The Unseen Bridegroom; Or, Wedded For a Week

"BLACK MASK"—"WHITE MASK."

"Finish your story!" exclaimed Miriam, impatiently. "Morning is coming, and like owls and bats and other noxious creatures, I hide from the daylight. How did you escape?"

"I didn't escape," said Mollie. "I couldn't. The week expired—my masked husband kept his word and sent me home."

"Sent you! Did he not fetch you?"

"No; the man who drove the carriage—who, with the girl Sarah, witnessed the marriage—brought me. Sarah bound me, although there was no occasion, and the man led me down and put me in. Sarah accompanied me, and I was driven to the very corner here. They let me out, and, before I had time to catch my breath, were off and away."

"And that is all?" said Miriam, wonderingly.

"All! I should think it was enough. It sounds more like a chapter out of the 'Castle of Otranto,' or the 'Mysteries of Udolpho,' than an incident in the life of a modern New York belle. For, of course, you know, Madame Miriam," concluded the pretty coquette, tossing back airily all her bright curls, "I am a belle—a reigning belle—the beauty of the season!"

"A little conceited, goosey girl—that's what you are, Mollie Dane, whom ever this terrible event can not make serious and sensible."

"Terrible event! Now, Miriam, I'm not so sure about that. If I liked the hero of the adventure—and I have liked some of my rejected flirtees, poor fellows!—I should admire his pluck, and fall straightway in love with him for his romantic daring. It is so like what those old fellows—knights and barons and things—used to do, you know. And if I didn't like him—if it were Sardonyx or Oleander—sure, there would be the fun and fame of having my name in all the papers in the country as the heroine of the most romantic adventure of modern times. There would be sensation novels and high-pressure melodramas manufactured out of it, and I would figure in the Divorce Court, and wake up some day, like Lord Byron, and find myself famous."

Miriam listened to this rattle with a face of infinite contempt.

"Silly child! It will ruin your prospects for life. Sir Roger will never marry you now."

"No," said Mollie, composedly, "I don't think he will; for the simple reason that I wouldn't have him."

"Wouldn't have him? What do you mean?"

"What I say, auntie. I wouldn't marry him, or anybody else, just now. I mean to find out who is my husband first."

"Do they know this extraordinary story?"

Mollie laughed.

"No, poor things! And he and guardy are dying by inches of curiosity. Guardy has concocted a story, and tells it with his blandest air to everybody; and everybody smiles, and bows, and listens, and nobody believes a word of it. And that odious Mrs. Carl—there's no keeping her in the dark. She has the cunning of a serpent, that woman. She has an inkling of the truth, already."

"How?"

"Well, Mr. Rashleigh—the clergyman, you know, who was abducted to marry us—was at a dinner-party this very day—or, rather, yesterday, for it's two in the morning now—and at dinner he related his whole wonderful adventure. Of course, he didn't see my face or know me; but he described the bride—small, slender, with a profusion of golden ringlets. You should have seen Mrs. Carl look across the table at me—you should have heard her hiss in my ear, in her venomous, serpent-like way: 'I think I know where you spent that fortnight.' I couldn't sleep to-night for thinking of it, and that's how I came to be awake so late, and to see you from the window. I'm not afraid of her; but I know she means me mischief, if she can."

Miriam gazed thoughtfully at her. She looked a very helpless, childish little creature, sitting there—the youthful face looking out of that sunshiny cloud of curls.

"She is your deadly enemy, then, Mollie. Why does she dislike you so much?"

"Because I dislike her, I suppose, and always did, and she knew it. It is a case of mutual repulsion. We were enemies at first sight. Then she is jealous of me—of my influence with her husband. She is provoked that she can not fathom the mystery of my belongings, and she thinks, I know, I am Mr. Walraven's daughter, sub rosa; and, to cap the climax, I won't marry her cousin, Doctor Oleander."

"You seem to dislike Doctor Oleander very much?"

"I do," said Mollie, pithily. "I'd give him and the handsome Blanche a dose of strychnine each, with all the pleasure in life, if it wasn't a hanging matter. I don't care about being hanged. It's bad enough to be married and not know who your husband is."

"It may be this Doctor Oleander."

Mollie's eyes blazed up.

"If it is!"—she caught her breath and stopped—"if it is, Miriam, I vow I would blow his brains out first, and my own afterward! No, no, no! Such a horrible thing couldn't be!"

"Do you know, Mollie," said Miriam, slowly, "I think you are in love?"

"Ah! do you really? Well, Miriam, you used to spae fortunes for a living. Look into my palm now, and tell me who is the unhappy man."

"Is this artist you speak of handsome and young?"

"Handsome and young, and tolerably rich, and remarkably clever. Is it he?"

"I think it is."

Mollie smiled softly, and looked into the glowing mask of coals.

"You forget I refused him, Miriam."

"Bah! a girl's caprice. If you discovered he was your mysterious husband, would you blow out his brains and your own?"

"No," said Mollie, coolly. "I would much rather live with Hugh Ingelow than die with him. Handsome Hugh." Her eyes softened and grew humid. "You are right, Miriam. You can spae fortunes, I see. I do like Hugh, dearly. But he is not the man."

"No? Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. He is too chivalrous, for one thing, to force a lady's inclination."

"Don't trust any of them. Their motto is: 'All fair in love!' And then, you know, you played him a very shabby trick."

"I know I did."

Miss Dane laughed at the recollection.

"And he said he would not forget."

"So they all said. That's why I fear it may be one of the three."

"And it is one of the three; and you are not the clever girl I give you credit to be if you can not find it out."

"How?"

"Are they so much alike in height, and gait, and manner of speaking, and fifty other things, that you can't identify him in spite of his mask?"

"It is not so easy to recognize a masked man when he disguises himself in a long cloak and speaks French in a feigned voice. Those three men are very much of a height, and all are straight and slender. I tried and tried again, I tell you, during that last week, and always failed. Sometimes I thought it was one, and sometimes another."

"Try once more," said Miriam, pithily.

"How?"

"Are you afraid of this masked man?"

