at this hour you will belong to me wholly, and then your life shall be all couleur de rose. Nothing can come between us after that magic ring is on your finger. We shall belong to each other, then, in the solemn, beautiful words of the marriage service, 'until death us do part.'"

His happy mood and his loving confidence were infectious.

The girl forgot for awhile the hovering shadow of evil.

She was gay and blithe and happy, looking forward to the morrow with timid, tremulous joy.

"I shall come for you in a carriage to-morrow evening, myself," he said. "Walter Earle has promised to come for mother in his phaeton. Violet will meet us at the church."

He kissed her good-night, saying that he would bring his mother to-morrow.

"My last good-night," he said, as he held her small hands tightly a moment, loth to leave her, and smiling at the warm blushes that surged into her cheeks.

She watched him walking away through the white radiance of the moonlight, a tall and graceful figure, on which her heart and her eyes dwelt fondly. She murmured his words with trembling pleasure, "our last good-night."

CHAPTER XVIII.

"My dear, I have brought you my own bridal veil to wear. I fancied I would like Ronald's bride to wear it. I asked him about it, and he seemed very pleased with the idea."

Mrs. Valchester carefully unwrapped the little package of fine tissue paper, and shook out a web of costly Brussels lace. Jaquelina uttered a low cry of delight.

"It is beautiful," she said, "and you are very kind, Mrs. Valchester."

Ronald's handsome, stately old mother looked pleased.

"So you like it," she said, throwing it over Jaquelina's head, and thinking to herself how beautifully the dark eyes gleamed through its silvery mist. "Now, my dear, if we only had a few natural white flowers to arrange in your hair we should do splendidly. Have you any in your flower garden?"

Jaquelina, with her graceful head on one side, studied intently.

"I am afraid we have none that would do," she said, scornfully. "You see, Mrs. Valchester, it is so late in the season that most of the flowers are gone. In the spring and summer we have white lilacs and syringas, and roses and jessamines, but now we have only some small white chrysanthemums—yes, and a bed of lovely white pansies. Mrs. Earle gave me the plants last year. Would they do at all, Mrs. Valchester?"

"The very things," said the old lady; "are there many of them in bloom?"

"Lots of them," said Jaquelina, enthusiastically, "and, ah, so lovely, Mrs. Valchester. They look like white velvet, and they are so streaked and veined with the loveliest tints I ever saw."

Mrs. Valchester smiled indulgently at her girlish enthusiasm.

"Very well, Lina," she said, kindly. "You may bring me a quantity of the darlings. We will need some for your wreath, and some for your breast, and a knot to fasten in your belt."

Lina, who was already dressed in the quaint, pretty India muslin, and the gold chain and locket, went down from the little chamber in haste to execute the commission.

Mrs. Meredith, who was donning her Sunday best to attend the wedding, looked out from her chamber as the girl passed by.

"Lina, stop in my room as you go back," she said. "I've something for you."

"Very well, Aunt Meredith, I will," she said, hurrying on, full of happy excitement.

In the softly falling twilight she glided down the path to the old-fashioned garden that lay silent and odorous under the pale light of the moon that hung like a silver crescent in the dark blue sky just above the line of the distant hills.

Lina knelt down with a smile on her lips and gathered a lapful of the great, velvety pansies, on which the dewdrops of evening shone like glittering diamonds.

Her white hands trembled with pleasure; her young heart beat high with love and rapture. She had thrown off the incubus of dread since Ronald's reassuring words last night; yet a sudden, swift memory caused her, as she rose, to glance quickly around her, and then to gather up her flowers and fly along the path back to the house.

As she hurried up to her own room she suddenly remembered Mrs. Meredith's injunction, and ran back to her door, where she tapped lightly.

It was opened by her aunt, who held a small package in her hand, and spoke thickly, with her mouth full of hairpins.

"A black man brought this here, and said it was a bridal-present for you," Lina understood her to say.

She took the package and went on to Mrs. Valchester.

She emptied her lapful of flowers on the toilet-table and held up the package with a smile.

"Some one has sent me a bridal-gift," she laughed.

"Don't stop to examine it now, my dear," said Mrs. Valchester. "We have no time to lose. Sit down here by me, and let us tie the pansies into pretty little bunches."

Jaquelina sat down obediently, and Mrs. Valchester said:

"I will tell you a secret, Lina. Ronald went to New York last week and purchased an exquisite set of jewelry—diamonds and large, pale pearls—for your bridal-gift. Do you like jewels?"

"Very much," said Lina; "but I have never possessed any except mamma's few trinkets and the engagement-ring that Ronald gave me."

"Ronald does not mean to give you the jewels till after the wedding," said Ronald's adoring mother. "He has a poetic fancy for you to wear just the same things you wore when he first met you. Of course, that would never do in a fashionable place, but here in the country it does not matter so much to give him his way. Ronald is very fanciful and poetic. He is about to publish a volume of poems. I am sure they must succeed. Some of them are quite Byronic."

So Ronald's fond mother rambled on to his bride-elect, while with her own white, jeweled fingers she adjusted the beautiful veil on the girl's graceful head; confining it with knots of velvety white pansies.

When she said, quite proudly: "You are finished, and you make a really beautiful bride, my dear," Lina's heart gave a throb of rapture at the praise of her betrothed's mother.

"I may open the package now?" she said, timidly, to the stately old lady in her silver-gray silk and real laces and soft puffs of gray hair.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Valchester, "for I suppose you are impatient to see what token of kindness one of your friends has sent to you."

