Isabel made no answer, but trembling in every limb, shrank farther and farther back in her chair as the little, groping, outstretched arms came nearer and nearer to her. Presently, when she saw no escape, she forced a loud laugh, and said, “Fie, Alice. I tried to frighten you by feigning a strange voice. You want your letter, don’t you? Here it is. I only wished to see if in reading it a second time I could get any clue to the mystery,” and she gave the bit of paper back to Alice, who, somewhat puzzled to understand what it all meant, left the room, and Isabel was again alone. Three times she caught up the letter with the intention of breaking its seal, and as often threw it down, for, unprincipled as she was, she shrank from that act, and still, if she did not know the truth, she should go mad, she said, and pressing her hands to her forehead, she thought what the result to herself would be were Marian really alive.
“But she isn’t,” she exclaimed. “I won’t have it so. She’s dead—she’s buried in the river.” But who was there in New York that wrote so much like her? She wished she knew, and she might know, too, by opening the letter. If it was from a stranger, she could destroy it, and he, thinking it had been lost, would write again. She should die if she didn’t know, and maybe she should die if she did.
At all events, reality was more endurable than suspense, and glancing furtively around to make sure that no blind eyes were near, she snatched the letter from the table and broke the seal! Even then she dared not read it, until she reflected that she could not give it to Frederic in this condition—she might as well see what it contained; and wiping the cold moisture from her face she opened it and read, while her flesh seemed turning to stone, and she could feel the horror creeping through her veins, freezing her blood and petrifying her very brain. Marian Lindsey lived! She was coming back again—back to her husband, and back to the home which was hers. There was enough in the letter for her to guess the truth, and she knew why another had been preferred to herself. For a moment even her lip curled with scorn at what she felt was an unmanly act, but this feeling was soon lost in the terrible thought that Marian might return.
“Can it be? Must it be?” she whispered, as her hard, black eyes fastened themselves again upon the page, blotted with Marian’s tears. “Seven years—seven years,” she continued, “I’ve heard of that before,” and into the wild tumult of her thoughts there stole a ray of hope. If she withheld the letter from Frederic, and she must withhold it now, he would never know what she knew. Possibly, too, Marian might die, and though she would have repelled the accusation, Isabel Huntington was guilty of murder in her heart, as she sat there alone and planned what she would do. She was almost on the borders of insanity, for the disappointment to her now would be greater and more humiliating than before. She had no home to go to—her arrangements for remaining in Kentucky were all made, and Redstone Hall seemed so fair that she would willingly wait twice seven years, if, at the expiration of that time, she were sure of being its mistress. It was worth trying for, and though she had but little hope of success, the beautiful demon bent her queenly head and tried to devise some means of effectually silencing Marian, so that if there really were anything in the seven years the benefit would accrue to her.
“She’s a little,” she said, “and this Mrs. Daniel Burt she talked about is just as silly as herself. They’ll both believe what is told to them. I may never marry Frederic, it is true, but I’ll be revenged on Marian. What business had she to cross my path, the little red-headed jade!”
Isabel was growing excited, and as she dared do anything when angry, she resolved to send the letter back.
“I can imitate his handwriting,” she thought; “I can do anything as I feel now,” and going to her room, she found the letter he had written to her mother.
This she studied and imitated for half an hour, and at the end of that time wrote on the blank page of Marian’s letter, “Isabel Huntington is now the mistress of Redstone Hall.”
“That will keep her still, I reckon,” she said, and taking a fresh envelope, she directed it to “Mrs. Daniel Burt,” as Marian had bidden Frederic do. “’Twas a fortunate circumstance, her telling him that, for ‘Marian Lindsey’ would have been observed at once,” she thought; and then, lest her resolution should fail her, she found Josh and bade him take the letter to the post-office at the Forks of Elkhorn not very far away.
Nothing could suit Josh better than to ride, and stuttering out something which nobody could understand, he mounted his rather sorry-looking horse and was soon galloping out of sight. In the kitchen Mrs. Huntington heard of Josh’s destination, and when next she met her daughter, she asked to whom she had been writing.