CHAPTER XIII.
A CRY IN THE DARK.
One more scene in this night’s fateful masquerade remains to be described, and then the seemingly separate threads of our plot unite, and twine about our central figures a chain of Fate.
While Van Vernet is setting snares for the feet of his rival, and while that young man of many resources is actively engaged in disentangling himself therefrom,—while Leslie Warburton, tortured by a secret which she cannot reveal, and dominated by a power she dare not disobey, steals away from her stately home—and while Alan Warburton, soured by suspicion, made unjust by his own false pride, follows like a shadow behind her—a cloud is descending upon the house of Warburton.
Sitting apart from the mirthful crowd, quite unobserved and seemingly wholly engrossed in themselves, are little Daisy Warburton and the quaintly-attired Mother Goose, before mentioned.
It is long past the child’s latest bedtime, but her step-mamma has been so entirely preoccupied, and Millie so carelessly absorbed in watching the gayeties of the evening, that the little one has been overlooked, and feels now quite like her own mistress.
“Ha! ha!” she laughs merrily, leaning, much at her ease, upon the knee of Mother Goose; “ha! ha! what nice funny stories you tell; almost as nice as my new mamma’s stories. Only,” looking up with exquisite frankness, “your voice is not half so nice as my new mamma’s.”
“Because I’m an old woman, dearie,” replies Mother Goose, a shade of something like disapproval in her tone. “Do you really want to see Mother Hubbard’s dog, little girl?”
“Old Mother Hubbard—she went to the cupboard,” sings Daisy gleefully. “Of course I do, Mrs. Goose. Does Mother Hubbard look like you?”