CHAPTER XL.
DEEDS OF KINDNESS.
When Dalrymple tore himself away at last to prosecute the search for his daughter, it occurred to him to seek her at the home of Mrs. Godfrey, the aunt of his little nephews, Willie and Mark.
It was a great disappointment to him that she had heard nothing of Jessie, but after all he had hardly expected it. A forlorn hope had led him there, coupled with the desire to see his little nephews.
When the little lads were led in to him their chief interest in their new-found uncle was that he was the father of their loved Cousin Jessie. They plied him with anxious questions about her, to which he could only answer sadly that she had gone away for a while, but he hoped she would come back soon.
His first thought was for Mrs. Godfrey, whose care of his nephews he felt was deserving of a fair reward, so he presented her with a check for a thousand dollars.
The poor, toil-worn soul was overwhelmed with surprise and joy.
The sum represented a fortune in her eyes, to which the grateful tears rushed in torrents.
“Oh, I can never thank you enough! This will be like riches to my poor sister and me! She can have the comforts that an incurably sick woman needs now, thanks to your generosity! But I feel I don’t deserve it, when I remember how I had to send sweet Jessie away to earn her own living!”
“Do not worry over that, because it could not be helped. You did more than you were able, taking the little boys on your hands. I shall take care of them now and put them to school.”
“They were welcome to all I could do, poor little ones, and I love them dearly as the children of my dead brother and his sweet wife, but I am glad you can take care of them, and bring them up to be something in the great world,” she replied, with honest pride in her brother’s children.
“I will do my best,” he replied, bowing himself out, after promising to return in a day or two and make arrangements for taking Mark and Willie away.
Then so eager was he for another sight of Verna, that he must needs call again and tell her about his nephews and ask her advice about their future.
“I believe I neglected to tell you that I am fairly rich myself and can afford to do well by the boys without wronging you or Jessie,” he added.
To his surprise and delight she replied:
“I am almost sorry you are rich, Leon, for I would like to show you how generous I could be with these little ones, but they shall be my nephews as well as yours, and I insist on your bringing them here to-morrow to make their home with us.”
“My dearest, you do not understand how troublesome two growing boys could be. Your patience would very soon be exhausted.”
“No, indeed, Leon, for the patter of children’s feet and the sound of their happy voices would be like music in this great, lonely mansion. Here we could care for them like our own children, and how happy it would make our daughter when she comes home to find her loved little cousins with us. Let me have my way in this, Leon, if you can feel satisfied with the arrangements.”
“Satisfied, my own love? Why, it will, indeed, be a boon to me for which I shall feel grateful to you till my dying day,” he declared with fervor.
And thus it happened that on the very next day Mark and Willie Lyndon were removed from the dreary abode of poverty to their new palatial home.
But the secret rage of Cora Ellyson at the turn affairs were taking can better be imagined than described.
She had never felt a spark of real love for Mrs. Dalrymple, and had contemplated her impending death with inward satisfaction, expecting to inherit all her money, and rule royally in the social world by reason of it.
It was a bitter blow when her aunt came back from the gates of death and began to convalesce, but she reasoned to herself:
“It is only a temporary improvement in health, for when her daughter’s fate continues to be unknown she will relapse into a worse stage than at first, and die of disappointment.”
But when Mrs. Dalrymple confided to her the new turn affairs had taken, she could scarcely conceal her rage.
“You are going to remarry your divorced husband—the man you deserted of your own will, Aunt Verna, and pretended to hate and despise all these years—Impossible!” she exclaimed remonstratingly.
Mrs. Dalrymple’s dark head instantly crested itself with the pride Cora knew so well, and she dared not find further fault.
So Cora, repulsed, could only vent her rage in secret, and bitter enough it was, though mixed with one sweet drop of triumph in the thought that never again would their eyes rest on Jessie’s sweet face.
“Let them search and search, but never again will their eyes be gladdened by her return. Let them go on believing that Cora Ellyson is sorry she sent her into exile that night. Ha, ha!” and a laugh that was fiendish in its cruel triumph rang out upon the stillness of the room. She was in a retrospective mood, and as she shook loose the braids of dark hair over her shoulder, she gazed fixedly at her pallid face in the long mirror, muttering:
“Yet Frank Laurier doesn’t love me. How mortifying to marry a man who shrinks from one with secret aversion! Yet I will not turn back. I will marry him if only to punish him for his perfidy! And if he withholds love then he shall feel to the core of his heart what it is to trample on a woman’s love!”
Stung to fury by the indifference he could not hide, Cora was filled with the venom of “a woman scorned.”
The next day, after fitting out his manly little nephews in handsome new clothing, Leon Dalrymple took them to their future home, where they met a cordial welcome from the woman who was soon to be their uncle’s wife again.
But not so with Cora, who watched their movements with angry eyes.
To the little boys, fresh from the tiny cot of poverty, the great house on Fifth Avenue was a wonderful Aladdin’s palace.
They gazed about them in round-eyed wonder, and as soon as the first sense of being company was over and they were left somewhat to their own devices, they began to explore the house, peeping into room after room with childish curiosity, mounting stairway after stairway, and wandering along broad, dark corridors, until they could not find their way back to the lower rooms where they had been left by Mrs. Dalrymple.
“I’m losted,” sobbed Willie, the six-year-old, digging his little fists into his tearful blue eyes.
“So am I,” cried Mark, who was older and more manly; “but don’t cry! Here’s another door! Let’s peep in here!” seizing the knob, and shaking it vigorously. But the lock refused to yield, and very suddenly he was caught by Cora Ellyson, who slapped his face till his ears tingled with pain.