"Lugubrious reading, certainly," comments the lively young baronet. "Does Charteris enjoy that style of poetry for a summer evening by the sea?"
"I—I was not reading to Mr. Charteris," the girl stammers, vaguely confused. "I was reading when he came, and then I laid the book down."
Both men regard her a little gravely.
The touch of sadness in face and voice is strange, yet sweet, in the young and lovely girl.
Sir George tells himself that there is some depth to this lovely American girl, and wonders why Charteris doesn't fall in love with her.
For himself, he is very far gone indeed, and Vane, irritated by his society, abruptly announces that he will go up and see Mr. Langton.
"He will be very pleased, I know," Reine answers, brightening suddenly, and Vane turns away with a sudden angry conviction that she is glad to have him gone.
Sir George is glad at least, there can be no two opinions as to that. He settles himself delightedly in Vane's vacated chair.
"I have a proposition to make to you," Vane says, after he has conversed with Mr. Langton awhile on indifferent subjects.
Mr. Langton, lying on his couch, looking dull and weary, glances up with some interest.
"Well?" he says, abruptly.
"I saw your physician to-day," Vane observes, slightly embarrassed. "He thinks it would be at the risk of your health if you left this place under a month."
"The rascal! He's keeping me here to swell his fee for attendance, that's all," groans the millionaire; "well, and what has that to do with your proposition, eh?"
"A great deal. You know your delay in returning to America is attended with serious risk to Maud Langton, languishing in prison, and waiting for a release that cannot come until she regains possession of that note that is to prove her innocence."
"I have urged Reine to return alone, but she is unwilling to leave me," Mr. Langton answers, hastily.
"There would be no risk in doing so," Vane replies, "with a competent nurse left in charge of you. It is of that I wished to speak to you. Persuade Reine to go back without you. I will myself accompany her."
"You!" Mr. Langton exclaims, in such thorough surprise, that Vane flushes a deep red.
"Yes," he answers, a little testily, "I will go with her. Why not? She is my wife."
"Certainly, and it will be a very good plan," Mr. Langton replies, secretly delighted at Vane's repentance, but pretending to be very calm and non-committal.
"You see," Vane continues, with a sigh of relief, "after the business that took us home was concluded, I should bring Reine back. By that time you would be well and strong again, and we would travel some, the three of us, and remain abroad some time. Do you like my plan?"
"Very much. I am pleased with the idea. Have you spoken with Reine on the subject?"
"No, not yet. To tell the truth I have relied on you to persuade her. I might fail, you know. Will you undertake to plead my case for me?" inquires Vane, blushing like a girl.
"I thought you were lawyer enough to plead your own case," laughs the old millionaire.
"You see, this is different," answers Vane. "I—I do not quite understand Reine. I do not know how she would receive such a proposal. Perhaps she would laugh at me. I should have to plead as a lover, not as a lawyer. Only imagine the spirited little lady laughing in my face."
"I do not believe it is likely," Mr. Langton replies. "But since you are so afraid of your wife, I will speak to her about the matter. But, pray tell me, is your anxiety solely over Maud, or are you reconciled to your strange marriage?"
A step at the door, a hand at the latch, and Reine comes in, interrupting the answer hovering on his lips. Vane rises abruptly.
"I will go down and smoke my segar on the balcony," he says, then, looking at his wife: "Reine, will you walk on the sand with me afterward? It will be moonlight, and the nights are very pleasant."
A smile of surprise and pleasure lights the changeful face into splendor.
"Thank you, I shall like it very much," she answers, with some inward wonder at his kindness.
"I will wait for you, then, on the balcony," he replies, and when he's gone, Mr. Langton hastens to tell her of Vane's proposal.
Her color comes and goes, her bosom heaves as she listens.
"But you know I could not leave you here alone with only a hired nurse," she remonstrates.
"You could, and you must," he replies, seriously.
"Listen, Reine, your husband has held out the olive-branch of peace, and you must not decline to accept it if you care for him. I shall do very well here with the doctor and the nurse. After all, I am not sick, only weak and fatigued. Remember Maud's peril before you refuse."
"I have written to Maud's lawyer. He will know that I have the note, and they will wait until I come," she replies.
"Delays are dangerous," he answers, "and the mails are not sure. Suppose your letter should not reach them. Letters have been lost before now," he says, artfully.
The girlish face grows white and troubled.
"If I thought that mine would be lost——" she begins.
"You would go," he finishes for her. "Very well, Reine, take my advice and go. I will remain here until you return. Go down now to your husband and tell him you will be ready to accompany him to-morrow."
"If anything should happen to you, I should never forgive myself," she says, with lingering hesitation.
"Nothing will happen," he answered. "You will find me here, when you come back, safe and well. Go, now, to Vane, and tell him you will go."
She lingers a moment, warned by some strange presentiment of evil; then, conquered by his renewed persuasions, and her own anxiety over Maud's fate, she goes from the room with a strangely beating heart to seek her husband.
He throws away his segar with a smile at sight of her, and comes out from a little knot of men who have clustered around him.
"You are ready?" he says, with a new tone of tenderness in his voice that makes the girlish heart beat all the faster, and drawing her hand through his arm they bend their steps to the shore.
It is twilight, that most seductive hour of all the twenty-four. The moon is rising softly, a few stars shine in the purple vault above, and mirror themselves in the laughing waves below.
The murmurous sound of the great deep is all that breaks the silence.
"Mr. Langton has told you, Reine," he says, looking down into the brilliant face that is "luminous, star-like, gem-like," in the soft, twilight haze.
"Yes," she answers, in a low voice, as if she scarcely cared to break the charmed silence brooding around them.
