A Terrible Secret, May Agnes Fleming [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

in the head now. He'll never be able to bear the sight of me again."

"I don't see that," Edith responded; "if a murder is committed, the world is pretty sure to know of it--its something not to be ignored. How deeply he seems to feel it too--in spite of his rank and wealth I pity him, Trixy."

"Pity him as much as you like, so that it is not the pity akin to love. I don't want _you_ for a rival, Edie--besides I have other views for you."

"Indeed! The post of confidential maid when you are Lady Catheron?"

"Something better--the post of confidential sister. There! You needn't blush, I saw how the land lay from the first, and Charley isn't a bad fellow in spite of his laziness. The door bell again. Nothing but callers now until dark."

All Miss Stuart's masculine friends came dropping in successively, to institute the necessary inquiries as to the state of her health, after eight hours' steady dancing the preceding night. Edith's unsophisticated head ached with it all, and her tongue grew paralyzed with the platitudes of society. The gas was lit, and the dressing-bell ringing, before the last coat-tail disappeared.

As the young ladies, yawning drearily in each other's faces, turned to go up to their rooms, a servant entered, bearing two pasteboard boxes.

"With Sir Victor Catheron's compliments, Miss Beatrix, and brought by his man."

Each box was labelled with the owner's name. Trix opened hers with eager fingers. A lovely bouquet of white roses, calla lilies, and jasmine, lay within. Edith opened hers--another bouquet of white and scarlet camellias.

"For the opera," cried Trix, with sparkling eyes, "How good of him--how generous--how forgiving! After the papers and all! Sir Victor's a prince, or ought to be."

"Don't gush, Trixy," Edith said, "it grows tiresome. Why did he send you all white, I wonder? As emblematic of your spotless innocence and that sort of thing? And do _I_ bear any affinity to '_La Dame aux Camellias_?' I think you may still hope, Trix--if there be truth in the language of flowers."

Three hours later--fashionably late, of course--the Stuart party swept in state into their box. Mrs. Stuart, Miss Stuart Mr. Stuart, junior, and Miss Darrell. Miss Stuart dressed for some after "reception" in silvery blue silk, pearl ornaments in her hair, and a virginal white bouquet in her hand. Miss Darrell in the white muslin of last night, a scarlet opera cloak, and a bouquet of white and scarlet camellias. Charley lounging in the background, looking as usual, handsome of face, elegant of attire, and calmly and upliftedly unconscious of both.

The sweet singer was on the stage. Edith Darrell leaned forward, forgetting everything in a trance of delight. It seemed as though her very soul were carried away in the spell of that enchanting voice. A score of "double barrels" were turned to their box--Beatrix Stuart was an old story--but who was the dark beauty? As she sat, leaning forward, breathless, trance-bound, the singer vanished, the curtain fell.

"Oh!" it was a deep drawn sigh of pure delight. She drew back, lifted her impassioned eyes, and met the smiling ones of Sir Victor Catheron.

"You did not know I was here," he said. "You were so enraptured I would not speak. Once it would have enraptured me too, but I am afraid my rapturous days are past."

"Sir Victor Catheron speaks as though he were an octogenarian. I have heard it is 'good form' to outlive at twenty, every earthly emotion. Mr. Stuart yonder prides himself on having accomplished the feat I may be stupid, but I confess being _blase_, doesn't strike me in the light of an advantage?"

"But if _blase_ be your normal state? I don't think I ever tried to cultivate the _vanitas vanitatem_ style of thing, but if it _will_ come? Our audience are enthusiastic enough--see! They have made her come back."

She came back, and held out both hands to the audience, and the pretty gesture, and the charming smile, redoubled the applause. Then silence fell, and softly and sweetly over that silence, floated the tender, pathetic words of "Way down upon the Swanee River." You might have heard a pin drop. Even Sir Victor looked moved. For Edith, she sat scarcely breathing--quivering with ecstasy. As the last note was sung, as the fair songster kissed hands and vanished, as the house arose from its spell, and re-rang with enthusiasm, Edith turned again to the young baronet, the brown eyes luminous with tears, the lips quivering. He bent above her, saying something, he could hardly have told what, himself--carried away for once in his life, by the witchery of two dark eyes.

Mr. Charles Stuart, standing in the background, beheld it all.

"Hard hit," he murmured to his mustache, but his face, as he gave his mother his arm, and led her forth, told nothing.

An old adorer escorted Miss Stuart. Miss Darrell and her camellias, came last, on the arm of the baronet.

That night, two brown eyes, haunted Sir Victor Catheron's slumbers--two brown eyes sparkling through unshed tears--two red lips trembling like the lips of a child.

For the owner of the eyes and lips, she put the camellias, carefully in water, and far away in the small hours went to bed and to sleep. And sleeping she dreamed, that all dressed in scarlet, and wearing a crown of scarlet camellias, she was standing up to be married to Sir Victor Catheron with Mr. Charley Stuart as officiating clergyman, when the door opened, and the murdered lady of Trixy's story came stalking in, and whirled her screaming away in her ghostly arms.