Jaquelina removed the wrappings and found a small painting, exquisitely framed in ebony and silver. The painting represented a serpent crushing a dove. Beneath it was written, in a fine, clear, feminine hand the one word:

"Vendetta."

Mrs. Valchester looked over Lina's shoulder at the strange bridal-gift.

"Lina," she said, gravely, "it is not a friend who has sent you this; it is an enemy."

"Oh, how cruel!" said the girl.

Her fair cheeks grew pale, and a frightened look came into her dark eyes.

"Who could have done it?" said Mrs. Valchester. "Have you an enemy, my child—a female enemy? This is the writing of a woman."

"I do not know a woman on earth who dislikes me," Lina replied.

"It was very unkind and cruel," said Mrs. Valchester, warmly. "I should not have thought anyone could be so cruel as to try and frighten you thus in the happiest moment of your life. It is very strange that you should have an unknown enemy who should take this method of declaring war against you. We must tell Ronald about it, and see if he can have any idea as to the perpetrator."

Then she paused, and Lina laid the threatening bridal-gift upon the small toilet-table, for the rumble of wheels was heard below. Ronald Valchester had come for his bride.

"They are come. Do not be frightened Lina," said Mrs. Valchester, smiling, as the sensitive white-and-red began to come and go in the cheeks of the dark-eyed girl.

CHAPTER XIX.

The small congregation of the pretty little country chapel where Jaquelina was to be married was in a flutter of excitement equal to that of a fashionable city church.

High and low, rich and poor, had gathered in the aisles to witness the wedding of the farmer's pretty, simple niece to the wealthy and aristocratic Ronald Valchester.

There was the usual amount of gossip and small talk while they waited for the bridal party to appear, but the chat was mostly good-natured.

Jaquelina Meredith had always been an object of pity and sympathy to the neighbors for the hard life she had lived at her uncle's. All were glad that she had made what is termed a good match.

Kind and friendly hands had decorated the house of God with flowers for the bridal. Gentle Mrs. Earle had sent white flowers, beneath which the contracting parties were to stand while they pledged the solemn vows.

The path from the gateway to the churchdoor was literally strewn with roses. Kind hearts and kind wishes waited on the coming of the gentle young bride.

They came at last. The whisper ran from lip to lip. The joyous notes of the wedding march pealed from the small organ; the gray-haired minister arose and stood waiting with his open book.

The immediate relatives of the bride and groom, the Merediths and Mrs. Valchester, entered first with Mr. and Mrs. Earle.

They proceeded to the seats reserved for them near the altar, amid a great deal of subdued whispering over their appearance, especially the elegant dresses of Mrs. Earle and the groom's mother.

Then: "Oh, how beautiful!" was whispered from lip to lip as Violet Earle came slowly up the aisle on the arm of her handsome brother.

Violet was attired in an exquisite costume of white lace, festooned with delicate pink geraniums. She wore gleaming white pearls on her neck and wrists, and carried a small basket of delicate pink geraniums on her arm that exhaled a delicate perfume as she passed.

"Violet, I never saw you looking so pretty as you do to-night," Walter whispered to her, and it was true.

A slight air of restless and anxious expectancy lent color to her cheeks and fire to her eyes.

Walter himself looked handsome, but very pale and grave. He had not conquered his own heart yet, and he walked over a path of thorns when he accompanied his friend to the altar.

It was a strange sight to see this brother and sister acting as bridesmaid and groomsman to this pair.

Walter was in love with the bride, Violet with the groom. Yet they had been chosen for this office and accepted it calmly as they were now fulfilling it.

They walked to the front of the altar and stepped apart.

Ronald Valchester, tall, handsome and stately, passed between them with his bride upon his arm, and stood expectantly before the clergyman.

Those who stood around said that there never had been a finer-looking bridegroom or a lovelier bride.

Valchester's calm, grave face was very pale, but it was touched with a beautiful, tender seriousness that impressed all who saw it with his deep consciousness of the sanctity of the moment.

The beautiful face of the girl-bride, as seen through the mist of the splendid Brussels veil, glowed with shy blushes, and the thick, curling fringe of her black lashes drooped low upon her softly-rounded cheek.

A moment—the rustle and whisper in the congregation suddenly grew still. The clergyman began to read the solemnly beautiful words of the marriage service. Everyone was looking at the bride. No one noticed that Violet Earle, as she stood at the left of the bride, looked behind her with an anxious, fugitive, eager gaze.

But the next moment all was darkness and confusion. A man sprang up with the swiftness of lightning, and with a daring hand extinguished the pretty chandelier that lighted the chapel.

Cries of alarm and indignation arose. In an instant all was hurry, noise and confusion.

In the instant that the light was extinguished, Jaquelina heard a low cry of pain from her lover's lips, felt him falling to the floor in the darkness. Then she was caught in a pair of strong arms and borne rapidly from the chapel. Struggling and screaming, she was lifted to the back of a horse and borne fleetly away in the arms of her captor.

In the hour that was the happiest of her life, Gerald Huntington had taken his terrible revenge.

CHAPTER XX.

Gradually the first frantic struggle of Jaquelina relaxed in violence. The grief and horror of her situation overcame her nerves. She fainted, and hung limp and nerveless in the strong arms of the outlaw.

"It is better thus," said Gerald Huntington, grimly. "Her struggles sadly impeded my flight. Now I will put my horse to its highest speed."

