CHAPTER XIX.
CALLED TO ACCOUNT.
It was a long road for a woman to travel at that unconventional hour, but Leslie Warburton was fleet-footed, and fear and excitement lent her strength.
Necessity had taught her how to enter and escape from the dangerous maze where the people who claimed a right in her existence dwelt. And on being forced to flee by her haughty brother-in-law, she bowed her head and wrapping herself in her dark cloak sped away through the night.
She had little fear of being missed by her guests,—a masquerade affords latitude impossible to any other gathering, and contrary to the usual custom, the maskers were to continue their incognito until the cotillion began. If her guests missed her, she would be supposed to be in some other apartment. If she were missed by Winnie, that little lady would say: “She is with Archibald, of course.”
Nevertheless, it was an unsafe journey. But she accomplished it, and arrived, panting, weary, and filled with a terrible dread at the thought of the exposure that must follow her encounter with Alan.
They were dancing still, her light-hearted guests, and Leslie resumed her Sunlight robes, and going back to her place among them forced herself to smile and seem to be gay, while her heart grew every moment heavier with its burden of fear and dire foreboding.
Anxiously she watched the throng, hoping, yet dreading, to see the sailor costume of Alan, fearing lest, in spite of his high courage, disaster had overtaken him.
It was in the grey of morning, and her guests were dispersing, when Alan Warburton reappeared. He was muffled as at first, in the black and scarlet domino, and he moved with the slow languor of one utterly exhausted or worn with pain.
At length it was over; the last guest had departed, the house was silent, and Leslie and Alan stood face to face under the soft light of the library chandelier.
During the ceremonies of departure, he had remained constantly near her. And when they were left, at last, with only Winnie French beside them, Leslie, seeing that the interview was inevitable, had asked Winnie to look in upon little Daisy, adding, as the girl, with a gay jest, turned to go:
“I will join you there soon, Winnie, dear; just now Alan and I have a little to say about some things that have occurred to-night.”
Tossing a kiss to Leslie, and bestowing a grimace upon Alan as he held open the door for her exit, Winnie had pirouetted out of the room, and sped up the broad stairway as fleetly as if her little feet were not weary with five hours’ dancing.
Then Leslie, with a stately gesture, had led the way to the library.
Silently, and as if by one accord, they paused under the chandelier, and each gazed into the face of the other.
His eyes met hers, stern, accusing, and darkened with pain; while she—her bearing was proud as his, her face mournful, her eyes resolute, her lips set in firm lines. She looked neither criminal nor penitent; she was a woman driven to bay, and she would fight rather than flee.
Looking him full in the face, she made no effort to break the silence. Seeing which, Alan Warburton said:
“Madam, you play your part well. You are not now the nocturnal wanderer menaced by a danger—”
“From which you rescued me,” she interrupts, her face softening. “Alan, it was a brave deed, and I thank you a thousand times!”
“I do not desire your gratitude, Madam. I could have done no less, and would do yet more to save from disgrace the name we bear in common. Was your absence noted? Did you return safely and secretly?”
“I have not been missed, and I returned as safely and as secretly as I went.”
Her voice was calm, her countenance had hardened as at first.
“Madam, let us understand each other. One year ago the name of Warburton had never known a stain; now—”
He let the wrath in his eyes, the scorn in his face, finish what his lips left unsaid.
But the eyes of his beautiful opponent flashed him back scorn for scorn.
“Now,” she said, with calm contempt in her voice, “now, the proudest man of the Warburton race has stepped down from his pedestal to play the spy, and upon a woman! I thank you for rescuing me, Alan Warburton, but I have no thanks to offer for that!”
“A spy!” He winced as his lips framed the word. “We are calling hard names, Mrs. Warburton. If I was a spy in that house, what were you! I have been a spy upon your actions, and I have seen that which has caused me to blush for my brother’s wife, and tremble for my brother’s honor. More than once I have seen you leave this house, and return to it, clandestinely. It was one of these secret expeditions, which I discovered by the merest chance, that aroused my watchfulness. More than once have letters passed to and fro through some disreputable-looking messenger. To-night, for the first time, I discovered where you paid your visits, but not to whom. To-night I traced you to the vilest den in all the city. Madam, this mystery must be cleared up. What wretched secret have you brought into my brother’s house? What sin or shame are you hiding under his name? What is this disgrace that is likely to burst upon us at any moment?”
