CHAPTER XVI.
WHEN A MAN HATES.
Rapid thoughts were revolving in his mind:
“I will take her far away from New York, my precious daughter, and her mother shall never know that she is not lying in the old vault among her dead-and-gone kindred, the proud Van Dorns. The rest of her sweet life shall belong to the plebian father her mother despised.”
Suddenly he remembered the old sexton lying, as he supposed, in a heavy swoon on the floor of the vault.
“Can I purchase his silence?” he wondered, laying Jessie’s quiet form down on the dry grass while he returned to the vault.
It gave him a shock to find that the old man was quite dead, but directly he began to perceive that the sudden death would help his plans materially.
“Poor old man, I am very sorry about it, but it makes my secret safe. Now, I will lay him with the lantern and the vault keys some distance away in one of the paths, so that when he is found in the morning no one will suspect what has happened here,” he thought, as he lifted the frame of the old man and bore it some distance away, placing beside it the lantern and keys as if he had fallen dead on the spot.
“God rest his soul!” he murmured, bending over the still form and placing in his inner coat pocket a sum of money more than sufficient to defray his burial expenses.
“For who knows but he may have left a widow and orphans who will mourn bitterly to-morrow when he is found here dead,” he thought, with a sigh, as he turned from the spot, returning to Jessie, who lay faintly breathing, but not yet fully conscious, on the grass.
“Now to get safely away from here before she awakes and realizes the horror of her position,” he muttered, fastening the long overcoat tightly around her to conceal her white robes as he bore her in his arms out of the beautiful cemetery, past glimmering statues marking the last repose of world-worn hearts.
Once safely in the street, he ventured to call a taxicab, explaining to the chauffeur, who looked suspiciously at his strange burden, that his daughter had fainted in the street while they were on their way to a little party.
“Just drive about the streets a while until I give you further orders,” he said, wishing to gain time to think.
To carry Jessie in this garb and condition to any hotel, he knew, would bring upon him a suspicion he was unwilling to face, so he racked his brain in the endeavor to decide where to go with his charge.
In his extremity he thought of the woman by whom the Lyndons had once lived, and who had told him of his sister’s death and the removal of the bereaved family to so distant a part of the city that she had quite lost track of them. The woman was widowed and lived alone in a poor cottage of her own, so it was the safest refuge he could find for Jessie.
To this kindly soul he went in his trouble, and was received with motherly cordiality.
Preferring not to tell her the actual truth, he satisfied her curiosity with a plausible story, and soon had Jessie disrobed and placed in a warm, comfortable bed.
But though the woman who had dearly loved Jessie always called her by every fond, endearing name, no light of recognition shone in the dazed, dark eyes. By morning they found that she was really ill, and needed a physician.
“She has had a fall and perhaps injured her brain—however, I can tell better by to-morrow,” said the man of healing.
Acting on this clever diagnosis, his treatment of the case was so correct that within three days the light of reason returned to Jessie’s eyes.
It was a fact that the fall on the pavement and striking her head had more seriously injured Jessie than the drug she had taken, the latter having only induced a long, deep sleep, very like its “twin brother death.”
Leon Dalrymple watched by her bedside with passionate devotion, feeling that he had at last something to live for in this beautiful daughter restored to him as from the dead.
While she still lay ill without having recognized any one around her, he provided the Widow Doyle with a full purse and sent her out to buy a fine outfit.
“We are going away on a journey, my daughter and I,” he said. “She must have a large trunkful of good clothing suitable to a young lady of moderate fortune—nothing gaudy or cheap, but of fine material, and of the best make.”
Mrs. Doyle was a woman of excellent taste, and she fitted Jessie out well with clothing of the best style, so that when she was well enough to sit up she could while away the hours of convalescence by admiring her pretty, new things.
The day came when she opened wide her beautiful eyes with the light of reason shining in them, and saw sitting by the bed a handsome, fair-haired man, who had about him a subtle fascination that instantly drew her heart.
“Who are you?” she whispered faintly.
He turned and took her hand.
“Have you never heard of your absent father, dear little Jessie?”
“Yes. Are you——”
“Yes, I am your father, dearest. Will you kiss me?”
She held up her sweet face passively and gave him a child’s dutiful kiss, murmuring plaintively:
“And my mother?”
A dark frown gloomed his brow as he retorted angrily:
“We will never speak of her, Jessie. She is as one dead to us both.”