"Serena! Good heavens! It is really you! What has happened? Is your mother dead, or—"
"Dead? No, thank Heaven—we are both living and well. The fact is, Keith, we—mamma and I—closed up the house the very day after you left us, and decided upon a little trip. We have been for some two weeks traveling about now—and that explains our unexpected appearance here, our trip being partly on business, partly for pleasure. Mamma received news from some of her relatives which made it advisable for us to come South—news which may prove of pecuniary benefit to us. So we placed our house in charge of Mrs. Rogers and started at once."
She told her falsehood glibly, her sallow cheek flushing, her pale eyes scintillating. It sounded very reasonable; and how could Keith Kenyon know that it was false, or detect the ring of untruth in her story? One of the most unsuspicious of natures, it was hard to believe that this woman had deliberately followed him, ignoring the letter that he had written her—that letter in which he had begged her to release him from a galling bond—because he loved another woman, and had never loved Serena Lynne, but had been led into an engagement while he was too sick and feeble to realize his own actions.
It was a bold stroke, but Serena Lynne was capable of this, and much more. At first she had found it somewhat difficult to induce her mother to co-operate with her in the scheme which she had concocted; but one part of her story to Keith was true—Mrs. Lynne had received a letter from her sister, the woman who had once been Keith's nurse when he was a child. She lived in an obscure town in Louisiana, and had not met Mrs. Lynne for years. She had to send for her sister, and Mrs. Lynne could not well refuse to aid her daughter in her scheme when her own private affairs called her into the vicinity of Keith Kenyon's home. And Serena was in dead earnest. She had sworn to marry this man—sworn upon bended knee that she would never give him up—this man whom she so madly, insanely loved. She had made this bold move—risked her all upon one cast of the die—and it would go hard with her before she would willingly resign all hope and give up the man who was bound to her in honor, though his chains were of iron, and galled and clanked so fearfully.
His eyes sought her face; the sallow, unlovely features looked more repulsive to him than ever before.
"But, Serena"—his voice trembling a little with sudden fear—"did you not receive my letter?"
"Your letter?" arching her pale brows with assumed surprise. "Why, how could I, when we left home the very day after you did? And so you did write to me, Keith? Thank you. I shall have my mail forwarded here, and will be pleased to read your first love letter to me, even though it is a little behind time."
She laughed, but the laugh had a disagreeable tone, and was a failure.
"'Better late than never,'" she added.