Mr. Maynard had frequently warned them all against touching any of the test tubes, flasks, retorts and crucibles in his room, but evening after evening he called Elizabeth to watch the changing colors in the delicate fluids, or the crystillization of rare substances while he instructed her, so they honestly supposed, by many scientific and wonderful experiments.
This was all Mrs. Sinclair could learn from the aged mourners, and weary at heart she returned once more to her now cheerless home. She felt certain that this Lawrence Maynard and her son were one and the same person, but little did she dream of the actual facts that remained untold in the aged woman's innocent recital.
It was in this cleverly improvised laboratory that Elizabeth Merril, unknown to her feeble grandparents, passed the few deliriously happy hours of her otherwise unromantic life. She had entered in the full possession of her womanly dignity and virtue, only to become faint from the exhalations of tempting perfumes and intoxicated by the fascinations of the tempter's smile and passionate pleadings. Long and fiercely she struggled with her new born passion, but her lover's first, warm kiss drew her very heart from her bosom and almost insane with love and fear she twined her white arms around his neck and pleaded for his dear protection.
At last, in a moment of reckless passion, he consented to a private marriage only insisting on concealment of the same until he should give her permission to announce it.
A private marriage is but a compromise with virtue in every instance, but Elizabeth was young and inexperienced.
She trusted her lover implicitly, and although the affair was not as she in her girlish fancies desired, still it was a bondage of love and she would willingly have submitted to its chains until death if her lover had so commanded.
It was only the insurmountable difficulty of her condition that at last counteracted the mental and moral poison of his presence and broke completely the spell that his impassioned caresses had thrown so fatally about her.
When the truth burst upon her that concealment was no longer possible, she fled to his apartments and fell on her knees before him.
"Oh, Lawrie, Lawrie," she sobbed, "You must tell Grandma of our marriage, you must, or I am ruined!" and she wept as if her heart would break.