THE OLD LOVE IS MASTER.
“Two years since I left West Virginia and began this new life with my dear father in New York! The time has slipped away so fast I can scarcely realize it!” cried Eva as she swept aside with a white, jeweled hand the rich lace curtains from the window and looked out upon Fifth Avenue through a misty veil of fast-falling December snow.
You would scarcely call her “Little Eva” now, she had changed so much from the slender maiden of seventeen to a tall, exquisitely rounded young lady of nearly twenty, more beautiful now than in her first youth, with all the added advantages that travel, culture, and wealth could give.
The rich golden hair had caught a deeper sheen of gold, the great dark eyes were like shadowed pools that held a sorrowful secret, the smile of the rare red lips had a subtle touch of sadness, as if in her very gayest moods Eva Somerville could not forget the past.
No, she could not forget; she bore a haunted heart within her heaving breast—haunted by the memory of the love she had put away—a love that was always crying to her by day or night, in the gayest or the saddest scenes, for recognition.
Many changes had come to Eva since that golden May day when her father had brought her away from West Virginia into this new life of luxury and ease; she had traveled in many lands, she had learned to know the world, and many lovers had knelt at her feet; but none had touched her heart, none had dimmed the image of the handsome face of him from whom she had been parted at the altar by so cruel a tragedy, who had so nearly been her husband that it seemed to her as if their souls were eternally one, though their lives were sundered by the cruel vendetta of hate, begun by their families before they were born.
While she traveled those eighteen months abroad with her father, acquiring the culture and polish necessary to her new station in life, Eva kept up a constant correspondence with her friend Ada Winton, and through her kept informed of all that had transpired since she left.
She had been nearly wild with fear lest Doctor Rupert Ludington should be hanged for her cousin’s murder.
She knew in her heart that he was not guilty, that the accident had happened while he was defending his own life. But she feared lest the jury would not believe the plea for the defense.
She said to herself that, though she was parted eternally from her heart’s beloved, she could not bear her life if they found him guilty—if they punished him for his innocent sin.