"Mrs. Vance, there is an old woman down-stairs says she has brought the laces you wished to see," said a trim little serving maid at Mrs. Vance's door.
Mrs. Vance looked up impatiently from her book.
"I have not ordered any laces at all," said the lady, sharply. "Send the lying old creature away, Agnes."
The trim maid hesitated.
"You ought to look at them, Mrs. Vance," said she, timidly; "such lovely laces I never saw. They are as delicate as sea-foam and very cheap. I expect they are smuggled goods."
"Well, well, let her come up then, but I do not need any of her wares."
Agnes went away and presently reappeared a moment at the door, and ushered in old Haidee with a basket on her arm. The maid then left them together.
"Now, then," said the lady, sharply, "what did you mean by saying I had ordered your laces?"
"Oh! pretty lady, forgive an old woman's lie to the maids for the sake of getting in. I have bargains, lady—lovely laces smuggled through the Custom House without any duty—I can sell them to you much cheaper than the merchants can afford to do."
"Let me see them, then," said the lady, with apparent indifference.
Old Haidee unpacked her wares and exhibited a small but fine assortment of real laces. Her prices were extremely low, and Mrs. Vance, though she pretended indifference, was charmed with their elegance, and the small sum asked by the vender. After a good deal of haggling she selected several yards, and paid for them in gold pieces taken from a silken netted purse through whose interstices gleamed many more pieces of the same kind. Old Haidee's eyes gleamed greedily at the sight.
"Gold-gold!" she muttered, working her claw-like fingers. "Give me the purse, pretty lady."
Mrs. Vance withdrew a step in amazement.
"Old woman, you are crazy. Go, leave the room this very instant!"
"Give me the gold," still pleaded the miserly old hag.
"I will have you turned out of the house this minute, miserable old beggar!" cried Mrs. Vance, moving toward the bell.
"Stop one moment, lady, I have something to say to you—a secret to tell you. You would not have me tell it before the servants, would you?" said the old woman, in such a meaning tone that Mrs. Vance actually hesitated, with her hand on the bell-rope.
"Say on," said she, haughtily, and thinking to herself that the old lace-vender was insane.
"Bend closer, lady, the walls have ears sometimes. This is a terrible secret," said Haidee, with a solemn air.
Mrs. Vance moved a step nearer, impressed in spite of herself by the eerie, witch-like gestures and sepulchral air of the speaker.
"Lady, a few nights ago a fair young girl was murdered within these stately walls. Ah! you tremble; she trembled too when the jealous woman stole into her room, turned the key in the lock, and struck her down as she stood looking at her sweet reflection in her bridal dress—yes, struck her down with a brutal dagger-thrust in her heart. The wicked murderess stooped to see if her guilty work was done, then escaped down the ladder of vines that climbed up to the window. The jury said that the poor girl committed suicide; but we know better—do we not, beautiful lady?"
"You are a fiend," cried Mrs. Vance, from the chair where she had sunk down, still clutching the heavy purse of gold coins in her cold hand. "You lie! no one murdered her—she died by her own hand."
"Lady, I shall not tell my secret to any one but you," said Haidee, with a low and fiend-like laugh. "Now, will you give me the gold?"
"Never! You have come here to blackmail me! you wish to frighten me by trumped up suspicion; I will not buy your silence!" cried Mrs. Vance, passionately.
"Very well, lady, I will go to Mr. Lawrence, I will go to Mr. Darling, I will tell them what I have told you," said the lace-vender, rising to leave.
"Stay—who knows this lying tale besides yourself?"
"No one, lady. I, Haidee Leveret, am the only witness of your crime, and you can buy my silence with that purse of gold," said the old crone, sepulchrally.
"Take it, then," said Mrs. Vance, flinging it down at her feet "and keep the secret till your dying day! you need not return to blackmail me again. That is all the gold I have. I am a poor woman. I can get no more to give you!"