They walk slowly arm-in-arm along the sandy shore. Vane has drawn her hand very closely through his arm, and the tips of her velvet-soft fingers lie against his wrist, sending thrills of sweetness along every nerve. To him also "silence seemed best," so they stroll on quietly awhile. Reine lost to everything but the magic charm that lies in the presence of the man she loves, and Vane held in thrall also by some new feeling, whose power he is scarcely prepared to acknowledge.
He looks down at the young face that is strangely fair and tender in the mystic light, and wonders at his own blindness that he has never quite realized the charm of her beauty before. She has thrown some soft trifle of filmy lace over her waving dark hair, with soft ends knotted beneath the round, dimpled chin. Nothing could be more becoming. It frames the glowing face so delicately and so exquisitely, making her fairer than she knows. A strange, delicious thrill goes through Vane's heart as he remembers that this girl belongs to him—she is his wife.
"And she loves me," he says to himself, with the same wonder he had felt when that truth first flashed upon him. It flatters his manly vanity, cruelly hurt by Maud's treachery, to know that one true heart clings to him and loves him, though the woman he had loved had deceived him.
Suddenly her lips part with an anxious question:
"And you think it wise and prudent that I should go back to Maud leaving Uncle Langton here?"
"Yes," he answers, and there is a silence which she does not break.
"What do you think of the plan?" he asks.
"I hardly know," the girl answers, with some embarrassment.
"But you will do as I wish you—you will go back—in my care, Reine?"
"If you think it for the best," she answers very low.
"I do think so, otherwise I should not urge it. You need not be afraid to go with me, Reine. I will care for you with every tenderness—you are my wife, you know."
And, stooping over her, he lays his lips full and softly upon her own.
The shock of a great, new happiness tingles through the girl's sensitive frame. It is the first caress her unloving husband has ever offered her. With that impulsive kiss hope, which has almost died in her wounded heart, is born anew.
"You are my wife," he repeats, gently. "I shall not lose sight of that fact again. I shall remember my duty better."
She sighs a little. That word "duty" sounds so cold.
"I will try to make you happier," he continues; "I fear you have not been so light-hearted as you used to be since that night. Do you know those verses you were reading this evening sounded like a reproach to me?"
She glances up, inquiringly.
"The verses you shut your hands over when I came up to you," he explains. "The sad words ring in my head:
"Did you think, my child, that they applied to your own case?"
"I was tempted to think so—can you blame me?" she says, with a gentle reproach in her voice.
"Do not fall into such despondent thoughts again," he answers, evasively. "You are too young for sorrow, Reine. Look on the bright side of the picture. I foresee that this play will end with my falling desperately in love with my own wife."
"I hope so," she answers, with sudden, piteous earnestness, and a quiver of passionate sorrow in her voice.
"So do I," he says, filled with sudden penitence. "I am sure it cannot be hard to learn to love so fair and noble a wife. You have saved me from my own sinful passions, Reine. I can never forget that."
"And now I must go back," she says, with a bitter sigh of regret. "Uncle Langton will be lonely, and if—if I go to-morrow I have a great deal of packing to do first."
They walk slowly back to the hotel through the murmurous silence of the summer night by the sea, with the strong, sweet smell of the brine in their faces. It is the first time they have been together without cold words from one or the other, the first time her husband has caressed her.
And when he leaves her at the balcony steps he presses his lips to her white hand, and whispers, kindly:
"After to-night, little wife, we are never to be parted any more, remember."
No one can recall without a shudder of horror the midnight burning of the steamer Hesperus in mid-ocean in 188-, and the terrible loss of life consequent upon that marine disaster.
She had been five days out, with fair skies and smooth seas, and every prospect of a prosperous and speedy voyage, when that disastrous fire stole upon her like a thief in the night, and wrapped her noble and majestic form in a winding sheet of flame.
Fifty souls perished miserably, including the captain and a part of crew.
In that terrible holocaust of fire and water, Reine Charteris was lost.
Her husband was saved—saved through such a tragedy of horror as sowed silvery threads in his fair, clustering locks, and almost broke his heart with remorse and pain.
We will hear him tell the story in his own words, as he told it that day when seated in the gloomy prison-cell, where Maud Langton was expiating her folly in bitterness of soul, he placed in her hands a small metallic case, locked with a tiny key, and said, solemnly and slowly:
"This means freedom and release to you, Maud. It is a legacy to you from the dead."
The beautiful, queenly-looking girl, wasted and worn from long confinement, and sickening dread and terror, looks up at the man's pale, haggard face, at the deep crape band on his hat, and shudders.
"You mean——" she says, then pauses, struck dumb by the white agony of his face.
"I mean I have lost my wife; Reine is dead."
"Dead!" the beautiful prisoner cries in wonder—not sorrow.
That is so plain to his senses, sharpened by grief, that he cries out bitterly:
"Yes, dead! But look at your legacy, Maud. That is all your selfish soul will care for!"
She gives him one look of cold surprise, and then turns eagerly to her treasure.
The small key grates in the lock, the lid of the box flies open.
Within lies a package wrapped in oil silk. Undoing this with eager fingers, Maud comes upon the precious note that means so much to her in this terrible plight, the note poor Reine had crossed the seas to win from the vengeful grasp of Vane Charteris.
All of Maud's cold, superb dignity breaks down at sight of that little slip of paper. She weeps and laughs together.
"This means hope, freedom, happiness to me," she cries, tearfully. "And you had it all the time, Vane. And Reine knew. It was for that she crossed the seas?"
"Yes," he answers, "and it was for that she died."
