Dora Thorne, Charlotte Mary Brame [beach read book TXT] 📗

for Lord Airlie. His kiss was still warm on her lips--those same lips should never deny him.

"You do not speak," he added, gloomily. "By Heaven, Beatrice, if I thought you had learned to love another man--if I thought you wanted to be free from me to marry another--I should go mad mad with jealous rage! Is it so? Answer me."

She saw a lurid light in his eyes, and shrank from him. He tightened his grasp upon her arm.

"Answer me!" he cried, hoarsely. "I will know."

Not far from her slept the lover who would have shielded her with his strong arm--the lover to whom every hair upon her dear head was more precious than gold or jewels. Not far from her slept the kind, loving father, who was prouder and fonder of her than of any one on earth. Gaspar Laurence, who would have died for her, lay at that moment not far away, awake and thinking of her. Yet in the hour of her deadly peril, when she stood on the shore of the deep lake, in the fierce grasp of a half-maddened man, there was no one near to help her or raise a hand in her defense. But she was no coward, and all the high spirit of her race rose within her.

"Loosen your grasp, Hugh," she said, calmly; "you pain me."

"Answer me!" he cried. "Where is the ring I gave you?"

He seized both her hands and looked at them; they were firm and cool--they did not tremble. As his fierce, angry eyes glanced over them, not a feature of her beautiful face quivered.

"Where is my ring?" he asked. "Answer me, Beatrice."

"I have not worn it lately," she replied. "Hugh, you forget yourself. Gentlemen do not speak and act in this way."

"I believe I am going mad," he said, gloomily. "I could relinquish my claim to you, Beatrice for your own sake, but I will never give you up to be the wife of any other man. Tell me it is not so. Tell me you have not been so doubly false as to love another, and I will try to do all you wish."

"Am I to live all my life unloved and unmarried?" she answered, controlling her angry indignation by a strong effort, "because when I was a lonely and neglected girl, I fell into your power? I do not ask such a sacrifice from you. I hope you will love and marry, and be happy."

"I shall not care," he said, "what happens after I am gone--it will not hurt my jealous, angry heart then, Beatrice; but I should not like to think that while you were my promised wife and I was giving you my every thought, you were loving some one else. I should like to believe you were true to me while you were my own."

She made no answer, fearing to irritate him if she told the truth, and scorning to deny the love that was the crowning blessing of her life. His anger grew in her silence. Again the dark flush arose in his face, and his eyes flamed with fierce light.

Suddenly he caught sight of the gold locket she wore round her neck, fastened by the slender chain.

"What is this thing you wear?" he asked, quickly. "You threw aside my ring. What is this? Whose portrait have you there? Let me see it."

"You forget yourself again," she said, drawing herself haughtily away. "I have no account to render to you of my friends."

"I will see who is there!" he cried, beside himself with angry rage. "Perhaps I shall know then why you wish to be freed from me. Whose face is lying near your heart? Let me see. If it is that of any one who has outwitted me, I will throw it into the depths of the lake."

"You shall not see it," she said, raising her hand, and clasping the little locket tightly. "I am not afraid, Hugh Fernely. You will never use violence to me."

But the hot anger leaped up in his heart; he was mad with cruel jealousy and rage, and tried to snatch the locket from her. She defended it, holding it tightly clasped in one hand, while with the other she tried to free herself from his grasp.

It will never be know how that fatal accident happened. Men will never know whether the hapless girl fell, or whether Hugh Fernely, in his mad rage, flung her into the lake. There was a startled scream that rang through the clear air, a heavy fall, a splash amid the waters of the lake! There was one awful, despairing glance from a pale, horror-stricken face, and then the waters closed, the ripples spread over the broad surface, and the sleeping lilies trembled for a few minutes, and then lay still again! Once, and once only, a woman's white hand, thrown up, as it were, in agonizing supplication, cleft the dark water, and then all was over; the wind blew the ripples more strongly; they washed upon the grass, and the stir of the deep waters subsided!

Hugh Fernely did not plunge into the lake after Beatrice--it was too late to save her; still, he might have tried. The cry that rang through the sleeping woods, seemed to paralyze him--he stood like one bereft of reason, sense and life. Perhaps the very suddenness of the event overpowered him. Heaven only knows what passed in his dull, crazed mind while the girl he loved sank without help. Was it that he would not save her for another that in his cruel love he preferred to know her dead, beneath the cold waters, rather than the living, happy wife of another man? Or was it that in the sudden shock and terror he never thought of trying to save her?

