CHAPTER V.
ZENITH'S MALEDICTION.
A dead pause of blank consternation; the faces around a sight to see; horror and wonder in every countenance—most of all in the countenance of Sir Jasper Kingsland.
The clergyman was the first to speak.
"The woman is stark mad," he said. "We must see about this. Such violent lunatics must not be allowed to go at large. Here, Humphreys, do you and Dawson lift her up and carry her to my house. It is the nearest, and she can be properly attended to there."
"You know her, Sir Jasper, do you not?" asked Lady Helen, with quick womanly intuition.
"Know her?" Sir Jasper replied, "know Zenith? Great Heaven! I thought she was dead."
The Reverend Cyrus Green and Lady Helen exchanged glances. Mr. Carlyon looked in sharp surprise at the speaker.
"Then she is not mad, after all! I thought she mistook you for some one else. If you know her, you have the best right to deal with her. Shall these men take her to Kingsland Court?"
"Not for ten thousand worlds!" Sir Jasper cried, impetuously. "The woman is nothing—less than nothing—to me. I knew her once, years ago. I thought her dead and buried; hence the shock her sudden entrance gave me. A lunatic asylum is the proper place for such as she. Let Mr. Green send her there, and the sooner the better."
The Reverend Cyrus Green looked with grave, suspicious eyes for a moment at the leaden face of the speaker.
"There is wrong and mystery about this," he thought—"a dark mystery of guilt. This woman is mad, but her wrongs have driven her mad, and you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, are her wronger."
"It shall be as you say, Sir Jasper," he said, aloud; "that is, if I find this poor creature has no friends. Are you aware whether she has any?"
"I tell you I know nothing of her!" the baronet cried, with fierce impatience. "What should I know of such a wretch as that?"
"More than you dare tell, Sir Jasper Kingsland!" cried a high, ringing voice, as a young woman rushed impetuously into the church and up the aisle. "Coward and liar! False, perjured wretch! You are too white-livered a hound even to tell the truth! What should you know of such a wretch as that, forsooth! Double-dyed traitor and dastard! Look me in the face and tell me you don't know her!"
Every one shrunk in terror and dismay; Sir Jasper stood as a man might stand suddenly struck by lightning. And if looks were lightning, the blazing eyes of the young woman might have blasted him where he stood. A tall and handsome young woman, with black eyes of fire, streaming, raven hair, and a brown gypsy face.
"Who are you, in mercy's name?" cried the Reverend Cyrus Green.
"I am the daughter of this wretch, as your baronet yonder is pleased to call my mad mother. Yes, Mr. Green, she is my mother. If you want to know who my father is, you had better ask Sir Jasper Kingsland!"
"It is false!" the baronet cried, "I know nothing of you or your father. I never set eyes on you before."
"Wait, wait, wait!" the Reverend Cyrus Green cried, imploringly. "For Heaven's sake, young woman, don't make a scene before all these listeners. We will have your mother conveyed into the vestry until she recovers; and if she ever recovers, no time is to be lost in attending to her. Sir Jasper, I think the child had better be sent home immediately. My lady will wonder at the delay."
A faint wail from the infant lying in the nurse's arms seconded the suggestion. That feeble cry and the mention of his wife acted as a magic spell upon the baronet.
"Your mad intruders have startled us into forgetting everything else.
Proceed, nurse. Lady Helen, take my arm. Mr. Carlyon, see to Mildred.
The child looks frightened to death, and little wonder!"
"Little, indeed!" sighed Lady Helen. "I shall not recover from the shock for a month. It was like a scene in a melodrama—like a chapter of a sensation novel. And you know that dreadful creature, Sir Jasper?"
"I used to know her," the baronet said, with emphasis, "so many years ago that I had almost forgotten she ever existed. She was always more or less mad, I fancy, and it seems hereditary. Her daughter—if daughter she be—seems as distraught as her mother."
"And her name, Sir Jasper? You called her by some name, I think."
"Zenith, I suppose. To tell the truth, Lady Helen, the woman is neither more nor less than a gypsy fortune-teller crazed by a villainous life and villainous liquor. But, for the sake of the days gone by, when she was young and pretty and told my fortune, I think I will go back and see what Mr. Green intends doing with her. Such crazy vagrants should not be allowed to go at large."
The light tone was a ghastly failure, and the smile but a death's-head grin. He placed Lady Helen in the carriage—Mr. Carlyon assisted the nurse and little Mildred. Then Sir Jasper gave the order, "Home," and the stately carriage of the Kingslands, with its emblazoned crest, whirled away in a cloud of dust. For an instant he stood looking after it.
"Curses on it!" he muttered between set teeth. "After all these years, are those dead doings to be flung in my face? I thought her dead and gone; and lo! in the hour of my triumph she rises as if from the grave to confound me. Her daughter, too! I never knew she had a child! Good heavens! how these wild oats we sow in youth flourish and multiply with their bitter, bad fruit!"
He turned and strode into the vestry. On the floor the miserable woman lay, her eyes closed, her jaw fallen. By her side, supporting her head, the younger woman knelt, holding a glass of water to her lips. The Reverend Cyrus Green stood gravely looking on.
"Is she dead?" Sir Jasper asked, in a hard voice.
It was to the clergyman he spoke, but the girl looked fiercely up, her tones like a serpent's hiss.
"Not dead, Sir Jasper Kingsland! No thanks to you for it! Murderer—as much a murderer as if you had cut her throat—look on her, and be proud of the ruin you have wrought!"
"Silence, woman!" Mr. Green ordered, imperiously. "We will have none of your mad recriminations here. She is not dead, Sir Jasper, but she is dying, I think. This young woman wishes to remove her—whither, I know not—but it is simply impossible. That unfortunate creature will not be alive when to-morrow dawns."
"What do you propose doing with her?" the baronet asked, steadily.
"We will convey her to the sexton's house—it is very near. I have sent Dawson for a stretcher; he and Humphreys will carry her. This young woman declines to give her name, or tell who she is, or where she lives."
"Where I live is no affair of yours, if I can not take my mother there," the young woman answered, sullenly. "Who I am, you know. I told you I am this woman's daughter."
"And a gypsy, I take it?" said Mr. Green.
"You guess well, sir, but only half the truth. Half gypsy I am, and half gentlewoman. A mongrel, I suppose, that makes; and yet it is well to have good blood in one's veins, even on the father's side."
There was a sneering emphasis in her words, and the snaky black eyes gleamed like daggers on the baronet.
But that proud face was set and rigid as stone now. He returned her look with a haughty stare.
"It is a pity the whipping-post has been abolished," he said, harshly. "Your impertinence makes you a fit subject for it, mistress! Take care we don't commit you to prison as a public vagrant, and teach that tongue of yours a little civility when addressing your betters."