"No, no!" Maud says, and shakes her head; "how could that be? Oh, how I thank you for bringing me this! You did not know when you went away how much it was worth to me, did you? That my very life would depend upon it?"
He looks at her with steady, somber eyes.
"Yes, I knew," he answers. "I knew, but I did not care. My love for you was turned to hate by the crushing indignity you had put upon me. At that time I would have sold myself to the evil one for the chance of revenge upon you. Guess how I felt when, at the inquest over the dead body of the lover you had preferred to me, I found what terrible power fate had put into my eager hands. I rejoiced wickedly. I went away that the great ocean rolling between us might keep from me the tidings of your too probable fate, for I shuddered at the horror of my revenge, although I could not forego it. Yes, Maud, I, who had loved you dearly once, would not have lifted my finger to save you from the horror of a shameful death upon the scaffold; do you realize, now, the intensity of my hate?"
She puts her delicate hand to her grand, white throat and sobs hysterically. By day and by night she has dreamed of that horrible, impending death. She knows that all believed her guilty of her lover's death, and that no jury would have cleared her without that note in Clyde's own writing, swearing that he would shoot himself if she failed to marry him.
"You were cruel, cruel," she moans.
"Say rather that I was insane," he answers; "my heart and my brain were on fire, and my soul was numb within me until Reine came to me and showed me what a wretch I was, and how I should be your murderer if I persisted in my wicked silence. Then I yielded to that white-souled child who was far too pure to be my wife, and I prayed God to forgive my sin, as I now pray you, Maud."
She looks at him with her large, clear blue eyes, with the glad tears of joy still pendant on the golden lashes and holds out her hands.
"I cannot refuse to forgive you since you have relented and brought me this invaluable paper," she answers, "and more especially since I know that I did you a cruel wrong. Can you forgive me, Vane?"
"Once I thought I could not, but it is easy enough now," he answers, gravely, just touching for a moment the soft, white, extended hands. "I have no longer any room in my heart for anger or resentment. I think only of my grief."
"For Reine!" she asks, with an almost imperceptible lifting of the golden eyebrows indicating surprise.
"For Reine," he answers, with a tortured sigh.
"Did she die abroad?" Maud asks in an awed and softened voice.
"She was drowned at midnight in the Atlantic Ocean, amid all the horrors of fire and flood," he groans.
"On the ill-fated Hesperus," she exclaims. "Oh, I read the news in the papers, but there were no particulars, and I did not dream of such a tragedy. You were with her, were you not? Why was it that you could not save her?"
His gloomy eyes fell with a look of loathing on the paper in her hand.
"She died, Maud, to save you from the consequences of your folly. She might have been saved but for that paper you hold in your hand," he answers, sternly.
"I do not understand you, Vane. Surely you know not what you say," Miss Langton utters in perplexity.
"Listen, and you shall be the judge," he answers, with a heavy sigh. "I sailed with my wife on the Hesperus——"
"And Uncle Langton?" she interrupts him to ask.
"We left Mr. Langton resting at a quiet summer resort. He was too much indisposed to return with us so soon. We were to have gone back for him as soon as your freedom had been secured," he explains.
She bows, silently, and he goes on, the pale, beautiful girl listening attentively.
"Reine came to me the day that we had been five days out, with that little metallic case in her hand. She had been very bright and happy since we started, but just then she was pale and grave. 'Vane,' she said to me, 'I have put Maud's precious paper in this little case for greater safety. But I have a strange dread of losing it. Put it in your breast pocket and keep it for me!' I—oh, Heaven! I obeyed her," he exclaims, struggling with a bitter remorse.
The beautiful prisoner regards him with silent sympathy.
"I obeyed her," he repeats, with a passionate remorse, "and that night when we sprang into the water together, fleeing from the devouring flames, it was still on my person. All hope seemed gone, and we clung to each other in the desperation of despair, determined at least to die together. Suddenly a crowded life-boat came in sight. A man shouted there was room for one more and that they would take the woman in. At these words she cried out frantically that I had Maud's precious paper, and that I was the one to be saved, and with that she loosed her hold, and with an awful suddenness pushed me from her, and sank down, down in the terrible water. With the awful shock of her loss I became unconscious. They drew me into the boat in the place of my poor girl, and the boat swept on over her awful burial-place. It was for you, Maud. She gave her beautiful, innocent life freely for you rather than risk the loss of the legacy I have brought you!"
Even Maud Langton's cold and shallow nature, utterly incapable of such an act of dauntless heroism as Reine's, is touched by the man's overmastering grief and the story of the woman's devotion.
"Poor little Reine! I did not deserve such a sacrifice from her," she exclaims, with a guilty consciousness of her cruel and contemptuous treatment of her generous rival.
Vane Charteris makes her no reply. He has dropped his pale, handsome face into his hands, his strong frame quivers with silent sobs. Maud watches him in amazement.
"You take it hard," she says; "yet I thought you did not love her, that you would not care."
"Not care!" lifting his somber blue eyes a moment to her pale, wondering face. "I care so much that by night or by day, sleeping or waking, her image is never absent from my thoughts. I would give the whole world to have her back, my poor lost darling!"
"Then you learned to love her?" Miss Langton exclaims, recalling his fastidious dislike of Reine's wild ways and sharp little speeches.
"Yes; now, when it is all too late," he answers, in a wild burst of remorse and sorrow.
Then there is a brief silence. How often those sad words, "too late," come home to stricken hearts with a pathos that words are all too powerless to express. Could Reine but have known—in that fair land to which her soul had flown—her husband's poignant repentance, she might well have answered with the poet:
"Believe me, Vane, I am very, very sorry," Maud says to him in her gentlest tones. "Perhaps you think I was not worthy little Reine's generous self-sacrifice."
