CHAPTER XIII.
GILBERT WARRINGTON’S PLOT.
Gilbert Warrington!
For a moment Violet’s heart stood still, then began to beat eighteen to the dozen. She pressed her cold, shaking hand upon it, as though with a hope of quieting its tumult; then, pale and outwardly calm, she turned and faced her unwelcome visitor. His sallow face was full of ill-concealed triumph; his thin lips wore a mocking smile. He stepped forward and extended his hand, but Violet drew back with a shudder.
“Ah, my dear Miss Arleigh!”—his voice had an unpleasant ring to it—“so you refuse to take my hand? Well, all right. That is just as you see fit. My word for it, you will be glad to accept any overtures of friendliness that I may see fit to make you before many days have passed.”
Violet’s eyes flashed. It was with difficulty that she restrained her anger; but she confronted him in outward quiet.
“What is your business with me?” she inquired, in a low, scornful tone. “Be good enough to state it, and then leave me. I wish to be alone.”
He smiled, and his keen eyes shone with a dangerous glitter.
“Ah, you do?” he sneered. “Well, you shall be alone in good time, but at present I have something to say to you, and you must listen to me.”
“Must I?”
Violet’s temper began to gain the ascendency. What right had this man to come to her in her own home and command her to listen to him?
“You are inclined to be impudent, Mr. Warrington,” she added, sharply.
“Not at all.” He drew a little nearer. “See here, Violet, why can’t you and I be friends? I prefer it so, and really you will find it much more pleasant since we are compelled to come in contact with each other.”
“I do not understand you. Why am I compelled to associate with you?”
To save her life, Violet could not repress the contempt in her voice as she spoke the personal pronoun. Gilbert Warrington’s face flushed for a moment.
“You do not understand me. I have not yet explained to you,” he returned. “Miss Violet Arleigh, you are aware that for years I have transacted business with your mother—the late Mrs. Rosamond Arleigh? You, of course, knew nothing of the nature of that business, as it was of a wholly private nature; in short, a secret, a bad, black secret between Mrs. Arleigh and myself.”
“If so”—Violet’s voice was cold and scornful—“it was not her secret. She was never guilty of wrong-doing.”
“Ah, well! possibly not. But have you never heard, my dear young friend, of a person being so hedged in by circumstances that they have been forced to suffer for the mistake or wrong-doing of another? Suppose now—just let us suppose the case—that your father, the late Harold Arleigh, had been guilty of a sin or crime, and that its consequences had recoiled upon the head of your innocent mother, would not she be compelled to suffer from his wrong-doing, yet be herself perfectly guiltless?”
“You are speaking in riddles,” returned Violet, coldly. “I do not understand you, sir. Be good enough to explain. I am certain that Harold Arleigh, my father, was not a criminal. He would never have committed a crime, and then allow my poor mother to suffer the consequences—to be driven to her death, and hounded down to her grave by a man like you!”
An angry scowl disfigured the sallow face of Warrington. He clinched his hands involuntarily, as though he longed to strike the girl down at his feet.
Violet drew back and faced him with flashing, indignant eyes.
“Now, sir”—in a low, level voice—“I demand that you make a full explanation. I wish to know exactly what you mean. I am tired of your hints and insinuations. I will know what sin my father committed and left the shame and suffering for my mother to bear. Thank Heaven, she has escaped its burden—and you!”
“Have a care, Miss Violet Arleigh!” he hissed, vengefully. “I advise you to be careful, and weigh well what you are saying. You may get into serious trouble. I am not the sort of man to stand idly by and allow a woman to insinuate all sorts of crimes against my good name.”
“Your good name!”
Violet said no more, but the silence which followed was significant.
“No, Gilbert Warrington,” the girl’s cold voice broke in upon the pause which followed, “you are not that sort of man! You are capable of waging war against weakness, of leading a crusade against friendless and unprotected women and children. There is no bravery or real courage about you. From the crown of your head to the soles of your feet you are an unmitigated coward!”
“By Heaven!”
He sprung to her side and laid his hand heavily upon her arm. But she shook off his grasp and faced him bravely, her small head uplifted in conscious pride, her beautiful dark eyes shining like stars.
“Dare to touch me again!” she panted, breathlessly. “Dare to lay your hand upon me, Gilbert Warrington, and I will have you punished as you deserve.”
“Who will make the attempt? Who will venture to make such an attempt, pray?” he sneered. “Your fine gentleman lover, Leonard Yorke? Mr. Leonard Yorke, of Yorke Towers, who makes fierce love to you one hour, and in the next is pouring forth his very heart at the dainty feet of your pretty cousin, Hilda Rutledge? Why, it is common talk throughout the neighborhood that Leonard Yorke is playing fast and loose with you, and really does not know which is the most charming, you or Hilda. They hint, however, that while he is dead in love with Miss Rutledge, who is poor, he still keeps his hold upon you, the supposed heiress to the Arleigh fortune.”
She caught the tone of ill-concealed derision in his voice, and her heart sunk low in her breast with a sharp pang.
“The ‘supposed heiress’?” she repeated, eagerly. “Will you kindly explain your object in using the term ‘supposed,’ Mr. Warrington?”
His eyes glittered with a fiendish light.
“Oh, so you have come down to business at last?” he sneered. “To be sure, I will explain with pleasure. My dear Miss Arleigh, you must know that I hold in my possession a secret—a family secret of the Arleighs—which, if it were made public, would ruin you forever in the eyes of society and the world in general. Once known by the world of society, and it will blight and destroy your happiness; it will make you a very outcast, a pariah among men. Leonard Yorke will turn coldly from you, and his love will die.”
“If his love is worth no more than that,” intervened Violet, hotly, “it will be better for it to die. But I thought you said that he loved Hilda?”
Gilbert Warrington bit his lip. In his eagerness to wound and pique Violet, he had forgotten his own words of a few moments previous.
He smiled coldly.
“Well, I do not care; he will drop you as he would a scorpion, when he learns the truth concerning you, and the disgraceful secret for which Harold Arleigh is responsible.”
Violet made no reply; she stood like one stunned, as gradually the truth, the bitter truth, crept into her heart. She was in the power of this villain. How, in Heaven’s name, could she escape? There must be some way of escape, some road out of the dilemma, but she knew not which way to turn. Gilbert Warrington seemed to read her very thoughts.
“Every man has his price, I have been told,” he observed, sententiously. “I have mine. Are you willing to pay a price for keeping your unpleasant secret, Miss Arleigh? Tell me, are you?”
She caught her breath with a suppressed cry.
“What is your price?” she asked, coldly.
Yet no hint of what was coming had as yet intruded upon her heart. She believed that he would ask a share of the Arleigh fortune, perhaps. Well, better that than to be haunted by this bad secret, this ghost of the past; and to escape from the clutches of this man Warrington she would sacrifice all that she possessed in the world.
He smiled.
“My price? Oh, yes! Well, Miss Violet Arleigh, it is this.” His eyes transfixed hers with their steady gaze, and his thin lips set themselves into a straight, narrow line. “I know all about this secret, the Arleigh secret,” he went on, slowly. “I am the only person living, now that your mother is gone, who does know it. It is a secret which would ruin you forever if it became known, or even suspected. But I will promise, will swear, will bind myself in any way you like, to keep it a dead secret forever, upon one condition. It is this, that you consent to be my wife. Once my wife, our interests will be identical, and I will shield you from all the world, from all harm. I will hide this secret, and no one will ever suspect its existence. I will place in your hands the proof, so that you may destroy it. You shall live a life of ease and luxury. Only consent to be my wife. Will you, Violet?”
