Laurel Vane; or, The Girls' Conspiracy

by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

It was a long while before Laurel recovered her calmness. She had been severely shaken by her interview with Mr. Le Roy. She did not feel half so triumphant and victorious as she might have done. She had repulsed her husband, she had made him suffer all that she had suffered that night when he had renounced her. But there was none of the sweetness of victory in her triumph. She was at war with herself. Her own heart was a traitor. It only ached over the conquest of love by ruthless pride. The triumph was bitterer than defeat.

When she dragged herself up from the floor at last, with all her misery written on her face, she saw a letter lying on her toilet-table. It had been brought in by her maid during her absence. She took it up, and found that it was addressed to herself, in the delicate, refined hand of Mrs. Le Roy.

An expression of dismay and dread came over the beautiful face.

"Why has she written to me?" she asked herself. "Does she, too, mean to claim me and Laurie?"

She grew very pale at the thought. A dread came over her that they would take her child from her to punish her for her willfulness and pride.

"They shall not have him," she said to herself, setting her little white teeth firmly together. "I will take my little son and fly to the uttermost ends of the earth with him. I was foolish and weak even to have come here. I forgot many things I ought to have remembered. I forgot utterly that tell-tale birth mark on my child's temple—the birth-mark of all the Le Roys. I never dreamed that they would suspect me. I thought that grave with my name upon it was an all sufficient shield for me."

She opened the letter and read it. It was a beautiful, pathetic appeal that brought tears to Laurel's proud, dark eyes. Mrs. Le Roy had recognized her, too. She prayed her to forgive St. Leon for his hardness of heart, and to return to him.

"I do not know whether my son has recognized you or not, Laurel," wrote the anxious mother. "You may remember that he is very proud and reserved. He is silent. He makes no sign. And yet I think that he could not have failed to know you. Forgive him, Laurel. He has suffered bitterly and repented sorely. Let me tell him that you are living, and that your beautiful little son is his own child. Let me tell him that you both will come home to us. Ah, Laurel, my dear daughter, I cannot tell you how tenderly my heart goes out to you, both for your own sake and for that of the child. How I love the beautiful, manly little lad! He is the heir to Eden, the last descendant of the Le Roys, my son's son, my only grandchild. All these years you have kept him from us; you have had all his sweetness to yourself. I have no word of blame for you, my dear daughter. I know you were greatly wronged—almost driven, as it were, into the course you adopted. But you will give him to us now, will you not, dear? You will come back to the home you never should have left, you will be the light of our hearts and our eyes, as you were before that fatal night. To-morrow I shall come to you for your answer. I have not told St. Leon of my discovery. I shall not speak to him until after I see you. But I cannot help but hope, that your answer will be a favorable one. You would not have come here among us if you had not meant to be kind to us. I remember your gentle, loving heart, my dear, and, although you have the world at your feet now, I think you will be the same tender, loving little girl that you were of old. You will come home to us soon—you and my darling little Laurence."

"Laurence, Laurence, it is only of the child they think—only of their heir to Eden," she said to herself, bitterly. "I see through it all. They would endure the mother for the child's sake! I understand! But it shall not be. I will take my boy away. I have cared for him all these years, and I will do so still. They who were so cruel to the mother shall have none of the child's love!"

And when Mrs. Le Roy called the next day she was astounded to find that Carlyle Ford and Mrs. Lynn and her son had left Belle Vue the previous evening. None of the servants were aware of their destination. One of them gave the lady a note that Mrs. Lynn had left behind for her. It was brief and cruelly cold.