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Season,” “Cecil Rosse,” “The Haunted Husband,” “Sundered
Hearts,” and numerous other books published in the
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Neva’s Three Lovers

NEVA’S THREE LOVERS.

CHAPTER I.
THE GAME WELL BEGUN.

Sir Harold Wynde, Baronet, was standing upon the pier head at Brighton, looking idly seaward, and watching the play of the sunset rays on the waters, the tossing white-capped waves, and the white sails in the distance against the blue sky.

He was not yet fifty years of age, tall and handsome and stately, with fair complexion, fair hair, and keen blue eyes, which at times beamed with a warm and genial radiance that seemed to emanate from his soul. The rare nobility of that soul expressed itself in his features. His commanding intellect betrayed itself in his square, massive brows. His grand nature was patent in every look and smile. He was a widower with two children, the elder a son, who was a captain in a fine regiment in India, the younger a daughter still at boarding-school. He possessed a magnificent estate in Kent, a house in town, and a marine villa, and rejoiced in a clear income of seventy thousand pounds a year.

As might be expected from his rare personal and material advantages, he was a lion at Brighton, even though the season was at its height, and peers and peeresses abounded at that fashionable resort. Titled ladies—to use a well-worn phrase—“set their caps” for him; manœuvring mammas smiled upon him; portly papas with their “quivers full of daughters,” and with groaning purses, urged him to dine at their houses or hotels; and widows of every age looked sweetly at him, and thought how divine it would be to be chosen to reign as mistress over the baronet’s estate of Hawkhurst.

But Sir Harold went his ways quietly, seeming oblivious of the hopes and schemes of these manœuverers. He had had a good wife, and he had no intention of marrying again. And so, as he stood carelessly leaning against the railing on the pier head, under the gay awning, his thoughts were far away from the gaily dressed promenaders sauntering down the chain pier or pacing with slow steps to and fro behind him.

The sunset glow slowly faded. The long gray English twilight began to fall slowly upon promenaders, beach, chain pier, and waters. The music of the band swallowed up all other sounds, the murmur of waters, the hum of gay voices, the sweetness of laughter.

But suddenly, in one of the interludes of the music, and in the midst of Sir Harold’s reverie, an incident occurred which was the beginning of a chain of events destined to change the whole future course of the baronet’s life, and to exercise no slight degree of influence upon the lives of others.

Yet the incident was simple. A little pleasure-boat, occupied by two ladies and a boatman, had been sailing leisurely about the pier head for some time. The boatman, one of the ordinary pleasure boatmen who make a living at Brighton, as at other maritime resorts, by letting their crafts and services to chance customers, had been busy with his sail. One of the ladies, a hired companion apparently, sat at one side of the boat, with a parasol on her knee. The other lady, as evidently the employer, half reclined upon the plush cushions, and an Indian shawl of vivid scarlet lavishly embroidered with gold was thrown carelessly about her figure. One cheek of this lady rested upon her jewelled hand, and her eyes were fixed with a singular intentness, a peculiar speculativeness, upon the tall and stalwart figure of Sir Harold Wynde.

There was a world of meaning in that long furtive gaze, and had the baronet been able to read and comprehend it, the tragical history we are about to narrate would never have happened. But he, wrapped in his own thoughts, saw neither the boat nor its occupants.

The little craft crept in quite near to the pier head—so near as to be but a few rods distant—when the boatman shifted his helm to go about and stand upon the other tack. The small vessel gave a lurch, the wind blowing freshly; the lady with the Indian shawl started up, with a shriek; there was an instant of terrible confusion; and then the sail-boat had capsized, and her late occupants were struggling in the waters.

In a moment the promenaders of the chain pier had thronged upon the pier head. Cries and ejaculations filled the air. No one could comprehend how the accident had occurred, but one man who had been watching the boat averred that the lady with the shawl had deliberately and purposely capsized it. And this was the actual fact!

Sir Harold Wynde was startled from the trance-like musings by the lady’s shriek. He looked down upon the waters and beheld the result of the catastrophe. The boat’s sail lay half under water. The boatman had seized the lady’s companion and was clinging to the upturned boat. The companion had fainted in his arms, and he could not loosen his hold upon her unless he would have her drown before his eyes. The lady, at a little distance from her companions in peril, tangled in her mass of scarlet and gold drapery, her hat lost, her long hair trailing on the waves, seemed drowning.

Her peril was imminent. No other boats were near, although one or two were coming up swiftly from a distance.

The lady threw up her white arms with an anguished cry. Her glance sought the thronged pier head in wild appealing. Who, looking at her, would have dreamed that the disaster was part of a well-contrived plan—a trap to catch the unwary baronet?

As she had expected from his well-known chivalrous character, he fell into the trap. His keen eyes flashed a rapid glance over beach and waters. The lady was likely to drown before help could come from the speeding boats. Sir Harold pulled off his coat and made a dive into the sea. He was an expert swimmer, and reached the lady as she was sinking. He caught her in his arms and struck out for the boat. The lady became a dead weight, and when he reached the capsized craft her head lay back on his breast, her long wet tresses of hair coiled around him like Medusean locks, and her pale face was like the face of a dead woman.

Sir Harold clung to the side of the boat opposite that on which the boatman supported his burden. And thus he awaited the coming of the boats.

Among the eager thronging watchers on the pier head above was a tall, fair-faced man, with a long, waxed mustache, sinister eyes and a cynical smile. He alone of the throng seemed unmoved by the tragic incident.

“It was pretty well done,” he muttered, under his breath—“a little transparent, perhaps, and a trifle awkward as well, but pretty well done! The baronet fell into the trap too, exactly as was hoped. Your campaign opens finely, my beautiful Octavia. Let us see if the result is to be what we desire. In short, will the baronet be as unsuspicious all the way through?”

Sir Harold certainly was unsuspicious at that moment. The helpless woman in his arms aroused into activity all the chivalry of his chivalric nature. He held her head above the creeping waves until the foremost boat had reached him. His burden was the first to be lifted into the rescuing craft; the lady’s companion followed; the baronet and the boatman climbing into the boat last, in the order in which they are named.

The capsized boat was righted and its owner took possession of her. The rescuing craft transported the baronet and the two ladies to the beach. The lady companion had recovered her senses and self-possession, but the lady employer lay on the cushions pale and motionless.

On reaching the landing, a cab was found to be in waiting, having been summoned by some sympathizing spectator. The companion, uttering protestations of gratitude, entered the vehicle, and her mistress was assisted in after her. The former gathered her employer in her arms, crying out:

“She is dead! She is dead! I have lost my best friend—”

“Not so, madam,” said Sir Harold, in kindly sympathy. “The lady has only fainted, I think. To what place shall I tell the cabman to drive?”

“To the Albion Hotel. Oh, my poor, poor lady! To die so young! It is terrible!”

Sir Harold made some soothing response, but being chilled and wet, did not find it necessary to accompany to their hotel the heroines of the adventure. He gave their address to the cabman, watched the cab as it rolled away, and then breaking loose from the crowd of friends who gathered around him with anxious interrogatories, he secured his coat and procured a cab for himself and proceeded to his own hotel.

It was not until he had had a comfortable bath, and was seated in dry attire in his private parlor, that Sir Harold remembered that he did not know the name of the lady he had served, or that he had not even seen her face distinctly.

“She is as ignorant of my name and identity,” he thought, “as I am of hers. If the incident could be kept out of the papers, I need never be troubled with the thanks of her husband, father, or brother.”

But the incident was not kept out of the papers. Sir Harold Wynde, being a lion, had to bear the penalty of popularity. The next morning’s paper, brought in to him as he sat at his solitary breakfast, contained a glowing account of the previous evening’s adventure, under the flaming head line of “Heroic Action by a Baronet,” with the sub-lines: “Sir Harold Wynde saves a lady’s life at the risk of his own. Chivalry not yet dead in our commonplace England.” And there followed a highly imaginative description of the lady’s adventure, her name being as yet unknown, and a warm eulogy upon Sir Harold’s bravery and presence of mind.