He has no answer ready for her. She begins to realize that he is strangely changed. The fair and handsome face that used to be so gay and debonair has grown wan and haggard. Some silver threads shine in the fair, clustering locks on his temples. His step is slow and heavy as he turns to go.
"How long will it be before I shall be free?" she asks him, wistfully, as he turns to go.
He starts, and turns back, remembering suddenly what the petted beauty must have endured in these weary weeks of confinement, with the shadow of an awful fate hanging over her.
Looking closer into the white face with its finely-chiseled features, sharpened and refined by the agony she has endured, his heart swells with momentary pity for the cold beauty who has wronged him so deeply.
"But a little while, I think," he answers, kindly. "I have seen your lawyer. He told me that the trial which he has been staving off from time to time, will take place to-morrow. He is quite sure that your innocence will be indisputably proven by the paper you hold, together with other facts in his possession. I congratulate you, Maud, upon your narrow escape from the terrible web that circumstantial evidence had woven around you."
She shudders, and grows deathly pale at the thought of it, and Vane hurries from the room and from the presence of her who had been, for a brief while, the sun of his existence.
Hurrying back to his hotel, he finds there a letter which has followed him across the sea from the quiet watering-place where he had left Mr. Langton. It is from the genial, kindly physician, and the news is startling.
The old millionaire, the sharp-tongued, irascible, yet kindly-hearted old gentleman, is dead—has died suddenly and strangely of disease of the heart in two days after Reine and Vane had left him in the confident hope of soon rejoining him. They have buried him there in the quiet churchyard by the sea, far away from his native land, and the friends he loved. All unknowing of Reine's fate, he has gone to rejoin her in the unknown land.
Mr. Langton's favorite axiom: "Delays are dangerous," which he had quoted so effectively to Reine, would seem to have made less impression on his own mind. The new will, which was to have disinherited Maud Langton and made Vane Charteris and his wife his sole heirs, had been carelessly and fatally postponed. Beautiful Maud, but yesterday penniless, imprisoned, suspected, goes back to-day, free, joyous, triumphant, to her old home, the undisputed mistress of Langton Hall and her uncle's great wealth. Vane Charteris, in nowise disconcerted, and scarcely disappointed, returns to the musty little law office in Washington, from whence his old friend's letter had summoned him a few months before to marry his heiress.
It is a dull, prosaic life enough. Vane is young yet, and has not made his mark. Very few clients come to seek his assistance out of their difficulties. Some dreary days go by, and life does not look quite the same through his office windows as it did in the golden spring before he went to Langton Hall. It is autumn now. The leaves are turning red, and brown, and yellow, the petals are falling from the flowers. Not that Vane takes note of this. One flower that faded in the summer gone, is worth all the world to him. For a time ambition, energy, hope, seem to forsake him. Always before his eyes floats a vision of a fair, dead face with waving tresses, tangled with seaweed; always against his breast he feels the pressure of small hands pressing against him, pushing him from her in the mad resolve to die in his stead. For in his heart Vane feels that it was not alone for Maud's sake she died. She had meant to save him, whom she loved far more than life.
So the autumn days go by. By-and-by the gay, brilliant, beautiful city of Washington begins to fill up with its usual winter throng. Congress assembles, and the brilliant crowds that follow in its train. And one day there comes a delicate, perfumed note to Vane from one of the most fashionable avenues of the fashionable city.
"Dear Vane," it says, "I have come to Washington for the winter, but shall be very quiet, of course, being in deep mourning for my dear uncle. I have invited the Widow Baird and her daughter—unexceptionable people, you know—to stay with me. But I am very lonely, very repentant, and very sad. Will you let by-gones be by-gones, and come and see me?
"Maud Langton."
A delicate, dainty, seductive note. With a start, Vane remembers the elegant house on —— avenue, which had been Mr. Langton's property. Here it is that his heiress had pitched her tent, figuratively speaking, and opened the campaign, for she is determined not to lose the delights of the winter wholly, although in ostensible mourning.
Vane is roused to indignation at first. Why should she ask him to call? Does she take him for a simpleton? He has forgiven her for Reine's sake. That is enough.
He stays away, and in three days an elegant private carriage sets Maud down in front of his office. She rustles across the threshold in a costly costume, designed to represent slight second mourning—a black silk with jetted trimmings, white crepe lisse at throat and wrists, a jetted bonnet with white lisse strings, a dress that is marvelously becoming to the pearl-fair beauty, framed in soft waves of golden hair.
"Perhaps you think I have come to scold you," she says, with infinite tact, as he comes forward, visibly embarrassed; "but I have not. Of course you had a right to decline my invitation, if it did not please you to come. I shall not trouble you long now. I am here on a matter of business."
Mr. Charteris bows and hands her a chair. She seats herself, making moonlight, not "sunlight," "in a shady place," with her cold, white beauty.
Then her large, light-blue eyes turn scrutinizingly on his worn, handsome face.
"You are not looking well," she pronounces. "Business, perhaps, is driving you too hard?"
Vane smiles rather grimly.
"I cannot make any complaint of that nature," he responds.
The blue eyes light, unmistakably, with pleasure.
"Then you are not busy," she says; "I am rather glad to hear it. Perhaps you will have time to manage my property for me?"
He looks inquiringly at the beautiful, smiling face.
"I have quarreled with my lawyer," she explains. "I intended to take the management of my affairs out of his hands. Will you take his place, Vane?"
A dark, red flush creeps up to his temples at her air of condescending patronage.