"Afraid? Certainly not. I have nothing to fear. Did he not keep his word and restore me to my friends at the expiration of the week? You should have heard him, Miriam, at that last interview—the eloquent, earnest, impassioned way in which he bid me good-bye. I declare, I felt tempted for an instant to say: 'Look here, Mr. Mask; if you love me like that, and if you're absolutely not a fright, take off that ugly, black death's-head you wear, and I'll stay with you always, since I am your wife.' But I didn't."

"You would not fear to meet him again, then?"

"On the contrary, I should like it, of all things. There is a halo of romance about this mysterious husband of mine that renders him intensely interesting. Girls love romance dearly; and I'm only a girl, you know."

"And the silliest girl I ever did know," said Miriam. "I believe you're more than half in love with this man in the mask; and if it turns out to be the artist, you will plump into his arms, forever and always."

"I shouldn't wonder in the least," responded the young, lady, coolly. "I never knew how much I liked poor dear Hugh until I gave him his congé. He's so very, very, very handsome, you see, Miriam; and I adore beauty."

"Very well. Find out if it's he—and find out at once."

"More easily said than done, isn't it?"

"Not at all. You don't suppose he has left the city?"

"No. He told me that he would not leave—that he would remain and watch me, unseen and unknown."

"Then, if you advertise—if you address him through the medium of the daily papers—he will see and answer your advertisement."

"Very probably. But he isn't going to tell me who he is. If he had any intention of doing so, he would have done it last week."

Miriam shook her head.

"I'm not so sure about that. You never asked him to reveal himself. You gave him no reason to suppose you would do otherwise than scorn and flout him, let him be who he might. It is different now. If it is Hugh Ingelow, you will forgive him all?"

"Miriam, see here: why are you so anxious I should forgive this man?"

"Because I want to see you some respectable man's wife; because I want to see you safely settled in life, and no longer left to your own caprices, or those of Carl Walraven. If you love this Hugh Ingelow, and marry him, you may probably become a rational being and a sensible matron yet."

Mollie made a wry face.

"The last thing I ever want to be. And I don't believe half a dozen husbands would ever transform me into a 'sensible matron.' But go on, all the same. I'm open to suggestion. What do you want me to do?"

"Address this man. Ask him to appoint a meeting. Meet him. Tell him what you have told me, and make him reveal himself. He will be sure to do it, if he thinks there are grounds for hope."

"And if it turns out to be Sardonyx or Oleander—and I have a presentiment that it's the latter—what then?"

"'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' I don't believe it is either. From what you tell me of them, I am sure neither would behave so honorably at the last—keeping his promise and fetching you home."

"There is something in that," said Mollie, thoughtfully. "Unless, indeed, they grew tired of me, or were afraid to imprison me longer. And my masked husband talked, at the parting, as neither of these reptiles could talk. It may be some one of whom I have never thought—who knows? I've had such a quantity of lovers that I couldn't possibly keep the run of them. However, as I'm dying to meet him again, whoever he is, I'll take your advice and address him."

Miriam rose.

"That is well. And now I must be going. It is past three, and New York streets will presently be astir. I have a long way to go, and no wish to be seen."

"Miriam, stop. Can't I do anything to assist you? You are half starved, I know: and so miserably clad. Do—do let me aid you?"

"Never!" the woman cried, "while you are beneath this roof. If ever you settle down in a house of your own, and your husband permits you to aid so disreputable a being as I am, I may listen to you. All you have now belongs to Carl Walraven; and to offer me a farthing of Carl Walraven's money is to offer me the deadliest of insults."

"How you hate him! how he must have wronged you!" Again that burning blaze leaped into the woman's haggard eyes.

"Ay, girl! hate and wrong are words too poor and weak to express it. But I bide my time—and it will surely come—when I will have my revenge."

She opened the door and passed out swiftly. The listener at the key-hole barely escaped behind the cabinet—no more.

Mollie, in her rosy silken robes, like a little goddess Aurora, followed her out, down the stairs, and opened for her the house door.

The first little pink clouds of the coming morn were blushing in the east, and the rag-women, with their bags and hooks, were already astir.

"When shall I see you again?" Mollie said.

Miriam turned and looked at her, half wonderingly.

"Do you really wish to see me again, Mollie—such a wretched-looking being as I am?"

"Are you not my aunt?" Mollie cried, passionately. "How do I know there is another being on this earth in whose veins flow the same blood as mine? And you—you love me, I think."

"Heaven knows I do, Mollie Dane!"

"Then why wrong me by such a question? Come again, and again; and come soon. I will be on the watch for you. And now, farewell!"

She held out her little white hand. A moment, and they had parted.

The young girl went slowly back to her room to disrobe and lie down, and the haggard woman flitted rapidly from street to street, on her way to the dreary lodgings she called home.

Two days after, running her eyes greedily over the morning paper, Miriam read, heading the list of "Personals:"

"So," said the woman to herself, "she has kept her word. Brave little Mollie! Oh! that it may be the man she loves! I should be almost happy, I think, to see her happy—Mary's child!"

Miriam waited impatiently for the response. In two days it came:

"I, too, will be there," said Miriam. "It can do no harm; it may, possibly, do some good."

MRS. CARL WALRAVEN'S LITTLE GAME.

Mysterious Miriam, in her dismal garret lodging, was not the only person who read, and intelligently comprehended, these two very singular advertisements.

Of all the hundreds who may have perused and wondered over them, probably there were but four who understood in the least what was meant—the two most interested, and Miriam and Mrs. Walraven.

Stay! There was the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh, who might have seen his way through, had he chanced to read the "Personal" column of the paper.

On the Thursday morning that this last advertisement appeared, Mrs. Carl Walraven sat alone in the pretty boudoir sacred to her privacy. It was her choice to breakfast alone sometimes, en dishabille. It had been her choice on this particular day.

At her elbow stood the tiny round table, with its exquisite appointments of glass, and porcelain, and silver; its chocolate, its toast, its eggs, its little broiled bird.

Mrs. Walraven was of the luxurious sort, as your full-blown, high-blooded Cleopatras are likely to be, and did ample justice to the exquisite cuisine of the Walraven mansion.

Lying back gracefully, her handsome morning robe falling loosely around her, her superb black hair twisted away in a careless, serpentine coil, her face fresh and blooming, "at peace with the world and all therein," my lady Blanche digested her breakfast and leisurely skimmed the morning paper.

