“Go on, dear,” whispered Arthur, encouragingly, with an anxious look at Cinthia.
“We were very happy, for my husband seemed a model of manly perfection,” continued Mrs. Varian. “We lived in Florida with my dear father, who made Everard the manager of all his investments, thus insuring him independence of my fortune, for he was very proud and impatient of being thought a fortune-hunter. Arthur was born when I had been married one year, and until he was four years old I was the happiest woman on earth.”
Everard Dawn gave her a sudden bright look that she did not perceive, as if grateful for those words.
Again sighing, she continued:
“Then a dark shadow fell over Love’s Retreat—the shadow of a beautiful young girl, the daughter of a former client of my husband. She arrived suddenly at our home one day, bearing a letter from her father who had recently died. In it he commended the girl—Gladys Lowe—to the guardianship of my husband, begging that he would keep her at his home till she married. To be brief, her father’s property dwindled to nothing when it came to be settled up, leaving her penniless on our hands—a charge I would most generously have undertaken but for the predilection Miss Lowe immediately manifested for my husband, driving me wild with her kittenish coquetries, for she was very charming, with abundant tawny locks and effective hazel eyes, that were always fixed on Everard with a passion she could not disguise. The Varians are charged with being jealous people, and I do not deny it; I feared she would win my husband with her blandishments, and I imperiously demanded of him that he send Miss Lowe away.”
CHAPTER XXXIX.
A MORTAL WOUND.
Every one in the room was listening with suppressed excitement to Mrs. Varian’s story, every eye was fixed on her mortally pale face, so deathlike in its pallor save for the great Oriental dark eyes burning like coals of fire.
Cinthia had grown ghastly, too, as she rested in the clasp of Madame Ray’s arm, taking no heed of her handsome betrothed on the other side, hovering near to console her in the terrible revelation soon coming.
The lady paused, drew her breath in sharply, like one in pain, and resumed:
“I could not bring my husband to believe in the sincerity of my objections to his ward. He first laughed at my jealousy, then upbraided me with my injustice to a homeless orphan girl. He could not send her away penniless into the world, for he had been under obligations to her father, in whose office he had gained his first law practice. He begged me to have patience and charity toward Miss Lowe until her superior attractions should win her a husband. Heaven knows I was never lacking in Christian charity toward any unfortunate person, but Gladys Lowe was not a good girl. A flirt to her fingertips, and totally without principle or conscience, she discovered my jealousy and played on it cleverly, augmenting it by cunning schemes that my husband never suspected, and that I, in my bitter pride and jealousy, never betrayed to him. So matters went on for a year, and in that interval of time I several times surprised my husband in compromising situations with his ward. By my father’s advice, I ordered her to leave my house, and there was a stormy scene.