CHAPTER XXV.
A TERRIBLE SECRET.
Violet felt herself borne rapidly away in the strong arms which held her; away, she knew not whither. It was melodramatic; it was like a scene from a sensational novel; but this recollection did not lessen the poor girl’s terror. In vain she struggled and tried to shriek aloud for help; the heavy hand closed tighter down upon her month; her breath grew shorter and fainter, and at last, in sheer self-defense, she ceased to struggle or to try and raise an alarm. At length, after what seemed an endless time, her abductor came to a halt, and she was placed upon her feet.
“There, my lady,” said a harsh voice in her ear, “you are safe at last—safe in my hands.”
That voice, that hated voice! She realized the truth at once; she was in the power of Gilbert Warrington. A cold, sickening sensation crept over her heart and chilled the blood within her veins. In the power of this villain, what hope was left for her? Where was he taking her? Why had he abducted her? And what was the meaning of the words to which she had listened between old Betty Harwood and Warrington? She felt her heart stand still with terror, then with a mad bound it throbbed on once more. Panting in breathless silence, she extended her hands; they came in contact with the trunk of a tree. The cloak was removed from her eyes; she glanced wildly around her. She was in the woods somewhere behind Yorke Towers, alone in the night with Gilbert Warrington.
He stood before her glaring down into her frightened face with wild eyes full of triumph.
“So you know the situation at last, my lady,” he sneered. “You are in my hands, and it will be many a long day before you get out again, I can assure you, unless you will consent to my wishes. Violet, if you will marry me at once, I will swear to leave you and never come near you again. I want the Arleigh fortune, and if you will secure it to me by marriage, I will never trouble you more. You shall be as free as the bird of the air. What do you say, Violet?”
“I say that you are a villain, Gilbert Warrington, and that I would sooner die than become your wife.”
“Humph! I fancy you will change that decision when you learn the full extent of my power over you. Violet Arleigh, shall I tell you the secret which I have held over your mother’s head for many a year, the secret which I had threatened to expose the very night that she—she died. It terrified her so that she attempted to take her own life.”
“I do not believe it! I do not believe that my mother would ever think seriously of such a dreadful thing as suicide!” cried the girl, excitedly. “I believe that you are speaking falsely. You are a bad man—a false, bad man, and a villain, if ever there was one!”
Gilbert Warrington smiled. Even in the dense shadow of the trees, through which the silvery moon-rays could scarcely penetrate, Violet saw that smile, and a chill crept over her.
“This is all mere waste of time and breath, you know, my dear,” he observed, harshly. “I am going to have my own way in this matter, and you may as well yield peacefully as otherwise, for yield you must! Now, Violet, I ask you once more, would you like to learn the nature of the secret which blackened all your mother’s life and made her afraid of her own shadow—a secret which I alone shared, and which I held over her head until she longed to die to escape the knowledge—a secret for which she paid dearly in more ways than one?”
“Yes, indeed,” panted the girl, desperately, “she paid you well, you blackmailer and extortioner! I knew that there was something hidden in the past for which she was suffering and atoning with her very life. I know nothing of the nature of that secret; but I do not believe that it has anything to do with dishonor if it had any connection with my mother!”
“Ah, indeed! What confidence, to be sure! It is truly touching. What a blow it will be for you, my dear, when you learn the truth—that your mother was base and vile and wanton——”
“Stop! So help me Heaven, you shall not breathe such words against my pure mother, a saint in Heaven! Dare to open your lips to speak such vile words again, Gilbert Warrington, and I will find some way to punish you!”
“Oh, will you? It is something like the mouse and the lion, now, isn’t it, my dear? Yet the truth remains the same. There is a black and awful secret connected with your mother’s past which, if it were known to Mrs. Yorke, for instance—and I can not say how much that lady already suspects—would effectually cut off all tender passages between yourself and her beloved son. Helen Yorke is far too proud to allow her only son to ally himself with disgrace!”
“He would never do that by marriage with an Arleigh!” cried Violet, proudly.
“No? There, now, you see just how little you know about it, my dear. Disgrace is not a pleasant word, but it ofttimes blackens the fairest escutcheons; and so it has done in this instance. Your mother, my dear Violet, was an uncommonly fine woman—she must have been to have held my heart captive for all these long years; but all the same, there was a time in her life when she made a misstep as well as many another woman. Many a proud lady of fashion and position carries a black secret hidden away in her heart; and Rosamond Arleigh was thus burdened, for she kept hidden away for years the knowledge that her marriage with Harold Arleigh was a sham—a mere farce—and that you, her only child, are illegitimate!”
“Oh, my God!”
The words fell from the girl’s white lips in a broken gasp, a bitter cry of mortal anguish and wordless suffering. She fell upon her knees upon the ground and wrung her small hands in bitter agony.
“Gilbert Warrington, beware!” she cried at length, a mad hope that he was tricking her springing up within her heart; “beware how you slander my mother, my poor dead mother! So help me Heaven!”—she arose to her feet and stood gazing with eyes full of despair into the man’s cruel face—“I will hold you accountable for this! I will go to the authorities in the morning, and you shall prove what you assert, or suffer as you deserve! It is beyond endurance! It is terrible that I must stand here, helpless and alone, and listen to such fearful words from the lips of a bad man like you! Monster! fiend! have you no heart, no pity, no mercy, no feeling of humanity? Surely the world does not need a devil while such men as you exist!”
Gilbert Warrington laughed softly, and his wicked eyes twinkled with malicious satisfaction.
“Well done, well said, my dear little spitfire!” he sneered. “Storm away, my little tempest in a teapot; I like to hear you. It is the most amusing scene that I have witnessed in many a day. Reminds me of a tiny toy terrier snapping at the huge heels of a great Newfoundland, and has just about as much effect. All the same, Violet Arleigh, my words are true. Do you think me silly enough to make such grave assertions without being fully convinced of their truth? You must be mad! No, my dear; I have known for several years that Rosamond and Harold Arleigh were never legally married. What is more, Helen Yorke suspects the truth. She was dead in love with Harold Arleigh, herself, and I was dead in love with Rosamond, so we are fellow-sufferers, she and I. No, Violet, I am not deceiving you nor slandering the dead from brutal motives; I am telling you the plain, hard truth. It is time that you knew it. And I am prepared to prove this grave charge, if you wish the secret exposed to the light of day, the secret which killed your mother. But I offer you terms. Marry me, Violet, share the fortune with me, and I promise to keep the secret to the end of time.”
The girl drew back, her eyes flashing fire.
“If I am not Harold Arleigh’s legitimate child, I am not his legal heir,” she said, coldly; “therefore, the Arleigh fortune will not go with my hand to anybody. Gilbert Warrington, you have overreached yourself in this game. Even I, with my limited knowledge and experience, know better than that.”
“But, Violet, you forget the fortune was bestowed upon your mother by Harold Arleigh in the shape of a deed of gift. You are her legal heir, and, at all events, the will which she left—oh, you know nothing of it, I see!—leaves you sole heir. It is a comfortable fortune, and that fortune I mean to have. But I must first make you my wife; so, Violet, my dear, you had better listen to reason, for you can not escape me again.”