"Excuse me, I must decline," he answers.
"You decline—surely not!" says the proud beauty, with incredulous surprise.
"Why should I not decline?" Vane Charteris asks, with a certain haughtiness, before which Maud lowers her proud tone of patronage visibly.
"I thought you could not afford to decline," she falters. "Are you not—not poor?"
"Granted," he answers, with a slight, cold smile. "I am not yet poor enough to barter my self-respect. For the rest, you know, Miss Langton—
Maud, who has come bustling with pretty patronage and self-importance, is visibly disconcerted. She takes a new tone.
"You are harsh and cruel to me, Vane," she says, petulantly. "I came with the best intentions. I only meant kindness."
"Thank you," stiffly.
"I thought you had forgiven my—my folly," she goes on further, with a killing glance from the long-lashed, seraphic-blue eyes.
"I hope I have," he replies, still coldly.
"Then why—why will you refuse my request?" she asks.
Something like scorn flashes on her from the man's sapphire-blue eyes.
"Miss Langton, I have forgiven the indignity you put upon me last summer," he answers, shortly, "but do you think I could stoop to serve you—you?"
The heiress colors under his glance of haughty scorn.
"You will never forget that," she sighs. "You will not believe how eager I am to make atonement for my sin against you. I see you are determined to be hard and cold with me. You will not make friends."
Vane turns round upon her a little fiercely.
"What are you driving at, Maud?" he asks, with positive rudeness. "Do you wish to make a fool of me again? To win my heart from me again and trample it under your feet?"
And then a sudden impulsive shame seizes upon him as she shrinks before his quick wrath with something very like fear in her face.
"I beg your pardon—I was talking foolishly to you," he says. "You do not at all understand me, I think, Miss Langton, or you would never have——"
"Never have come here, you mean," she says, as he pauses. "Aren't you just a little rude, Mr. Charteris? But I am determined not to be angry with you. Forgive me for trespassing on your time. I am going now."
Swish! goes the rich silk against her chair with a waft of delicious perfume.
The tips of her gloved fingers settle lightly against his coat-sleeve, the great, blue eyes look straight into his own, persuasively.
"Vane, think better of your refusal, pray do," she says. "I did not come here to insult you, neither to wheedle you back to your old allegiance. I thought you would help me about this great, troublesome property. I am so ignorant and helpless."
"Any lawyer in the city would be glad to manage your business for you," he returns, with cool courtesy.
"I shall not ask any of them till I hear from you again. Perhaps you may change your mind, and let me know that you will take this trouble off my hands," she answers, good humoredly, moving toward the door.
Vane attends her to her carriage, and with a formal bow returns to his lonely office. How lonely he never quite realized till now, looking at the empty chair where the brilliant heiress had sat just now, queenly and graceful like the tall, white lily to which he had once likened her.
We will return to Reine Charteris on that terrible night of fire and flood, when, with all the deathless devotion of a true woman's heart she sacrificed herself to save her husband and her friend.
In the minute before the life-boat came into sight Reine's mind had been comparatively calm and contented.
Though she believed that certain death stared her in the face, it had no special terrors for her. Her life had been good and pure, and she had no dread of the hereafter.
The thought of dying with the husband she loved had a strange, romantic sweetness for her heart.
In the bright and awful glare of light thrown upon the waters by the burning ship, her pale and lovely face had upon it an expression of rapt and Heavenly sweetness and content, untouched by dread or fear.
Vane's arm was drawn around her, and they were slowly swimming about and looking for some drifting desperate hope of rescue.
A few minutes ago the black waves, weirdly illumined by the red glare of the flames, had been filled with a writhing, despairing, shrieking mass of anguished humanity, but now they had all disappeared. Some had floated off to a distance, some had sunk beneath the waves and found a watery grave—
Vane and Reine were quite alone for a moment—alone, and drawn seemingly nearer together than they had ever been in life by the deadly peril that menaced them. They had made up their minds to death. Both were good swimmers, but they were too far from land for their strength and skill to avail. They clung together, each feeling instinctively that death would be less hard if shared together.
At that moment one of the life-boats that had been seized upon in the first moments of peril by a fortunate few, came in sight of them. It was crowded, already, but one manly heart saw and pitied the terrible case of the two victims. He shouted that they would make room for one more—they would take the woman in.
"Come, Reine, they will save you, my darling," Vane Charteris cried out, tenderly and joyfully, yet with the solemnity of a last farewell in his eyes, as he drew his young wife forward.
But with a sudden cry of anguish, the girl resisted him.
The bare thought of forsaking her husband and leaving him to die alone, was more bitter than death. With that thought came the remembrance of the precious paper she had crossed the sea to win from Vane's vengeful keeping.
"Let me save you—remember you have Maud's precious paper," she cried out, hoarsely, and pushing him frantically from her with both extended hands, she sank down—down into the depths of the sea. They waited a moment, but she did not rise again, and seeing that Vane had lost consciousness, they drew him into the life-boat, and in the efforts to revive him, they soon drifted out of sight of the spot where the devoted girl had disappeared beneath the fire-illumined waves.
In the meantime Reine, who was really a strong and expert swimmer, had only dived beneath the waves, and had come up again in a few seconds later at a different spot where, herself unseen, she could behold the life-boat with its living freight drifting swiftly out of her yearning sight. She had freely given her one chance of life to her husband, but with the thought that he would live there was born in her own young heart an agonizing desire for life. She loved Vane so dearly that she could not bear to leave him in the bright, gay world, and go down to death alone. Though not regretting that she had saved her husband by so great a sacrifice, she breathed a silent, fervent, yet seemingly hopeless prayer, that she might also be rescued and restored to him.