He stood for hours--it seemed to him as years--watching the spot where the pale, agonized face had vanished--watching the eddying ripples and the green reeds. Yet he never sought to save her--never plunged into the deep waters whence he might have rescued her had he wished. He never moved. He felt no fatigue. The first thing that roused him was a gleam of gray light in the eastern sky, and the sweet, faint song of a little bird.

Then he saw that the day had broken. He said to himself, with a wild horrible laugh, that he had watched all night by her grave.

He turned and fled. One meeting him, with fierce, wild eyes full of the fire of madness, with pale, haggard face full of despair, would have shunned him. He fled through the green park, out on the high-road, away through the deep woods--he knew not whither never looking back; crying out at times, with a hollow, awful voice that he had been all night by her grave; falling at times on his face with wild, woeful weeping, praying the heavens to fall upon him and hide him forever from his fellow men.

He crept into a field where the hedge-rows were bright with autumn's tints. He threw himself down, and tried to close his hot, dazed eyes, but the sky above him looked blood-red, the air seemed filled with flames. Turn where he would, the pale, despairing face that had looked up to him as the waters opened was before him. He arose with a great cry, and wandered on. He came to a little cottage, where rosy children were at play, talking and laughing in the bright sunshine.

Great Heaven! How long was it since the dead girl, now sleeping under the deep waters, was happy and bright as they?

He fled again. This time the piercing cry filled his ears; it seemed to deaden his brain. He fell in the field near the cottage. Hours afterward the children out at play found him lying in the dank grass that fringed the pond under the alder trees.

* * * * *


The first faint flush of dawn, a rosy light, broke in the eastern sky, a tremulous, golden shimmer was on the lake as the sunbeams touched it. The forest birds awoke and began to sing; they flew from branch to branch; the flowers began to open their "dewy eyes," the stately swans came out upon the lake, bending their arched necks, sailing round the water lilies and the green sedges.

The sun shone out at length in his majesty, warming and brightening the fair face of nature--it was full and perfect day. The gardeners came through the park to commence their work; the cows out in the pasture land stood to be milked, the busy world began to rouse itself; but the fatal secret hidden beneath the cold, dark water remained still untold.


Chapter XLI


The sun shone bright and warm in the breakfast room at Earlescourt. The rays fell upon the calm, stately face of Lady Helena, upon the grave countenance of her son, upon the bright, handsome features of Lord Airlie. They sparkled on the delicate silver, and showed off the pretty china to perfection. The breakfast was upon the table, but the three occupants of the room had been waiting. Lady Helena took her seat.

"It seems strange," she said to Lord Earle, "to breakfast without either of the girls. I would not allow Lillian to rise; and from some caprice Beatrice forbade her maid to call her, saying she was tired."

Lord Earle made some laughing reply, but Lady Helena was not quite pleased. Punctuality with her had always been a favorite virtue. In case of real illness, allowance was of course to be made; but she herself had never considered a little extra fatigue as sufficient reason for absenting herself from table.

The two gentlemen talked gayly during breakfast. Lord Earle asked Hubert if he would go with him to Holte, and Lord Airlie said he had promised to drive Beatrice to Langton Priory.

Hearing that, Lady Helena thought it time to send some little warning to her grandchild. She rang for Suzette, the maid who waited upon Beatrice, and told her to call her young mistress.

She stood at her writing table, arranging some letters, when the maid returned. Lady Helena looked at her in utter wonder--the girl's face was pale and scared.

"My lady," she said, "will you please come here? You are wanted very particularly."

Lady Helena, without speaking to either of the gentlemen, went to the door where the girl stood.

"What is it, Suzette?" she asked. "What is the matter?"

"For mercy's sake, my lady," replied the maid, "come upstairs. I I can not find Miss Beatrice--she is not in her room;" and the girl trembled violently or Lady Helena would have smiled at her terror.

"She is probably with Miss Lillian," she said. "Why make such a mystery, Suzette?"

"She is not there, my lady; I can not find her," was the answer.

"She may have gone out into the garden or the grounds," said Lady Helena.

"My lady," Suzette whispered, and her frightened face grew deathly pale, "her bed has