“No; do not put them away yet. There were several good things among them—no, I won’t get frightened again,” as he declined to let her have them. She drew them gently from him, and hurriedly took out one, which she put into his hand, saying falteringly:
“Would not this make a creditable novel?”
Bayard Lorraine took the clipping from Fair’s trembling little white hand, and sat down by her side to read it, and if his eyes had not been turned from her face he would have seen that her eyes had a troubled light, and that she had grown pale again, while her form trembled with agitation.
But he did not look at her. He began to read the paragraph, which had a sensational heading, running thus:
The Finale of a Romantic Story of Love, Pride, and Ambition among the Working Classes.
A slight frown contracted Bayard Lorraine’s straight brows, and he read on:
The deliberate suicide by drowning in the East River yesterday of Carl Bernicci, an Italian who kept a small fruit and confectionery stand near the wharf, forms the sequel to a romantic story which reached our reporter through the friends of the suicide. It appears that there worked in a garment factory a pretty little girl by the name of Fielding, a vain little creature, whose head was quite turned by the beauty of her own big, brown eyes and curly, red hair. The little beauty was clever and ambitious, and in the hope of making a grand match through her good looks, held aloof from her admirers in her own class of life, treating them with scorn and indifference.
But through her vaulting ambition came her terrible downfall. A young man, Carl Bernicci by name, saw the factory girl, and fell in love with her. He begged one of her associates in the factory to introduce him, but was assured that the pretty Miss Fielding would not look at a poor man. Then, just for a joke, he proposed that he should represent himself as a very wealthy man. Miss Fielding was caught by the glittering bait, and accepted him when he proposed marriage. In a few weeks they were solemnly united in wedlock, the young lover thinking that she would forgive his deception when she found it out, for the sake of their mutual love. How much he deceived himself may be understood by the fact that his girl bride left him forever within an hour after their marriage, vowing vengeance on him for the trick by which he had won her hand. For several weeks he haunted her humble home, where she lived with her mother, but both refused to have anything to do with him, for the mother was as ambitious and unforgiving as the daughter. But very suddenly the parent died of heart disease, and soon afterward the girl disappeared and her whereabouts became a mystery to every one. Carl Bernicci, the despised yet devoted husband, was in despair, fearing that she had gone to the bad to avenge herself upon him. His fears, unhappily, had good ground, for it was soon discovered that she had fallen into evil ways. She was seen lately riding in an open carriage with a notorious woman, and Carl Bernicci, driven to desperation, flung himself yesterday into the East River and was drowned. The body was not recovered.
This was what Fair had read. This was what had driven the color from her face and lips, this horror of Carl Bernicci’s tragic death. But little by little the blushes came back, and the thought that now she was free to love Bayard Lorraine made her glad that the man she feared and hated was dead.
“But what a tissue of lies the whole thing was!” she thought indignantly. “How dared any one assert that I had gone to the bad? I was never out in a carriage but once, and then I went with Mrs. Howard’s maid to a department store to leave an order for my traveling outfit. I was most falsely accused, and I believe that Belva Platt was the enemy that started the slander,” she said to herself bitterly.