“Oh, I hope none of you will blame me for what she did!” Rosalind cried artlessly. “I am not to blame, for I only thought to give pleasure. The woman came to me as I leaned out of a window, and proffered her wish, and I immediately granted it. How was I to know that at heart she was a fiend?”
CHAPTER XVIII.
A FRIEND IN NEED.
Rosalind’s sorrow, so prettily acted, had its due effect. Her friends quickly acquitted her of all blame, and hastened to soothe her ruffled feelings by praising the good intentions that had prompted her terrible mistake.
The Bonairs hated anything like notoriety, and they tried very hard to keep the sensational events of that night out of the newspapers.
But their efforts failed of success, and the reporters reaped a rich harvest.
When the manager of Berry’s company came the next day to inquire for his missing star, he was astounded to learn through the voluble housekeeper of the tragedy of the previous night.
He went quite white, and trembled with the shock, and as he was rather young and very handsome, Mrs. Hopson surmised that he must be the young girl’s lover, and pitied him very much.
He cried out hoarsely:
“Barely alive, you say, with but one chance in a hundred for her life? Oh, how terrible! I can scarcely credit it, unless I see her with my own eyes!”
He went from the mansion to the cottage, and Mrs. Cline permitted him to see the poor, unconscious girl upon the bed, breathing so faintly that it seemed as if every pulsation must be her last.