She gave a cry, looked me wildly in the face, and then sank upon her knees, lifting up thanks to heaven. “Twenty-four of these notes,” said she; “have I written, and flung upward through that lofty skylight, weighted by the beads he left wound about my darling daughter’s neck. This one only has brought me the least response. Does he know? Is he willing that you should come up here?”
“I have come at the risk of my life,” I quietly answered. “He does not know that I have surprised his secret. He would kill me if he did. Madame, I want to free you, but I want to do it without endangering him. I am his wife, and three hours ago I loved him.”
Her face, which had turned very pale, approached mine with a look I hardly expected to encounter there. “I understand,” she said; “I comprehend devotion; I have felt it for my daughter. Else I could not have survived the wrong of this incarceration, and my forcible severance from old associations and friends. I loved her, and since the knowledge of her affliction, and the still worse knowledge that she had been made the victim of a man’s greed to an extent not often surpassed in this world, would have made her young life wretched without securing the least alleviation to our fate, I have kept both facts from her, and she does not know that closed doors mean bondage any more than she knows that unrelieved darkness means blindness. She is absolutely ignorant that there is such a thing as light.”
“Oh, madame!” I murmured, “Oh, madame! Show a poor girl what she can do to restore you to your rights. The door is open and you can descend; but that means——- Oh, madame, I am filled with terror when I think what. He may be in the hall now. He may have missed the key and returned. If only you were out of the house!”
“My dear girl,” she quietly replied, “we will be some day. You will see to that, I know. I do not think I could stay here, now that I have seen another face than his. But I do not want to go now, to-day. I want to prepare Theresa for freedom; she has lived so long quietly with me that I dread the shock and excitement of other voices and the pressure of city sounds upon her delicate ears. I must train her for contact with the world. But you won’t forget me if I allow you to lock us in again? You will come back and open the doors, and let me go down again through my old halls into the room where my husband died; and if Mr. Allison objects—— My dear girl, you know now that he is an unscrupulous man, that it is my money he begrudged me, and that he has used it and made himself a rich man. But he has one spark of grace in him. He has never forgotten that we needed bread and clothes. He has waited on us himself, and never have we suffered from physical want. Therefore, he may not object now. He may feel that he has enriched himself sufficiently to let us go free, and if I must give my oath to let the past go without explanation, why I am ready, my dear; nothing can undo it now, and I am grown too old to want money except for her.” “I cannot,” I murmured, “I cannot find courage to present the subject to him so. I do not know my husband’s mind. It is a fathomless abyss to me. Let me think of some other way. Oh, madam! if you were out of the house, and could then come——” Suddenly a thought struck me. “I can do it; I see the way to do it—a way that will place you in a triumphant position, and yet save him from suspicion. He is weary of this care. He wants to be relieved of the dreadful secret which anchors him to this house, and makes a hell of the very spot in which he has fixed his love. Shall we undertake to do his for him? Can you trust me if I promise to take an immediate impression of this key, and have one made for myself, which shall insure my return here?”
“My dear,” she said, taking my head between her two trembling hands, “I have never looked upon a sweeter face than my daughter’s till I looked upon yours to-day. If you bid me hope, I will hope, and if you bid me trust, I will trust. The remembrance of this kiss will not let you forget.” And she embraced me in a warm and tender manner.
“I will write you,” I murmured. “Some day look for a billet under the door. It will tell you what to do; now I must go back to my husband.”
And, with a sudden access of fear, caused by my dread of meeting his eyes with this hidden knowledge between us, I hastened out and locked the door behind me.
When I reached the office, I was in a fainting condition, but all my hopes revived again when I saw the vest still hanging where I had left it, and heard my husband’s voice singing cheerfully in the adjoining room.