He crushed the beautiful, senseless white burden fiercely against his breast, and struck the spurs into the sides of his gallant horse, urging him madly forward, for he could hear, in the distance, the ringing hoofs of the animals that bore hot pursuers upon his track.

But his horse, one of the swiftest racers in the country, and the first-rate start he had had, precluded the possibility of being overtaken. Gradually as he flew over the long, white, moon-lighted road, he lost the echo of the pursuing hoofs. They might follow still, but he had left them too far behind to fear them. When he had fully realized this, he struck into the woods. An hour's hard riding brought him to the entrance of the cave, where Jaquelina had first had the ill-fortune to meet him.

He dismounted, and, taking the still senseless girl in his arms, blew a shrill, low whistle that brought a man to care for his horse.

"Have you brought the priest?" he said, abruptly, to this man.

"Yes, captain, he's in waiting," was the respectful reply.

Gerald Huntington waited for no more. He strode into the pitchy darkness of the cave, winding in and out through its tortuous recesses, and emerged, at last, in the luxurious apartment which was specially his own, and which no one dared to enter without his permission. All the while the beautiful, stolen bride lay white and senseless, like a broken lily in his strong arms.

Now he laid her down on a silken sofa, and drawing a flask of wine from his pocket poured a few drops between her pale, parted lips, and chafed her cold brow and hands. Almost before he knew it, the dark eyes opened dreamily, and stared up at his masked face in bewilderment. Then Gerald Huntington again repeated his peculiar whistle.

The thick, velvet hanging parted noiselessly, and three men appeared in the opening. They manifested no surprise at the unusual sight of the girl lying helplessly on the sofa. They evidently knew what had transpired.

"Has Bowles arrived safely from the chapel?" inquired Captain Huntington.

"Yes, captain—just this moment," was the reply.

"Very well. Tell him to come in with the priest. You three guard the different approaches until you receive the signal to take away the priest."

The men bowed and went away. Jaquelina, suddenly regaining her strength and a half-dazed consciousness, sprang wildly to her feet.

"Oh, my God!" she cried out, as her gaze roved wildly around the luxurious cavern apartment, "is it indeed true? You have dared to bring me here! You have torn me from——"

She stopped with a moan of uncontrollable anguish.

"I have torn you from your lover's very arms—yes," echoed Gerald Huntington, with a scornful laugh. "Did I not warn you I would take my revenge in your happiest hour?"

"Cruel, implacable wretch!" Jaquelina cried out, indignantly, her dark eyes flashing fiery scorn on her triumphant enemy. "Oh, how I hate your very sight!"

"Hush, hush, my bonny bride," said Gerald Huntington, with mocking tenderness. "Ere long I will teach you to love me."

She looked at him with parted lips and dark eyes, but her angry beauty did not move him. His wrath was roused to its highest pitch against her. Passionate love and passionate hate struggled together in his breast.

The heavy curtains parted softly again, and Bowles entered, ushering in a small, frightened-looking priest. Gerald Huntington caught Jaquelina's hand forcibly in his and drew her forward.

"Come, priest, we are waiting," he said, with haughty impatience. "Make us man and wife as soon as you can."

"Oh, never—never!" cried his captive with a shriek of fear and terror, as she broke loose from his hold and fled swiftly toward the heavy hangings in a wild effort at escape.

But as she pushed aside the thick curtains, a dark form barred her farther progress. Gerald Huntington came toward her, laughing carelessly at her cry of disappointment.

"Not so fast, my pretty bird," he said. "You are caged tight and fast. There is no escape for you. I have determined to make you my bride whether you consent or not."

"You cannot," she broke out in passionate, breathless defiance. "You dare not!"

"I dare do anything!" Gerald Huntington replied proudly, and he proved the truth of his words by seizing her firmly by one arm, while Bowles, at a signal from his chief, took her by the other. It was a strange sight. The frightened, trembling little priest standing irresolute in the center of the large apartment, and the lovely young girl struggling desperately with the two masked outlaws; her face pale and convulsed with terror, her dark hair streaming in dishevelled ringlets, the silvery mist of her bridal veil rent and torn, the broken, white pansies falling from her hair and her breast, and strewing the crimson carpet—over all, the flickering glare of the lamplight, and the dark, sinister faces of the outlaws peering through the velvet hangings at the striking scene.

The little priest who had been decoyed to the cave by a clever story of a death-bed in the country, though frightened at the sound of his own voice in that terrible place, felt moved to utter a feeble protest.

"If the young lady is not willing," he ventured, "it is not right to marry her against her will."

Gerald Huntington turned on him sternly.

"Reverend sir," he said, haughtily, "we have not asked for your opinion. You are here to perform the ceremony of marriage. Proceed with it. To refuse, or even to hesitate, will be at your deadly peril!"

His white hand went into his breast, and the priest heard the click of a weapon. With a throbbing heart and faltering voice he began to mumble forth the words of the marriage service. Bowles and his master held Jaquelina firmly between them. Gerald Huntington made every response in a loud, clear, triumphant voice; but Jaquelina's head drooped on her breast, while her whole slight frame was benumbed by a sick and shuddering horror. A terrible hopeless despair was stamped upon her white and haggard features.

"I pronounce you man and wife, and whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," said the priest's feeble, quivering voice at last, and the new-made bride drooped forward and fell like one dead at the feet of her lawful master.