Yet who can tell how often God is near, listening to the wild appeals of those who, despairing of human help, cry out to Heaven. Alone in the wide waste of the ocean, with the midnight stars shining down upon her like the pitying eyes of angels, a friendly plank drifted to her reach. She clutched it eagerly with her hands, threw herself upon, and embraced it with her bruised and weary arms. Now she felt, with a thrill of hope, that there was at least one plank between her and eternity.
The night wore on. Wind and tide bore her far away from the terrible burning ship that towered aloft like a ghastly funeral pyre, throwing its awful glare far and wide upon the sea.
Tossed hither and yon, bruised and buffeted by the heavy waves, the slender form of the fair young girl still held in its breast the faint spark of life, though looking forward to death as inevitable, and drawing nearer and nearer.
The blushing rose of dawn opened its petals at last. The morning light glimmered palely in the east. It shone upon a deathly-white face with pale lips, half apart, and eye-lids closed in unconsciousness, with the long, thick lashes lying on the cheek like to "rays of darkness."
At that moment a small sailing-vessel hove in sight. The floating plank with its precious burden was sighted by the pilot, and in a few minutes more the unfortunate girl was safe on deck.
The crew gathered around her, filled with wonder and curiosity at the sight of the beautiful ocean-waif.
"She is dead," said the mate, with a sorrowful shake of the head.
"I do not think so," said the captain, decidedly. "Look at her right temple. You see it still bleeding from a slight wound that must have been received from something that has struck her in the water. She has been stunned by it, perhaps, and will revive presently. Call Doctor Franks."
Doctor Franks came and agreed with the captain. The girl was not dead, but there was no telling how soon she would be, from the bad effects of her exposure in the water, and the jagged wound on her head.
"A bed must be prepared for her at once, and I will see what I can do towards resuscitating her," said the kind-hearted Doctor Franks.
"Go and tell the stewardess to prepare a bed quickly for this young lady," said the captain, turning to the cabin-boy.
The boy disappeared in the lower regions of the vessel, returning presently with a plump, good-natured-looking woman, who had a "full blown comeliness, white and red."
"An' indade, Cap'en Dill, sorra a bit spare bed is there, saving the little cuddy-hole where Mrs. Odell's maid slept afore she died."
"Prepare that, then, Mrs. McQueen. Don't you see what a deuce of a hurry we are in?" returned Captain Dill.
"Faix, and it'll be by Mrs. Odell's leave, then," says Mrs. McQueen. "Shall I ask her? It's a bit cross and ailing she is the day."
"Ask her then, and be in a hurry," he answers. "If she refuses, the poor girl shall have my bed, and I'll bunk on deck with a blanket."
He is saved the necessity of the sacrifice, however, for Mrs. Odell, whoever she may be, yields an ungracious consent to the appropriation of the defunct maid's bed, and the still unconscious girl is removed thereto.
Long days afterward she opens her eyes consciously for the first time upon this world, after a long battle has been fought with fever, and delirium, and greedy death; opens her eyes with a passionate heart-cry on her poor, fever-parched lips:
"Vane, dear Vane!"
There is a soft swish of silk as of a lady rising from her chair, and Reine's large, hollow, dark eyes follow the sound.
She lies on a small, white bed in a "cuddy-hole" indeed, herself, but a small door is propped open, showing just beyond a very tiny, but elegant saloon, furnished royally enough for a princess, with hangings of purple velvet and gold, and softest couches and chairs, a carpet of velvet pile, picturesque rugs strewn about the floor, small paintings, each perfect gems of art, adorning the walls. Moving slowly through this luxurious saloon comes a lady, on whom Reine's feeble gaze is instantly riveted.
A form of medium hight, with narrow, stooping shoulders, and a middle-aged face with a strange beauty all its own—the beauty of brilliant eyes, waxen pallor, and hectic-flushed cheeks, that the deadly disease, consumption, bestows upon its victims. Clothed with almost barbaric splendor, with rustling silks and velvets, and sparkling jewels that seemed to flash fire in the dim saloon, she was yet one upon whom the heart ached to gaze, for by her terrible emaciation, and hollow, fever-flushed cheeks, and pain-drawn lips, she was one that cruel death had plainly marked for his own.
In wondering silence Reine's dark eyes lift to the strange woman's face as she comes to her side, diffusing a delicate odor of attar du rose as she moves. She speaks in a low, pleasantly-modulated voice, interrupted by a slight, hacking cough:
"You spoke, did you not? Is there anything you wish?"
"Yes, I want Vane," Reine answers, in a weak, childish voice, forgetful, or momentarily unconscious, of all that has passed since she was sundered from her husband's side.
An expression of pity comes into the emaciated face regarding her.
"I hope you will see Vane after a while," she replies, evasively. "Do you feel better, my dear?"
"Better?" the girl echoes, startled. "Have I been ill?"
"Yes, with fever. But you are convalescing now. Do you remember nothing of your illness?"
"Nothing," Reine answers, dreamily. "And—and your face is strange to me. Have I ever seen you before?"
"Not to your knowledge, I think," Mrs. Odell replies, with a slight smile.
A puzzled look comes into the pale, thin face lying on the pillow, with its great, hollow, black eyes. Reine is slowly gathering up the links of memory.
"Are—are we not on the Atlantic Ocean?" she inquires, after a dreamy pause.
Mrs. Odell, drawing her handkerchief across her lips after a slight spell of coughing, answers: "Yes."
Another dreamy pause. The dark eyes that have half-closed, open slowly again.