The old woman gathered up the purse of coins, hid it in her bosom, and trotted out, mouthing and mumbling to herself. Mrs. Vance fell down upon the floor writhing in terror. "My sin has found me out," she cried, wringing her white hands helplessly. "Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot, it was all for you!"
"A lucky day," said old Haidee to herself as she trotted down the street. "A fine piece of work, and well paid for! A purse of gold and a diamond! Well, well!"
She stopped and took poor Lily's note from her pocket where it had lain concealed, and tearing it into minute fragments threw it into the street. A gentleman passing by observed the action curiously. It was Mr. Lawrence. Ah! if he had but known whose hand had written the note whose coarse, brown fragments lay under his feet, if he had but turned and followed that hideous old witch, what months of sorrow might have been spared him. But he did not know, and he went on to his home, bowed and heart-broken, while old Haidee trotted quickly past, crooning a low tune in the pride of her gratified avarice and cunning.
As she went into the door of her home, Doctor Pratt came in suddenly after her.
"Now where have you been, Haidee?" he asked, suspiciously.
"Only to market, doctor," said she, trembling, sidling past him with the basket on her arm.
He found his patient restless and excited. She was tossing uneasily from side to side of the bed, and her cheeks were flushed and feverish. He took the small hand, and found the pulse bounding rapidly beneath his touch.
"This will not do," said he, "you must not excite yourself unduly."
The door opened, admitting Haidee with a bowl of fresh arrowroot. Lily looked wistfully beyond her, but she was quite alone. She saw in Haidee's cautious, negative shake of the head that her mission had failed. She fell back, crushed with her disappointment.
"Come, take your nourishment," said Pratt, kindly.
She shook her head. A choking sensation arose in her throat, and she could not swallow. She determined to make one appeal to this grim-looking man.
"Doctor," she said, clasping her hands imploringly, "I appeal to your honor, to your generosity, to your humanity, to restore me to my home and father!"
Doctor Pratt shook his head decisively.
"It is impossible for me to do that," he answered; "you are in the power of Mr. Colville; I am merely employed by him to attend you in your illness. You must make your appeal to him."
"He is a villain, a designing wretch!" she broke out, indignantly. "I will make no appeal to him. But, doctor, if you will go and tell my father where to find me, I will give you five thousand dollars the day I am liberated from this prison-house."
He laughed and drew a newspaper from his pocket. Putting it in her hands, he directed her attention to a marked paragraph. She read it with streaming eyes. It ran simply:
"Much sympathy has been excited for the Lawrence family in the painful discovery that the body of Miss Lily Lawrence has been stolen from the vault of her father. The well-known wealth of the great banker makes it seem probable that the foul deed was committed with a view to a heavy ransom. It will be seen in our reward column that Mr. Lawrence offers ten thousand dollars for the return of the corpse."
"So your father offers more for the repose of your dead body than you do for your living one," he said, laughing. "No, Miss Lawrence, I cannot accept your munificent bribe. My duty to Mr. Colville forbids. And au revoir. I must be going. I leave you some medicine and will see you again to-morrow. Take the best care of her, Haidee."
He went away, and they heard the hall door clang behind him. Lily turned to her silent attendant.
"Haidee, you did not go," she murmured, in a reproachful tone.
"Oh! yes, I did, miss, but your father was not there," readily answered the treacherous old woman.
"Oh! then you left the note for him, and also your address?" said Lily in a more hopeful tone.
"Aye, that I did, miss," said old Haidee, lying glibly; "I gave it to a very pretty lady."
"It was my sister Ada, then," said Lily.
"No, miss; your sister lies ill of a fever. I gave it to a lady called Mrs. Vance," lied Haidee, watching the patient's face keenly.
A startling change swept over the girl's white features. Fear, terror, resentment—all were blended in that look.