CHAPTER XXI.

Gerald Huntington lifted his unconscious bride and laid her again on the sofa. Bowles hurried the not unwilling priest from the room. The outlaw chief was alone with the beautiful, senseless form of the hapless girl whom he had torn from the side of her lover before the very altar, and forced away to share the terrible life of a criminal who was in hiding from the stern arm of justice.

He knelt down by her side, and took her small white hand in both his own.

"She fell before I could place the wedding-ring on her finger," he said: "I will do so now."

But in lifting her hand he saw a diamond ring sparkling on one slender finger. He tore it off quickly, and a spasm of jealous rage convulsed the handsome features from which he had cast aside the disfiguring mask.

"Valchester's gift, doubtless," he said, holding it scornfully on the tip of his finger. "Let us see what dainty motto the poet chose for his darling!"

He held the sparkling circlet up to the light and read the fine lines cut deeply within it:

"Sans peur et sans reproche!"

Then a groan forced itself through his lips that had grown suddenly cold and pallid.

"Ah, my God! the Ardelle motto! How comes it on the hand of this child?"

But the pale, silent lips of the wronged girl made him no answer. She lay still, with the dark fringe of her lashes lying low upon her white cheek. His eye caught the gleam of a golden locket lying on her breast.

"Ah!" he cried, jealously tearing it open, "my rival's dreamy face, perhaps."

A woman's curl, soft and dark, fell from the locket into his hand, and seemed to twine about his fingers as if in tenderness. He shut it into his hand, and looked for the expected picture of the hated rival.

Two faces smiled out upon him. One was a man's—gentle, tender, dreamy, handsome—the other a face, dark and lovely, with a luring charm about its vivid beauty. The fury, the passion, the jealous rage died out of the outlaw's face as he gazed. His fierce, dark eyes grew soft, then startled, and the whiteness of death overspread his face. He opened his hand, and looked fixedly at the long, curling tress.

"My God!" he uttered, and his eyes roved from the fair face in the picture to that of the still unconscious girl. Something in the strange likeness of the two affected him terribly.

"Can it be?" he said, aloud; and as if he had asked her a question, the white lids of Jaquelina fluttered upward, and she fixed her dark eyes upon him.

Then she saw that he held her treasured locket open in his hand, and a gleam of anger flashed from her eyes.

"How dare you?" she cried, trying to wrench it from him.

But the outlaw caught the weak little hands and held them tightly.

"Girl," he said, hoarsely, "tell me whose faces are these you wear upon your breast?"

Something in his strong, repressed agitation forced a reply from Jaquelina's pale lips.

"They are those of my father and mother," she replied, wonderingly.

"Your mother's maiden name?" he asked, fixing his dark, magnetic eyes upon her face.

And again some power that seemed beyond her own volition, held her passionate anger in abeyance, and forced her to reply, quietly:

"Jaqueline Ardelle."

The man started—a groan of agony forced itself between his bloodless, pain-drawn lips.

"For God's sake, I ask you, for God's sake, tell me all you know of your mother," he exclaimed, in low, tense accents, while his black eyes seemed to burn with inward fire.

"I know very little to tell you," she said, with increasing wonder at his fearful agitation, for great drops of dew beaded his high, white brow. "I have told you her name was Jaqueline Ardelle. My father married her in the south of France. He was an artist, and fell in love with her beauty. He brought her home with him, and when I was born she died."

"And this was her hair—her ring—her locket?" he said, as she paused, and then Jaquelina saw for the first time that he had taken her mother's ring from her finger. She reached out her hand for it as she said, sadly:

"Yes, that was her ring and her locket, and that was a curl they cut off for papa after she was dead. And this dress I have on now was my mother's wedding-dress."

There was a pause. The dark eyes of the outlaw were fixed on the curl in his hand. Its silken tendrils seemed to twine about his hand caressingly.

"Give me the curl. I will put it back in the locket," said the girl, rising abruptly to a sitting posture.

"No—no," the outlaw murmured, dreamily, like one talking in his sleep.

"Give it to me," Jaquelina repeated, half angrily. "It is mine—mine."

Then Gerald Huntington sprang to his feet, and towered above her in his princely hight and satanic beauty.

His face was livid, his eyes flashed fire. He threw the silken curl into her lap with a muttered curse.

"Take it," he cried, madly, "take it, and with my curse! I am baffled! baffled! In the moment of my revenge the golden wine of happiness has turned to poison on my lips! I have loved you madly, and made you my bride, but you can never, never be wife of mine! These arms may never hold you, these lips never press your own! Go, girl; go out of my sight forever! Go, before in the madness of my love and despair, I lay you dead at my feet!"

Jaquelina needed no second bidding.

The outlaw chief had turned away with his dark face hidden in his hands.

She slipped from her seat, and gliding softly across the carpeted floor, passed between the heavy velvet hangings and disappeared in the perilous gloom and darkness of the cave beyond, leaving the outlaw chief solitary and alone, stricken by some mysterious, blighting secret.

CHAPTER XXII.

When the chandelier was relighted in the chapel they found Ronald Valchester lying like one dead upon the floor before the altar.

The abductor of his bride had given him a murderous thrust from a knife in the dark, and his snowy vest was dyed with the crimson current that poured from his side.

He was in a deep and death-like swoon, and when he opened his dim eyes again, he found himself supported on the white arm of Violet Earle, while a flood of tears rained from her dark blue eyes.

