The father decided to settle in Germany for a year and cultivate his daughter’s mind.
He had already discovered to his delight that she had inherited his great talent for music, together with a voice of rare power and melody.
Securing the best teachers that money could procure, they spent eighteen quiet months in the polishing of Jessie’s mind, and father and daughter became passionately attached to each other, finding in this warm affection some balm for past sorrow.
Meanwhile, Lyndon had kept from his daughter one fact that she would doubtless have found very interesting—the story of the accident that had prevented the marriage of Frank Laurier at the appointed time.
He had read in the next day’s papers the story of the interrupted marriage—the bride’s long wait at the church, the mysterious failure of the bridegroom to arrive, the bride’s mortification and her return home—then the solution of the mystery in the accident that had befallen Laurier, nearly costing him his life, as it was stated that he was lingering between life and death with concussion of the brain.
Leon Lyndon immediately comprehended that he had been the cause of the trouble by running into Laurier with his wheel, and though it had been unavoidable, he felt a keen remorse and regret for his part in the tragedy, although he owed the victim no sympathy, seeing what grief he had brought upon his daughter.
These facts Lyndon thought it prudent to conceal from Jessie, supposing that the marriage would take place anyhow, as soon as the condition of the bridegroom improved, so the name was tacitly dropped between them, and after they left New York remained unspoken, if unforgotten.
Meanwhile, matters were quite different in New York from what either he or Jessie could have supposed.
Laurier, after his accident, had remained for several days in a serious condition, recovering consciousness so slightly as not to be able to recognize the friends who were permitted to visit him. Having no relatives in the city, his dearest friend, Ernest Noel, was often by his bedside, and it was quite a week before the latter dared answer the half-dazed questions put to him by the sick man.
Then full consciousness dawned, and all the cruel truth came upon him.