Slowly she moved toward him, looking straight into his angry, scornful face. Slowly she answered:
“Alan Warburton, you have appointed yourself my accuser; you shall not be my judge. I am answerable to you for nothing. From this moment I owe you neither courtesy nor gratitude. I have a secret, but it shall be told to my husband, not to you. If I have done wrong, I have wronged him, not you. You have insulted me under my own roof to-night, for the last time. I will tell my story to Archibald now; he shall judge between us.”
She turned away, but he laid a detaining hand upon her arm.
“Stop!” he said, “you must not go to Archibald with this; you shall not!”
“Shall not!” she exclaimed scornfully; “and who will prevent it?”
“I will prevent it. Woman, have you neither heart nor conscience? Would you add murder to your list of transgressions?”
“Let me go, Alan Warburton,” she answered impatiently; “I have done with you.”
“But I have not done with you! Oh, you know my brother well; he is trusting, confiding, blind where you are concerned. He believes in your truth, and he must continue so to believe. He must not hear of this night’s work.”
“But he shall; every word of it.”
“Every word! Take care, Mrs. Warburton. Will you tell him of the lover who was here to-night, disguised as a woman, the better to hover about you?”
“You wretch!” She threw off his restraining hand and turned upon him, her eyes blazing. Then, after a moment, the fierce look of indignation gave place to a smile of contempt.
“Yes,” she said, turning again toward the door, “I shall tell him of that too.”
“Then you will give him his death-blow; understand that! Yesterday, when his physician visited him, he told us the truth. Archibald’s life is short at best; any shock, any strong emotion or undue excitement, will cause his death. Quiet and rest are indispensable. To-morrow—to-day, you were to be told these things. By Archibald’s wish they were withheld from you until now, lest they should spoil your pleasure in the masquerade.”
The last words were mockingly uttered, but Leslie paid no heed to the tone.
“Are you telling me the truth?” she demanded. “Must I play my part still?”
“I am telling you the truth. You must continue to play your part, so far as he is concerned. For his sake I ask you to trust me. You bear our name, our honor is in your keeping. Whatever your faults, your misdeeds, have been, they must be kept secrets still. I ask you to trust me,—not that I may denounce you, but to enable me to protect us all from the consequences of your follies.”
If the words were conciliatory, the tone was hard and stern. Alan Warburton could ill play the role he had undertaken.
The look she now turned upon him was one of mingled wonder and scorn.
“You are incomprehensible,” she said. “I am gratified to know that it was not my life nor my honor, but your own name, that you saved to-night,—it lessens my obligation. Being a woman, I am nothing; being a Warburton, disgrace must not touch me! So be it. If I may not confide in my husband, I will keep my own counsel still. And if I cannot master my trouble alone, then, perhaps, as a last resort, and for the sake of the Warburton honor, I will call upon you for aid.”
There was no time for a reply. While the last words were yet on her lips, the heavy curtains were thrust hastily aside and Winnie French, pallid and trembling, stood in the doorway.
“Leslie! Alan!” she cried, coming toward them with a sob in her throat, “we have lost little Daisy!”
“Lost her!”
Alan Warburton uttered the two words as one who does not comprehend their meaning. But Leslie stood transfixed, like one stunned, yet not startled, by an anticipated blow.
“We have hunted everywhere,” Winnie continued wildly. “She is not in the house, she is not—”
She catches her breath at the cry that breaks from Leslie’s lips, and for a moment those three, their festive garments in startling contrast with their woe-stricken faces, regard each other silently.
Then Leslie, overcome at last by the accumulating horrors of this terrible night, sways, gasps, and falls forward, pallid and senseless, at Alan Warburton’s feet.