The doctors came and examined him. They found that the wound was not so bad as was at first supposed.

It was a flesh-wound in the left lung, and, though dangerous, not necessarily fatal.

They thought the assassin had aimed for the heart, but had missed it in the darkness.

They carried him to Laurel Hill, and Walter Earle and every other man in the neighborhood set out on a hot pursuit of the daring abductor of the beautiful girl-bride.

Public indignation was thoroughly aroused, and public opinion pointed unerringly to the perpetrator of the terrible outrage.

All remembered that Gerald Huntington had sworn an oath of vengeance against Jaquelina Meredith the night on which she had effected his capture.

Meanwhile Ronald Valchester, lying in a cool, white chamber at Laurel Hill, and lovingly tended by careful hands, was racked by the pain of his wound and the still greater anguish of his mental suffering.

He had lost her, his bonny, dark-eyed bride. She had been torn from his side in the very moment when she was about to be made his own forever.

One ever-recurring question fevered and tormented his harassed mind. To what terrible fate had his darling been devoted by her ruthless foe?

He moaned and tossed in restless delirium all night. They could not soothe him. Opiates failed utterly of effect.

The doctors said it was very bad for his wound. If a fever set in they could not answer for the consequences. But the terribly bereaved bridegroom heeded nothing they said.

He lay all night with his eager, restless eyes fixed upon the door.

Whenever anyone entered he would ask them if they had heard anything—if Walter had returned, and a dozen other anxious questions that were always answered in the negative.

But in the golden dawn of the new day Walter Earle rode into the stable-yard.

His horse was panting and flecked with foam. His master looked weary and jaded, but there was a light of eager joy in his face.

He threw the reins to a servant, and hurried away to the wounded bridegroom's room.

Valchester's heavy eyes, still fixed yearningly on the door, grew bright with joy at his friend's entrance.

"Walter, you bring me news," he cried, eagerly.

And Walter answered with a quiver of joy in his voice:

"Yes, Val, we have found her!"

"Found her!" Mrs. Valchester echoed from her place beside the bed where she was fanning her son.

"Found her!" Mrs. Earle cried joyfully from the washstand where she was preparing iced cloths for Ronald's heated brow.

But Ronald was stricken dumb by that joyful answer. He lay still, pressing Walter's hand tightly in perfect silence, his whole eloquent face expressing his exceeding joy and thankfulness. It was Mrs. Earle who asked after a moment:

"Walter, where did you find the poor child?"

"In the woods, mother, where she had dragged herself until she could go no further. She was very weak and exhausted."

"Is it possible she had escaped from her captor?" exclaimed Mrs. Valchester.

"So it seems," said Walter, "but she was too weary and exhausted to give us any information, scarcely. We have taken her home, and when she is rested and somewhat recovered, she will tell us all."

"When did you find her?" Ronald asked, faintly.

"A little past midnight, lying like a little white heap under a tree," Walter replied.

"She was quite unconscious, and only rallied after we reached the farm with her. She could only answer a few questions, and we would not weary her. She was very nervous, and seemed disinclined for speech."

"Oh! that I were well enough to go to her," groaned Ronald.

Walter Earle looked at the pale, eager face compassionately.

"Valchester, do not worry yourself," he said, kindly. "It is not good for you. Lina will come to you the moment she is able. She said she would, and her uncle said that he would bring her. Try and be patient a few hours."

"If he would only sleep," said Mrs. Valchester, eagerly. "The doctor said he must be very quiet and sleep a good deal, but he has never even closed his eyes, and he's watching the door constantly, and asking wild questions of everyone."

Walter looked at the pale, worn face of the wounded man. He knew in his heart what the anguish of that night had been to him.

"Poor old Val," he said, gently, "how could he help it? It was hard to bear—the misery, and the terrible suspense. But now that Lina is safe, he will compose himself and go to sleep as you wish him—will you not, Ronald?" he inquired in a soothing tone.

"I will try," he answered, and closed his eyes obediently; but every now and then when they thought him asleep, a nervous start or a twitching of the eye-lids would betray the wakefulness and excitement which he was patiently striving to overcome.

But happiness is a potent medicine.

They knew that ere long his relieved mind would succumb to its own weariness, so they darkened the room and kept very still, waiting anxiously for the moment when "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," should fold her pinions over his weary pillow.

Then Walter himself, weary and worn with a night's hard riding, stole from the room to seek rest and comfort on his own downy couch.

Outside the door he encountered his sister restlessly hovering in the hall, her fair face strangely pallid, a frightened gleam in her large, blue eyes.

"Walter," she whispered fearfully, "is it true what I heard you saying just now—that Lina Meredith is really found?"

"Yes, it is true," he answered. "Are you not glad, Violet?"

A strange expression that Walter could not understand, came over the pallid face of the girl.

"Found—I can scarcely credit it!" she cried out, in astonishment. "Come, Walter, I will go with you to your room, and you shall tell me all about it."

She went with him to his quiet room, but she could gain no more from him than she had already heard him telling Ronald Valchester. A look of disappointment came over her lovely, blonde face. She left Walter and went away to her own room, where she threw herself down upon her snowy couch and wept the bitterest tears that had ever fallen from those lovely eyes.

"Gerald Huntington has played me false," she told herself. "He has let her go after all the risks I ran for him. Oh! how could he be so base, so cruel? What shall I do now? Oh, what shall I do?"