"Is this steamer the—the Hesperus?" she queries, half-doubtfully.
Mrs. Odell draws back with a slight expression of alarm on her face.
"I—I fear you are talking too much for an invalid," she says. "I will call the doctor."
Retiring into the saloon, and touching a silver call-bell, the fat stewardess appears.
"Send Doctor Franks in," Mrs. Odell commands. "His patient begins to recover consciousness."
Doctor Franks comes, eager, and on the alert, smiling a little as Reine's curious eyes seek his face.
"Another stranger," she complains, with almost childish petulance.
"Well, and what would you have?" he answers, cheerfully, as he touches her pulse. "Though strangers, we are all friends."
"I want Vane," the girl answers, with a hungry yearning in her weak voice.
"After awhile—after awhile," he answers, evasively, as the lady had done. "Are you feeling better to-day?"
"Yes, if I have been ill—have I?" Reine inquires, with some of her old sharpness of tone, for in her weak state she is easily irritated.
"Have you? Well, I should say so," he responds, smilingly. "At present you are nothing but a pair of big black eyes and a lot of hair that I should have cut off only that you were so pretty with it that I hadn't the heart."
"Do not believe him," Mrs. Odell puts in, good-naturedly. "If I had not scolded and begged, and almost gone down on my knees to him, he would have shaved your pretty head bare."
"I should not have liked that," Reine says, putting her small fingers to the thick, glossy plaits. "Vane liked my hair. He thought it pretty; he said so that very night when——" But, with the effort of recalling the long-past time, a great wave of memory suddenly breaks over Reine's heart. Her wan face grows paler, her eyes dilate wildly and fill with swift, passionate tears.
"I remember," she gasps, in a voice of pain, "oh, Heaven! I remember."
There is a moment of silence and they watch her closely. All along Dr. Franks had dreaded this moment of re-awakened memory in the girl's heart. But her agitation is not so great as he had anticipated, for though she is sobbing softly behind her hands, it is not with the bitterness of an utter despair.
"What is it you remember, Miss Langton?" he asks, touching her arm gently.
She starts and looks at him with her great, tear-filled eyes.
"Who told you my name?" she asks, curiously.
"It was marked upon your clothing," Mrs. Odell gently explains, and again Dr. Franks says, curiously:
"You were saying that you remembered——"
"The burning of the Hesperus and the loss of life, and our deadly peril, yes—yes," Reine answers, weakly. "But Vane was saved; oh, thank God for that. And now my life, too, is spared," she exclaims, with the glad tears of joy falling through her white fingers.
They regard her in sympathetic silence awhile, then Dr. Franks says, kindly:
"I am very glad your friend was saved, Miss Langton, and very happy to think that we had the pleasure of seeing you. Were you bound for America?"
"Yes—returning home from a trip to England," she answers.
"I knew you were American instantly," says Mrs. Odell. "We are also of that nationality."
"I am very glad," Reine answers, giving her a pensive smile. "Are you also bound for your native shore?"
"Not just now," the consumptive returns, with a smothered sigh. "I am in delicate health, and Doctor Franks here has recommended the climate of Italy for my health, with the additional advantage of a leisurely sea-trip in a sailing vessel. We are now making our way to Mentone, Italy."
"You are bound for Mentone, Italy!" Reine repeats, with a quiver of disappointment in her low voice. "Then I am going farther away from home every hour!"
"Yes," replies Doctor Franks. "Lucky thing for you, too, in your weak and debilitated condition. Mentone is a charming climate for invalids. Will set you up in less than no time. Then, when your roses are blooming again, we'll send you home to America."
"How long since you picked me up out of the water?" she asks.
"Three weeks," he replies.
Three weeks!—she shuts her eyes ever so tightly, but the traitor tears creep through beneath the black fringe of her lashes.
Three weeks since she parted from Vane amid the horrors of that awful night. Three weeks he has believed her dead. Has he mourned her much? she wonders. Perhaps time has already dulled the sharp edge of grief.
Then graver thoughts chase these self-regrets from her mind.
A terrible doubt chills the life-blood around her heart.
After all, was Vane really saved?
She remembers that crowded little life-boat, already so full that it seemed rash and perilous to take in even one more passenger.
Has the little bark survived the dangers of the sea, or gone down with its precious freight of souls to swell the treasures of the "vasty deep?"
Truly has the poet written that: "Love is sorrow with half-grown wings."
Reine lies silent, with quivering lips and closed eyelids, thinking with grief unutterable of the beloved one's unknown fate. From first to last this passionate love of hers has brought her nothing but bitter pain and sharp humiliation.
Doctor Frank's genial voice rouses her from her bitter absorption.
"Come, come, mademoiselle, this will never do. No fretting and grieving if you please. It will only retard your recovery and return to America. Hold up your head now, and swallow this bit of refreshment our good stewardess has brought you. Then you must go to sleep."
"Do, that's a dearie," admonishes Mrs. McQueen, rather vaguely, proceeding to feed the patient with a spoon from the bowl of gruel that she has brought in, but after a sip or two Reine declares that she cannot swallow, and begs to be let alone.
To this the physician blandly consents after administering an infinitesimal dose of a dark liquid. As a result Reine goes away on a journey to the land of Nod in precisely fifteen minutes. Talking and emotion have thoroughly wearied her exhausted frame.
She sleeps soundly and dreamlessly till the light of another day shines broadly over the world.
Waking silently, and in her senses this time, the girl lies still with wide dark eyes gazing around her. The door into the tiny saloon is open as before.
She sees Mrs. Odell lying on a satin couch, wrapped in a crimson dressing-gown, and covered with a costly India shawl. Her eyes are closed, her face is ghastly in its deep pallor and emaciation.
Suddenly she starts broad awake, seized by a terrible fit of coughing that convulses her slight frame. When she withdraws the snowy handkerchief she has been holding to her lips, Reine sees that it is streaked with blood.
"Oh, dear!" she exclaims, terrified, and Mrs. Odell looks around.
"So you are awake—what a sleep you have had. What made you cry out so?" she inquires in a weak, exhausted voice.
"It was the sight of the blood," Reine stammers. "I was frightened. You are very ill, are you not?"
Mrs. Odell, who has sunk wearily into a chair by her bedside, looks down at her with a ghastly smile on her blood-stained lips.
"Oh, no," she answers, with the hopeful confidence peculiar to that flattering disease, consumption, "my lungs are a little weak, that is all my trouble. The sea air and the Italian climate will quite restore my health, I think. The American climate is too harsh for me. I shall be better at Mentone."
"You will make your home there?" Reine asks, and Mrs. Odell answers readily:
"Yes, until my health is restored. Then I shall return to my native land. There is no place like America to me. Besides, all my property is there."
"Your friends and relatives, too?" Reine asks, and Mrs. Odell answers, sighing:
"Relatives I have none. My husband and children have all gone before to the better land. My friends are few. A woman as rich as I am does not know how to trust in friendship. Only think, child, my husband has left me two millions of dollars, and I have neither kith nor kin of my own to leave it to. I am utterly alone in the world."
"As I was until I met—Vane," Reine murmurs silently to herself, while a look of sympathy flashes from her beautiful eyes upon the lonely rich woman.
"The friend I cared most for on earth," Mrs. Odell continues, sadly, "was my maid, who died just a few days before you were rescued. She was a girl of culture and refinement, rather above her position, and a friend, rather than a servant. I have missed her sadly, as much for her company as her services."
"Did she die suddenly?" Reine asks, with a sigh for the poor girl who had found a watery grave far from her native land.
"Yes, very suddenly, from an unsuspected heart disease."
After a minute's silence Mrs. Odell resumes, pensively:
"Do you know what I have been wishing, Miss Langton?"
"I cannot even guess," Reine replies, wonderingly.
"I have been wishing that you could take that poor girl's place with me. Not as my maid, of course, but as my friend and companion. I have grown to like you so much since you have been lying here ill and suffering. I have taken care of you as far as my own feeble state would allow. Do you think you could be my friend, child?"
"I am sure I could; that is, if you would not suspect me of designs on your property. I am an heiress, myself," Reine returns, with such naive, innocent pride that Mrs. Odell's pain-drawn lips part in an amused smile:
"You simple child. No one could suspect you of anything. There is no guile in that charming face," she answers kindly.
"Thank you. I shall be very glad of your friendship, and hope I may be of some account to you," Reine murmurs.
"It is settled then," Mrs. Odell says, with evident satisfaction. "You are to be my friend and my guest, the same as a daughter to me, until you leave me to return to America, which time, I hope, may be far off yet, for I shall not like to lose my little friend."
"Do not say that," Reine cries out quickly. "I should hate to grieve you, but I have two dear ones who would grieve to think that I was dead. I must let them know the truth as soon as I can."
Poverty is a great persuader. Numberless times it has forced people to put their pride in their pocket.
Vane Charteris, moping along in his law-office, finds such a dearth of clients that it would seem the world is for once at peace.
Nothing happens to break up the dull monotony of his life, or put a fee into his lank pockets. True, invitations pour in upon the "handsome rising young lawyer," but these he declines on the score of his mourning.
The city wakes up to the gayety of its winter season, but the ripple of joyous life flows past him unheeded. The lethargy of a hopeless grief is upon him. At last, with something of a shock, the vulgar and prosaic question of: "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" forces itself upon his consideration.
For Vane, handsome, careless, ease-loving Vane, has suddenly and thoughtlessly come to the end of his resources.
Bills, formidable, some of them, begin to pour in. Our hero, anxiously debating the question of "ways and means of raising the wind," begins to realize that business is strangely dull, and himself placed in a dilemma.
You understand that Vane Charteris is no perfect hero, my friends, you have seen that from the first. Self has in almost every instance ruled his thoughts; he has yielded to temptation, he has shown himself daily one of those petulant, faulty, yet daring types of men whom, after all, women cannot help loving.
So in this instance, instead of loftily adhering to his stubborn rejection of Maud Langton's offer, Vane Charteris suddenly remembers, with a sensation of relief, that all this while, a long month, indeed, the offer has lain in abeyance, waiting on his pleasure. Maud, like a skillful general, having made one artful move, is now waiting to see what the enemy will do.
Vane, like the thoughtless and innocent fly that he is, walks straight into the trap she has set. He decides to call. After all he may be forced to accept the management of her property. At this critical period of his fate, he cannot afford to be proud.
Yet it is with strange reluctance he climbs the marble steps and rings the bell. A memory of the dead seems to hold him back. The perfume of a white rose he has purchased and placed in his coat in passing a little flower shop, rises strong and sweet, thrilling him with the thought of her who has been like a rose herself.
"A rosebud set with little, willful thorns."
"I am foolish," he says to himself, disobeying the impulse to turn and descend the steps. "I must go through with it, I have to live."
He rings the bell again, and when the door is opened, sends in cards for Miss Langton, and Mrs. and Miss Baird, with whom he has some slight acquaintance.
The two latter are out. Miss Langton receives him in the elegant library where she is alone among the books, basking in the ruddy glow of firelight and gaslight. As his eyes light upon her, he recalls the English laureate's Maud: