The man she hated

Belva Platt did not find it as easy to force her recreant lover back to her feet as she had expected.

Waverley Osborne was a good-looking, clever young man, with a good opinion of himself, and his love for the handsome blonde had taken flight the first time he beheld the piquant face of Fair Fielding.

Although deeply disappointed and indignant at the treatment he had received at the hands of Fair and her mother, he had by no means given up the hope of winning the young girl’s regard. He was conceited, and he made up his mind that Fair only repulsed him through fear of her mother.

“She would go with me fast enough only for that old cat, who wants to keep her daughter from getting married that she may support her in her laziness,” he said angrily to himself, and he made up his mind not to cease his attentions to Fair, but to conduct them more cautiously, so that he might make an impression on her girlish heart and induce her to meet him clandestinely, since her mother was opposed to his suit.

So he began to write her surreptitious love letters, which he conveyed to her hands by means of the little boys about the establishment, generally as she was leaving the factory after her day’s work was done.

Pretty Fair opened the first two of these epistles, and, finding them filled with praises of her beauty and protestations of love, returned both to the writer, with a curt message that she desired nothing to do with him.

But Waverley Osborne told himself that these were but the coquetries of a pretty young girl, who adopted these coy repulses only to lead him on. So he persevered, and every day sent her a fresh letter, which she, with resentful haste, returned, unopened, so that Belva Platt, who was watching her lover’s movements in Fair’s direction very closely, one day secured one of these letters by bribing a little messenger boy, and forthwith possessed herself of the tender contents.

The fury of the girl whose love had been slighted and rejected for a rival knew no bounds.

“I could kill them both!” she said savagely, through her clenched teeth, as she paced restlessly up and down her room, crushing the perfumed sheet in her angry hands and calling down furious maledictions on the head of the girl on whom she had vowed to take a bitter revenge.

“I will bear it no longer. I will go to see her mother, and if she is as weak and foolish as the girls say she is, why, I will cajole her into helping me to carry out my scheme of vengeance,” she muttered grimly.

And on Sunday afternoon, the only day on which she had any time for visiting, she dressed herself in her best attire, and boldly called on Mrs. Fielding.

“I hope you will excuse me for taking the liberty, but I am so fond of Fair that I could not help calling,” she said blandly, and, having thus paved her way, she proceeded: “Oh, my dear girl, I have something to tell you—quite a coincidence, really. You remember what I was telling you about a friend of mine, a rich young man, who vows he will marry no one but a working girl?”

“Eh?” exclaimed Mrs. Fielding, with deep interest, and Belva mentally hugged herself.

“Good! She snaps at the tempting bait,” she muttered grimly, and, turning to the lady, she exclaimed: “Hasn’t Fair told you? Why, what a sly little puss she is, never to tell you of her grand opportunity! You see, I wanted to introduce her to a particular friend of mine, an extremely wealthy young man, and she positively refused to know him. Think of that! And, you see, it certainly did pique him, for I had told him how pretty she was, and he is just crazy to get acquainted with her. He came past the factory one day just as we were leaving, and I pointed her out to him. He told me afterward that it was curiosity to see her that brought him. He said she must be a wonderful girl to refuse a young man’s acquaintance simply because he was rich.”

“Oh, Miss Platt, it wasn’t that, of course. I simply didn’t care about him,” Fair explained quickly, adding, after an instant: “I really meant to tell mother—but—I forgot.”

Yes, poor child, she had truly forgotten, for on the same fated afternoon Bayard Lorraine’s blue eyes had flashed across the horizon of her life, and all things else had grown obscure. She was blinded by looking on the sun.

Mrs. Fielding, all eager interest, turned to artful Belva.

“Did I really understand you to say that the young man actually wanted to marry a working girl?”

“Yes, that was what I said. He told me he was disgusted with society belles, and meant to seek a bride among the working classes. As soon as I saw Fair, I thought that she was the very one for him, as she was so superior to the generality of working girls; and, then, too, I knew that her beauty would create a sensation if she became a rich man’s bride.”

“Please don’t flatter me, Miss Platt!” exclaimed Fair, blushing warmly.

“It is no flattery, my dear girl. It is the plain truth,” replied Belva, as she rattled on: “But what I was about to tell you, Fair, was that this rich young man is a cousin of Bayard Lorraine, the person that saved your life that day. Now, doesn’t it seem like a coincidence?”

“I don’t know,” Fair answered vaguely. She blushed and trembled at the very mention of the name that was always in her secret thoughts.

“The strangest part, to me,” continued Belva vivaciously, “is that while Bayard Lorraine is very proud and haughty, and never associates with any but rich girls, his cousin, George Lorraine, thinks as much of a poor girl as a rich one—even more—for he says rich girls never love a man for himself, but only for the amount of money he has, and he is so disgusted that he means to have a dear little working girl, who will love him for himself alone.”

Mrs. Fielding was wondering to herself what manner of man this could be, and, looking at Belva, she said dubiously:

“Your friend must be a strange kind of man; or perhaps he has done something so bad that it has placed him outside the pale of polite society? He may be a black sheep.”

Belva protested eagerly that such was not the case, that George Lorraine was the most intimate friend of his Cousin Bayard.

“He is peculiar, that is all, and is a sort of crank on the subject of marrying for love,” she said. “His relations object very much to his sentiments, but it does no good. Now, Bayard Lorraine is the proudest man in New York. You know that yourself, Fair, for, although he was brave enough to save your life, he did not take enough interest in you to find out your name.”

She had wormed this out of Fair by ceaseless persistency.

Fair made no answer, but sat with drooping head and nervous fingers, smoothing down the folds of her white apron. What was there for her to say? Belva’s words were only too true.

But Mrs. Fielding and Belva carried on the conversation quite briskly, and the end was that Fair’s mother gave the artful schemer leave to bring George Lorraine to call.

Belva lost no time in taking advantage of the permission, and the very next evening she climbed the stairs to the little four-story room with a young man whom she introduced to Fair and her mother as Mr. George Lorraine.

Fair looked with much interest at her new acquaintance, to see if he bore any resemblance to his cousin. She could not find any, as George was small and dark, with an Italian type of beauty, for he was certainly very good-looking.

But he was well dressed and agreeable, and talked so constantly about “my Cousin Bayard, you know,” that Fair found him, on the whole, a very pleasant acquaintance.

“Bayard is going to marry an heiress, you know,” he confided to her, adding, with an admiring glance into the bright brown eyes: “But, by Jove, you know, if I’d had such a chance as that beggar the day he sailed, I’d have stayed at home and let that girl go, in spite of her moneybags.”