The baronet’s lip curled as he read impatiently the fulsome article. He had scarcely finished it when a waiter entered, bringing in upon a silver tray a large squarely enveloped letter. It was addressed to Sir Harold Wynde, was stamped with an unintelligible monogram, and sealed with a dainty device in pale green wax. As the baronet’s only lady correspondent was his daughter at school, and this missive was clearly not from her, he experienced a slight surprise at its reception.

The waiter having departed, Sir Harold cut open the letter with his pocket knife, and glanced over its contents.

They were written upon the daintiest, thickest vellum paper unlined, and duly tinted and monogrammed, and were as follows:

Albion Hotel, Tuesday Morning.

“Sir Harold Wynde: The lady who writes this letter is the lady whom you so gallantly rescued from a death by drowning last evening. I have read the accounts of your daring bravery in the morning’s papers, and hasten to offer my grateful thanks for your noble and gallant kindness to an utter stranger. Life has not been so sweet to me that I cling to it, but yet it is very horrible to go in one moment from the glow and heartiness of health and life down to the very gates of death. It was your hand that drew me back at the moment when those gates opened to admit me, and again I bless you—a thousand thousand times, I bless you. Alas, that I have to write to you myself. I have neither father, lover, nor husband, to rejoice in the life you have saved. I am a widow, and alone in the wide world. Will you not call upon me at my hotel and permit me to thank you far more effectively in person? I shall be waiting for your coming in my private parlor at eleven this morning.

“Gratefully yours,
“Octavia Hathaway.”

The baronet read the letter again and again. His generous soul was touched by its sorrowful tone.

“A widow and alone in the world!” he thought. “Poor woman! What sentence could be sadder than that? She is elderly, I am sure, and has lost all her children. I do not want to hear her expressions of gratitude, but if I can make the poor soul happier by calling on her I will go.”

Accordingly, at eleven o’clock that morning, attired in a gentleman’s unexceptionable morning dress, Sir Harold Wynde, having sent up his card, presented himself at the door of Mrs. Hathaway’s private parlor at the Albion Hotel, and knocked for admittance.

The door was opened to him by the lady’s companion, who greeted him with effusiveness, and begged him to be seated.

She was a tall, angular woman, with sharp features, whose characteristic expression was one of peculiar hardness and severity. Her lips were thin, and were usually compressed. Her eyes were a light gray, furtive and sly, like a cat’s eyes. Her pointed chin gave a treacherous cast to her countenance. Her complexion was of a pale, opaque gray; her hair, of a fawn color, was worn in three puffs on each side of her face, and her dress was of a tint to match her hair. Sir Harold conceived an instinctive aversion to her.

“Mrs. Hathaway?” he said politely, with interrogative accent.

“No, I am not Mrs. Hathaway,” was the reply, in a subdued voice, and the furtive eyes scanned the visitor’s face. “I am only Mrs. Hathaway’s companion—Mrs. Artress. Mrs. Hathaway has just received your card. She will be out directly.”

The words were scarcely spoken when the door of an inner room opened, and Mrs. Hathaway made her appearance.

Sir Harold stood up, bowing.

The lady was by no means the elderly, melancholy personage he had expected to see. She was about thirty years of age, and looked younger. She had a tall, statuesque figure, well-rounded and inclined to embonpoint. She carried her head with a certain stateliness. Her hair was dressed with the inevitable chignon, crimped waves, and long, floating curl, and despite the monstrosity of the fashion, it was decidedly and undeniably picturesque. Her face, with its clear brunette complexion, liquid black eyes, Grecian nose, low brows, and faultless mouth, was very handsome. There was a fascination in her manners that was felt by the baronet even before she had spoken.

She was not dressed in mourning, and it was probable, therefore, that her widowhood was not of recent beginning. She was clothed in an exquisitely embroidered morning dress of white, which trailed on the floor, and was relieved with ornaments of pale pink coral, and a broad coral-colored sash at her waist.

“This is Mrs. Hathaway, Sir Harold,” said the gray looking lady’s companion.

The lady sprang forward after an impulsive fashion, and clasped the baronet’s hands in both her own. Her black eyes flooded with tears. And then, in a broken voice, she thanked her preserver for his gallant conduct on the previous evening assuring him that her gratitude would outlast her life. Her protestations and gratitude were not overdone, and unsuspecting Sir Harold accepted them as genuine, even while they embarrassed him.

He remained an hour, finding Mrs. Hathaway charming company and thoroughly fascinating. The companion sat apart, silent, busy with embroidery, a mere gray shadow; but her presence gave an easy unconstraint to both the baronet and the lady. When Sir Harold took his departure, sauntering down to the German Spa, he carried with him the abiding memory of Mrs. Hathaway’s handsome brunette face and liquid black eyes, and thought himself that she was the most charming woman he had met for years.

From that day, throughout the season, the baronet was a frequent visitor at Mrs. Hathaway’s private parlor. The gray companion was always at hand to play propriety, and the tongues of gossips, though busy, had no malevolence in them. Sir Harold had his own horses at Brighton, and placed one at Mrs. Hathaway’s disposal. The widow accepted it, procured a bewitching costume from town, and had daily rides with the baronet. She also drove with him in his open, low carriage, and bowed right and left to her acquaintances upon such occasions with the gracious condescension of a princess. She sailed with him in his graceful yacht, upon day’s excursions, her companion always accompanying, and rumor at length declared that the pair were engaged to be married.

Sir Harold heard the reports, and they set him thinking. The society of Mrs. Hathaway had become necessary to him. She understood his tastes, studying them with a flattery so delicate that he was pleased without understanding it. She read his favorite books, played his favorite music, and displayed talents of no mean order. She was fitted to adorn any position, however high, and Sir Harold thought with a pleasant thrill at his heart, how royally she would reign over his beautiful home.

In short, questioning his own heart, he found that he had worshiped his dead wife, who would be to him always young, as when he had buried her—but with the passion of later manhood, an exacting, jealous yearning affection, which gives all and demands all. With his children far from him, his life had been lonely, and he had known many desolate hours, when he would have given half his wealth for sympathy and love.

“I shall find both in Octavia,” he thought, his noble face brightening. “I shall not wrong my children in marrying her. My son will be my heir. My daughter’s fortune will not be imperilled by my second marriage. Neva is sixteen, and in two years more will come home. How can I do better for her than to give her a beautiful mother, young enough to win her confidence, old enough to be her guide? Octavia would love my girl, and would be her best chaperon in society, to which Neva must be by and by introduced. I should find in Octavia then a mother for my daughter, and a gentle loving wife and companion for myself. But will she accept me?”

He put the question to the test that very evening. He found the handsome widow alone in her parlor, the gray companion being for once absent, and he told her his love with a tremulous ardor and passion that it would have been the glory of a good woman to have evoked from a nature so grand as Sir Harold’s.

The fascinating widow blushed and smiled assent, and her black-tressed head drooped to his shoulder, and Sir Harold clasped her in his arms as his betrothed wife.

With a lover’s impetuosity he begged her to marry him at an early day. She hesitated coyly, as if for months she had not been striving and praying for this hour, and then was won to consent to marry him a month thence.

“I am alone in the world, and have no one to consult,” she sighed. “I have an old aunt, a perfect miser, who lives in Bloomsbury Square, in London. She will permit me to be married from her house, as I was before. The marriage will have to be very quiet, for she is averse to display and expense. However, what she saves will come to me some day, so I need not complain. I shall want to keep Artress with me, Sir Harold. I can see that you don’t like her, but she has been a faithful friend to me in all my troubles, and I cannot abandon her when prosperity smiles so splendidly upon me. I may keep her, may I not?”