"Oh!" she cried, "then indeed I have no hope of release! She will not give the letter to my father. She is my murderess—she tried to kill me. She will come here and make her fatal work sure! Watch for her, Haidee—do not allow her to enter here. She will kill me, indeed she will kill me!"
"Oh, me, honey, I am so sorry that I gave her the note," said Haidee, artfully; "but do not be afraid, she shall not come here to finish her devil's work—no, not she, my poor deary."
Alas! alas! poor Lily! Doctor Pratt's opiates could not bring oblivion of her troubles that night. She raved and tossed through the long and weary night, while Haidee, thoroughly alarmed, was very glad to see the physician's face quite early the next morning.
"Come home and dine with me, Lance," said Mr. Lawrence, meeting Lancelot Darling amid the bustle and stir of Wall street.
Poor Lance had been strolling carelessly up and down with a care-worn, wretched look upon his handsome face. Time went very slowly with him now. He turned about and, shaking hands with his friend, walked on by his side.
"Is there any news?" he asked, his mind reverting instantly to the painful event which occupied all his waking thoughts.
"None," answered the banker, sadly. "Some of the sharpest detectives in the city are trying to trace it, but as yet there is not the faintest clew."
He sighed and Lancelot echoed the sigh. Both walked silently on. At length the banker signaled a car and, entering it, they became at once the cynosure of all the eyes within it. Their recent terrible affliction was so well known that sympathy shone on them from every eye. But little was said to them even by the friends they encountered. The mute trouble of their faces seemed to repel the mere trivialities of conversation, and no one wished to speak of the mournful tragedy whose impress was written so legibly on the faces of both the sufferers.
"You are looking very ill," Mrs. Vance said, in a gentle tone of sympathy, when the banker had left the guest in the drawing-room while he went up to see Ada, whose illness had not as yet taken any favorable turn.
"I am quite well, thank you," he answered, absently, and with an unconscious, heart-wrung sigh. He was looking about him sadly, seeing in fancy the graceful, girlish form that had so often flitted through this grand room. She saw the turn his mind had taken, and instantly diverted it to the present.
"Has anything been heard from our poor Lily yet?" she asked, in low, mournful tones.
"Nothing, nothing. Oh! Mrs. Vance, this suspense is very hard to bear," said he, impetuously, won by the gentle sympathy in her face and voice to an outburst he had not intended. "It is almost killing me!"
"Poor Lance," said she, in a broken voice; "your features show the traces of your great suffering. It is hard for us all to bear, but harder still for you."
Her delicate hand fluttered down upon his own with a pressure of mute sympathy, while she buried her face in her handkerchief, sobbing softly.
"I should not have brought my gloomy face here to sadden you still more—forgive me for my reckless outburst," said he, pained by the sight of her womanly grief, which always goes to a man's heart.
"Do not regret it," she answered, through her sobs. "Let me grieve with you, poor boy, in your trouble. Believe me, sympathy is very sweet."
"Thank you," he answered, gently. "Ah! this indeed is a house of mourning. Is Ada any better to-day, Mrs. Vance?"
"I am sorry to say she is not," answered the lady, making a pretence of drying her eyes, which, however, had not been wet by a single tear. "She has a low, intermittent fever, which does not as yet yield at all to the physician's treatment. God grant we are not to lose our lovely Ada, too. Ah! that would indeed be a sad consequence of poor Lily's rash suicide."
He shuddered through all his strong young frame at that concluding word.
"Oh, God!" he groaned, "the mystery of it! Suicide! Suicide! If God had taken her from us, I could learn to say, 'It is well'—but that she should weary of us all, that she should rush out of this life that I thought to make so fair and beautiful to her in our united future! I cannot understand it—it is horrible, maddening!"
Musingly she murmured over a few lines from Tom Hood's mournful poem, "The Bridge of Sighs:"
"Mad from Life's history,
Swift to Death's mystery,
Glad to be hurled
Anywhere, anywhere, out of the world!"
The words seemed to madden him. Impatiently he strode up and down the floor.
