His Unknown Wife, Louis Tracy [best black authors .TXT] 📗

return home. For myself I cared little, but when I thought of my mother I yielded. I am not excusing myself, Alec, though I little guessed the true nature of the bargain. I see now that Suarez and Steinbaum wished to avoid the actual semblance of having committed daylight murder and robbery. They might justify your death as a rebel against the state, but they could not explain away the seizure of your property, whereas its sale by your widow would be a most reasonable proceeding.

“Please understand that I believed I was only carrying out a formal undertaking meant to enable my stepfather to recover money honestly lent. Even so, my resolution faltered at the last moment, and I signed the register in my mother’s name. And now I have bared my heart to you, and you see how-utterly-impossible-it is-Oh, Alec, don’t be cruel! Don’t torture me! I can never, never be your wife, because I can never forgive myself!”

Alec, the wise, as Sturgess had often styled him, showed exceeding wisdom now by letting her cry her fill. Never a word did he say until the tempest subsided. Then he took her hand again and drew her to him.

“Tell me one thing, Nina,” he said gently. “What became of the ring-our ring!”

“It is tied around my neck-on a bit of ribbon,” she sobbed.

“Then it shall remain there until we reach New York,” he said.

“But-I want-to keep it-as a souvenir of all that has passed,” she said brokenly.

“So you shall, dear one. You would never feel satisfied, anyhow, with a Spanish marriage, so we’ll try an American one.”

“Alec, I cue-cue-can’t marry you. I’m too ashamed.”

He laughed happily, and drew her to him.

“You can’t wriggle out of the knot now, girlie,” he said. “But, just to behave like other folk, we’ll begin again at the beginning, and not at the end. Nina, do you think you can learn to love me quick enough to permit of a real wedding when we arrive in New York? You and I have gone through so many experiences since we met that we can dispense with some of the preliminaries to courtship. Shall we fix a date now? Say three weeks after we land, or sooner, if matters can be arranged.”

She lifted her tear-stained face, and her soul went out to his in their first kiss.

Sturgess, when he heard of the latest development, “got busy,” as he put it, on his own account. He, of course, had been told the exact facts by Nina on that night passed on the island in Nelson Straits. The upshot of the general agreement speedily arrived at was a noteworthy double wedding, at which, as a topic of conversation, the beauty of the brides rivaled, if it did not eclipse, their extraordinary adventures.

It should be said, as a fitting rounding off of a record of singular events, that Maseden not only obtained the money held in trust for him by the consul at Cartagena, but the proceeds of the sale of the ranch as well. Enrico Suarez was stabbed to the heart by a maniac with a grievance. Señor Porilla, an honest man, according to South American standards, became president, and saw to it that Maseden’s rights were safeguarded. Even the wily Steinbaum was compelled to disgorge to Gray’s executors.

The Aztec treasure was sold for a mint of money to a millionaire collector, and this sum was settled on Mrs. Gray for life, with reversion to her daughters in equal shares.

If any one is really curious to ascertain the identity and whereabouts of Mr. and Mrs. Philip Alexander Maseden or Mr. and Mrs. C. K. Sturgess, all that is necessary is to visit a town on the coast of Maine any August, and keep an eye peeled for a ship’s lifeboat converted into a yawl and named “The Ark.” Therein will be found some very pleasant people, and, with the help of the foregoing history, the rest of the task should be simplicity itself.

THE END.