Thus appealed to, Sir Harold smothered his dislike of the gray companion, and consented that she should become an inmate of his house.

Mrs. Hathaway proceeded to explain the causes of her friendlessness. She was an orphan, and had early married the Honorable Charles Hathaway, the younger son of a Viscount, who had died five years before. The Honorable Charles had been a dissipated spendthrift, and had left his wife the meagre income of some three hundred pounds a year. Her elegant clothing was, for the most part, relics of better days. As to the expensive style in which she lived, keeping a companion and maid, no one knew, save herself and one other, how she managed to support it. Her name and reputation were unblemished, and the most censorious tongue had nothing to say against her.

And yet she was none the less an unscrupulous, unprincipled adventuress.

This was the woman, the noble, gallant baronet proposed to take to his bosom as his wife, to endow with his name and wealth, to make the mother and guide of his pure young daughter. Would the sacrifice of the generous, unsuspected lover be permitted?

It was permitted. A month later their modest bridal train swept beneath the portals of St. George’s Church, Hanover Square. The bride, radiant in pearl-colored moire, with point lace overdress, wore a magnificent parure of diamonds, presented to her by Sir Harold. The baronet looked the picture of happiness. The miserly aunt of Mrs. Hathaway, a skinny old lady in a low-necked and short-sleeved dress of pink silk, that, by its unsuitability, made her seem absolutely hideous, attended by a male friend, who gave away the bride, was prominent among the group that surrounded the altar.

Sir Harold’s son and heir was in India, and his daughter had not been summoned from her boarding-school in Paris. The baronet’s tender father soul yearned for his daughter’s presence at his second marriage; but Lady Wynde had urged that Neva’s studies should not be interrupted, and had begged, as a personal favor, that her meeting with her young step-daughter might be delayed until her ladyship had become used to her new position. She professed to be timid and shrinking in regard to the meeting with Neva, and Sir Harold, in his passionate love for Octavia, put aside his own wishes, yielding to her request. But he had written to his daughter, announcing his intended second marriage, and had received in reply a tender, loving letter full of earnest prayers for his happiness, and expressing the kindest feelings toward the expected step-mother.

The words were spoken that made the strangely assorted pair one flesh. As the bride arose from her knees the wife of a wealthy baronet, the wearer of a title, the handsome face was lighted by a triumphant glow, her black eyes emitted a singular, exultant gleam, and a conscious triumph pervaded her manner.

She had played the first part of a daring game—and she had won!

As she passed into the vestry to sign the marriage register, leaning proudly upon the arm of her newly made husband, and followed by her few attending personal friends, a man who had witnessed the ceremony from behind a clustered pillar in the church, stole out into the square, his face lighted by a lurid smile, his eyes emitting the same peculiar, exultant gleam as the bride’s had done.

This man was the tall, fair-haired gentleman, with waxed mustaches, sinister eyes and cynical smile, who, nearly three months before, had witnessed from the pier head at Brighton the rescue of Mrs. Hathaway from the sea by Sir Harold Wynde. And now this man muttered:

“The game prospers. Octavia is Lady Wynde. The first act is played. The next act requires more time, deliberation, caution. Every move must be considered carefully. We are bound to win the entire game.”

CHAPTER II.
A DECISIVE MOVE COMMANDED.

Sir Harold and Lady Wynde ate their wedding breakfast in Bloomsbury Square, at the house of Lady Wynde’s miserly aunt, Mrs. Hyde. A few of the baronet’s choice friends were present. The absence of Sir Harold’s daughter was not especially remarked save by the father, who longed with an anxious longing to see her face smiling upon him, and to hear her young voice whispering congratulations upon his second marriage. Neva had been especially near and dear to him. Her mother had died in her babyhood, and he had been both father and mother to his girl. He had early sent his son to school, but Neva he had kept with him until, a year before, his first wife’s relatives had urged him to send her to a “finishing school” at Paris, and he had reluctantly yielded. Not even his passionate love for his bride could overcome or lessen the fatherly love and tenderness of years.

Immediately after the breakfast the newly married pair proceeded to Canterbury by special train. The gray companion and Lady Wynde’s maid traveled in another compartment of the same coach. The Hawkhurst carriage was in waiting for the bridal pair at the station. Sir Harold assisted his wife into it, addressed a few kindly words to the old coachman on the box, and entered the vehicle. The gray companion and the maid entered a dog-cart, also in waiting. Hawkhurst was several miles distant, but the country between it and Canterbury was a charming one, and Lady Wynde found sufficient enjoyment in looking at the handsome seats, the trim hedges, and thrifty hop-gardens, and in wondering if Hawkhurst would realize her expectations. She found indeed more enjoyment in her own speculations than in the society of her husband.

About five o’clock of the afternoon, the bridal pair came in sight of the ancestral home of the Wynde’s. The top of the low barouche was lowered and Sir Harold pointed out her future home to his bride with pardonable pride, and she surveyed it with eager eyes.

It was, as we have said, a magnificent estate, divided into numerous farms of goodly size. The home grounds of Hawkhurst proper, including the fields, pastures, meadows, parks, woods, plantations and gardens, comprised about four hundred acres. The mansion stood upon a ridge of ground some half a mile wide, and was seen from several points at a distance of three or four miles. It was a grand old building of gray stone, with a long facade, and was three stories in height. Its turrets and chimneys were noted for their picturesqueness. Its carved stone porches, its quaint wide windows, its steep roof, from which pert dormer-windows, saucily projected, were remarkable for their beauty or oddity. Despite its age, and its air of grandeur and stateliness, there was a home-like look about the great mansion that Lady Wynde did not fail to perceive at the first glance.

The house was flanked on either side by glass pineries, grape houses, hothouses, greenhouses and similar buildings. Further to the left of the dwelling, beyond the sunny gardens, was the great park, intersected with walks and drives, having a lake somewhere in the umbrageous depths, and herds of fallow-deer browsing on its herbage. In the rear of the house, built in the form of a quadrangle, of gray stone, were the handsome stables and offices of various descriptions. The mansion with its dependencies covered a great deal of ground, and presented an imposing appearance.

The house was approached by a shaded drive a half mile or more in length, which traversed a smooth green lawn dotted here and there with trees. A pair of bronze gates, protected and attended by a picturesque gray stone lodge, gave ingress to the grounds.

These gates swung open at the approach of Sir Harold Wynde and his bride, and the gate-keeper and his family came out bowing and smiling, to welcome home the future lady of Hawkhurst. Lady Wynde returned their greetings with graceful condescension, and then, as the carriage entered the drive, she fixed her eager eyes upon the long gray facade of the mansion, and said:

“It is beautiful—magnificent! You never did justice to its grandeurs, Harold, in describing Hawkhurst. It is strange that a house so large, and of such architectural pretension, should have such a bright and sunny appearance. The sunlight must flood every room in that glorious front. I should like to live all my days at Hawkhurst!”

“Your dower house will be as pleasant a home as this although not so pretentious,” said Sir Harold, smiling gravely. “It is probable that you being twenty years my junior, will survive me, Octavia, and therefore I have settled upon you for your life use in your possible widowhood one of my prettiest places, and one which has served for many generations as the residence of the dowager widows of our family.”

The glow on Lady Wynde’s face faded a little, and her lips slightly compressed themselves, as they were wont to do when she was ill pleased.

“I have never asked you about your property, Harold,” she remarked, “but your wife need be restrained from doing so by no sense of delicacy. I suppose your property is entailed?”

“Hawkhurst is entailed, but it will fall to the female line in case of the dying out of heirs male,” replied the baronet, not marking his bride’s scarcely suppressed eagerness. “It has belonged to our family from time immemorial, and was a royal grant to one of our ancestors who saved his monarch’s life at risk of his own. Thus, at my death, Hawkhurst will go, with the title, to my son. If George should die, without issue, Hawkhurst—without the title, which is a separate affair—will go to my daughter.”