"My betters!" the girl hissed, in a fierce, sibilant whisper. "Why, yes, I suppose a daughter should look upon a father in that light. As to the whipping-post and prison, try it at your peril! Try it, if you dare, Sir Jasper."
Before he could speak the door opened, and Dawson entered with the stretcher.
"Lay her upon it and remove her at once," the rector said. "Here, Humphreys, this side. Gently, my men—gently. Be very careful on the way."
The two men placed the seemingly lifeless form of Zenith on the stretcher and bore her carefully away.
The daughter Zara followed.
"She will not live until to-morrow morning," the rector said; "and it is better so, poor soul! She is evidently hopelessly insane."
"And the daughter appears but little better. By the way, Mr. Green,
Lady Kingsland desires me to fetch you back to dinner."
The rector bowed.
"Her ladyship is very good. Has your carriage gone? I will order out the pony-phaeton, if you like."
Ten minutes later the two gentlemen were bowling along the pleasant country road leading to the Court. It was a very silent drive, for the baronet sat moodily staring at vacancy, his mouth set in hard, wordless pain.
"They will tell Olivia," he was thinking, gloomily. "What will she say to all this?"
But his fears seemed groundless. Lady Kingsland treated the matter with cool indifference. To be sure, she had not heard quite all. A madwoman had burst into the church, had terrified Lady Helen pretty nearly to death with her crazy language, and had tried to tear away the baby. That was the discreet story my lady heard, and which she was disposed to treat with calm surprise. Baby was safe, and it had ended in nothing; the madwoman was being properly cared for. Lady Kingsland quietly dismissed the incident altogether before the end of dinner.
The hours of the evening wore on—very long hours to the lord of Kingsland Court, seated at the head of his table, dispensing his hospitalities and trying to listen to the long stories of Mr. Carlyon and the rector.
It was worse in the drawing-room, with the lights and the music, and his stately wife at the piano, and Lady Helen at his side, prattling with little Mildred over a pile of engravings. All the time, in a half-distracted sort of way, his thoughts were wandering to the sexton's cottage and the woman dying therein—the woman he had thought dead years ago—dying there in desolation and misery—and here the hours seemed strung on roses.
It was all over at last. The guests were gone, the baby baronet slept in his crib, and Lady Kingsland had gone to her chamber. But Sir Jasper lingered still—wandering up and down the long drawing-room like a restless ghost.
A clock on the mantel chimed twelve. Ere its last chime had sounded a sleepy valet stood in the doorway.
"A messenger for you, Sir Jasper—sent by the Reverend Mr. Green.
Here—come in."
Thus invoked, Mr. Dawson entered, pulling his forelock.
"Parson, he sent me, zur. She be a-doying, she be."
He knew instantly who the man meant.
"And she wishes to see me?"
"She calls for you all the time, zur. She be a-doying uncommon hard.
Parson bid me come and tell 'ee."
"Very well, my man," the baronet said. "That will do. I will go at once. Thomas, order my horse, and fetch my riding-cloak and gloves."
The valet stared in astonishment, but went to obey. It was something altogether without precedent, this queer proceeding on the part of his master, and, taken in connection with that other odd event in church, looked remarkably suspicious.
The night was dark and starless, and the wind blew raw and bleak as the baronet dashed down the avenue and out into the high-road. He almost wondered at himself for complying with the dying woman's desire, but some inward impulse beyond his control seemed driving him on.
He rode rapidly, and a quarter of an hour brought him to the sexton's cottage. A feeble light glimmered from the window out into the blackness of the night. A moment later and he stood within, in the presence of the dying.
The Reverend Cyrus Green sat by the table, a Bible in his hand. Kneeling by the bedside, her face ghastly white, her burning black eyes dry and tearless, was the young woman. And like a dead woman already, stretched on the bed, lay Zenith.
But she was not dead. At the sound of the opening door, at the sound of his entrance, she opened her eyes, dulling fast in death, and fixed them on Sir Jasper.
"I knew you would come," she said, in a husky whisper. "You dare not stay away! The spirit of the dying Zenith drove you here in spite of yourself. Come nearer—nearer! Sir Jasper Kingsland, don't hover aloof. Once you could never be near enough. Ah, I was young and fair then! I'm old and ugly now. Come nearer, for I can not speak aloud, and listen. Do you know why I have sent for you?"
He had approached the bedside. She caught his hand and held it in a vise-like clutch.
"No," he said, recoiling.
"To give you my dying malediction—to curse you with my latest breath! I hate you, Sir Jasper Kingsland, falsest of all mankind! and if the dead can return and torment the living, then do you beware of me!"
She spoke in panting gasps, the death-rattle sounding in her skinny throat. Shocked and scandalized, the rector interposed:
"My good woman, don't—for pity's sake, don't say such horrible things!"
But she never heeded him.
"I hate you!" she said, with a last effort. "I die hating you, and I curse you with a dying woman's curse! May your life be a life of torment and misery and remorse! May your son's life be blighted and ruined! May he become an outcast among men! May sin and shame follow him forever, and all of his abhorred race!"
Her voice died away. She glared helplessly up from the pillow. A deep, stern, terrible "Amen!" came from her daughter's lips; then, with a spasm, she half leaped from the bed, and fell back with a gurgling cry—dead!
"She is gone!" said the rector, with a shudder. "Heaven have mercy on her sinful soul!"
The baronet staggered back from the bed.
"I never saw a more horrible sight!" continued the Reverend Cyrus. "I never heard such horrible words! No wonder it has unmanned you, Sir Jasper. Pray sit down and drink this."
He held out a glass of water. Sir Jasper seized and drank it, his brain reeling.
With stoical calm, Zara had arisen and closed the dead woman's eyes, folded the hands, straightened the stiffening limbs, and composed the humble covering. She had no tears, she uttered no cry—her face was stern as stone.
"Better stay in this ghastly place no longer, Sir Jasper," the rector suggested. "You look completely overcome. I will see that everything is properly done. We will bury her to-morrow."
As a man walks in a dreadful dream, Sir Jasper arose, quitted the room, mounted his horse, and rode away.
One dark, menacing glance Zara shot after him; then she sat stonily down by her dead. All that night, all next day, Zara kept her post, neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping. Dry and tearless, the burning black eyes fixed themselves on the dead face, and never left it.
When they put the dead woman in the rude board coffin, she offered no resistance. Calmly she watched them screw the lid down—calmly she saw them raise it on their shoulders and bear it away. Without a word or tear she arose, folded her cloak about her, and followed them to the church-yard.
One by one the stragglers departed, and Zara was left alone by the new-made grave. No, not quite alone, for through the bleak twilight fluttered the tall, dark figure of a man toward her. She lifted her gloomy eyes and recognized him.
"You come, Sir Jasper," she said, slowly, "to see the last of your work. You come to gloat over your dead victim, and exult that she is out of your way. But I tell you to beware! Zenith in her grave will be a thousand times more terrible to you than Zenith ever was alive!"
