“‘Estelle, what will you give me for good news at last?’ she cried, gayly, and holding the telegram above her head, out of my reach.
“‘I will give you a hundred dollars, Nell, if it is good news,’ I answered, springing up to take it from her, my heart beating high with hope, for I felt almost sure that the message could contain nothing else.
“I tore it open with trembling eagerness, only to find these words within:
“‘Lost; appointment given to a man named Wilmot. Will write particulars.’
“It was a dreadful blow! Nellie had read the message over my shoulder, and for a moment we were both so paralyzed that we could only look into each other’s face in dumb agony. Then I remembered nothing more for a week, while for a month I did not leave my bed. During this time Charlie wrote, bitterly regretting that he had sent me the message, but saying he had promised to let me know as soon as the matter was decided, and on the impulse of the moment, his judgment blunted by his own disappointment, he had cabled what afterward he realized must have been a cruel blow to me. He said that money had bought up the position, while he had been so certain that the influence at work for him was stronger than any amount of bribery could be. ‘Still,’ he cheerfully concluded, ‘he would try for something else, and do his utmost to relieve me from my embarrassing position.’
“All this, however, was poor consolation for me; I could not confess my marriage and go to him a beggar in his poverty, even though my heart longed for him with all the strength of its deep and lasting love. My mother failing, slowly, but surely, was dependent upon me for every comfort that she possessed and besides this I could not make up my mind to put the ocean between us when I knew I should never see her again if I did. My husband had spoken of my ‘embarrassing position,’ but he did not dream one-half the truth, for I had concealed from him the fact that I was soon to become a mother.”
CHAPTER XLVI.
MRS. MAPLESON’S STORY CONCLUDED.
“Estelle!” exclaimed Colonel Mapleson, in a shocked, yet sympathetic tone, “of all the romances that I have ever read or known, this is the strangest!”
“Yes,” Mrs. Mapleson continued, “I had persistently refrained from telling my husband my secret, and Nellie alone knew it. At first I only meant to reserve it until he should come for me, as he was to do immediately upon securing his position. I was sure that, if he knew, he would instantly demand my return to him, and an open acknowledgment of our union, and so I kept putting it off, until now, that I had received that fatal news, it was too late. I could not send for him to come to me, for then the secret must come out with all its direful results, while I knew he could not take care of me in a strange country when he was so unsuccessful in his own. I was almost insane for a time, for I saw no way out of my difficulties. My mother was so feeble that she demanded the constant attendance of a nurse, and the most expensive luxuries, to prolong her life. Where would the money come from to furnish all these, if it should become known that I had violated the conditions of my uncle’s will? Where, too, would the money come to meet my own expenses of maternity, and to care for the little one that would soon be mine? All too late I realized the terrible mistake that I had made in yielding to Charlie’s importunities, although I loved my husband most tenderly.
“‘What shall I do?’ I cried, in despair, to my sister, one day, when all these facts, and the terrible fate awaiting their revelation, had been reviewed for the hundredth time.