"She never loved me as I loved her!" he broke out, passionately. "I could not have done aught to grieve her so. If earth had been a desert, it must still have been Paradise to me while she walked upon it. Oh! Lily, Lily, you were very cruel!"
"Do not grieve so, I beseech you," said the widow's gentle voice. Timidly she took his hand and led him to a seat. "You will make yourself ill. We cannot afford to lose you, too. You were so near becoming one of the family that you seem almost to take the place of our dear one who has left us."
"You think me almost a madman," said he, remorsefully. "I startle you with my wild words. I should not have come here."
"Yes, you should," she answered, kindly. "You should come oftener than you do and let me sympathize with you in your trouble. Who can grieve with you so well as I who knew and loved your dear one? Promise to come every day, dear Lance, and let us share our trouble together."
"I will try," he answered, moved by her gentle friendliness, and thinking as he looked up that she was a very handsome woman. Not with the beauty of his lost Lily. Her angelic, blonde fairness typified the highest beauty to him. But handsome with a certain queenliness that was very winning. How dark and soft her eyes were—how beautiful the sweep of the long, dark lashes. And her cheeks—how rich and soft was the color that glowed upon them and deepened to crimson tints upon her full lips. And when that dark, bright face glowed with tenderness and feeling how very fascinating it became. When she took on herself the role of comforter how softly she could pour the oil of healing on the troubled waves of feeling. She had Lance soothed and quieted before Mr. Lawrence came down, with a pale and troubled face, from Ada's sick room.
Dinner went off rather soberly and solemnly. The array of silver and cut-glass was dazzling, the edibles costly and dainty, but Lance scarcely made a pretence of eating. Mr. Lawrence merely trifled with the viands, and Mrs. Vance was the only one whose appetite was equal to the demands of the occasion. Conversation lagged, though the beautiful widow tried to keep it up with all the consummate art of which she was mistress. But the gentlemen did not second her efforts, and she was relieved when the formal ceremony was over and they went out to smoke their cigars.
"I will go in and see Ada a little," thought she. "The nurse says the fever is not infectious."
She tripped lightly up the steps and into the room where poor Ada lay tossing in her burning fever. She was very much like her sister in appearance, but the luxurious chamber where she lay was in great contrast with that in which poor suffering Lily was now immured. True, Lily had all the comforts her sickness needed, but here the capricious eyes of an invalid found everything to charm and soothe the weary eye. Here delicate curtains of silk and lace shut out the too dazzling light of day; here dainty white hangings delighted the eye with their coolness and purity. Here and there were set vases of freshly-cut flowers filling the air with sweetness, and rare and costly paintings looked down from the softly tinted walls.
An expression of annoyance swept over the girl's fair, ingenuous face as Mrs. Vance bent airily over her and touched her feverish brow with her delicately rouged lips.
"You should not kiss me," said she, pettishly, "this fever may be infectious."
"The doctor said it was not infectious, my dear," murmured the lady sweetly. "I asked him myself this morning."
"Oh! you did, eh? I suppose wild horses could not have dragged you in here to see me if it had been," said Ada, sarcastically.
"Is there anything I can do for you, my love?" asked Mrs. Vance, gracefully ignoring the spoiled girl's incivility.
"Nothing—only do not talk to me—talking hurts my head," replied the invalid, turning her face away.
"Ah, then, if I only disturb you I will take my leave," said the handsome widow, tripping out of the room.
"You were rather rude, my dear," said the nurse, surprised at her gentle patient's sudden petulance.
"I don't care," said Ada vehemently, "I hate that woman! I cannot tell why it is, but I have hated her ever since she came here to live, nearly two years ago. She knows I do not like her, but she affects unconsciousness of it. Keep the door locked, nurse, and do not let her come in here again—tell her I am too ill to see anyone. When she kissed me just now I felt as if a great slimy snake had crawled over me—ugh!" she said, shuddering at the recollection.
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