The baronet looked at her with a darkly troubled face.
"Why do you hate me so?" he said. "Whatever wrong I did her, I never wronged you."
"You have done me deadly wrong! My mother's wrongs are mine, and here, by her grave, I vow vengeance on you and yours! Her dying legacy to me was her hatred of you, and I will pay the old debt with double interest, my noble, haughty, titled father!"
She turned with the last words and sped away like an evil spirit, vanishing in the gloom among the graves.
CHAPTER VI.
TWO DYING BEQUESTS.
This midsummer night was sultry and still. The darkness was like the darkness of Egypt, lighted every now and then by a vivid Hash of lightning, from what quarter of the heavens no man knew. The inky sky was invisible—no breath of air stirred the terrible calm. The midsummer night was full of dark and deadly menace.
Hours ago a fierce and wrathful sunset had burned itself out on a brassy sky. The sun, a lurid ball of fire, had sunk in billows of blood-red cloud, and pitch blackness had fallen upon earth and sky and sea. Everything above and below breathed of speedy tempest, but the midnight was drawing near, and the storm had not yet burst.
And on this black June night Sir Jasper Kingsland lay on his stately bed, dying.
The lofty chamber was but dimly lighted. It was a grand, vast room, paneled in black oak, hung with somber draperies, and carpeted in rich dark Brussels.
Three wax candles made white spots of light in the solemn gloom; a wood-fire burned or rather smoldered, in the wide hearth, for the vast rooms were chilly even in midsummer; but neither fire-light nor candle-light could illumine the ghostly depths of the chamber. Shadows crouched like evil things in the dusky corners, and round the bed, only darker shadows among the rest, knelt the dying man's family—wife and daughter and son. And hovering aloof, with pale, anxious faces, stood the rector, the Reverend Cyrus Green, and Doctor Parker Godroy.
The last hope was over, the last prayer had been said, the last faint breaths uttered between the dying lips. With the tide going out on the shore below, the baronet's life was ebbing.
"Olivia!"
Lady Kingsland, kneeling in tearless grief by her husband's side, bent over him to catch the faint whisper.
"My dearest, I am here. What is it?"
"Where is Everard?"
Everard Kingsland, a fair-haired, blue-eyed, handsome boy, lifted his head from the opposite side. It was a handsome, high-bred face—the ancestral face of all the Kingslands—that of this twelve-year-old boy.
"Here, papa!"
"My boy! my boy! whom I have loved so well—whom I have shielded so tenderly. My precious, only son, I must leave you at last!"
The boy stifled a sob as he bent and kissed the ice-cold face. Young as he was, he had the gravity and self-repression of manhood already.
"I have loved you better than my own life," the faint, whispering voice went on. "I would have died to save you an hour of pain. I have kept the one secret of my life well—a secret that has blighted it before its time—but I can not face the dread unknown and bear my secret with me. On my death-bed I must tell all, and my darling boy must bear the blow."
Everard Kingsland listened to his father's huskily murmured words in boyish wonderment. What secret was he talking of? He glanced across at his mother, and saw her pale cheeks suddenly flushed and her calm eyes kindling.
"No living soul has ever heard from me what I must tell you to-night, my Everard—not even your mother. Do not leave me, Olivia. You, too, must know all that you may guard your son—that you may pity and forgive me. Perhaps I have erred in keeping any secret from you, but the truth was too horrible to tell. There have been times when the thought of it nearly drove me mad. How, then, could I tell the wife I loved—the son I idolized—this cruel and shameful thing?"
The youthful Everard looked simply bewildered—Lady Kingsland excited, expectant, flushed.
She gently wiped the clammy brow and held a reviving cordial to the livid lips.
"My dearest, do not agitate yourself," she said. "We will listen to all you have to say, and love you none the less, let it be what it will."
"My own dear wife! half the secret you know already. You remember the astrologer—the prediction?"
"Surely. You have never been the same man since that fatal night. It is of the prediction you would speak?"
"It is. I must tell my son. I must warn him of the unutterable horror to come. Oh, my boy! my boy! what will become of you when you learn your horrible doom?"
"Papa," the lad said, softly, but growing very white, "I don't understand—what horror? what doom? Tell me, and see how I will bear it. I am a Kingsland, you know, and the son of a daring race."
"That is my brave boy! Send them out of the room, Olivia—priest, doctor, Mildred, and all—then come close to me, close, close, for my voice is failing—and listen."
Lady Kingsland arose—fair and stately still as twelve years before, and eminently self-sustained in this trying hour. In half a minute she had turned out rector, physician, and daughter, and knelt again by that bed of death.
"The first part of my story, Olivia," began the dying man, "belongs to you. Years before I knew you, when I was a young, hot-headed, rashly impulsive boy, traveling in Spain, I fell in with a gang of wandering gypsies. I had been robbed and wounded by mountain brigands; those gypsies found me, took me to their tents, cared for me, cured me. But long after I was well I lingered with them, for the fairest thing the sun shone on was my black-eyed nurse, Zenith. We were both so young and so fiery-blooded, so—Ah! what need to go over the old, old grounds? There was one hour of mad, brief bliss, parting and forgetfulness. I forgot. Life was a long, idle summer holiday to me. But she never forgot—never forgave! You remember the woman, Olivia, who burst into the church on the day of our boy's christening—the woman who died in the sexton's house? That woman was Zenith—old and withered, and maddened by her wrongs—that woman who died cursing me and mine. A girl, dark and fierce, and terrible as herself, stood by her to the last, lingered at her grave to vow deathless revenge—her daughter and mine!"
The faint voice ceased an instant. The fluttering spirit rallied, and resumed:
"I have reason to know that daughter was married. I have reason to know she had a child—whether boy or girl I can not tell. To that child the inheritance of hatred and revenge will fall; that child, some inward prescience tells me, will wreak deep and awful vengeance for the past. Beware of the grandchild of Zenith, the gypsy—beware, Olivia, for yourself and your son!"
"Is this all?" Olivia said, in a constrained, hard voice.
"All I have to say to you—the rest is for Everard. My son, on the night of your birth an Eastern astrologer came to this house and cast your horoscope. He gave that horoscope to me at day-dawn and departed, and from that hour to this I have neither seen nor heard of him. Before reading your future in the stars he looked into my palm and told me the past—told me the story of Zenith and her wrongs—told me what no one under heaven but myself knew. My boy, the revelation of that night has blighted my life—broken my heart! The unutterable horror of your future has brought my gray hairs to the grave. Oh, my son! what will become of you when I am gone?"
"What was it, papa?" the lad asked. "What has the future in store for me?"
A convulsive spasm distorted the livid face; the eye-balls rolled, the death-rattle sounded. With a smothered cry of terror Lady Kingsland lifted the agonized head in her arms.
"Quick, Jasper—the horoscope! Where?"
"My safe—study—secret spring—at back! Oh, God, have mercy—"
The clock struck sharply—twelve. A vivid blaze of lambent lightning lighted the room; the awful death-rattle sounded once more.
"Beware of Zenith's grandchild!"
He spoke the words aloud, clear and distinct, and never spoke again.
* * * * * *
Many miles away from Kingsland Court, that same sultry, oppressive midsummer night a little third-rate theater on the Surrey side of London was crowded to overflowing. There was a grand spectacular drama, full of transformation scenes, fairies, demons, spirits of air, fire, and water; a brazen orchestra blowing forth, and steam, and orange-peel, and suffocation generally.
Foremost among all the fairies and nymphs, noted for the shortness of her filmy skirts, the supple beauty of her shapely limbs, her incomparable dancing, and her dark, bright beauty, flashed La Sylphine before the foot-lights.
The best danseuse in the kingdom, and the prettiest, and invested with a magic halo of romance, La Sylphine shone like a meteor among lesser stars, and brought down thunders of applause every time she appeared.
The little feet twinkled and flashed; the long, dark waves of hair floated in a shining banner behind her to the tiny waist; the pale, upraised face—the eyes ablaze like black stars! Oh, surely La Sylphine was the loveliest thing, that hot June night, the gas-light shone on!
The fairy spectacle was over—the green drop-curtain fell. La Sylphine had smiled and dipped and kissed hands to thundering bravos for the last time that night, and now, behind the scenes, was rapidly exchanging the spangles and gossamer of fairydom for the shabby and faded merino shawl and dingy straw hat of every-day life.
"You danced better than ever to-night, Miss Monti," a tall demon in tail and horns said, sauntering up to her. "Them there pretty feet of your'n will make your fortune yet, and beat Fanny Ellsler!"
"Not to mention her pretty face," said a brother fiend, removing his
mask. "Her fortune's made already, if she's a mind to take it.
There's a gay young city swell a-waiting at the wings to see you home,
Miss Monti."
"Is it Maynard, the banker's son?" she asked.
The second demon nodded.
"Then I must escape by the side entrance. When he gets tired waiting,
Mr. Smithers, give him La Sylphine's compliments, and let him go."
She glided past the demons down a dark and winding staircase, and out into the noisy, lighted street.
The girl paused an instant under a street-lamp—she was only a girl—fifteen or sixteen at most, though very tall, with a bright, fearless look—then drawing her shawl closely round her, she flitted rapidly away.
The innumerable city clocks tolled heavily—eleven. The night was pitch-dark; the sheet-lightning blazed across the blackness, and now and then a big drop fell. Still the girl sped on until she reached her destination.
It was the poorest and vilest quarter of the great city—among reeking smells, and horrible sounds, and disgusting sights. The house she entered was tottering to decay—a dreadful den by day and by night, thronged with the very scum of the London streets. Up and up a long stair-way she flew, paused at a door on the third landing, opened it, and went in.
It was a miserable room—all one could have expected from the street and the house. There was a black grate, one or two broken chairs, a battered table, and a wretched bed in the corner. On the bed a woman—the ghastly skeleton of a woman—lay dying.
The entrance of La Sylphine aroused the woman from the stupor into which she had fallen. She opened her spectral eyes and looked eagerly around.
"My Sunbeam! is it thou?"
"It is I, mother—at last. I could come no sooner. The ballet was very long to-night."
"And my Sunbeam was bravoed, and encored, and crowned with flowers, was she not?"
"Yes, mother; but never mind that. How are you tonight?"
"Dying, my own."
The danseuse fell on her knees with a shrill, sharp cry.
"No, mother—no, no! Not dying! Very ill, very weak, very low, but not dying. Oh, not dying!"
"Dying, my daughter!" the sick woman said. "I count my life by minutes now; I heard the city clocks strike eleven; I counted the strokes, for, my Sunbeam, it is the last hour thy mother will ever hear on earth."
The ballet-dancer covered her face, with a low, despairing cry. The dying mother, with a painful effort, lifted her own skeleton hand and removed those of the girl.
"Weep not, but listen, carissima. I have much to say to thee before I go; I feared to die before you came; and even in my grave I could not rest with the words I must say unsaid. I have a legacy to leave thee, my daughter."
"A legacy?"
The girl opened her great black eyes in wide surprise.
"Even so. Not of lands, or houses, or gold, or honors, but something a thousand-fold greater—an inheritance of hatred and revenge!"
"My mother!"
"Listen to me, my daughter, and my dying malediction be upon thee if thou fulfillest not the trust. Thou hast heard the name of Kingsland?"
"Ay, often; from my father ere he died—from thee, since. Was it not his last command to me—this hatred of their evil race? Did I not promise him on his death-bed, four years ago? Does my mother think I forget?"
"That is my brave daughter. You know the cruel story of treachery and wrong done thy grandmother, Zenith—you know the prediction your father made to my father, Sir Jasper Kingsland, on the night of his son's birth. Be it thine, my brave daughter, to see that prediction fulfilled."
"You ask a terrible thing, my mother," she said, slowly; but I can refuse you nothing, and I abhor them all. I promise—the prediction shall be fulfilled!"
"My own! my own! That son is a boy of twelve now—be it yours to find him, and work the retribution of the gods. Your grandmother, your father, your mother, look to you from their graves for vengeance. Woe to you if you fail!"
"I shall not fail!" the girl said, solemnly. "I can die, but I can not break a promise. Vengeance shall fall, fierce and terrible, upon the heir of Kingsland, and mine shall be the hand to inflict it. I swear it by your death-bed, mother, and I will keep my oath!"
The mother pressed her hand. The film of death was in her eyes. She strove to speak; there was a quick, dreadful convulsion, then an awful calm.
Within the same hour, with miles between them, Sir Jasper Kingsland and
Zara, his outcast daughter, died.
* * * * * *
The dawn of another day crept silently over the Devon hill-tops as Lady
Kingsland arose from her husband's deathbed.
White, and stark, and rigid, the late lord of Kingsland Court lay in the awful majesty of death.
The doctor, the rector, the nurse, sat, pale and somber watchers, in the death-room. More than an hour before the youthful baronet had been sent to his room, worn out with his night's watching.
It was the Reverend Cyrus Green who urged my lady now to follow him.
"You look utterly exhausted, my dear Lady Kingsland," he said. "Pray retire and endeavor to sleep. You are not able to endure such fatigue."
"I am worn out," she said. "I believe I will lie down, but I feel as though I should never sleep again."
She quitted the room, but not to seek her own. Outside the death-chamber she paused an instant, and her face lighted suddenly.
"Now is my time," she said, under her breath. "A few hours more and it may be too late. His safe, he said—the secret spring!"
She flitted away, pallid and guilty looking, into Sir Jasper's study. It was deserted, of course, and there in the corner stood the grim iron safe.
"Now for the secrets of the dead! No fortune-telling jugglery shall blight my darling boy's life while I can help it. He is as superstitious as his father."
With considerable difficulty she opened the safe, pulled forth drawer after drawer, until the grim iron back was exposed.
"The secret spring is here," she muttered. "Surely, surely, I can find it."
For many minutes she searched in vain; then her glance fell on a tiny steel knob inserted in a corner. She pressed this with all her might, confident of success.
Nor was she deceived; the knob moved, the iron slid slowly back, disclosing a tiny hidden drawer.
Lady Kingsland barely repressed a cry as she saw the paper, and by its side something wrapped in silver tissue. Greedily she snatched both out, pressed back the knob, locked the safe, stole out of the study and up to her own room.
Panting with her haste, my lady sunk into a seat, with her treasures eagerly clutched. A moment recovered her; then she took up the little parcel wrapped in the silver paper.
"He said nothing of this," she thought. "What can it be?"
She tore off the wrapping. As it fell to the floor, a long tress of silky black hair fell with it, and she held in her hand a miniature painted on ivory. A girlish face of exquisite beauty, dusky as the face of an Indian queen, looked up at her, fresh and bright as thirty years before. No need to look at the words on the reverse—"My peerless Zenith"—to know who it was; the wife's jealousy told her at the first glance.
"And all these years he has kept this," she said, between her set
teeth, "while he pretended he loved only me! 'My peerless Zenith!'
Yes, she is beautiful as the fabled houris of the Mussulman's paradise.
Well, I will keep it in my turn. Who knows what end it may serve yet?"
She picked up the tress of hair, and enveloped all in the silver paper once more. Then she lifted the folded document, and looked darkly at the superscription:
"Horoscope of the Heir of Kingsland."
"Which the heir of Kingsland shall never see," she said, grimly unfolding it. "Now for this mighty secret."
She just glanced at the mystic symbols, the cabalistic signs and figures, and turned to the other side. There, beautifully written, in long, clear letters, she saw her son's fate.
The morning wore on—noon came; the house was as still as a tomb. Rosine, my lady's maid, with a cup of tea, ventured to tap at her ladyship's door. There was no response.
"She sleeps," thought Rosine, and turned the handle.
But at the threshold she paused in wild alarm. No, my lady did not sleep. She sat in her chair, upright and ghastly as a galvanized corpse, a written paper closely clutched in her hand, and a look of white horror frozen on her face.
CHAPTER VII.
AFTER TEN YEARS.
"I have said it, and I mean it; they ought to know me well enough by this time, Godsoe. I'd transport every man of them, the poaching scoundrels, if I could! Tell that villain Dick Darkly that the first time I catch him at his old tricks he shall follow the brother he makes such a howling about, and share his fate."
Sir Everard Kingsland was the speaker. He stood with one hand, white and shapely as a lady's, resting on the glossy neck of his bay horse, his fair, handsome face, flushed with anger, turned upon his gamekeeper.
Peter Godsoe, the sturdy gamekeeper, standing before his young master, hat in hand, looked up deprecatingly.
"He takes it very hard, Sir Everard, that you sent his brother to Worrel Jail. His missis was sick, and two of the children had the measles, and Will Darkly he'd been out o' work, and they was poor as poor. So he turns to and snares the rabbits, and—"
"Godsoe, are you trying to excuse this convicted poacher? Is that what you stopped me here to say?"
"I beg your pardon, Sir Everard; I only wanted to warn you—to put you on your guard—"
"To warn me—to put me on my guard? What do you mean? Has that villainous poacher dared to threaten me?"
"Not in my hearing, sir; but others say so. And he's a dark, vindictive brute; and he swore a solemn oath, they say, when his brother went to Worrel Jail, to be revenged upon you. And so, Sir Everard, begging your pardon for the freedom, I thought as how you was likely to be out late to-night, coming home from my lord's, and as Brithlow Wood is lonesome and dark—"
"That will do, Godsoe!" the young baronet interrupted, haughtily. "You mean well, I dare say, and I overlook your presumption this time; but never proffer advice to me again. As for Darkly, he had better keep out of my way. I'll horsewhip him the first time I see him, and send him to make acquaintance with the horse-pond afterward."
He vaulted lightly into the saddle as he spoke.
The brawny gamekeeper stood gazing after him as he ambled down the leafy avenue.
"His father's son," he said; "the proudest gentleman in Devonshire, and the most headstrong. You'll horsewhip Dick Darkly, Sir Everard! Why, he could take you with one hand by the waist-band, and lay you low in the kennel any day he liked! And he'll do it, too!" muttered Godsoe, turning slowly away. "You won't be warned, and you won't take precaution, and you won't condescend to be afeard, and you'll come to grief afore you know it."
The misty autumn twilight lay like a veil of silver blue over the peaceful English landscape; a cool breeze swept up from the sea over the golden downs and distant hills, and as Sir Everard rode along through the village, the cloud left his face, and a tender, dreamy look came in its place.
"She will be present, of course," he thought. "I wonder if I shall find her as I left her last? She is not the kind that play fast and loose, my stately, uplifted Lady Louise. How queenly she looked at the reception last night in those velvet robes and the Carteret diamonds!—'queen rose of the rose-bud garden of girls.' She is my elder by three round years at least, but she is stately as a princess, and at twenty-five preserves the ripe bloom of eighteen. She is all that is gracious when we meet, and my mother has set her heart upon the match. I have half a mind to propose this very night."
She was an earl's daughter, this stately Lady Louise, but so very impoverished an earl that the young Devonshire baronet, with his ancient name and his long rent-roll, was a most desirably brilliant match.
She was down on a visit to her brother, Lord Carteret, and had made a dead set at Sir Everard Kingsland from the hour she had met him first. He was on his way to Lord Carteret's now. There was a dinner-party, and he was an honored guest; and Lady Louise was brilliant, in the family diamonds and old point lace, once more.
She was in the drawing-room when he entered—her stately head regally uplifted in the midst of a group of less magnificent demoiselles—a statuesque blonde, with abundant ringlets of flaxen lightness, eyes of turquoise blue, and a determined mouth and chin.
Sir Everard paid his respects to his host and hostess, and sought her side at once.
"Almost late," she said, with a brilliant, welcoming smile, giving him her dainty little hand; "and George Grosvenor has been looking this way, and pulling his mustache and blushing redder than the carnations in his button-hole. He wants to take me in to dinner, poor fellow, and he hasn't the courage to do it."
"With your kind permission, Lady Louise, I will save him the trouble," answered Sir Everard Kingsland. "Grosvenor is not singular in his wish, but I never gave him credit for so much good taste before."
"Mr. Grosvenor is more at home in the hunting-field than the drawing-room, I fancy. Apropos, Sir Everard, I ride to the meet to-morrow. Of course you will be present on your 'bonny bay' to display your prowess?"
"Of course—a fox-hunt is to me a foretaste of celestial bliss. With a first-rate horse, a crack pack of hounds, a 'good scent,' and a fine morning, a man is tempted to wish life could last forever. And you are only going to ride to the meet, then, Lady Louise?"
"Yes; I never followed the hounds, I don't know the country and I can't ride to points. Besides, I am not really Amazonian enough to fancy a scamper across the country, flying fences and risking my precious neck."
"I must own that, to me, a lady never looks less attractive than in a hunting-field, among yelping hounds, and shouts, and cheers, and cords and tops, and scarlet coats."
"That comes of being a poet and an artist; and Sir Everard Kingsland is accused of being both. You want to fancy us all angels, and you can not reconcile an angelic being with a side-saddle and a hard gallop. Now, I don't own to being anything in the Di Vernon line myself, and I don't wish to be; but I do think a pretty girl never looks half so pretty as when well mounted. You should have seen Harrie Hunsden, as I saw her the other day, and you would surely recant your heresy about ladies and horse-flesh."
"Is Harrie Hunsden a lady?"
"Certainly. Don't you know her? She is Captain Hunsden's only daughter—Hunsden, of Hunsden Hall, one of your oldest Devon families. You'll find them duly chronicled in Burke and Debrett. Miss Hunsden is scarcely eighteen, but she has been over the world—from Quebec to Gibraltar—from Halifax to Calcutta. Two years of her life she passed at a New York boarding-school, of which city her mother was a native."
"Indeed!" Sir Everard said, just lifting his eyebrows. "And Miss
Hunsden rides well?"
"Like Di Vernon's self."
"Is your Miss Hunsden pretty? and shall we see her at the meet to-morrow?"
"Yes to both questions; and more than at the meet, I fancy. She and her thorough-bred, Whirlwind, will lead you all. Her scarlet habit and 'red roan steed' are as well known in the country as the duke's hounds, and her bright eyes and dashing style have taken by storm the hearts of half the fox-hunting squires of Devonshire."
She laughed a little maliciously. Truth to tell, not being quite sure that her game was safely wired, and dreading this Amazonian Miss Hunsden as a prospective rival, she was nothing loath to prejudice the fastidious young baronet beforehand, even while seeming to praise her.
"I am surprised that you have not heard of her," she said. "Sir Harcourt Helford and Mr. Cholmondeley actually fought a duel about her, and it ended in her telling them to their faces they were a pair of idiots, and flatly refusing both. 'The Hunsden' is the toast of the country."
Sir Everard shuddered.
"From all such the gods deliver us! You honor Miss Hunsden with your deepest interest, I think, Lady Louise?
"Yes, she is such an oddity. Her wandering life, I presume, accounts for it; but she is altogether unlike any girl I ever know. I am certain," with a little malicious glance, "she will be your style, Sir Everard."
"And as I don't in the least know what my style is, perhaps you may be right."
Lady Louise bit her lip—it was a rebuff, she fancied, for her detraction. And then Lady Carteret gave that mysterious signal, and the ladies rose and swept away in billows of silk to the drawing-room, and the gentlemen had the talk to themselves "across the walnuts and the wine."
To one gentleman present the interim before rejoining the ladies was unmitigatedly dull, even though the talk ran on his favorite topics—-horse-flesh and hunting. He was in love, he thought complacently, and Lady Louise's eyes had sparkled to-day and her smiles had flashed their bewildering brightness upon him more radiantly than ever before.
"How pleased my mother will be!" Sir Everard thought. "I will ask Lady Louise this very night. An earl's daughter—though a bankrupt—is a fitting mate for a Kingsland."
Lady Louise sat at the piano, the soft light falling full on her pale, statuesque face, and making an aureole around her fair, shapely head.
Sir Everard Kingsland crossed over and stood beside her, and Lord and
Lady Carteret exchanged significant glances, and smiled.
It was a very desirable thing, indeed; they had brought Louise down for no other earthly reason; and Louise was playing her cards, and playing them well.
If Sir Everard had one taste stronger than another it was his taste for music, and Lady Louise held him spell-bound now. She played, and her fingers seemed inspired; she sung, and few non-professionals sung like that.
The chain of brittle glass that bound the captive beside her grew stronger. A wife who could bewitch the hours away with such music as this would be no undesirable possession for a blasé man. He stooped over her as she arose from the piano at last.
"Come out on the balcony," he said. "The night is lovely, and the good people yonder are altogether engrossed in their cards and their small-talk."
Without a word she stepped with him from the open French window out into the starlit night.
What is it that Byron says about solitude, and moonlight, and youth? A dangerous combination, truly; and so Sir Everard Kingsland found, standing side by side with this pale daughter of a hundred earls. But the irrevocable words were not destined to be spoken, for just then George Grosvenor, goaded to jealous desperation, stalked out through the open casement and joined them.
The midnight moon was sailing up to the zenith as Sir Everard rode home. His road was a lonely one through Brithlow Wood, which shortened his journey by over a mile; but his thoughts were pleasant ones, and he hummed, as he rode, the songs Lady Louise had sung.
"Confound that muff, Grosvenor!" he thought. "If it had not been for his impertinent intrusion, the matter would have been safely settled by this time—and settled pleasantly too, I take it; for, without being a conceited noodle, I really think Lady Louise will say yes. Ah! what's this?"
For out of the starlit darkness, from among the trees, started up a giant black figure, and his horse was grasped by the bridle and hurled back upon his haunches.
"You villain," the young man dauntlessly cried, "let go my bridle-rein!
Who are you? What do you want?"
"I'm Dick Darkly," answered a deep, gruff voice, "and I want your heart's blood!"
"You poaching scoundrel!" exclaimed Sir Everard, quick as lightning raising his riding-whip and slashing the aggressor across the face. "Let go my horse's head."
With a cry that was like the roar of a wild beast the man sprung hack. The next instant, with a horrible oath, he had seized the young man and torn him out of the saddle.
"I'll tear you limb from limb for that blow, by heavens!" Dick Darkly shouted. "If I hadn't meant to kill you before, I would kill you for that cut of your whip. I've waited for you, Sir Everard Kingsland! I swore revenge, and revenge I'll have! I'll kill you this night, if they hang me for it to-morrow!"
He held his victim in a grip of iron, from which he struggled madly to get free, while the horse, with a shrill neigh of terror, started off riderless.
"I swore I'd kill you, Sir Everard Kingsland," Dick Darkly growled, "when you put my poor brother in Worrel Jail for snaring the miserable rabbits to keep his sick wife and children from starving. I swore it, and I'll keep my oath. You told your gamekeeper this very day you would lash me like a dog, and duck me after. Aha, Sir Everard! Where's the horse-whip and the horse-pond now?"
"Here!" shouted the young baronet; and with a mighty effort he freed his arms, and raising the whip, slashed Dick Darkly for the second time across the face. "You murdering villain, you shall swing for this!"
With a blind roar of pain and rage, the murderer closed with his victim. They grappled, and rolled over and over in each other's arms.
Panting and speechless, the death-struggle went on; but Sir Everard was no match for the burly giant. With a savage cry, the huge poacher thrust his hand into his belt, and a long, blue-bladed knife gleamed in the moon's rays.
"At last!" he panted. "I'll have your heart's blood, as I swore I'd have it!"
He lifted the knife. Sir Everard Kingsland tried to gasp one last brief prayer in that supreme moment.
"Help!" he cried, with a last wild struggle—"help! help! murder!"
There was a rustling in the trees and some one sprung out. The last word was lost in the sharp report of a pistol, and with a scream of agony, Dick Darkly dropped his knife and fell backward on the grass.
CHAPTER VIII.
A MYSTERIOUS YOUNG MAN.
The baronet leaped to his feet, and stood face to face with his preserver. The giant trees, towering up until they seemed to pierce the sky, half shut out the moonlight, but yet Sir Everard could see that it was a slender stripling who stood before him, a slouched hat pulled far over his eyes.
"I owe you my life," he cried, grasping the youth's hand. "An instant later, and I would have been in eternity. How shall I ever thank you?"
"Don't make the attempt," replied the lad, coolly. "It was the merest chance-work in the world that sent me here to-night."
"Don't call it chance, my boy. It was Providence sent you to save a life."
"Providence may have wished to save your life, and was not particular as to the means. Let us look to this fellow. I hope my shot has not killed him outright."
They both stooped over the fallen giant. Dick Darkly lay on his face, groaning dismally, the blood pumping from his chest with every breath.
"It's an ugly-looking hole," said Sir Everard. "Two inches lower, and it would have gone straight through his heart. As it is, it will put a stop to his assassinating proclivities for awhile, I fancy. Lie still, you matchless scoundrel, while I try and stop this flow of blood."
He knelt beside the groaning man and endeavored to stanch the red gushing with his handkerchief. The youth stood by, gazing calmly on.
"What do you mean to do with him?" he asked.
"Send some of my people to take him to his home, and as soon as he is sufficiently recovered to stand his trial for attempted murder—"
"For God's sake, Sir Everard!" faintly moaned the wounded man.
"Ah, you audacious villain, you can supplicate now! If I let you off this time, my life would not be worth an hour's purchase."
"What did he call you?" asked the boy, with sudden, sharp anxiety in his tone. "Whose life have I saved?"
"I am Sir Everard Kingsland, of Kingsland Court," the baronet answered.
"And you are—who?"
"Sir Everard Kingsland! And I have saved your life!"
"For which Heaven be praised! It is a very pleasant world, this, and I have no desire just yet to leave it. Pray tell me the name of my preserver!"
"Never mind my name; it is of no consequence who I am. I have a long journey before me; I am very weary and footsore, and it is time I was on my way."
"Weary and footsore?" repeated the baronet. "Nay—then all the more need we should not part. Come home with me and rest—to-night, at least. I owe you a heavy debt, and I should like to pay a little of it."
"You owe me nothing!" His eyes gleamed under his hat and his teeth clinched as he spoke. "Nothing, Sir Everard Kingsland! Let us say good-bye. I must reach Worrel by sunrise."
"And so you shall. The fleetest steed in my stables shall carry you. But come to Kingsland and rest for the night. If you will not accept my thanks, accept at least the shelter of my roof."
The boy seemed to hesitate.
The baronet look advantage of that momentary hesitation and drew his arm through his own. There was not a prouder man in wide England, but this unknown lad had saved his life, and Sir Everard was only two-and-twenty, and full of generous impulses.
"Come," he said, "don't be obstinate. You own to being footsore and weary. Kingsland is very near, and a night's rest will do you good."
"Thanks! I accept your kind hospitality, Sir Everard, on two conditions."
"On any conditions you choose, mon ami. What are they?"
"That no one shall know it but yourself, and that I may depart before day-dawn."
"I dislike that last condition very much; but it must be as you say.
Sleep in safety, most mysterious youth; no one shall know you are under
my roof, and I will come and wake you myself at the first peep of day.
Will that do?"
"Admirably. You are very kind to take all this trouble for a nameless tramp, Sir Everard."
"Am I? Even when the nameless tramp saved my life?"—yet Sir Everard winced a little while saying it. "And that reminds me, we must hasten, if yonder fallen villain is to recover from his wound. His condition is not an enviable one at this moment."
"How did it happen?" the boy asked.
And the young baronet repeated the story of Dick Darkly's provocation and vow of revenge.
As he concluded they passed through the stately gates, up the majestic sweep of drive, to the imposing old mansion.
"Home!" Sir Everard said, gayly. "Solitude and darkness reign, you see. The family have long since retired, and we can pass to our respective dormitories unseen and unheard."
The boy looked up with his brilliant, glowing eyes. But he did not speak. In silence he followed Sir Everard in, up the noble marble stair-way, along richly carpeted, softly lighted corridors, and into a stately chamber.
"You will sleep here," Sir Everard said. "My room is near, and I am a light sleeper. To-morrow morning at five I will rouse you. Until then adieu, and pleasant dreams."
He swung out and closed the door, and not once had he seen the face of his guest. That guest stood in the center of the handsome chamber, and gazed around.
"At last!" he hisses between his set white teeth—"at last, after two years' weary waiting! At last, oh! my mother, the time has come for me to keep my vow!"
He raised one arm with a tragic gesture, removed the slouched hat, and stood uncovered in the tranquil half light.
The face was wonderfully handsome, of gypsy darkness, and the eyes shone like black stars; but a scarlet handkerchief was bound tightly around his head, and concealed every vestige of hair. With a slow smile creeping round his mouth, the boy took his handkerchief off.
"To-morrow he will come and call me, but to-morrow I shall not leave Kingsland Court. No, my dear young baronet, I have not saved your life for nothing! I shall have the honor of remaining your guest for some time."
CHAPTER IX.
MISS SYBILLA SILVER
Meantime Sir Everard had aroused his valet and a brace of tall footmen, and dispatched them to the aid of the wounded man in the wood. And then he sought his own chamber, and, after an hour or two of aimless tossing, dropped into an uneasy sleep.
And sleeping, Sir Everard had a singular dream. He was walking through Brithlow Wood with Lady Louise on his arm, the moonlight sifting through the tall trees as he had seen it last. Suddenly, with a rustle and a hiss, a huge green serpent glided out, reared itself up, and glared at them with eyes of deadly menace. And somehow, though he had not yet seen the lad's face, he knew the hissing serpent and the preserver of his life were one and the same. With horrible hisses the monster encircled him. Its fetid breath was in his face, its deadly fangs ready to strike his death-blow, and, with a suffocating cry, Sir Everard a-woke from his nightmare and started up in bed.
"Good heavens! such a night of horrors, waking and sleeping! A most ungrateful dream, truly! It is time I awoke my unknown preserver."
The mysterious youth lay fast asleep upon the bed, dressed as he had left him, with the exception of the slouched hat and the red cotton handkerchief. They lay on the carpet; and over the pillows, and over the coarse velveteen jacket streamed such a wealth of blue-black hair as the baronet in all his life never before beheld.
"Powers above!" Sir Everard gasped, in his utter amaze, "what can this mean?"
He advanced with bated breath, bent over and gazed at the sleeper's face. One look, and his flashing first suspicion was a certainty. This dark, youthful, faultlessly beautiful face was a woman's face. A girl in velveteen shooting-jacket and pantaloons, handsome as some dusky Indian princess, lay asleep before him.
Sir Everard Kingsland, in the last stage of bewilderment and amaze, retreated precipitately and shut the door.
The instant the chamber door closed the mysterious young man raised himself on his elbow, very wide awake, his handsome face lighted with a triumphant smile.
"So," he said, "step the second has been taken, and Sir Everard has discovered the sex of his preserver. As he is too delicate to disturb a slumbering lady in disguise, the slumbering lady must disturb him!"
He—or rather she—leaped lightly off the bed, picked up the scarlet bandanna, twisted scientifically the abundant black hair, bound it up with the handkerchief, and crushed down over all the slouched hat. Then, with the handsome face overshadowed, and all expression screwed out of it, she opened the door, and saw, as she expected, the young baronet in the passage.
He stopped at once at sight of her. He had been walking up and down, with an exceedingly surprised and perplexed face; and now he stood with his great, Saxon-blue eyes piercingly fixed upon the young person in velveteen, whose jacket and trousers told one story, and whose streaming dark hair told quite another.
"It is past sunrise, Sir Everard," his preserver began, with a reproachful glance, "and you have broken your promise. You said you would awake me."
"I beg your pardon," retorted Sir Everard, quietly; "I have broken no promise. I came to your room ten minutes ago to arouse you, as I said I would. I knocked thrice, and received no reply. Then I entered. You must excuse me for doing so. How was I to know I was entertaining angels unaware?"
With a low cry of consternation his hearer's hands flew up and covered his face, to hide the blushes that were not there.
"Your red handkerchief and hat do you good service in your masquerade, mademoiselle. I confess I should never suspect a lady in that suit of velveteen."
With a sudden theatrical abandon the "lady in velveteen" flung herself on her knees at his feet.
"Forgive me!" she cried, holding up her clasped hands. "Have pity on me! Don't reveal my secret, for Heaven's sake."
"Forgive you!" repeated Sir Everard, hastily. "What have I to forgive? Pray get up; there is no reason you should kneel and supplicate pity from me."
He raised her imperatively. Her head dropped in womanly confusion, and, hiding her face, she sobbed.
"What must you think? How dreadful it must look! But, oh, Sir
Everard! if you only knew!"
"I should like to know, I confess. Come here in this window recess and tell me, won't you? Come, look up, and don't cry so. Tell me who you are."
"I am Sybilla Silver, and I have run away from home, and I will die sooner than ever go back!"
She looked up with a passionate outbreak, and Sir Everard saw the splendor of a pair of flashing Spanish eyes.
"I shall not send you back, depend upon it. Why did you run away, Miss
Silver?"
"Do you really wish to know?" she asked. "Oh, Sir Everard Kingsland, will you indeed be my friend?"
"Your true and faithful friend, my poor girl!" he answered, moved by the piteous appeal. "Surely I could hardly be less to one who so bravely saved my life."
"Ah! that was nothing. I lay no claim on that. Serve me as you would serve any friendless girl in distress; and you are brave and generous and noble, I know."
"You 'do me proud,' mademoiselle. Suppose you cease complimenting, and begin at the beginning. Who are your friends, and why did you leave them, and where have you run away from?"
"From Yorkshire, Sir Everard—yes, all the way from Yorkshire in this disguise. Ah! it seems very bold and unwomanly, does it not? But my uncle was such a tyrant, and I had no appeal. I am an orphan, Sir Everard. My father and mother have been dead since my earliest recollection, and this uncle, my sole earthly relative, has been my guardian and tormentor. I can not tell you how cruelly he has treated me. I have been immured in a desolate old country-house, without friends or companions of my own age or sex, and left to drag on a useless and aimless life. My poor father left me a scant inheritance; but, such as it is, my uncle set his greedy heart upon adding it to his own. To do this, he determined upon marrying me to his only son. My cousin William was his father over again—meaner, more cruel and crafty and cold-blooded, if possible—and utterly abhorred by me. I would sooner have died ten thousand deaths than marry such a sordid, hateful wretch! But marry him I surely must have done, if I remained in their power. So I fled. With inconceivable trouble and maneuvering. I obtained this suit of clothes. If I fled undisguised, I knew I would certainly be pursued, overtaken, and brought back. In the dead of night I opened my chamber window and made my escape. I took a loaded pistol of my uncle's with me; I knew how to use it, and I felt safe with such a protector. My old nurse lived in Plymouth with her daughter, and to her I meant to go. I had a little money with me, and made good my escape. My disguise saved me from suspicion and insult. Last night, on my way to Worrel, I heard your cry for help, and my pistol stood me in good stead, for the first time. There, Sir Everard, you know all. I hate and despise myself for the dress I wear, but surely there is some excuse to be made for me."
The Spanish eyes, swimming in tears, were raised imploringly to his, and Sir Everard was two-and-twenty, and very susceptible to a beautiful woman's tears.
"Very much excuse, my poor girl," he said, warmly. "I am the last on earth to blame you for flying from a detested marriage. But there is no need to wear this disguise longer, surely?"
"No; no need. But I have had no opportunity of changing it; and if I do not succeed in finding my nurse at Plymouth, I don't know what will become of me."
"Have you not her address?"
"No; neither have I heard from her in a long, long time. She lived in Plymouth years ago with her married daughter, but we never corresponded; and whether she is there now, or whether indeed she is living at all, I do not know. I caught at the hope as the drowning catch at straws."
Sir Everard looked at her in that thoughtful pause. How beautiful she was in her dark, glowing girlhood—how friendless, how desolate in the world.
"It would be the wildest of wild-goose chases, then," he said, "knowing as little of your nurse's whereabouts as you do, to seek her in Plymouth now. Write first, or advertise in the local journals. If she is still resident there, that will fetch her."
"Write! advertise!" Sybilla Silver repeated, with unspeakable mournfulness; "from whence, Sir Everard?"