She always liked the "Personals." To-day they had a double interest for her. She read again and again—a dozen times, at least—that particular "Personal" appointing the meeting at Fourteenth Street, and a lazy smile came over her tropical face at last as she laid it down.

"Nothing could be better," mused Mrs. Walraven, with that indolent smile shining in her lazy, wicked black eyes. "The little fool sets her trap, and walks into it herself, like the inconceivable idiot she is. It reminds one of the ostrich, this advertisement—pretty Mollie buries her head in the sand, and fancies no one sees her. Now, if Guy only plays his part—and I think he will, for he's absurdly and ridiculously in love with the fair-haired tom-boy—she will be caught in the nicest trap ever silly seventeen walked into. She was caged once, and got free. She will find herself caged again, and not get free. I shall have my revenge, and Guy will have his inamorata. I'll send for him at once."

Mrs. Walraven rose, sought out her blotting-book, took a sheet of paper and an envelope, and scrawled two or three words to her cousin:

Ringing the bell, Mrs. Walraven dispatched this little missive, and then, reclining easily in the downy depths of her violet velvet fauteuil, she fell into a reverie that lasted for upward of an hour. With sleepy, slow, half-closed eyes, the wicked, smile just curving the ripe-red mouth, Mme. Blanche wandered in the land of meditation, and had her little plot all cut and dry as the toy Swiss clock on the low mantel struck up a lively waltz preparatory to striking eleven. Ere the last silvery chime had ceased vibrating, the door of the boudoir opened and Dr. Guy Oleander walked in.

"Good-morning, Mrs. Walraven," said the toxicologist, briskly. "You sent for me. What's the matter?"

He took off his tall hat, set it on a sofa, threw his gloves into it, and indulged in a prolonged professional stare at his fair relative.

"Nothing very serious, I imagine. You're the picture of handsome health. Really, Blanche, the Walraven air seems to agree with you. You grow fresher, and brighter, and plumper, and better-looking every day."

"I didn't send for you to pay compliments, Doctor Oleander," said Mrs. Walraven, smiling graciously, all the same. "See if that door is shut fast, please, and come and sit here beside me. I've something very serious to say to you."

Dr. Oleander did as directed, and took a seat beside the lady.

"Your husband won't happen in, will he, Blanche? Because he might be jealous, you know, at this close proximity; and your black-a-vised men of unknown antecedents are generally the very dickens when they fall a prey to the green-eyed monster."

"Pshaw! are you not my cousin and my medical adviser? Don't be absurd, Guy. Mr. Walraven troubles himself very little about me, one way or other. I might hold a levee of my gentlemen friends here, week in and week out, for all he would know or care."

"Ah! post-nuptial bliss. I thought marriage, in his case, would be a safe antidote for love. All right, Blanche. Push ahead. What's your business? Time is precious this morning. Hosts of patients on hand, and an interesting case of leprosy up at Bellevue."

"I don't want to know your medical horrors," said Mrs. Walraven, with a shudder of disgust; "and I think you will throw over your patients when you hear the subject I want to talk about. That subject is—Mollie Dane!"

"Mollie!" The doctor was absorbed and vividly interested all at once. "What of Mollie Dane?"

"This," lowering her voice: "I have found out the grand secret. I know where that mysterious fortnight was spent."

"Blanche!" He leaned forward, almost breathless. "Have you? Where?"

"You'd never guess. It sounds too romantic—too incredible—for belief. Even the hackneyed truism, 'Truth is stranger than fiction,' will hardly suffice to conquer one's astonishment—yet true it is. Do you recollect the Reverend Mr. Rashleigh's story at the dinner-party, the other day—that incredible tale of his abduction and the mysterious marriage of the two masks?"

"I recollect—yes."

"He spoke of the bride, you remember—described her as small and slender, with a profusion of fair, curling hair."

"Yes—yes—yes!"

"Guy," fixing her powerful black eyes on his face, "do you need to be told who that masked bride was?"

"Mollie Dane!" cried the doctor, impetuously.

"Mollie Dane," said Mrs. Walraven, calmly.

"By Jove!"

Dr. Oleander sat for a instant perfectly aghast.

"I only wonder it did not strike you at the time. It struck me, and I whispered my suspicion in her ear as we passed into the drawing-room. But she is a perfect actress. Neither start nor look betrayed her. She stared at me with those insolent blue eyes of hers, as though she could not possibly comprehend."

"Perhaps she could not."

Mrs. Walraven looked at him with a quiet smile—the smile of conscious triumph.

"She is the cleverest actress I ever saw off the stage—so clever that I am sometimes inclined to suspect she may have been once on it. No, my dear Guy, she understood perfectly well. Mollie Dane was the extraordinary bride Mr. Rashleigh married that extraordinary night."

"And who the devil," cried Dr. Guy, using powerful language in his excitement, "was the birdegroom?"

"Ah!" said Blanche, "there's the rub! Mr. Rashleigh doesn't know, and I don't know, and Mollie doesn't know herself."

"What!"

"My dear Doctor Oleander, your eyes will start from your head if you stare after that fashion. No; Mollie doesn't know. She is married; but to whom she has no more idea than you have. Does it not sound incredible?"

"Sound? It is incredible—impossible—absurd!"

"Precisely. It is an accomplished fact, all the same."

"Blanche, for Heaven's sake, explain!" exclaimed the young man, impatiently. "What the foul fiend do you mean? I never heard such a cock-and-bull story in all my life!"

"Nor I. But it is true, nevertheless. Listen: On the night following the dinner-party I did the meanest action of my life. I played eavesdropper. I listened at Mollie's door. All for your sake, my dear Guy."

"Yes?" said Guy, with an incredulous smile.

"I listened," pursued Mrs. Blanche, "and I overheard the strangest confession ever made, I believe—Mollie Dane relating the adventures of that hidden fortnight, at midnight, to that singular creature, Miriam."

"Miriam! Who is she?"

"Oh! you remember—the woman who tried to stop my marriage. Mollie quieted her on that occasion, and they had a private talk."

"Yes, yes! I remember. Go on. How did Miriam come to be with Mollie, and who the mischief is Miriam?"

"Her aunt."

"Her aunt?"

"Her mother's sister—yes. Her mother's name was Dane. Who that mother was," said Mrs. Walraven, with spiteful emphasis, "I fancy Mr. Walraven could tell you."

"Ah!" said her cousin, with a side-long glance, "I shouldn't wonder. I'll not ask him, however. Proceed."

"I took to reading a novel after I came home," proceeded Mrs. Walraven, "and my husband went to bed. I remained with my book in the drawing-room, very much interested, until nearly midnight. I fancied all in the house had retired; therefore, when I heard a soft rustling of silk swishing past the drawing-room door, I was considerably surprised. An instant later, and the house door was softly unfastened. I turned the handle noiselessly and peeped out. There, in her pink dinner toilet, jewels and all, was Miss Dane, stealing upstairs, and following her, this wretched, ragged creature, Miriam."

"Well?" said the doctor.

"Well, I followed. They entered Miss Dane's chamber and closed the door. The temptation was strong, the spirit willing, and the flesh weak. I crouched at the key-hole and listened. It was a very long conversation—it was fully three o'clock before Miriam departed—but it held me spell-bound with its interest from beginning to end. Once I was nearly caught—I sneezed. I vanished behind a big cabinet, and just saved myself, for they opened the door. Mollie set it down to the wind, or the rats, closed the door again, and my curiosity overcoming my fear of detection, I crept back and heard every word."

"Well?" again said the doctor.

"Well, Mollie made a clean breast of it. On her wedding-night she was enticed from the house by a letter purporting to come from this Miriam. The letter told her that Miriam was dying, and that she wished to make a revelation of her parentage to Mollie, before she departed for a worse land. It seems she knows Miss Dane's antecedents, and Miss Dane doesn't. Mollie went at once, as the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh did, and, like him, was blindfolded and bound, borne away to some unknown house, nobody knows where, waited on by the girl who carried the letter, and held a fast prisoner by a man in a black mask. That man's face Mollie never saw, nor has she the least idea of whom it may be. She is inclined to suspect you."

"Me!"

The doctor's stare of astonishment was a sight to behold.

"It is you, or Sardonyx, or Ingelow—one of you three, Mollie is certain. The particular one she can't decide. She dreads it may be either the lawyer or the doctor, and hopes, with all her heart, it may be the artist."

Dr. Oleander's swarthy brows knit with a midnight scowl.

"She is in love with this puppy, Ingelow. I have thought as much for some time."

"Hopelessly in love with him, and perfectly willing to be his wife, if he proves to be her husband. Should it chance to be you, she will administer a dose of strychnine the first available opportunity."

"She said that, did she?"

"That, and much more. She hates, detests, and abhors you, and loves the handsome artist with all her heart."

"The little jade! And how about her elderly admirer?"

"Sir Roger? Oh! he is to get the go-by. 'Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' He will stand the blow. 'All for love, and the world well lost,' is to be her motto for the future. She is in love with Hugh, and Hugh she must have. The spoiled baby is tired of all its old toys, and wants a new one."

"And she married this masked man, and never saw him? That is odd."

"The whole affair is excessively odd. You know how impatient she naturally is. She grew desperate in her confinement in a few days, and was ready to sell her birthright for a mess of pottage—ready to sacrifice her freedom in one way for her freedom in another. She had the man's promise that he would return her to her friends a week after she became his wife. She married him, and he kept his promise."

"And he never let her see his face?"

"Never! and she can not even suspect who it is. He wore a long, disguising cloak that concealed his figure, false beard and hair, and spoke only French. But she hopes it may be Hugh Ingelow. What do you think?"

"That is not Hugh Ingelow. The fellow hasn't energy enough to entrap a fly."

"Sardonyx, then?"

"Sardonyx is too cautious. He knows too much of the law to run his head into the lion's jaws. Besides, it is too absurdly romantic for so practical a man. No, it is not Sardonyx."

"Yourself, then?"

The doctor laughed.

"Nonsense, Blanche! Mollie is out of her reckoning about us three. By the bye, I see now through those queer advertisements that have appeared in the 'Herald' of late. Black Mask—White Mask."

"Yes; Mollie wants to find out whom she has espoused. By Miriam's advice, she inserted that first advertisement to Black Mask. He, as you perceive, replies in to-day's edition."

"And she is to meet him to-morrow night."

"Exactly; and will, unless you forestall him."

"How?"

"Don't be stupid, pray. What is to hinder you from being at the place of rendezvous first and playing Black Mask?"

"I beg your pardon; I am stupid still. Black Mask will be there himself."

"Look here: ten is the hour. Toward evening I will advance every time-piece in the house, Mollie's watch included, half an hour. She will be at the place of tryst at half past nine. Be you there, likewise—cloaked, bearded, bewigged. Have a carriage in waiting. Make her think you are Hugh Ingelow, and she will enter it without hesitation. Speak French. She will not recognize your voice. Once in the carriage, carry her off."

"Where?" asked the doctor, astonished at the rapidity of all this.

"To Long Island—to the farm. She will be as safe there as in Sing Sing. Make her think you are her unknown husband. It will be easily done, for she half thinks it now. Only—look out for the strychnine!"

The doctor rose to his feet, his sallow face flushed, his small black eyes sparkling.

"By Jove! Blanche, what a plotter you are! I'll do it, as sure as my name's Guy. I love the little witch to madness, and I owe her one for the way she jilted me. I'll do it, by thunder!"

"Very well," said Mrs. Walraven, quietly. "Don't get excited, and don't make a noise. I knew you would."

"But what will the old lady say?"

"Who cares for the old lady?" retorted Mme. Blanche, contemptuously. "Not you, I hope. Tell her it's an insane patient you have brought to her for quiet and sea air. Judy is a regular dragon, and the old woman is as keen as a ferret and as sly as a female fox. Mollie won't escape from them. She may yield, if she really is convinced you are her husband. Tell her you love her to distraction—can't live without her, and so on. She may yield. Who knows? These girls are bundles of inconsistencies, and Mollie Dane the most inconsistent of the tribe. Have the ceremony performed over again before witnesses, and bring her back here in a month—Mrs. Guy Oleander! Even if she won't consent from pity for your state, she may to escape from that dreary Long Island farm. She did once before, you know, and may again. That is all I have to suggest, Guy. The rest is with yourself. In the vocabulary of great men, there is no such word as fail."

She rose up. Dr. Oleander grasped her hand in an outburst of enthusiastic gratitude.

"Blanche, you're a brick—a trump—a jewel beyond price! I don't know how to thank you. You're a woman of genius—a wife for a Talleyrand!"

"Thanks. Let me be able to return the compliment. I ask no more. Let me see how cleverly you will carry off pretty Mollie. I never want to see her under this roof again."

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

The April day had been very long, and very, very dull in the handsome Walraven Fifth Avenue palace. Long and lamentable, as the warning cry of the banshee, wailed the dreary blast. Ceaselessly, dismally beat the rain against the glass. The icy breath of the frozen North was in the wind, curdling your blood and turning your skin to goose-flesh; and the sky was of lead, and the streets were slippery and sloppy, and the New York pavements altogether a delusion and a snare.

All through this bad, black April day, Mollie Dane had wandered through the house, upstairs and down-stairs, like an uneasy ghost.

Some evil spirit of unrest surely possessed her. She could settle nowhere. She threw herself on a sofa in her pretty bedroom, and tried to beguile the forlorn hours with the latest novel, in vain. She yawned horribly over the pages and flung it from her in disgust.

She wandered down to the drawing-room and tried the grand piano, whose tones were as the music of the spheres. Still in vain. The listless fingers fell aimlessly on the ivory keys.

She strove to sleep, but the nervous restlessness that possessed her only drove her to the verge of feverish madness in the effort. The girl was possessed of a waking nightmare not to be shaken off.

"What is it?" cried Mollie, impatiently, to herself. "What the mischief's the matter with me? I never felt like this before. It can't be remorse for some unacted crime, I never committed murder that I know of. It can't be dyspepsia, for I've got the digestive powers of an anaconda. It can't be the weather, for I've struggled through one or two other rainy days in my life-time; and it can't be anxiety for to-night to come, for I'm not apt to get into a gale about trifles. Perhaps it's a presentiment of evil to come. I've heard of such things. It's either that or a fit of the blue-devils!"

The long, wet, windy day wore on. Mr. Walraven slept through it comfortably in his study. Mrs. Walraven had a tête-à-tête luncheon with her cousin, the doctor, and dawdled the slow hours away over her tricot and fashion magazines.

Old Mme. Walraven rarely left her own apartments of late days. Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law detested each other with an intensity not common even in that relationship. How she ever killed time was a mystery unknown. Mollie good-naturedly devoted a couple of her precious daily hours to her. The house was as still as a tomb. Downstairs, Messrs. Johnson and Wilson, Mr. Coachman, Mme. Cook and Mlle. Chambermaid may have enjoyed themselves in one another's society, but above the kitchen cabinet all was forlorn and forsaken.

"Awfully slow, all this!" said Miss Dane to herself, with a fearful yawn. "I'll die of stagnation if this sort of thing keeps on. Mariana, howling in the Moated Grange, must have felt a good deal as I do just at present—a trifle worse, maybe, for I don't wish I were dead altogether. The Tombs is gay and festive compared to Fifth Avenue on a rainy day. I wish I were back playing Fanchon the Cricket, free and happy once more, wearing spangles as Ophelia of Denmark, and a gilt paper crown as Cleopatra of Egypt, I wasn't married then; and I didn't go moping about, like an old hen with the distemper, every time it was wet and nasty. If it keeps on like this I shall have a pretty time of it getting to Fourteenth Street, at ten o'clock to-night. And I'll surely go, if it were to rain cats, dogs, and pitchforks!"

She stood drearily at the drawing-room window, looking forlornly out at the empty street.

The eerie twilight was falling, rain and wind rising and falling with it, the street lamps twinkling ghostily through the murky gloaming, the pavement black and shining. Belated pedestrians hurried along with bowed heads and uplifted umbrellas, the stages rattled past in a ceaseless stream, full to overflowing. The rainy night was settling down, the storm increasing as the darkness came on. Mollie surveyed all this disconsolately enough.

"I don't mind a ducking," she murmured, plaintively, "and I never take cold; but I don't want that man to see me looking like a drowned rat. Oh, if it should turn out to be Hugh—dear, dear Hugh!" Her face lighted rapturously at the thought. "I never knew how much I loved him until I lost him. If it isn't Hugh, and Hugh asks me to run away with him to-morrow, I'll do it—I declare I will—and the others may go to grass!"

At that moment, voices sounded on the stairs—the voices of Mrs. Walraven and her cousin.

The drawing-room door was ajar, Mollie's little figure hidden in the amber drapery of the window, and she could see them plainly, without herself being seen.

"You won't fail?" Mrs. Walraven said, impressively. "I will do my part. Are you equal to yours?"

"I never fail where I mean to succeed," answered Dr. Guy, with equal emphasis. "Sooner or later, I triumph! I shall triumph now! 'All things are possible to him who knows how to wait.' I have waited, and this night gives me my reward."

The house door closed after the young man. Mrs. Walraven peeped into the drawing-room, never seeing the slender figure amid the voluminous golden damask, and then reascended the stairs. Mollie was again in silence and solitude.

"Now, what are those two up to, I should like to know?" soliloquized the young lady. "Some piece of atrocious mischief, I'll be bound! He looks like the Miltonic Lucifer sometimes, that man, only not one half so good-looking; but there is a snakish, treacherous, cold-blooded glare in his greenish-black eyes that makes me think of the arch-tempter; and some people have the bad taste to call him handsome."

The twilight had ended in darkness by this time. Mollie put her hand to her belt to find her watch, but it was not there.

"I have left it on my dressing-table," she thought, moving away. "I will have a cup of tea in my room this evening, and let guardy and Madame Blanche dine together. I wish it were time to start. I abominably hate waiting."

Mollie found her watch on the table, and was rather surprised to see it past eight.

"I had no idea it was so late," she said to herself. "I shall leave here at half past nine. There is nothing like keeping tryst in season."

She rang for Lucy, ordered a little supper in her room, and then dismissed the maid.

"I shan't want you again to-night, Lucy," she said. "You can go out, if you like, and see your mother."

Lucy tripped away, right well pleased, and Mollie dawdled the time over her supper and a book.

Half past nine came very soon.

"Time to get ready," thought Mollie, starting up. "Dear, dear! it's highly romantic and highly sensational, this nocturnal appointment with a masked man, and that man one's mysterious husband. I can't say much for the place; there's precious little romance around the Maison Dorée. Does it still rain, I wonder?"

She opened the blind and looked out. Yes, it still rained; it still blew in long, shuddering gusts; the low-lying sky was inky black; athwart the darkness flashed the murky street lamps.

Mollie dropped the curtain, with a little shiver.

"'The night is cold, and dark, and dreary,
It rains, and the wind is never weary.'

It's a horrible night to be abroad, but I'll keep my word, if I drown for it!"

She hunted up the long water-proof mantle she had worn the night of her abduction, drew the hood far over her head and face, wrapped it around her, opened the window, and resolutely stepped out on the piazza.

She paused an instant—a blinding rush of wind and rain almost took her off her feet; the next, the brave little heroine was flitting along the slippery piazza, down the stairs, out of the wicket gate and into the black, shining street.

Away sped Mollie—swift as a little, wingless Mercury—down the avenue, through Union Square, to the place of tryst.

She expected every moment to hear the city clocks chime ten, but she reached Broadway without hearing them. Little wonder, when it was but half past nine.

Drenched through, blown about, breathless, panting, almost scared at the dreary forlornness of the deserted streets, the adventurous little damsel reached the place of tryst.

Was she too soon? Surely not. There stood a cab, drawn close to the curbstone, and there, in the shadow of the cab, stood a tall man in a cloak, evidently waiting.

The lamps of the carriage shone upon him, but the cloak collar was so turned up, the slouched hat so pulled down, such a quantity of dark beard between, that nothing was visible of the face whatever.

Mollie paused, altogether exhausted; the man advanced a step out of the shadow.

"White Mask?" he asked, in a cautious whisper.

"Black Mask!" responded Mollie, promptly.

"All right, then!" replied the man, speaking in French, and speaking rapidly. "It's impossible to stand here in the rain and talk. I have brought a carriage—let me assist you in."

But Mollie shrunk back. Some nameless thrill of terror suddenly made her dread the man.

"You must—you must!" cried the man, in an impetuous whisper. "We can not stand here in this down-pour. Don't you see it is impossible? And the first policeman who comes along will be walking us off to the station-house."

He caught her arm and half led her to the carriage. Shrinking instinctively, yet hardly knowing what to do, she found herself in it, and seated, before she quite knew it.

He sprung after her, closed the door, the carriage started at once at a great pace, and the poor little fly was fairly caught in the spider's web.

"I don't like this," said Mollie, decisively. "I had no idea of entering a carriage when I appointed this meeting. Where are you taking me to?"

"There is no need to be alarmed, pretty Mollie," said the man, still speaking French. "I have given the coachman orders to rattle along through the streets. We can talk here at our leisure, and as long as we please. You must perceive the utter impossibility of conversation at a street corner and in a down-pour of rain."

Mollie did, but she fidgeted in her seat, and felt particularly uncomfortable, all the same. Now that it was too late, she began to think she had acted unwisely in appointing this meeting.

"Why didn't I let well enough alone?" thought the young lady. "At a distance, it seemed the easiest thing in the world; now that I am in the man's power, I am afraid of him, more so than I ever was before."

The man had taken his seat beside her. At this juncture he put his arm around her waist.

"Why can't we be comfortable and affectionate, as man and wife should—eh, Mollie? You don't know how much obliged to you I am for this interview."

There was a ring of triumph in his tone that Mollie could not fail to perceive. Her heart gave a great jump of terror, but she angrily flung herself out of his arm.

"Keep your distance, sir! How dare you? You sing quite a new song since I saw you last! Don't you lay a finger on me, or I'll—"

"What, pretty Cricket?" with a sardonic laugh.

Mollie caught her breath. That name, that tone—both were altogether new in the unknown man.

The sound of the voice, now that he spoke French, was quite unlike that of the man she had come to meet. And he was not wont to call her Cricket.

Had she made some horrible mistake—been caught in some dreadful trap? But, no; that was impossible.

"Look here, Mr. Mask," said Mollie, fiercely, "I don't want any of your familiarity, and I trust to your honor to respect my unprotected situation. I appointed this meeting because you kept your word, and behaved with tolerable decency when we last parted. I want to end this matter. I want to know who you are."

"My precious Mollie, your husband!"

"But who are you?"

"One of your rejected suitors."

"But which of them?—there were so many."

"The one who loved you best."

"Pshaw! I don't want trifling! What is your name?"

"Ernest."

"I never had a lover of that name," said Mollie, decidedly. "You are only mocking me. Are you—are you—Hugh Ingelow?"

Her voice shook a little. The man by her side noted it, and burst into a derisive laugh.

"You are not Hugh Ingelow!" Mollie cried in a voice of sharp, sudden pain—"you are not!"

"And you are sorry, pretty Mollie? Why, that's odd, too! He was a rejected lover, was he not?"

"Let me out!" exclaimed the girl, frantically—"let me go! I thought you were Hugh Ingelow, or I never would have come! Let me out! Let me out!"

She made a rush at the door, with a shrill cry of affright. A sudden panic had seized her—a horrible dread of the man beside her—a stunning sense that it was not the man she loved.

Again that strident laugh—mocking, sardonic, triumphant—rang through the carriage. Her arms were caught and held as in a vise.

"Not so fast, my fair one; there is no escape: I can't live without you, and I see no reason why a man should live without his wife. You appointed this meeting yourself, and I'm excessively obliged to you. I am taking you to the sea-side to spend the honey-moon. Don't struggle so—we'll return to New York by and by. As for Hugh Ingelow, you mustn't think of him now; it isn't proper in a respectable married woman to know there is another man in the scheme of the universe except her husband. Mollie! Mollie! if you scream in that manner you'll compel me to resort to chloroform—a vulgar alternative, my dearest."

But Mollie struggled like a mad thing, and screamed—wild, shrill, womanly shrieks that rang out even above the rattle and roll of the carriage wheels.

The man, with an oath, placed his hand tightly over her mouth. They were going at a frightful pace, and already the city, with its lights and passengers, was left far behind. They were flying over a dark, wet road, and the wind roared through distant trees, and the rain fell down like a second deluge.

"Let me go—let me go!" Mollie strove madly to cry, but the tightening grasp of that large hand suffocated her.

The carriage seemed suddenly to reel, a thousand lights flashed before her eyes, a roar like the roar of many waters surged in her ears, a deathly sickness and coldness crept over her, and with a gasping sob she slipped back, fainting away for the first time in her life.

THE MAN IN THE MASK.

Dizzily Mollie opened her eyes. Confused, bewildered, she strove to sit up and catch her breath in broken gasps.

"So sorry, Mollie," said an odious voice in her ear. "Quite shocked, I am sure, to have you faint; but you've not been insensible half an hour. It wasn't my fault, you know. You would scream, you would struggle, you would exhaust yourself! And what is the consequence of all this excitement? Why, you pop over in a dead swoon."

Mollie raised herself up, still dazed and confused. She put her hand to her forehead and strove to recall her drifting senses.

They were still bowling along at a sharp pace over a muddy country road; still fell the rain; still howled the wind; still pitch darkness wrapped all without. Were they going on forever? Was it a reality or a horrible nightmare?

"We are almost at our journey's end," said the man, soothingly. "Come, cheer up, Cricket. I love you, and I won't hurt a hair of your head."

"Where are we?" Mollie faintly asked.

"Rattling over a beastly country road," answered her companion, "under a sky as black as Erebus, and in a down-pour that threatens a second flood. There's the sea. We're down by the sad sea waves now, Mollie."

Mollie listened. Above the roar of the elemental strife she could hear the deep and mighty bass of the roaring sea.

"We will be there in ten minutes more," said the man, briskly.

"Where is there?" inquired Mollie, in the same faint accent.

"Home, my pretty wife—our cottage by the sea, and all that, you know. Don't droop, my charming Cricket. We'll be as happy together as the days are long. I love you with all my soul—I swear it by all that's good and gracious; and I'll make you the best husband ever bright-eyed little girl had. Trust me, Mollie, and cheer up. Yoicks! Here we are."

The carriage stopped with a jerk that precipitated Mollie into her captor's arms; but, with an angry push, she was free again directly.

The man opened the door and sprung out. Wind howling, rain tailing, trees surging, sea roaring, and a big dog barking, made the black night hideous.

"Down, Tiger! Down, you big, noisy brute!" cried the man. "Here, Mollie, let me help you out."

There was no escape—Mollie let him. The salt breath of the sea blew in her face—its awful thunder on the shore drowned all lesser noises.

Through the blackness of the black night she could see the blacker outline of a house, from one or two windows of which faint lights shone. Tossing trees surrounded it—a high board fence and a tall, padlocked gate inclosed it.

"All right, Mollie," the man said. "This is home!"

He drew her arm within his and hurried her up a long, graveled path, under dripping, tossing trees.

The storm of wind and rain nearly beat the breath out of the girl's body, and she was glad when the shelter of a great front porch was gained.

"I hope you're not very wet, my little wife," said the man: "because I don't know as there is a change of garments in this establishment that will fit you. However, as you will retire directly, it doesn't so much matter."

He knocked with his knuckles a thundering reveille that echoed and re-echoed ghostily through the rumbling old house. In a moment there was a shuffling of footsteps inside, a rattling of a chain, and the noisy undoing of rusty bolts.

"Who's there?" asked a cracked old voice. "Is it the young master?"

"Yes, you old idiot! Didn't I send you word? Open the door at once, and be hanged to you!"

A key turned gratingly in the ponderous lock—bolts and chains fell, and the massive door swung back on creaky old hinges.

"Like an ancient castle in a story book," thought Mollie, in the midst of her trouble. "Where in the wide world am I? Oh, what an unfortunate little wretch I am! A stolen princess couldn't be abducted and imprisoned oftener."

The opening of the door showed a long, black, gloomy entrance hall—bare, bleak and draughty. Two people stood there—a grizzly old man, stooping, and bleared, and wrinkled, who had opened the door, and a grizzly old woman, just a shade less stooping, and bleared, and wrinkled, who held a sputtering tallow candle aloft.

"How are you, Peter? How are you, Sally?" said Mollie's conductor, nodding familiarly to these two antediluvians. "Is the room ready? Here's the lady."

He drew Mollie, whose arm he retained in a close grasp, a little closer to him, and Mollie noticed that, for some reason, the ancient pair shrunk back, and looked as though they were a little afraid of her.

"The room's all ready," said the old woman, with a pair of glittering little eyes fixed, as if fascinated, on Mollie's pretty face. "The missis and me's been a-tidying of it all day long. Poor creeter! so young and so pretty! What a pity!"

This last was sotto voce, but Mollie's quick ear caught it. She looked up at her conductor, but cloak and hat and whiskers disguised him as effectually as the mask had done on other occasions. She looked back at the old woman and held out her supplicating hands.

"My good woman, whoever you are, if you have a woman's heart, take pity on me. I have been brought here against my will by this man."

"Ah, poor creeter!" sighed the old woman, shaking her grizzly old head; "as if I didn't know that. Poor little creeter!"

"Help me!" Mollie cried. "Don't aid this man to keep me here. I don't know who he is—I have been wickedly entrapped. I am a little, helpless girl, but I have rich and powerful friends who will liberally reward you. Don't help this, bad, bold man to keep me a prisoner here."

"Ah, poor creeter!" sighed the old woman, plaintively, a second time; "only hear her talk now. And such a pretty little thing, too! Dear, dear! It goes to one's heart. Don't keep her standing in them wet clothes, sir. Come upstairs. Such a pity, such a pity!"

She hobbled away, muttering to herself and shaking her head. The disguised man laughed—a low, deriding laugh.

"You see, my dear little Mollie, you'll get any amount of pity, but nothing else. Old Sally will be very sincerely sorry for you, but she won't help you to escape. On the contrary, she'll keep you under lock and key as faithfully as though you were the Koh-i-noor. Come in, you may take cold in this nasty, draughty passage."

He drew her with him. Mollie seemed in a sort of dreamy swoon, and went passively. They ascended the stairs into another dark and draughty hall, flanked on either side by a couple of doors. One of these the old dame opened, and quite a new picture burst on Mollie's sight.

The apartment was not at all like the mysterious padded room of former experience; the four bare walls were plastered and blankly bare; the boarded floor was strewn with rags; the two big square windows were draped with paper-blinds. A huge fire of logs, such as Mollie had never beheld in her life before, roared gloriously in the old-fashioned fire-place, and lighted the room with a lurid glow. A four-post bedstead, the bed covered with a gaudy patch-work or counterpane, stood in one corner, a table with a white cloth stood in another, a chest of drawers in a third, and the door by which they entered in the fourth. This was Mollie's new prison.

"Elegant simplicity," observed the man, leading her in; "but we will do our best to make you comfortable during your stay. It need not be long—you know it depends on yourself, Mollie."

"On myself?"

She turned her pale face and angry, eyes upon him.

"I am your husband by a secret marriage, you know. Let that marriage be solemnized over again in public—no one need know of the other: consent to be my wife openly and above-board, and your prison doors will fly open that hour."

"In Heaven's name, who are you?" cried Mollie, impatiently. "End this ridiculous farce—remove that disguise—let me see who I am speaking to. This melodramatic absurdity has gone on long enough—the play is played out. Talk to me, face to face, like a man, if you dare!"

Her eyes blazed, her voice rose. The old woman looked from one to the other, "far wide" but in evident curiosity. The man had persisted in speaking to her in French, and Mollie had answered him in that language.

"Be it as you say!" cried her captor, suddenly; "only remember, Mollie, whether I am the person you prefer to see under this disguise or not, I am nevertheless your husband as fast as the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh can tie the knot. You shall know who I am, since it is only a question of to-night or to-morrow at the most. Sally, you can go."

Sally looked from one to the other with sharp, suspicious old eyes.

"Won't the young lady want me, sir? Is she able to 'tend to herself?"

"Quite able, Sally; she's not so bad as you think. Go away, like a good soul. I have a soothing draught to administer to my patient."

"Your patient!" said Mollie, turning the flashing light of her great blue eyes full upon him.

The man laughed.

"I had to invent a little fable for these good people. Didn't you notice they looked rather afraid of you? Of course you did. Well, my dear Mollie, they think you're mad."

"Mad?"

"Exactly. You are, a little, you know. They think you've come here under medical orders to recruit by the sea-shore. I told them so. One hate's to tell lies, but, unfortunately, white ones are indispensable at times."

The blue eyes shone full upon him, blazing with magnificent disdain.

"You are a poorer creature than even I took you to be, and you have acted a mean and dastardly part from the first—the part of a schemer and a coward. Pray, let me see the face of our modern Knight of Romance."

Old Sally had hobbled from the room and they stood alone, half the width of the apartment between them.

"Hard words, my pretty one! You forget it was all for love of you. I didn't want to see you the wife of an old dotard you didn't care a fillip for."

"So, to mend matters, you've made me the wife of a scoundrel. I must forever hate and despise—yourself."

"Not so, Mollie! I mean you to be very fond of me one of these days. I don't see why you shouldn't. I'm young; I'm well off; I'm clever; I'm not bad-looking. There's no reason why you shouldn't be very fond of me, indeed. Love begets love, they say, and I love you to madness."

"So it appears. A lunatic asylum would be the fitter place for you, if you must escape state prison. Are we to stand here and bandy words all night? Show me who you are and go."

The man laid his hand on his hat.

"Have you no suspicions, Mollie? Can't you meet me half-way—can't you guess?"

"I don't want to guess."

She spoke defiantly; but her heart was going in great, suffocating plunges against her side, now that the supreme moment had come.

"Then, Mollie, behold your husband!"

With a theatrical flourish he whipped off slouched hat, flowing beard and wig, dropped the disguising cloak, and stood before her revealed—Dr. Guy Oleander!

She gave one gasping cry, no more. She stood looking at him as if turning to stone, her face marble white—awfully rigid—her eyes starting from their sockets. The man's face was lighted with a sinister, triumphant glow.

"Look long, Mollie," he said, exultantly, "and look well. You see your husband for the first time."

And then Mollie caught her gasping breath at the taunt, and the blood rushed in a dark, red torrent of rage and shame to her fair face.

"Never!" she cried, raising her arm aloft—"never, so help me Heaven! I will sit in this prison and starve to death! I will throw myself out of yonder window into the black, boiling sea! I would be torn to pieces by wild horses! I will die ten thousand deaths, but I will never, never, never be wife of yours, Guy Oleander!"

Her voice rose to a shriek—hysterical, frenzied. For the instant she felt as though she were going mad, and she looked it, and the man recoiled before her.

"Mollie!" he gasped, in consternation.

The girl stamped her foot on the floor.

"Don't call me Mollie:" she screamed, passionately. "Don't dare to speak to me, to look at me, to come near me! I have heard of women murdering men, and if I had a loaded pistol this moment, God help you, Doctor Oleander!"

She looked like a mad thing—like a crazed pythoness. Her wild, fair hair fell loose about her; her blue eyes blazed steely flame; her face was crimson with the intensity of her rage, and shame, and despair, from forehead to chin.

"Go!" she cried, fiercely, "you snake, you coward, you felon, you abductor of feeble girls, you poisoner! Yes, you poison the very air I breathe! Go, or, by all that is holy, I will spring at your throat and strangle you with my bare hands!"

"Good Heaven!" exclaimed the petrified doctor, retreating precipitately, "what a little devil it is! Mollie, Mollie, for pity's sake—"

Another furious stamp, a spring like a wild cat toward him, and the aghast doctor was at the door.

"There, there, there, Mollie! I'm going. By Jove! what a little fiend you are! I didn't think you would take it like this. I—Great powers! Yes, I'm going!"

He flew out, closing the door with a bang. Then he opened it an inch and peeped in.

"I'll come again to-morrow, Mollie. Try, for goodness' sake, to calm yourself in the meantime. Yes, yes, yes, I'm going!"

For, with a shriek of madness, she made a spring at him, and the doctor just managed to slam the door and turn the key before her little, wiry hands were upon his throat.

"Great Heaven!" Dr. Oleander cried to himself, pale and aghast, wiping the cold perspiration off his face; "was ever such a mad creature born on the earth before? She looked like a little yellow-haired demon, glaring upon me with those blazing eyes. Little tiger-cat! I told them she was a raving lunatic, and, by George! she's going to prove me a prophet. It's enough to make a man's blood run cold."