“A weighty inheritance for a girl,” remarked Lady Wynde. “And—and if she should die without issue?”

“The estate would go to distant cousins of mine.”

Lady Wynde started. This was evidently an unexpected reply, and she could not repress her looks of disappointment.

“I—I should think your wife would come before your cousins,” she murmured.

“How little you know about law, Octavia,” said the baronet, with a grave, gentle smile. “The property must go to those of our blood. If our union is blessed with children, the eldest of them would inherit Hawkhurst before my cousins. But although the law has proclaimed us one flesh, yet it does not allow you to become the heir of my entailed property. It is singular even that a daughter is permitted to inherit before male cousins, but there was a clause in the royal deed of gift of Hawkhurst to my ancestors that gave the property to females in the direct line, in default of male heirs, but there has never been a female proprietor of the estate. I hope there never may be. I should hate to have the old name die out of the old place. But here we are at the house. Welcome home, my beautiful wife!”

The carriage stopped in the porch, and Sir Harold alighted and assisted out his bride. He drew her arm through his and led her up the lofty flight of stone steps, and in at the arched and open door-way. The servants were assembled to welcome home their lady, and the baronet uttered the necessary words of introduction and conducted his bride to the drawing-room.

This was an immensely long apartment, with nine wide windows on its eastern side looking out upon gardens and park. Sculptured arches, supported by slender columns of alabaster, relieved the long vista, and curtains depending from them were capable of dividing the grand room into three handsome ones. The drawing-room was furnished in modern style, and was all gayety, brightness and beauty. The furniture, of daintiest satin-wood, was upholstered in pale blue silk. The carpet, of softest gray hue, was bordered with blue.

“It is very lovely,” commented the bride. “And that is a conservatory at the end? I shall be very happy here, Harold.”

“I hope so,” was the earnest response. “But let me take you up to your own rooms, Octavia. They have been newly furnished for your occupancy.”

He gave her his arm and conducted her out into the wide hall, with its tesselated floor, up the wide marble staircase, to a suit of rooms directly over the drawing-room.

This suit comprised sitting-room, bedroom, dressing-room and bath-room. Their upholstery was of a vivid crimson hue. A faultless taste had guided the selection of the various adornments, and Lady Wynde’s eyes kindled with appreciation as she marked the costliness and beauty of everything around her.

“Your trunks have arrived in the wagon, Octavia,” said her husband, well pleased with her commendations. “Mrs. Artress and your maid, who came on in the dog-cart, have also arrived. Dinner has been ordered at seven. I will leave you to dress. And, by the way, should you have need of me, my dressing-room adjoins your own.”

He went out. Lady Wynde rang for her maid and her gray companion, and dressed for dinner. When her toilet was made, the baronet’s bride dismissed her maid and came out into her warm-hued sitting room, where Mrs. Artress sat by a window looking out into the leafy shadows of the park.

“Well?” said the beauty interrogatively. “What do you think? Have I not been successful?”

“So far, yes,” said the grim, ashen-faced companion, raising her light, hay-colored eyes in a meaning expression. “But the end is not yet. The game, you know, is only fairly begun.”

“Yes, I know,” said the bride thoughtfully. “But it is well begun. But hush, Artress. Here comes my happy bridegroom!”

There was a mocking smile on her lips as she bade Sir Harold enter. The wedded pair had a few minutes’ conversation in the sitting-room, her ladyship’s companion sitting in the deep window seat mute as a shadow, and they then descended to the drawing-room. Mrs. Artress meekly followed. She remained near Lady Wynde, in attendance upon her until after dinner, and then went up to her own room, which was in convenient proximity to the apartments of Lady Wynde.

The bride and bridegroom were left to themselves.

The former played a little upon the grand piano, and then approached her husband, sitting down beside him upon the same sofa. His noble face beamed love upon her. But her countenance grew hard with speculative thoughts.

“Let me see,” said she, speaking with well-assumed lightness. “What were we talking about when we arrived, Harold? Oh, about your property! So, this dear old Hawkhurst will belong to George? And what will Neva have?”

“Her mother’s fortune, and several estates which are not entailed. Neva will be a very rich woman without Hawkhurst. You also, Octavia, will be handsomely provided for, without detriment to my children.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Lady Wynde. “But if the estates are not entailed which you intend to give to Neva, you must leave them to her by will. Have—have you made your will?”

“Yes; but since I have contracted a new marriage, I shall have to make a new will. I shall attend to that at my leisure.”

Lady Wynde became thoughtful, but did not press the subject. She excused her questionings on the plea of interest in her husband’s children, and Sir Harold gave no thought to them.

The days went by; the weeks and months followed. Neva Wynde had not been summoned home, her step-mother finding plenty of excuses for deferring the return of her step-daughter. Perhaps she feared that a pair of keen young eyes, unvailed by glamor, would see how morally hideous she was—how base and scheming, and unworthy of her husband.

Sir Harold’s infatuation with his wife deepened as the time wore on. His love for her became a species of worship. All that she did was good in his eyes.

Lady Wynde went into society, visited the first county families, and received them at Hawkhurst. She gave a ball, dancing and dinner parties, “tea-fights,” and fetes champetres, without number. She promoted festivities of every sort, and became one of the most popular ladies in the county. She was a leader of fashion too, and withal was so gracious, so circumspect, so full of delicate flattery to every one, that even venomous tongued gossip had naught but good to say of her. Her position at Hawkhurst was thus firmly established, and she might be called a happy woman.

As the months went on, an air of expectancy began to be apparent in her manner. The gray companion shared it, moving with a suppressed eagerness and nervousness, as if waiting for something. And that which she waited for came at last.

It was one February evening, more than a year after the bride’s coming home to Hawkhurst. Outside the night was wild. Within Lady Wynde’s dressing-room the fire glowed behind its silvered bars, and its rays danced in bright gleams upon the crimson furniture. The lamps burned with mellow radiance. In the centre of the room stood the lady of Hawkhurst. She had dismissed her maid, and was surveying her reflection in a full-length mirror with a complacent smile.

She was attired in a long robe of crimson silk, and wore her ruby ornaments. Her neck and arms were bare. Her liquid black eyes were full of light; her face was aglow.

In the midst of her self-admiration, her gray companion entered abruptly, bearing in her hand a letter. Lady Wynde turned toward her with a startled look.

“What have you there, Artress?” she demanded.

“A letter addressed to me,” was the reply. “I have read it. I have a question to ask you, Octavia, before I show the letter to you. Sir Harold Wynde adores you. He loads you with gifts. He lays his heart under your feet. You are his world, his life, his very soul. And now I want to ask you—do you love him?”

The ashen eyes shot a piercing glance into the handsome brunette face, but the black eyes met hers boldly and the full lips curled in a contemptuous smile.

“Love him?” repeated Lady Wynde. “You know I do not. Love him? You know that I love another even as Sir Harold loves me! Love him? Bah!”

The gray woman smiled a strange mirthless smile.

“It is well,” she said. “Now read the letter. The message has come at last!”

Lady Wynde seized the letter eagerly. It contained only these words, without date or signature:

“The time has come to get rid of him! Now!”

CHAPTER III.
A FATEFUL MOVE DECIDED UPON.

Notwithstanding that the sinister message, contained in the single line of the mysterious missive brought to Lady Wynde by her gray companion, had been long expected, it brought with it none the less a shock when it came.

The paper fluttered slowly from the unloosed fingers of the baronet’s wife to the floor, and into the liquid black eyes stole a look half of horror and half of eagerness. Unconsciously her voice repeated the words of the message, in a hoarse whisper:

“It is time to get rid of him. Now!”

Lady Wynde shuddered at the sound of her own voice, and she stared at her gray companion, her eyes full of shrinking and terror. Those ashen orbs returned her stare with one that was bold, evil, and encouraging.

“I—I haven’t the courage I thought, Artress,” faltered her ladyship. “It is a terrible thing to do!”

“You love Sir Harold, after all?” taunted the companion, as she picked up the sinister slip of paper and burned it.

“No, no, but he trusts me; he loves me. There was a time, Artress, when I could not have harmed a dog that licked my hand or fawned upon me. And now—but I am not so bad as you think. I am base, unscrupulous, manœuvring, I know. My marriage was but part of a wicked plan, the fruit of a conspiracy against Sir Harold Wynde, but I shrink from the crowning evil we have planned. To play the viper and sting the hand that has warmed me—to wound to the core the heart that beats so fondly and proudly for me—to—to cut short the noble, beneficent, happy life of Sir Harold—oh, I cannot! I cannot!”

Her ladyship swept forward impetuously toward the hearth and knelt down before a quaint crimson-cushioned chair, crossing her arms upon it, and laying her head on her bare white arms. The firelight played upon the ruddy waves of her long robe, upon the gems at her throat and wrists, upon her picturesquely dishevelled hair, and upon her stormy, handsome face. She stared into the fire with her great black terrified eyes, as if seeking in those dancing flames some mystic meaning.

Her gray companion flitted across the floor to her side like an evil shadow.

“How very tragic you are, my lady,” she said, with a sneer. “It almost seems as if you were doing a scene out of a melodrama. No one can force you to any step against your will. You can do whatever you please. Sir Harold dotes upon you, and you can continue his seemingly affectionate wife, can receive his caresses, can preside over his household, and can soothe his declining years. He is not yet fifty-eight years old, vigorous and healthy, and, as he comes of a long-lived race, he will live to be ninety, I doubt not. You will, should you survive him, then be seventy. You can play the tender step-mother to his children. His daughter is sure to dislike you, and she may cause her father to distrust you. All this will no doubt be pleasant to you—”

“Hush, hush!” breathed Lady Wynde, with a tempestuous look in her eyes. “Let me alone, Artress. You always stir up the demon within me. Forty years of a dull, staid, respectable existence, when I might be a queen of society in London, might be married to one I have loved for years! Forty years! Why, one year seems to me an eternity. It seems a lifetime since I was married to Sir Harold. I—I will act upon the letter.”

The gray companion smiled.

“I was sure you would,” she said.

“But Sir Harold has not made a new will since our marriage,” urged Lady Wynde. “By our marriage settlements, I am to have the use of the dower house, Wynde Heights, during my lifetime, and a life income of four thousand pounds a year. At my death, both house and income revert to the family of Wynde. I have nothing absolutely my own, nothing left to me by will to do with as I please. Craven expected that I would have the dowry of a princess, I suppose, out of Sir Harold’s splendid property.”

“It is not too late to acquire it,” said the companion, significantly. “Sir Harold is clay in your hands. You can mould him to any shape you will. He has no child here to counteract your influence. He has money and estates which he intends to leave by will to his daughter Neva. If you are clever, you can divert into your own coffers all of Miss Wynde’s property that is not settled upon her already from her mother’s estate. It will do no harm to delay acting upon the message for a day or two, since something of so much importance remains to be transacted.”

“I am thankful for even a day’s respite,” murmured Lady Wynde. “I have been eager to receive the message, intending to act upon it promptly. But I am not all bad, Artress, and I shrink from the consummation of our plans. If Sir Harold would only die naturally! If something would only occur to remove him from my path!”

She breathed heavily as she arose, shook out the folds of her dress, and moved toward the door.

“The phial I had when we came here I found was broken yesterday,” said Artress. “I shall have to go up to London to-morrow for more of that fluid, so that there must be a day’s delay in any case. We must be very cautious, for people will wonder at the sudden death of one so hale and strong, and should suspicion arise, it must find no foundation to build upon.”

Lady Wynde nodded assent, and opened the door and went out with a weary step. She descended the broad staircase, crossed the great hall, and entered the drawing-room.

Sir Harold was seated near the fire, in a thoughtful reverie, but arose at her entrance with a beaming face and a tender smile.

“It’s a wild night, Octavia,” he said. “Come forward to the fire my darling. How pale you are! And you are shivering with the cold.”

He gently forced her into the easy-chair he had vacated, bent over her with lover-like devotion, patting her head softly with his hand.

“You look unhappy, dear,” resumed the baronet, after a pause. “Is there anything you want—a ball, jewels, a trip to the Continent? You know my purse is yours, and I am ready to go where you may wish to lead.”

“You are very good!” said Lady Wynde, her black eyes fixed in a gaze upon the fire, and again she shivered. “I—I am not worthy of all your kindness, Harold. Hark! There is the dinner-bell. Thank fortune for the interruption, for I believe I was growing really sentimental!”

She forced a laugh as she arose and took her husband’s arm, and was conducted to the dining-room, but there was something in her laughter that jarred upon Sir Harold, although the unpleasant impression it produced upon him was evanescent.

At the dinner Lady Wynde was herself again, bright and fascinating, only now and then, in some pause of the conversation, there came again into her eyes that horrified stare which they had worn up stairs, and which testified how her soul shrank from the awful crime she contemplated.

After dinner the pair returned to the drawing-room. Sir Harold drew a sofa toward the corner of the hearth and sat down upon it, calling his wife to him. She obeyed, taking a seat beside him. Her face was all brightness at this moment, and Sir Harold forgot his late anxieties about her.

“I believe I am the happiest man in the world, Octavia,” he said thoughtfully, caressing one of her jewelled hands he had lifted from her knee, “but my cup of joy lacks a drop or two of sweetness still. You are all the world to me, my wife, and yet I want something more.”

“What is it you want, Harold?”

“I have been thinking about my children,” said the baronet. “It is over a month since I heard from George, and he does not intend to leave India this year, although I have urged him to sell his commission and come home. The boy has a passion for a military life, and he went out to India against my better judgment. I cannot have George home again this year, but there is Neva near me. I long to see her, Octavia.”

“You are the most devoted of fathers,” laughed Lady Wynde. “We have been married but little over a year, and yet you have made two trips alone to Paris to see Neva. She must be a very paragon of daughters to cause her father to forget his bride.”

Sir Harold’s fair cheeks flushed a little.

“You forget,” he said, “that Neva was my especial charge from the hour of her mother’s death till I sent her to that Paris school. My love for you, Octavia, cannot lessen my love for her. I begin to think that I have done wrong in not bringing you two together before. I had a most pathetic letter from Neva before the holidays, begging to be allowed to come home, but at your request, Octavia, I denied her natural entreaty and compelled her to remain at her school. Even Madame [Da-Caret], the head of the establishment, thought it singular that Miss Wynde should, alone of all the English pupils, spend her holidays at the deserted institution. And now to-day I received a letter from Neva asking if she was to come home for the Easter holidays. I am afraid I have not rightly treated my motherless child, Octavia. She has never seen you; never been at home since you became mistress here. I fear that the poor child will think her exile due to your influence, to speak frankly, dear, and that she will regard you with dislike and bitterness, instead of the trust and confidence I want her to feel in you. You are both so dear to me that I shall be unhappy if you do not love each other.”

“There is time enough to form the acquaintance after Neva leaves school,” said Lady Wynde. “She is but a child yet.”

“She is seventeen years old, Octavia. I have decided to have her home at Easter, and I hope you will take some pains to win her trust and affection. She will meet you half-way, dear.”

“I am not fond of bread-and-butter school-girls,” said Lady Wynde, half frowning. “The neighborhood will be agape to see how I play the role of step-mother. And, to own the truth, Harold, I have no fancy to be called mother by a tall, overgrown girl, with her hair hanging down her back in two braids, and her dresses reaching to her ankles. I shall feel as old as Methuselah.”

Sir Harold sighed, and a grave shadow settled down upon his square massive brows.

“I hope that Neva will win her way to your heart, Octavia,” he remarked gently. “I thought it would look better if my daughter were to call her father’s wife by the endearing name of mother, but teach her to call you what you will. I have faith in your goodness of heart, my wife.”

“Perhaps I am a little jealous of her,” returned Lady Wynde, with a forced smile. “You fairly idolize her—”

“Have I not made her second to you?” interposed the baronet. “Has she not been banished from her home to please you since you entered it? When I think of her dull, dreary holidays in her school—holidays! the name was a mockery—my soul yearns for my child. Jealous of her, Octavia? What further proofs do you need that I prefer my wife in all things above my child?”

“Why,” said Lady Wynde tremulously, a hectic flush burning on either cheek, “look at the magnificent fortune she will have! While, if you should die I have only the pitiful income of four thousand pounds a year.”

“Pitiful, Octavia!”

“Yes, it is pitiful, compared to Neva’s. You have estates which you can convey away absolutely by will. Why should you not make me independently rich, with property that I can sell if I choose? What you leave to me is to be mine for life. What you leave to Neva is hers absolutely. This is monstrous, hateful, unjust!”

The baronet regarded his wife in amazement.

“You were satisfied with your marriage settlements when they were drawn up, Octavia,” he said.

“I was not satisfied even then, but I had no male relatives to speak to you about the matter, and it would have been indelicate for me to have said what I thought. But I hoped you would make things right in a will, as you can easily do. It is not right that such a distinction should be made between a daughter and a wife!”

“I am surprised at you, Octavia,” declared the baronet. “Neva inherits her mother’s fortune with something from me, but I cannot undertake to alter my intentions in regard to her. The provisions that were made for my mother are the same as those that have been made for you, and she found them ample. I can promise you nothing more; but, Octavia,” and he smiled faintly, “I have no intention of dying soon, and while I live your income need not to be limited to any certain sum. Let no jealousy of my Neva warp your noble nature, Octavia. I shall love you all the better if you love her.”

“Then you decline to make a new will, with further provision for me?” demanded the wife, her eyes downcast, the hectic spot burning fiercely on both cheeks.

“You surprise me, Octavia. Why are you so persistent about a subject of which I never dreamed you even thought? I do decline to make further provision for you, but not because I do not love and appreciate you, for I do both. So long as there is no issue to our marriage, the sum settled on you is ample for your own wants. If Providence sends us children, they will be provided for separately. We will let the discussion end here, Octavia, with the understanding that Neva will spend her Easter at Hawkhurst.”

Lady Wynde compressed her lips and looked sullen, but, as Sir Harold suggested, the discussion was dropped. The baronet was troubled, and disappointed in the wife he had believed faultless. The first shadow of their married life, the first suspicion of distrust of Lady Wynde in her husband’s mind had come at last, and they were hard to bear. Lady Wynde went to the piano and executed a dashing fantasia, all storm and violence, expressive of her mental condition. Sir Harold moved back from the fire and took up a book, but his grave, saddened face, his steady, intent gaze, and anxious mouth, showed that he was not reading, and that his thoughts were sorrowful.

When Lady Wynde had become tired of music, she went up to her rooms without a word to her husband. She entered her sitting-room, made beautiful by her husband’s taste, and going to the fire, knelt down before it on the hearth-rug. Artress and her maid were neither of them to be seen, and the baronet’s wife communed in solitude with her own deformed soul.

The winds tore through the trees in the park and on the lawn with a melancholy soughing, and the sound came to the ears of the kneeling woman. Her room was warm and bright with firelight, lamplight, and the glowing hue of crimson furniture. Every luxury was gathered within those walls dedicated to her use. Silken couches and fauteuils, portfolios of choice engravings, rare bronzes on the low marble mantel-piece, exquisite statuettes on carved brackets, albums of scenes in every hand done in water-colors, a beautiful cottage piano, and a hundred other articles made the room a very temple of comfort and beauty, yet in the spot where only loving thoughts of her husband should have had place she dared to harbor thoughts of crime! And that crime the most hideous that can be named—the crime of murder!

While she was kneeling there, the gray companion stole in softly and silently.

Lady Wynde slowly turned her head, recognized the intruder, and stared again with wide eyes into the flames.

“You look like a tragedy queen,” said Artress, with a soft laugh like the gurgling of waters. “You look as if you cast away all your scruples, and were ready to carry out the game.”

“I am,” said Lady Wynde, in a hard, suppressed voice.

“I thought you would come to it. Will Sir Harold make a new will?”

“No; he absolutely refuses.”

“Well, four thousand pounds a year need not be despised. And perhaps,” added Artress significantly, “we can make the sum larger. Am I to go to town to-morrow?”

“Yes, by the morning train. Go to Craven, and tell him the phial he gave you is broken and the contents spilled, and ask him for more of the—the preparation. I will find occasion to administer it. I have worked myself up to the necessary point, and would not scruple at any crime so long as I need not fear discovery. You will be back before dinner,” added Lady Wynde, her brunette complexion turning as gray as that of her companion, “and to-morrow night at this time I shall be a widow!”

CHAPTER IV.
A DOOR OPENED TO WICKEDNESS.

Soon after daybreak, upon the morning following the occurrence of the incidents related in the preceding chapter, Lady Wynde’s gray companion departed from Hawkhurst for Canterbury in a dog-cart which, with its driver, the baronet’s wife had ordered to be always at Artress’ disposal. She took the early train up to London, her business a secret between her mistress and herself.

At the usual breakfast hour, eight o’clock, Lady Wynde descended to the breakfast room. Sir Harold was already there, and greeted her with his usual tender smile, although he looked somewhat careworn. Their greetings were scarcely over, and the couple had taken their places at the table, when the butler appeared, bringing in the morning mail bag.

Sir Harold produced his key and unlocked it. There were a few newspapers for himself, some packets of silk samples, and a letter from Madame Elise, her dressmaker, for Lady Wynde. There were two letters for the baronet, one quite unimportant, which he tossed aside. The other bore the Indian post-mark.

“A letter from George,” said Sir Harold, his eyes brightening. “No, it’s not from George. The address is not in his hand. Who can have written to me in his stead?”

He tore open the letter hastily, his countenance falling.

His first glance was at the date; his second at the signature. An exclamation broke from his lips as he read aloud the name appended to the letter: “Cooper Graham, Regimental Surgeon.”

“What can this mean?” he exclaimed, in sudden agitation. “Can George be ill? Octavia, read the letter to me. The words seem all blurred.”

Lady Wynde took the letter, reading it aloud.

It was long, too long to transcribe here, and its import was terrible to the baronet. It opened with the announcement that the writer was the surgeon of Captain Wynde’s regiment, and that Captain Wynde was a patient under his care. It went on to say that Captain Wynde was the victim of a terrible and incurable disease under which he had been suffering for months, and the surgeon had learned that the poor young man had not written home to his friends the fact of his peril. His disease was a cancer, which was preying upon his vitals. Captain Wynde had been relieved of his regimental duties, and sent up into the hill country, where he now was. The young man’s thoughts by day and night were of his home—his one longing was to see his father before he died. Surgeon Graham went on to say that Captain Wynde could not possibly survive a sea journey; that he could not bear the bracing sea air, nor the fatigues of the overland route, and he would assuredly die on his way home. But, he added, that in the cool and quiet seclusion of his upcountry bungalow, his life could probably be prolonged for some three months.

Surgeon Graham concluded his startling letter with a further reference to Captain Wynde’s anxiety to look once more on his father’s face before he died. He said that the poor young man had desired that the letter should not be written to Sir Harold, and that the baronet should be informed of his son’s illness only in the letter which should announce that son’s death.

This terrible news was a fearful shock to Sir Harold. His son George, the heir of his name and estates, was dying in a far, foreign land, with a frightful disease, with no relative nor friend about him to smooth his pillow in his last agony, or to wipe the death-damp from his brows. The father sobbed aloud in his agony.

“My boy! my poor boy!” he cried, in a broken voice. “My poor dying boy!”

“It is very sad,” said Lady Wynde, wondering in her own heart if George Wynde’s death could be made to benefit her pecuniarily. “The surgeon seems a very kind-hearted person, and he says that George has an excellent native nurse, George’s man-servant—”

Sir Harold interrupted his wife by a gesture of impatience.

“The man is a Hindoo,” he said. “What consolation can he offer George in the hour of his death, when his eyes should rest on a tender, loving face—when his dying hands should grasp the hands of a friend? My poor brave boy! How could I ever consent to his going out to India? All his bright, military genius, all his longings to distinguish himself in the army, must end in an early Indian grave! But he shall not die with not one of his kindred beside him. We must go to him, Octavia. We shall reach him in time.”

Sir Harold seized upon his unopened Times, and glanced over the advertisements.

“A steamer sails from Marseilles two days hence,” he announced. “We must be off to-day, immediately, to catch it. I will have a bag packed at once. Order your maid to pack your trunks, Octavia—”

He paused, not comprehending the surprised stare in her ladyship’s bold black eyes.

“You seem to be laboring under a mistake Sir Harold,” said Lady Wynde, coolly. “If you choose to go out to India, you can do so. George is your son and heir, and I suppose it would really look better if you were to go. But as to my hurrying by sea and land, by day and night, to witness the death of a young man I never saw, the idea is simply preposterous. My health could never endure the strain of such a fatigue. You would have two graves to make instead of one.”

The lines in Sir Harold’s face contracted as in a sudden spasm.

“I—I was selfish to think of your going, Octavia,” he said sorrowfully. “It is true that we should have to travel day and night to reach Marseilles in time to catch the steamer. The passage of the Red Sea would also be hard for you. But I was thinking of my poor brave boy dying there among strangers, with no woman beside him. If—if you could have gone to him, my wife, and let him feel that he was going from one mother here to another mother there—”

“I should like to go, if only my health would permit,” sighed Lady Wynde. “But why do you not take your daughter with you?”

The father shook his head.

“She is so young,” he said. “She is so fond of poor George. I cannot cast so heavy a shadow over her future life as that visit to her brother’s death-bed would be. No, Octavia, I will go alone.”

He arose and went out, leaving his breakfast untouched. Lady Wynde sipped her coffee leisurely, and ate her breakfast with untroubled appetite. Then she proceeded to her own private sitting-room and took her place at one of the windows, watching the whirling snow-flakes of the February storm.

Sir Harold found her here when he came in, dressed for his journey. He had ordered a carriage, which was ready. His travelling bag was packed, and had been taken below. He had come in to say good-bye to his wife.

“What a great change a single hour has wrought in our lives!” he said, as he came up to Lady Wynde and put his arms around her. “Octavia, my darling, it wrings my heart to leave you. Write to me by every post. I shall remain with my boy until all is over. Tell me all the home news. You will have Neva home at Easter, and love her for my sake! She will be our only child soon!”

He embraced his wife with passionate affection, and murmured words of anguished farewell. He tore himself from her, but at the door he turned back, and spoke to her with a solemnity she had never seen in him before.

“Octavia,” he said, “at this moment a strange presentiment comes over me—a sudden horror—a chill as of death! Perhaps I am to die out there in India! If—if anything happens to me, Octavia, promise me to be good to my Neva.”

“It is not necessary to promise,” said Lady Wynde, “but to please you, I promise!”

Sir Harold’s keen blue eyes, full of anguish, rested in a long steady gaze upon that false handsome face, and the solemnity of his countenance increased.

“You will be Neva’s guardian, if I die,” he said, in a broken voice. “I trust you absolutely. God do unto you, Octavia, as you do unto my orphan child!”

How those words rang in the ears of Lady Wynde long afterward!

Sir Harold gave her a last embrace, and dashed down the stairs and sprang into the carriage. Lady Wynde watched him with tearless eyes as he drove down the avenue.

When he had disappeared from her sight, she said to herself:

“Of course I could have done nothing to put an end to Sir Harold’s life this morning. I only hope he will die in India—to save me the trouble of—of doing anything when he gets back!”

Sir Harold proceeded to Canterbury with all speed. On arriving, he proceeded directly to his solicitor’s, had a new will drawn up, constituting Lady Wynde his daughter’s personal guardian, and making Neva his sole heiress in the event of her brother’s death, Lady Wynde having been sufficiently provided for by her marriage settlements. The will duly signed and witnessed, Sir Harold hastened to the station, catching the train for Dover.

He crossed to Calais by the first boat, and went on to Marseilles, by way of Paris, without stopping even to see his daughter. He was not only in time to get passage by the Messageries Imperiales steamer, but had an hour to spare. In this hour he wrote a long and very tender letter to his daughter, telling her of her brother’s illness, and hinting of the gloom that had settled down upon his own soul. He begged her if anything happened to him on this journey, to love her step-mother, and to obey her in all things, regarding Lady Wynde’s utterances as if they came from Sir Harold.

He also wrote a note to his wife, and sent the two ashore to be posted by one of the agents of the company, just as the vessel weighed anchor for Suez.

In thirty-five days after leaving home he was in the Indian hill country, and beside his dying son.

Lady Wynde went out very little after her husband’s departure. She gave no more dinner parties, and behaved with such admirable discretion that her neighbors were full of praises of her. Although young, handsome and admired, presiding over one of the finest places in the county, with no one to direct or thwart her movements, the most censorious tongue could find nothing to condemn in her.

The only recreation she allowed herself were her weekly visits to London, ostensibly to see Madame Elise, but as the ashen-eyed Artress always accompanied her, they excited no comment even in her own household.

Easter drew near, and Lady Wynde wrote to her step-daughter that it would not be convenient to have her at Hawkhurst during the holidays, and ordered her to remain at her school.

The spring months passed slowly. Lady Wynde wrote by every post to her husband, and received letters as frequently. George’s minutest symptoms were described to her by the anxious father, and George himself, looking at his step-mother through his father’s eyes, sent her loving and pathetic messages, to which she duly responded.

Thus the time wore on until the midsummer.

About the middle of July, Lady Wynde received a black-bordered letter from her husband stating that his son and heir was dead. He had died at his up-country bungalow, after an illness which had been protracted considerably beyond the anticipations of his surgeon. Sir Harold wrote that he was exhausted by long nursing, and that he should remain a fortnight longer at his son’s bungalow to recruit his own health, and that he should then start for home.

“I wish he would come,” said Lady Wynde discontentedly, to her gray companion. “I am tired of this dull existence. I am anxious to rid myself of the trammels of my present marriage, and to be free to marry again.”

“You can be free within a week after Sir Harold’s return,” said Artress. “And he will be here in September.”

“I shall be free in September,” mused Lady Wynde, with sparkling eyes. “A widow with four thousand a year! Ah, if only some good demon would bring about that happy fact, leaving my hands unstained with crime?”

It seemed as if her familiar demon had anticipated her prayer.

Some two weeks later, a second black-bordered letter was brought to Lady Wynde. It was in an unfamiliar handwriting, and proved to be from Surgeon Graham.

It announced the death of Sir Harold Wynde!

The surgeon stated that the baronet had made all arrangements for returning to England, and that he had gone for a last ride among the hills. He had taken a jungle path, but being well armed and attended by a Hindoo servant, had anticipated no trouble. Some hours after he had set out on his ride, about the time the surgeon looked for his return, the Hindoo servant, covered with dust, rode up alone in a very panic of terror. With difficulty he told his story. Sir Harold Wynde had been attacked by a tiger that had leaped upon him from the jungle, and before his terrified servant could come to his aid, he had been dragged from his saddle, with the life-blood welling from his torn throat and breast. The servant, appalled, had not dared to fire, knowing that no human power could help Sir Harold in his extremity, and the baronet had been killed before his eyes. The Hindoo had then fled homeward to tell the awful story.

The surgeon added, that a party had been made up to visit the scene of the tragedy. A pool of blood, fragments of Sir Harold’s garments, the bones of his horse, and the foot-prints of a tiger, all tended to the confirmation of the Hindoo’s story. A hunt was organized for the tiger, and he was found near the same spot on the following day and killed.

We have given a brief epitome of the letter that declared to Lady Wynde that her prayer was answered, and that she was a widow.

She was sitting in the drawing-room at Hawkhurst when the letter was brought in to her. She was still sitting there, the letter lying on her lap, twice read, when her gray companion stole into the room.

“A letter from Sir Harold, Octavia?” said Artress, glancing at the black-bordered missive.

“No, it is from that Surgeon Graham,” answered her ladyship, with an exultant thrill in her low, soft voice. “You cannot guess the news, Artress. Sir Harold is dead!”

“Dead?”

“Yes,” cried Lady Wynde, “and I am a widow. Is it not glorious? A widow, well-jointured and free to marry again! Ha, ha! Tell the household the sad news, Artress, and tell them all that I am too overcome with grief to speak to them. Let the bell at the village be set tolling. Send a notice of the death to the Times. I am a widow, and the guardian of the heiress of Hawkhurst! You must write to my step-daughter of her bereavement, and also drop a note to Craven. A widow, and without crime. The heiress of Hawkhurst in my hands to do with as I please! Your future is to be linked with mine, my young Neva, and a fate your father never destined for you shall be yours. I stand upon the pinnacle of success at last.”

CHAPTER V.
SETTLING INTO HER PLACE.

The announcement of Sir Harold Wynde’s death in India, so soon too after the death of his son and heir, produced a shock throughout his native county of Kent, and even throughout England; for, although the baronet had been no politician, he had been one of the best known men in the kingdom, and there were many who had known and esteemed him, who mourned deeply at his tragic fate.

The London papers, the Times, the Morning Post, and others, came out with glowing eulogies of the grand-souled baronet whose life had been so noble and beneficent. The local papers of Kent copied these long obituaries, and added thereto accounts of the pedigree of the Wynde family, and a description of the young heiress upon whom, by the untimely deaths of both father and brother, the great family estates and possessions, all excepting the bare title, now devolved.

The retainers of the family, the farmers and servants—those who had known Sir Harold best—mourned for him, refusing to be comforted. They would never know again a landlord so genial, nor a master so kindly: and although they hoped for much from his daughter, yet, as they mournfully said to each other, Miss Neva would marry some day, and the chances were even that she would give to Hawkhurst a harsh and tyrannical master.

The little village of Wyndham, near Hawkhurst, the very ideal of a Kentish village, had been mostly owned by Sir Harold Wynde. To him had belonged the row of shops, the old inn with its creaking sign, and most of the neat houses that stood in gardens along the single street. It was Sir Harold who had caused to be built the little new stone church, with its slender spire, and in this church the mourning villagers gathered to listen to the sermon that was preached in commemoration of the baronet’s death.

Lady Wynde was not present to listen to this sermon. Her gray companion, attired in deep mourning, with the entire household of Hawkhurst, was there, and the young clergyman made a feeling allusion to “the bereaved young widow, sitting alone in her darkened chamber and weeping for her dead, refusing like Rachel of old, to be comforted.” Many of the kindly women present shed tears at this picture, but Artress smiled behind her double mourning vail. She knew that Lady Wynde was lying upon a sofa in her luxurious sitting-room at Hawkhurst, busy with a French novel, and she knew also that not one tear had dimmed her ladyship’s black eyes since the news had come of Sir Harold’s horrible fate.

Neighbors and friends thronged to Hawkhurst to offer their condolences to the young widow. For the first week she was reported inconsolable, and refused to see any one; but a box of the most elegant and fashionable mourning having come down from London, Lady Wynde began to receive her visitors. She affected to be quite broken down by her bereavement, and for weeks did not go out of doors. And when, finally, being urged to take care of her health and to become resigned to her loss, she took morning drives, her equipage looked like a funeral one, her carriage and horses being alike black, and her own face being shrouded in double folds of sombre crape.

Artress had written to Sir Harold’s daughter immediately upon the arrival of the news of Sir Harold’s death, but the letter had been cold and practical, and contained merely the terrible announcement, without one line to soften its horror. About a week later, no letter having been received from Neva, Lady Wynde wrote a very pathetic letter, full of protestations of sympathy, and setting forth her own mock sorrow as something genuinely heart-rending, and declaring herself utterly prostrated in both body and mind. Her ladyship offered her condolences to the bereaved daughter, assuring her that henceforth they “must be all the world to each other,” and concluded her letter by the false statement that it had been the late Sir Harold’s wish that his daughter should remain at her Paris school a year longer, and, as the wishes of the dead are sacred, Lady Wynde had sacrificed her own personal feelings in the matter, and had consented that Neva should remain another year “under the care of her excellent French teachers.”

“That disposes of the girl for a year,” commented Lady Wynde, as she sealed the missive. “I won’t have her here to spy upon me until the year of mourning is over, and I am free to do just as I please.”

So the letter was dispatched, and the baronet’s daughter was condemned to continue her school tasks, even though her heart might be breaking. There was no leisure for her in which to weep for the fate of her noble father; no one who had known him with whom she might talk of him; and only in the long and lonely night times was she free to weep for him, and then indeed her pillow was wetted with her tears.

About three weeks after the receipt of the letter from India announcing Sir Harold’s death, the baronet’s solicitor at Canterbury received a note from the widow, requesting him to call at Hawkhurst on the following day. He obeyed the summons, bringing with him a copy of Sir Harold’s will, made, as will be remembered, upon the day of the baronet’s departure from England. Lady Wynde, clad in the deepest weeds of woe, and attended by Artress, also in mourning, received the solicitor in the library, a grand apartment with vaulted ceiling, and lofty walls lined with books in uniform Russia leather bindings.

“I have sent for you, Mr. Atkins,” said Lady Wynde, when the customary greetings had been exchanged, “to learn if poor Sir Harold left a will. I had his desk searched, and no document of the sort can be found. If he made no will, I am anxious to know how I am to be affected by the omission.”

Mr. Atkins, a thin, small man, with a large, bald head, looked surprised at the simple directness of this speech. He had expected to find her ladyship overcome with grief, as report portrayed her; but her eyes were as bright and tearless, her cheeks as red, her features as composed, as if the business in hand were of the most trivial and unimportant description. Atkins, who had appreciated Sir Harold’s grand nature, felt an aversion to Lady Wynde from this moment.

“She didn’t care for him,” he mentally decided on the instant. “She’s an arrant humbug, and poor Sir Harold’s love was wasted on her. Upon my soul, I believe all she cared about him was for the title and his money.”

Transcriber’s Notes:

Neva’s Three Lovers

CHAPTER I.THE GAME WELL BEGUN.

CHAPTER II.A DECISIVE MOVE COMMANDED.

CHAPTER III.A FATEFUL MOVE DECIDED UPON.

CHAPTER IV.A DOOR OPENED TO WICKEDNESS.

CHAPTER V.SETTLING INTO HER PLACE.

CHAPTER I.
THE GAME WELL BEGUN.

CHAPTER II.
A DECISIVE MOVE COMMANDED.

CHAPTER III.
A FATEFUL MOVE DECIDED UPON.

CHAPTER IV.
A DOOR OPENED TO WICKEDNESS.

CHAPTER V.
SETTLING INTO HER PLACE.