Too much excitement, champagne, and lobster salad had engendered the vision no doubt, but it certainly spoiled Miss Darrell's beauty sleep _that_ night.


CHAPTER VI.

ONE MOONLIGHT NIGHT.

The pleasant days went on--April went out--May came in. On the tenth of May, the Stuart family, Sir Victor Catheron, and Lady Helena Powyss were to sail from New York for Liverpool.

To Edith, fresh from the twilight of her country life, these days and nights had been one bewildering round of excitement and delight. Opera, theatre, dinner and evening parties, shopping, driving, calling, receiving--all that goes to make the round of that sort of life, had been run. Her slender wardrobe had been replenished, the white Swiss had been reinforced by half-a-dozen glistening silks; the corals, by a set of rubies and fine gold. Mr. Stuart might be pompous and pretentious, but he wasn't stingy, and he had insisted upon it for his own credit. And half-a-dozen "spandy new" silks, fresh from Stewart's counters, with the pristine glitter of their bloom yet upon them, were very different from one half-worn amber tissue of Trixy's. Miss Darrell took the dresses and the rubies, and looked uncommonly handsome in both.

On the last night but one, of their stay in New York, Mrs. Featherbrain gave a last "At Home," a sort of "P. P. C." party, Trixy called it. Miss Darrell was invited, and said nothing at the time, unless tossing the card of invitation contemptuously out of the window can be called saying something; but at the last moment she declined to go.

"My head is whirling now, from a surfeit of parties," she said to Miss Stuart. "Aunt Chatty is going to stay at home, and so shall I. I don't like your Mrs. Featherbrain--that's the truth--and I'm not fashionable enough yet to sham friendship with women I hate. Besides, Trix dear, you know you were a little--just a little--jealous of me, the other night at Roosevelt's. Sir Victor danced with me once oftener than he did with you. Now, you dear old love, I'll let you have a whole baronet to yourself, for this night, and who knows what may happen before morning?"

Miss Edith Darrell was one of those young persons--happily rare--who, when they take a strong antipathy, are true to it, even at the sacrifice of their own pleasure. In her secret soul, she was jealous of Mrs. Featherbrain. If she and Charley carried on their imbecile flirtation, at least it would not be under _her_ disgusted eyes.

Miss Stuart departed--not the lilies of the field--not Solomon in all his glory--not the Queen of Sheba herself, ever half so magnificent. Charley went with her, a placid martyr to brotherly duty. And Edith went down to the family sitting-room where Aunt Chatty (Aunt Chatty by request) sat dozing in her after-dinner chair.

"We are going to have an 'At home' all to our two selves to-night, auntie," Edith, said, kissing her thin cheek; "and I am going to sing you to sleep, by way of beginning."

She was fond of Aunt Chatty--a meek soul, born to be tyrannized over, _and_ tyrannized over, from her very cradle. One of those large women, who obey their small husbands in fear and trembling, who believe everything they are told, who "bless the squire and his relations, and live contented with their stations;" who are bullied by their friends, by their children, by their servants, and who die meekly some day, and go to Heaven.

Edith opened the piano and began to play. She was looking very handsome to-night, in green silk and black-lace, one half-shattered rose in her hair. She looked handsome--at least so the young man who entered unobserved, and stood looking at her, evidently thought.

She had not heard him enter, but presently some mesmeric _rapport_ between them, told her he was near. She turned her head and saw him. Aunt Chatty caught sight of him, in her semi-sleeping state, at the same moment.

"Dear me, Charley," his mother said, "_you_ here? I thought you went to Mrs. Featherbrain's?"

"So I did," replied Charley. "I went--I saw--I returned--and here I am, if you and Dithy will have me for the rest of the evening."

"Edith and I were very well off without you. We had peace, and that is more than we generally have when you and she come together. You shall be allowed to stay only on one condition, and that is that you don't quarrel."

"_I_ quarrel?" Charley said, lifting his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead. "My dear mother, your mental blindness on many points, is really deplorable. It's all Edith's fault--all; one of the few fixed principles of my life, is never to quarrel with anybody. It upsets a man's digestion, and is fatiguing in the extreme. Our first meeting," continued Mr. Stuart, stretching himself out leisurely on a sofa, "at which, Edith fell in love with me at sight, was a row. Well, if it wasn't a row, it was an unpleasantness of some sort. You can't deny, Miss Darrell, there was a coolness between us. Didn't we pass the night in a snow-drift? Since then, every other meeting has been a succession of rows. Injustice to myself, and the angelic sweetness of my own disposition, I must repeat, the beginning, middle, and ending of each, lies with her. She _will_ bully, and I never could stand being bullied--I always knock under. But I warn her--a day of retribution is at hand. In self-defence I mean to marry her, and then, base miscreant, beware! The trodden worm will turn, and plunge the iron into her own soul. May I ask what you are laughing at, Miss Darrell?"

"A slight confusion of metaphor, Charley--nothing more. What have you done with Trix?"

"Trix is all right in the matronly charge of Mrs. Featherbrain, and engaged ten deep to the baronet. By the bye, the baronet was inquiring for you, with a degree of warmth and solicitude, as unwelcome as it was uncalled