Weeping and sighing, Violet wrung her hands, and hid her anguished face in the lace-trimmed pillow. She had dared and risked so much to remove her hated rival from her path, and all had failed.

In the afternoon Ronald Valchester fell into a long, refreshing sleep. When he awakened, feeling wonderfully calmed and refreshed, his first question was for his little Lina.

"My dear, I do not think she has come yet," said the gentle mother, patiently watching by his bedside. "Be patient. She will come bye-and-bye."

"Mother, will you just step down and see if they have heard any more from her?"

Mrs. Valchester moved quietly away. The invalid lay still, with half-closed eyes, watching the last flickering beams of sunshine as they lay in golden bars upon the floor.

Then, although he had heard no footsteps, he saw the shadow of a woman lying across the sunbeams on the floor. He looked up quickly and saw a small, white figure in the doorway, with a wan, white face and great, dark eyes that looked at him sorrowfully yet eagerly.

"Lina, Lina, my darling!" he cried out, extending his eager arms toward her.

CHAPTER XXIII.

At that loving call Jaquelina staggered across the floor to Ronald's bedside. She laid her wan, white face upon his own, and kissed him through a rain of bitter tears.

"Oh! my poor, poor murdered love," she sobbed wildly. "If you should die your poor Lina must die too."

Ronald's arm stole around the slender form lovingly.

"It is not so bad as that, dear," he said. "I shall get well, please God, and we shall be married soon. Nay, why should we not have the holy man come and unite us at this very hour? Would it not be the best, Lina, darling? Then you would belong to me, and be my own patient, loving little nurse. Believe me, I should get well all the faster."

But Jaquelina had drawn back from his caress with a sudden cry of pain. He put out his hand with a smile to draw her back, and then he saw that her small, white hands were cut and bruised, and that a linen bandage was swathed about her right arm.

"Oh! my poor little Lina!" he cried, "your hands are cruelly bruised and torn! Who has done this wicked, brutal deed?"

Her lips quivered as he took her hands gently and pressed them to his lips; the large tears gathered in her eyes and brimmed over on her pale cheeks.

"No one has done it, Ronald," she said, falteringly. "I crawled on my hands and knees through a long, dark, perilous cave, and the sharp rocks bruised and wounded me. But I did not care for that; I was so glad to get away that I did not feel the pain. Look at this," she said, turning back a corner of the bandage on her arm.

Ronald looked and shivered. There was a terrible, jagged wound on the fair, round arm, and the flesh around it was fearfully bruised and discolored.

"There were horses tethered in the cave," she whispered. "It was pitch black: I could see nothing. I must have crawled beneath their very feet, and one struck his hoof out in the darkness and kicked this arm. Then, by a merciful providence, I was enabled to turn aside out of the range of their hoofs. Oh, I cannot tell you, Ronald, how terrible it was, creeping through that fearful place."

"You were in the very den of the outlaws," he exclaimed.

"Yes," she answered, with a shudder.

"And you escaped from them, my brave little girl!" he cried. "Oh, thank God, you were saved from the vindictive power of that man! Lina, I cannot rest easy one moment now until I have the right to watch over every moment of your life. I must take you far away from here."

She trembled at the passionate dread in his voice, then rallied bravely.

"Do not fear for me," she said. "He will not molest me again, Ronald."

But Ronald shook his head.

"I shall never know one moment's peace until you are my own," he said. "Lina, I shall send for the minister to-night, and you shall be my wife without one moment's delay. You are willing, are you not, my little love?"

The girl clasped her small, bruised hands together, and her pale face grew paler still with anguish.

"Oh, pitiful Heaven!" she wailed, "how can I tell you the truth, my own Ronald?"

He looked at her in wonder.

"Lina, what is it?" he asked. "You will not refuse to marry me here and now—you cannot be so cruel. Think, love, you would have been my wife last night if all had gone well, and you cannot now refuse my prayer to make you mine in the moment of my suffering and sorrow. Think what a comfort it would be to me to have my own little wife for my patient, loving nurse—or perhaps that would be too great a burden for you, Lina?"

"No, no; it would be too great a pleasure," she replied eagerly. "How could I think any task performed for you would be a burden, Ronald?"

"Then you will marry me to-night, Lina, will you not, my darling?"

She looked at the pale, handsome face, with its anxious eyes and winning smile, and her heart gave a great, suffocating throb of terrible pain.

"Ronald, I cannot—to-night," she said, falteringly.

"To-morrow, then?" he said.

"That is too soon," she answered, looking away from him that he might not see the pain in her face. "We must defer it. Let us wait until you get well."

An expression of the keenest disappointment came over the handsome face.

"Lina, I thought you loved me better than that," he said, reproachfully. "What reason can there be for waiting so long?"

"There is a very important reason," she replied, tremblingly.

"Tell me what it is," said Ronald, half-laughing.

He thought it was only some small feminine scruple he could easily overcome.

She looked at him, hesitating strangely.

She had moved a little way from him, and stood with her hand resting easily on the back of a chair, while her long lashes drooped and a crimson flush tinted her face.

"Tell me what it is," he said again. "Is it that the pretty wedding-dress is ruined. Lina? Never mind that. The one you are wearing will do perfectly well."

"It is a greater obstacle than that," she faltered; "but it may be overcome after awhile. Uncle says so, and Walter Earle—I have told him, too—says that it will all come right."

"Lina, come here to my side and put both your hands in mine," said Ronald Valchester.

She obeyed him, though she trembled like a leaf.

"Now look straight into my eyes and let me see if you are quite sane," he said.

She lifted her long lashes obediently and looked at him.

He started as those dark eyes met his own. They were dim and heavy with almost intolerable anguish.

"Oh, Heaven, my darling, what mystery is this?" he cried out, fearfully. "Lina, what has happened to part us?"

She shivered, as though the very words hurt her.

"It is only for a little while," she said, in a low and faltering tone. "Uncle Charlie has promised to do all he can for us. It is bitter to bear, Ronald, but it will all come right."

"Lina, you drive me mad," he cried, hoarsely; and she saw that his face was pallid as death, and his eyes wild and frightened. "Go, my child, send Walter Earle to me. Perhaps he will tell me the truth."

A look of resolute endurance came into the pathetic young face.

"No," she said, "I will tell you myself. They said I could break it to you more gently. Perhaps I may help you to bear it. Oh, my darling, do not look at me so hard! I would have died rather than this should have happened."

The sight of her anguish almost maddened Ronald Valchester.

"Lina, I cannot bear this suspense any longer," he cried. "Tell me why you will not marry me?"

She came nearer; she took both his hands and held them in her own; she looked at him with brave, patient eyes.

"Oh, Ronald, my best beloved," she said, trying to speak calmly and bravely, "you must remember while I am telling you that it will not be for long. The obstacle shall be removed—Uncle Charlie has promised me that. But I cannot be your wife now, because—oh, Ronald, because—against my own will—I am already—married to another."

A terrible pause! The blue-gray eyes, looking up into the tear-wet black ones, grew dark with intense emotion; the handsome face grew corpse-like in its awful pallor.

"Lina!" he gasped, then words failed him.

"Yes, Ronald," she said, "last night that man had a priest in his awful cave. He read the ceremony of marriage over Gerald Huntington and myself; he pronounced us man and wife. But, Ronald, Uncle Charlie will get a divorce for me, and I will marry you as soon as I am free. Ronald——"

She stopped in terror. He had turned suddenly upon his side, and after a low, gasping sound in his throat, and one quiver of the limbs, lay still, with the bluish pallor of death on his face.

She laid her hand on his heart, but there was no movement.

"Ronald is dead!" she cried, and her wail of anguish re-echoed through the house.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Jaquelina's wail of anguish penetrated to every ear in the house. Those who had sent her alone to break the terrible news to Ronald, came hurrying in now, and found her weeping and wringing her hands, and wildly calling on Ronald to speak to her once more.

"Ronald is dead!" she cried to them. "I tried to tell him gently, but he could not bear it. It has killed him—oh, my darling, my darling!"

Walter Earle hurried to the bedside, while the shrieks of the women filled the room. He pushed Jaquelina gently aside, and bent over the still form of his friend. He laid his hand on the quiet heart.

"Do not tell me that he is dead—my only child, my precious Ronald!" cried the frightened mother.

Walter was silent. He felt the cold hands, the still heart over and over again. At last he turned to his mother, who stood weeping by his side.

"I cannot believe he is dead," he said. "I can feel no pulse, and no beat of the heart. Yet it is possible that he is only prostrated by the suddenness of the shock. He may possibly revive. Send for the doctor immediately."

Then he saw that Mrs. Valchester had fainted, and that Jaquelina chafing her cold hands and bathing them with her tears. He lifted the form of the insensible woman and bore her into the next room.

"Lina, you must come in here—and you, too, Violet," he said. "You must do what you can for Mrs. Valchester. I do not believe that Ronald is dead. I will try every means to revive him."

He left them and went back to Ronald, who still lay like one dead on his pillow. With all that Lina and Violet could do, it was a long time before they could rouse Mrs. Valchester from her deep swoon. In the meantime they could hear the hurrying footsteps coming and going in Ronald's room. The doctor had been sent for and arrived, but it was an hour before Mrs. Earle came softly into the room and said, with gentle joy on her sweet face:

"Walter was right—Ronald is living!"

"Living!" they echoed, and then the three women wept for joy—the mother who had borne him, the girl who was to have been his wife, and Violet who loved him secretly and vainly.

He was living, but life hung on the merest thread. No one could be admitted into the room that night but the doctor and Walter Earle and his mother. He was unable to bear even the joyful excitement his own mother could not have suppressed on seeing him.

He was nervous and restless. The doctor stayed with him all night. He slept for a few hours under the influence of a strong opiate. Then vivid consciousness and memory returned. He pleaded with the physician for a boon which was firmly refused.

But in the glimmering dawn of the new day, which had come in rainy and damp and sunless, the physician stood in the doorway of the next room, where the sleepless watchers waited for the hourly bulletins that came from the sufferer.

"He wishes to see Miss Meredith," he said, gravely.

"And not me!" Mrs. Valchester cried.

"Yes, if I would permit it," said the doctor. "But I am afraid of the excitement. I can admit but one at the time, and Miss Meredith must go first. He has asked for her so often I can no longer refuse his prayer."

Jaquelina rose from her crouching attitude in which she had remained cramped on the hearth-rug all night, shivering and wretched.

"You must go to him alone," said the kindly physician. "He wishes it so earnestly. Try to be very calm, my child. Agree to everything he says. If he becomes excited, call me into the room."

Jaquelina went very quietly, though her dark eyes shone like stars. She did not know with what a baleful gaze Violet watched her as she went into that room where the idol of both their hearts waited for her coming.

They listened, fearful of some excited cry, but no sound came from the next room save a murmur of low, hushed voices. In a very little while—ten or fifteen minutes at the most—the door opened and Jaquelina came out again.

"My dear," the old physician cried out in alarm, and he went up to her involuntarily. The strange pallor on her beautiful young face frightened him.

She lifted her heavy, dark eyes that seemed to have no light or beauty left in them any more, and looked up at him.

"Doctor Leslie," she said, "will you let his mother go to him now? He is not excited. I think he is quite calm, but perhaps his mother may comfort him."

She went out into the hall the next moment. No one thought of stopping her. Her strange appearance had almost frightened them. Doctor Leslie led Mrs. Valchester quietly into her son's room. Jaquelina went softly down-stairs and took her shawl and hat from the rack in the hall. She put them on mechanically and stole quietly out of the house into the chilly, rainy world that lay outside.

She walked quietly along the wet and sodden path across the lawn, little dreaming that Walter Earle had observed her from an upper window and was hastening after her. She turned with a start at his light touch upon her arm.

"Lina, what does this mean?" he cried.

"I am going home," she said, with hard, dry lips.

"Not in the rain," said Walter, "the walk is too far. I will drive you over in the phaeton after breakfast."

"I must go now," she said, pushing on resolutely through the chilling autumn drizzle. "I do not mind the walk."

"I do not understand you, Lina," he said, gravely. "Why did you not wait and see Valchester? He will be very disappointed at your going."

"I have seen him," she replied, still walking on. "Doctor Leslie allowed me to go in a few minutes."

Walter could not understand her strange gravity and quietude. It seemed as if years had suddenly fallen on the bright young head and made of her a mature and thoughtful woman.

"You will come back and see Ronald again?" he said, interrogatively.

She lifted her heavy eyes and gave him one swift look whose hopeless despair never passed from his memory.

"I shall never see Mr. Valchester again," she said, mournfully.

"Never—why not, Lina?" he cried, surprised.

"He has given me up," she said.

"Why?" Walter queried again in bewilderment. "It will be all right after your Uncle Charles obtains a divorce for you—will it not?"

She looked at him again with those heavy, hopeless eyes.

"No, never again," she said. "Mr. Valchester has told me that he does not believe that human law can repeal a union cemented by a priest of God. He does not believe in divorces. As long as Gerald Huntington lives, he believes I am bound to him."

"Valchester is mad—delirious," Walter muttered, indignantly. "For myself, I hold that it was no marriage at all!"

They were nearing the lawn gates, and in a moment she looked up at him.

"Mr. Earle," she said, "we are almost at the lawn gates. Will you excuse me if I go on alone from here? You are very kind, but—it seems to me I cannot bear the sight of a human face."

Walter bowed and turned back silently, leaving her to pursue her walk alone.

CHAPTER XXV.

When Walter Earle parted from Jaquelina at the lawn gates, he went back to the house with two distinct thoughts in his mind. One was a feeling of indignation and surprise against Ronald Valchester. He was amazed at learning that his friend was an unbeliever in divorces. He firmly resolved to give Ronald a lecture on the subject, when he should be sufficiently recovered to argue the case. His second thought, which he could not help entertaining, was, that since affairs had taken this peculiar turn, there was some hope still for himself.

"After the divorce is granted, I will do my utmost to re-unite them," he said, still loyal to Ronald and Lina in spite of his love for her; "and then if I fail of converting Ronald, I will woo little Lina for myself. Ronald could not accuse me of disloyalty to him in that case."

He could not help feeling that Ronald Valchester's defection must place his own suit in a better light before Jaquelina's eyes. The divorce from the outlaw was only a question of time, Walter thought. They could not fail to grant it. Indeed, it seemed to Walter that it could scarcely be viewed as a marriage at all. Jaquelina once freed from its fetters, she could not help feeling a little indignant at Valchester's view of the case, and, once over the smart of her pain, it seemed to Walter that his own loyal love could not fail to find favor in her eyes.

"And then—who knows?" mused Walter. "Jaquelina once out of his reach, and by his own decision, too, the heart of Valchester may, in time, turn to Violet. Poor little Violet! She has borne her pain bravely, but I am certain that she has not got over it yet."

In spite of his sympathy for the sadly and strangely parted lovers, Walter could not repress a glow of satisfaction at the thought that, after all, his own happiness and that of his sister might be secured by the strange events that had seemed so deplorable at first. Yet he resolved that he would first do all he could to change Valchester's opinion of divorces.

He went back to the sick-room and found his friend very ill and weak. The doctor warned him there must be no talking—his patient could not bear to be excited. He lay back upon the pillow, his handsome face pale as marble, the long, dark lashes lying motionless on his cheek, yet they knew that he was not asleep, only spent and exhausted by the tempest of emotion that had passed over him. His mother sat quietly by the bed-side, looking pale and sad, and heart-broken in the gray morning light. She had telegraphed for General Valchester, and looked anxiously for his arrival at any hour of the day.

As the day wore on, the wound developed a dangerous phase. Fever and delirium set in; Ronald's pale face grew scarlet, his dim eyes bright with fever fires. He tossed restlessly on his pillows, and babbled ceaselessly of his loved Lina, interspersing his flighty murmurs with poetical quotations. "Hiawatha's Wooing" seemed to linger in his mind like a pleasant dream. He would murmur over and over: