Molly’s Treachery

By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

HART SERIES NO. 62

COPYRIGHT 1886 BY GEO. MUNRO

Published By
THE ARTHUR WESTBROOK COMPANY
Cleveland, O., U. S. A.

Printed in the United States of America

MOLLY’S TREACHERY

CONTENTS

[CHAPTER I.]
[CHAPTER II.]
[CHAPTER III.]
[CHAPTER IV.]
[CHAPTER V.]
[CHAPTER VI.]
[CHAPTER VII.]
[CHAPTER VIII.]
[CHAPTER IX.]
[CHAPTER X.]
[CHAPTER XI.]
[CHAPTER XII.]
[CHAPTER XIII.]
[CHAPTER XIV.]
[CHAPTER XV.]
[CHAPTER XVI.]
[CHAPTER XVII.]
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
[CHAPTER XIX.]
[CHAPTER XX.]
[CHAPTER XXI.]
[CHAPTER XXII.]
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
[CHAPTER XXV.]
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
[CHAPTER XXX.]
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
[CHAPTER XXXVII.]
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
[CHAPTER XXXIX.]
[CHAPTER XL.]
[CHAPTER XLI.]
[CHAPTER XLII.]
[CHAPTER XLIII.]
[CHAPTER XLIV.]
[CHAPTER XLV.]
[CHAPTER XLVI.]

CHAPTER I.

“Ferndale, Greenbrier Co., West Va.
June 20, 1878.

“Dear sister and Aunt Lucy, oh, please do let me come home! Ferndale is horrid, the lonesomest old hole I ever saw in my life, and Aunt Thalia is a real old dragoness! And I’m tired of behaving like a grown-up lady, and just dying for some sort of a lark. And although I don’t like her much, I hate to fool her as I’m doing. It makes me feel mean as if I were a regular little fraud. I try to keep it up for your sake, Lou, but it goes hard. Bother the money! It isn’t worth the deceit, or, as our old French governess used to say, ‘Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle!’ Can’t you let me off now? I’ve been here two weeks, and I don’t think I can stand it any longer! It’s like a catacomb, so deadly lonesome! Not a caller since I came, and I haven’t seen a man for two weeks except the gardener and the old black coach driver! But that’s all the better, since my clothes are shabby anyhow! I think Aunt Thalia must have noticed that my red cashmere is out at elbows, for this morning she actually gave me forty dollars, and told me to go into town and buy myself a summer silk and her maid would make it for me this week. But I’m going to post this letter to you instead with the money registered to you (as you told me to do). I expect she will be fearfully angry when she finds it out. No doubt she will want to drive me away, so you had better send a telegram right off for me to come home. Say that Aunt Lucy’s sick, or somebody’s dying—anything—so that you get me away at once and forever from Ferndale! I shall die of the blues if I stay any longer! With love to you both,

“Molly E. Trueheart.”

“To Miss Louise Barry,
“Staunton, Va.”

The Ferndale estate did not deserve the title “horrid old hole,” as applied to it in that gushing, school-girlish letter. On the contrary it was a magnificent place of about a hundred acres—a valley farm, situated a few miles distant from the historic old town of Lewisburg, and less than six miles distant from the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs. The large, old-fashioned red brick mansion was almost hidden by a far-spreading grove of gigantic old forest trees, beneath whose shade, dark and damp and heavy, flourished the splendid ferns that gave the place its distinctive name. But after all, perhaps the dense shade and unavoidable dampness made the old house unwholesome, for old Mrs. Barry, its mistress, was an aged, withered crone, little more than skin and bones, with a temper none of the sweetest, and her servants as a whole were sour-tempered too, as if they did not get enough sunshine on their faces and into their souls. It was this subtle influence perhaps that made Mrs. Barry’s young guest vow to herself that she should go melancholy mad if she stayed much longer at Ferndale.

So with a heart beating high with hope she entered the old-fashioned family carriage and was driven into Lewisburg ostensibly to purchase the silk dress, but in reality to secretly register and post the letter of entreaty that was to wring her release from her probation at Ferndale and insure her speedy return to her own home.

She rather enjoyed the ride that sunny June afternoon, up hill and down dale in the jolting carriage over the rough, mountainous road, and her depressed spirits rose until she began to feel mildly jolly and hummed a little tune softly to herself that ended suddenly in an undeniable whistle of surprise as they came around a bend of the road and in sight of a picturesque plateau on which stood a beautiful country residence built of rough gray stone. There were two towers over which the pretty American ivy was picturesquely creeping, and the oriel windows here and there, and jutting verandas, were in a style of architecture quite unusual to the country, and betokening both wealth and taste. Our heroine thought she had never seen anything prettier than the great gray stone house with its creeping ivy, and its windows glistening in the sunlight, which had free play here, for there was a sloping lawn in front of the house with just enough trees grouped here and there to add beauty to the scene without at all obstructing the view.

The girl put her pretty, dark head out of the window and said, eagerly,

“Who lives there, Uncle Abe?”

The old family servant who had spent all his life in West Virginia, and knew every place for many miles around, answered promptly:

“Dat’s de ole Laurens place, honey. Fambly’s all in Yurrup now eddicating de darters and de sons. Mighty rich and proud, all dem Laurenses, missie. Come uv old English stock and ebry now an’ den some o’ dere kin dies ober de sea and leabes dem anoder fortin.”

“Oh,” said Molly, drawing a long breath, her piquant face glowing with eager interest.

She looked in something like awe at the beautiful home of these favorites of fortune.

“I wish I was one of ‘de darters’!” she said, quaintly.

“Hi, honey!” exclaimed old Uncle Abe, quite reproachfully. “Ole Mis’ Barry’s niece just as good as dem proud Laurenses.”

“Yes, Uncle Abe,” answered Molly, demurely, the mischievous golden brown lights dancing in her big, dark eyes, and her red lips dimpling with mirth at the old negro’s family pride.

Then she said, half-questioningly:

“But of course the Laurens family are too proud to notice any of their neighbors?”

Uncle Abe was too busy with his horses to reply for a moment or two, but presently he looked around quite crossly at his interlocutor, and said, severely:

“Miss Looisy Barry, I t’ink you mus’ be c’azy. Don’t you know dere ain’t nobody better den de Barrys? I been livin’ long o’ dem as slave and freedman all my life, me an’ my ole ’oman, and de Barrys is always de top o’ de pot, or, as ole missus say, cweam delly cweam. Dat’s F’ench for top o’ de pot, you mus’ know, chile. As fo’ de Laurenses, dey hab always been hand and glove wif de Barrys! Umph, chile, you don’t seem to know nuffin’ ’tall ’bout de ’portance of your own fambly,” concluded old Abe, shaking his gray head disgustedly, and turning his attention wholly to his horses for they had left the gray stone house out of sight, and were descending a steep hill now.

Molly Trueheart sat quite still with a distinctly wistful expression on her lovely girlish face.

“What do I care about the importance of the Barrys? I know that one of them at least can stoop to selfish scheming!” she muttered, impatiently. “Oh, I wish I was well out of this scrape. It is not so funny masquerading as I thought it would be! I nearly exploded into a confession when the poor old soul gave me that money, little fraud that I am!”

CHAPTER II.

If she was a little fraud, as she declared herself to be, she had the frankest, honestest, prettiest face in the world, and many curious and admiring eyes turned on her as she alighted from the carriage on reaching Lewisburg and tripped lightly across the narrow pavement into the post-office.

After she had duly registered the letter containing the forty dollars she went into a few stores, where she looked at summer silks; shook her dark, curly head in pretended disapproval of the prices, bought a paper of pins and a neck ribbon, then returned to the carriage before Uncle Abe, who was exchanging the compliments of the day with some gossips of his own color, was half ready to leave.

“Lor’, Miss Looisy, you aine a-gwine yit?”

“Yes, Uncle Abe.”

“Dem hosses aine got rested yit, dat’s a fac’. Doane you want stay awhile, honey, and call on sum o’ de fust famblies o’ de town?” wheedlingly.

The girl laughed merrily.

“I don’t know a person in Lewisburg from Adam,” she said. “Come on, Uncle Abe; you’ve gossiped enough this time,” and with a resigned sigh the old darky climbed to his seat again, whipped up the horses, and set off on the return journey to Ferndale.

Molly Trueheart leaned back in the carriage and gave herself up to the enjoyment of her own thoughts until they again came in sight of the Laurens estate when she called out to the old driver:

“Uncle Abe, who stays over there when the family goes abroad?”

Uncle Abe, out of humor at being separated so soon from his gossip, grunted out crossly:

“Nobody but dem sassy Laurens niggers.”

Molly felt herself snubbed and drew back her curly head, relapsing into a silence that lasted until she again crossed the threshold of Ferndale.

Mrs. Thalia Barry was sitting in the wide hall taking snuff out of a golden snuff-box.

She was a tall, spare woman with a frame that had originally been strong and stout, although now dwindled by the encroachments of age and the horrors of a chronic dyspepsia. She had thin, masculine-looking features, a false front of waved, white hair, false teeth, and her small, twinkling, greenish-gray eyes were partially hidden by gold-rimmed spectacles. She dressed habitually in soft, thick, gray silk, and pinned her collar of the yellowest old real lace with a magnificent diamond brooch. Ill-health had magnified an already imperious temper; and Molly was not far wrong when she complained that the aristocratic old lady was a perfect old dragoness, for she was the terror of her servants when in one of her “spells,” as they called them, and even her young visitor had more than once smarted under the lash of her displeasure.

But she looked up now with some eagerness, and said in her shrill, curt tone:

“Back so soon? I hope that old rascal, Abe, did not drive my horses too fast! Well, Louise, come and show me your silk.”

The pretty, dark eyed girl, in her cheap white dress and rustic straw hat, halted in the door-way with a frightened expression and gazed half appealingly into Mrs. Barry’s stern, ugly face.

“Well?” said the lady, impatiently. “Do you want some one to bring your bundle in from the carriage? Here, Ginny Ann,” to an old negro woman hovering about the back door, “go out to the carriage and get Miss Barry’s bundle!”

Molly sprang forward, her frightened expression changing to one of defiant bravery.

“Oh, aunt, she needn’t go! There’s—there’s no bundle there! I didn’t buy the dress!” she cried out, desperately.

“But why?” cried Mrs. Barry in amazement.

And the girl faltered, with hot blushes.

“I didn’t need it, you know.”

Mrs. Barry flew suddenly into a fury.

“Not need the dress, you silly girl, when you have not a decent rag to your back! What do you mean?” she stormed, in loud, angry tones.

Molly’s blushes grew hotter still, but they were those of anger now, and her black eyes blazed as she retorted:

“Well, if I have nothing but rags, what more do I need in this old tomb of a place where no one ever comes from week’s end to week’s end? I know you’ll be mad, Aunt Thalia, but if you kill me for it, I’ll tell the truth at once! I sent that money to my sister!”

Mrs. Barry’s face grew purple with wrath. She stamped furiously upon the carpeted floor.

“Never say that word again!” she burst out fiercely. “You have no sister.”

“My step-sister, then, Aunt Thalia,” amended Molly.

A glance of concentrated scorn and anger shone on her through the glasses of Mrs. Barry.

“Louise Barry, I thought you had more pride than to claim that girl—the daughter of the low-lived actress, who wheedled your father into marrying her, his second wife—your sister! The connection is a disgrace to you.”

“Hush, Aunt Thalia. You must not talk so to me!” said the girl, sharply. She had grown quite pale, and her slender little hands were clinched tightly together. She bit her red lips fiercely, to keep back burning words that had rushed to their portals.

Mrs. Barry snorted scornfully.

“You take her part, eh? that low-born brat that her dying mother saddled on your aunt Lucy. Louise Barry, I’m ashamed of you, disappointed in you. I wish now that I had taken you here to live when your father died, then Lucy Everett would have had to send Molly Trueheart to the poor-house instead of supporting her on the money I have sent every year to you.”

The girl stood looking at her with a heaving breast and eyes dilated with anger. When her aunt paused the girlish head was lifted proudly, and the young voice trembling with passion, answered sharply:

“Molly Trueheart’s mother, the low-lived actress, as you call her, left her daughter a legacy, small, but sufficient to pay for her board and clothing. She would not have to go to the poor-house, even if Aunt Lucy turned her out-of-doors.”

“Oh, indeed; I did not know she was an heiress. I thought she was a pauper. Why did you send her the money then, since she did not need it?” sharply.

“I—I owed it to her, Aunt Thalia,” said the girl with a defiant air.

“So then the allowance I have made you every year was not sufficient, and you had to borrow from that creature?”

“Ye-es, madame,” in a stifled tone.

“Very well, you shall never have that humiliation henceforth. It is not for Philip Barry’s daughter and my heiress to undergo such straits. Henceforth your home will be at Ferndale, and I’ll try to cure you of all fancy for your low-born connection. I’ll write to your aunt Lucy tonight and tell her so.”

“I—I won’t stay!” stormed the girl, in sudden passionate defiance and terror commingled. Her black eyes blazed as she fixed them on Mrs. Barry’s face.

The old lady gazed at her silently a moment as if almost paralyzed by astonishment.

“Why, you pert little baggage!” she muttered, then she made a dart toward the girl and clutched her arm with fingers that seemed strong as iron. Molly struggled wildly to get away, but Mrs. Barry held her tightly.

“Come here, Ginny Ann, and help me!” she called to the gaping old negress, and between them they dragged the girl upstairs, where Mrs. Barry deliberately pushed her into the big garret and locked the door.

“Stay there, miss, until you come to your senses and ask my pardon for your impertinence!” she screamed through the key-hole.

Then Molly heard the departing footsteps of the grim old lady and her satellite, and realized that she was locked up like a naughty child in punishment for her misdemeanor.

She was in doubt whether to laugh or cry at the preposterousness of the whole thing.

At first she indulged in a burst of defiant laughter which soon changed to hysterical sobbing. Sinking down on an old moth-eaten sofa she covered her face with her hands, and tears rained through her fingers.

“Oh, mamma, my true, gifted, beautiful mamma, it was bitter to hear you maligned so, and you in your tragic grave!” she murmured sadly. “And I, your own daughter, I could not take your part because of the promise that bound me to keep Louise’s secret. How can I ever like that proud old woman again?”

Like a grieved child she sobbed herself to sleep in the musty, close-smelling garret, where quiet reigned supreme save for the patter of startled mice across the bare, dusty floor.

Two hours passed, and Ginny Ann, the black woman, was sent up to inquire regarding the state of mind of the imprisoned culprit.

“Ole missis wants to know is you sorry fo’ youse sassiness yet?” she bawled through the key-hole.

There was no reply, and she went down and reported that Miss Louise was sulking yet, and wouldn’t answer a word.

“Let her stay until night, then. I guess the darkness will cure her of her stubbornness,” chuckled Mrs. Barry, evilly.

But all the same she had sent Agnes Walker, her maid, back to Lewisburg with old Abe, with instructions to buy the summer silk and a white muslin besides. The old lady had very particular reasons for wanting her niece to have this finery.

And while the prisoner sobbed herself to sleep in the garret, and Agnes Walker tumbled over silks and muslins in Lewisburg, Mrs. Barry had Ginny Ann unpacking trunks in the dressing-room and hauling out finery that had not seen the light for years, but which in the revolutions of fashion’s wheel was as fashionable now as in the long ago years when Mrs. Barry had bedecked her form in the costliest fabrics and richest laces to grace the grand society in which she moved before she had settled down, a childless widow, at lonely Ferndale, her dower house, to nurse her grief for her lost partner and her chronic dyspepsia together and to make herself a terror to any one who dared dispute her despotic will.

“Lor’, ole mis, dere’s dat white satting dress you wore when you went to see de queen ober de water,” exclaimed old Ginny Ann, as she lifted out a tray and disclosed beneath a lustrous heap of yellow satin and flounces of fine point lace. “But, Lor’ A’mighty, it’s all yallered er layin’. I ’speck I kin bleach de lace all right by layin’ it out in de dew at night, but dat satting won’t wash, and it’s jes’ ruinated,” sighing heavily and rolling up the whites of her eyes.

“There, don’t touch it, you old simpleton!” cried Mrs. Barry, hastily. “That dress has sacred memories. I wore it at a Drawing-room in London when I was presented to Queen Victoria on my wedding-tour, and on my return home at an Inauguration Ball in Washington, when our good President, Mr. Fillmore, took his seat. Shut up the trunk, Ginny Ann. I cannot cut up that dress even for my niece.”

“Dat’s so, dat’s so, ole mis. De impertent chile don’t deserbe it!” mumbled Ginny Ann.

“Hold your tongue, sauce-box!” cried her mistress, irately.

CHAPTER III.

But Molly Trueheart was not sulking in the garret as Ginny Ann had reported to her “ole miss.”

She had slept but a little while when she was awakened by a sound that made her spring to her feet with a shriek of alarm—the hurrying and scurrying of immense rats across the attic floor. Her black eyes opened wide in terror, and she sprang upon the sofa, and stood watching the loathsome animals as, startled by her scream, they scampered to their holes.

“Good gracious! There must have been a hundred of the nasty little vermin!” ejaculated Molly. In reality there had not been more than a dozen, but her terrors had magnified their numbers. “Ugh! ugh! ugh! how they make my flesh creep!” she continued, shuddering nervously and drawing her skirts close around her dainty little feet. “And to think that they might have bitten me in my sleep, the monsters! I wonder, I do wonder if Aunt Thalia intends for me to stay here all night! I sha’n’t do it! so there, no, not if Louise loses every cent of the fortune,” her eyes sparkling resentfully. “I don’t want my hair to turn white in one night from terror.”

Stillness reigned again, for the rodents, as much alarmed by her presence as she was by theirs, were trembling in their hiding-places. Molly sprang down and ran over to the window, which, without much difficulty, she flung open, letting in a flood of fresh air.

At the same moment she clapped her pretty dimpled hands together and uttered a cry of mischievous pleasure.

“Molly Trueheart, you limb of mischief, I knew you would be sure to have a lark if you stayed any longer at Ferndale!”

Close to that side of the house grew a stately oak tree that flung out its long, strong arms close to the window-sill. The large, laughing dark eyes were fixed on the tree while she spoke, and in another moment she climbed up into the window, twined her round white arms about a stout branch, and swung herself forward with kitten-like agility into the big tree, sliding from limb to limb until she was securely seated on a stout branch with her back against the body of the oak.

“Farewell, my late companions!” she cried gayly, waving her hand at the window, and thoroughly enjoying her escapade. “Oh, how delicious this is after Aunt Thalia’s musty old garret! I think I shall sleep in this tree all night. The big limbs and thick green leaves will make me a splendid bed, and—ouch, oh, Lord have mercy! oh! oh! oh!” and as the last exclamation left her lips, Molly’s hold on the tree relaxed, and she went crashing down, with a rustle of breaking twigs and scattering leaves, through the branches to the ground, where she lay groaning on the grass amid the debris collected during her fall.

For, lifting her bright eyes to the higher branches of the tree, she had suddenly beheld an immense black snake hanging downward with his tail curled around a stout twig, and his head thrust forward toward her, while his keen little eyes glowed in the green obscurity of the thick leafage like baleful jewels.

Molly had given such a start and scream of terror that she had tumbled headlong through the tree at least twenty feet from the ground, but the soft, thick grass and the leaves that had fallen with her, had so broken the severity of the fall that after the first groan she was able to rise slowly to her feet and exclaim between laughter and tears:

“‘Och, I’m kilt intirely,’ as Paddy would say. Now I wonder if I can be having the delirium tremens, seeing rats and snakes like this! It can’t be, for I’ve never been addicted to the intoxicating glass! I believe I’ve broken my arm, it hurts so bad. Good heavens, it’s coming down the tree! It must be a racer. I’ll have to cut and run!”

This she did with surprising agility, only pausing to look behind her once when she saw his snakeship, which did indeed belong to the racer species, trailing his shining length rapidly after. With a half sob in her throat, Molly flew on and on over hay-fields and hills, fences and brooks, until she had left Ferndale a mile behind her, and came up with a jerk against some tall, white palings that inclosed the beautiful lawn she had admired while riding that day—the Laurens place, as old Abe had called it in answer to her curious questions.

CHAPTER IV.

She paused and looked behind her to see if the black snake still pursued her, but she had left it far behind in her headlong race, and to her dismay she perceived by the brilliant hues of the western sky that the sun had almost set.

Badly frightened as she had been at first, the sudden feeling of safety roused in her the sense of the ludicrous, and Molly laughed aloud at her forlorn plight. Her white dress was in rags and soiled with the mud of the little brooks through which she had splashed headlong, she was bare-headed, her hair all loose and disordered, and the perspiration ran in streams down her flushed face.

“What a beauty I must look!” she ejaculated, merrily. “And I wonder what disaster will befall me next. I shall have to go and ask one of those ‘sassy Laurens niggers,’ as Abe calls them, to go home with me, for I daren’t go alone. I might meet that old snake again. But they will be frightened, I am such a sight, and perhaps they will set the dogs on me.”

She sat down on the grass to rest herself before going in at the gate and to think over the sudden contretemps that had befallen her after her two weeks of irreproachable good behavior.

A feeling of remorse came to her at the thought of her step-sister who might lose so much by the misdemeanor of the girl she had trusted.

“Oh, why didn’t I bear all and hold my tongue, little virago that I am?” she exclaimed. “I knew when I came that I must take a great deal. Aunt Lucy cautioned me carefully. Suppose—suppose—old Mrs. Barry should disinherit Louise for this. She wouldn’t forgive me as long as she lived, I know, and I couldn’t forgive myself, either.”

The beautiful young face wore an expression of dismay and the young heart throbbed with pain.

“Oh, how wicked I have been! How cruel to poor Louise,” she continued, springing excitedly to her feet. “My bad temper and love of fun are always leading me into mischief. But I’ll make it up, yes, I will. I’ll go and beg the old dragoness’ pardon. Not that she didn’t deserve all I said, but for Louise’s sake.”

With rapid footsteps she made her way to the servants’ quarters, which she saw some distance in the rear of the grand mansion. With some trepidation through fear of dogs, Molly approached the commodious white-washed kitchen in the door of which sat an old negress in a homely blue linsey dress with a red handkerchief twisted turban-wise about her head and a little black pipe in her mouth.

“Lor’ A’mighty, who dat?” she sputtered, as Molly came up in her ragged dress, and minus one slipper which she had dropped in her flight.

“Good-evening, auntie,” said Molly, putting on a smile like sunshine. “Don’t mind my looks, please. I fell from a tree and tore my dress, and ran from a snake and lost my slipper, and I’m so tired and hot and thirsty, please give me a drink.”

“Sartinly, chile, but did de snake bite ye? ’Cause, ef he bit you, honey, I better give you some reverend whisky to cure snake bite!”

“No, I was not bitten, auntie,” said Molly; then with a quizzical glance: “Isn’t it odd, auntie, that whisky will make men see snakes but it will cure snake bites?”

“Go ’long wid yer foolishness, chile,” said old Betsy, chuckling. She hobbled slowly to a little stone spring house near by and brought Molly a clean gourd full of cool, sparkling water. “Whut’s yer name, honey?” she continued, as Molly drank thirstily of the delicious draught.

“Will-o’-the-wisp!” said the girl, whimsically.

“Willy Whisk! Soun’s more like a boy’s den a geerl’s name. But won’t you take a cheer, honey, and tell me all about you-self?” wheedlingly.

“No, I thank you, aunt—what’s your name?”

“Aunt Betsy Bell, chile—named arter de big mountain, Betsy Bell,” said the old negress with pride.

“Well, Aunt Betsy, I’m in a great hurry. Won’t you send somebody with me to Ferndale? I’m afraid to go alone, it’s getting so dark, and that old snake is somewhere on the road waiting for me to come, I know,” with a shudder.

To her dismay the old woman shook her turbaned head and answered:

“Dere ain’t a soul on de place but me, honey. De men aine come f’om de corn-fiel’ yet, and my ole man tuck de ole mare dis morn’ and car’e’ some spring chickings down to de White Sulphur Springs, and he won’t git back till de cool o’ de night!”

“My gracious, this is awful,” said Molly, in dismay. Then she brightened and beamed on the old woman. “Won’t you go with me, Aunt Betsy?” she exclaimed.

“Lor’ me, chile, I got rheumatiz too bad! I aine walk as far ez Ferndale in two years. My laig all drawed wid rheumatiz. Set down an’ wait till de men come from de fiel’s, den you hab company to take you home.”

“How long until they come?”

“Two, free hours, I ’spect. Dey’s gwine work late, dey said, tryin’ to git all de corn plantin’ done tonight.”

Molly flung herself down tempestuously on the kitchen door-step, leaned her dark, curly head against Aunt Betsy’s linsey knee, and dissolved into stormy sobs and tears.

Aunt Betsy’s tender heart was touched to its center.

“Lor’ honey, you make me t’ink o’ my little white chillern I used to nurse, a-comin’ and layin’ deir curly heads ’g’in deir black mammy’s knee, and cryin’ and sobbin’! Hush, honey; I’ll fix a way fur ye—on’y don’t cry so, fur it makes my heart ache, t’inkin’ o’ my little white nurslin’s ober in dat furrin’ kentry. Now tell me, honey, Miss Willie Whisk, kin you ride hossback?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Molly, unblushingly; for although she had never ridden horseback in her life, she said to herself undauntedly:

“I can do it if I try.”

“All right; den I’ll lend you my ole misses’ ridin’ hoss, Miss Willie Whisk, and you kin turn him loose soon’s you git to ole Miss Barry’s gate, and dat hoss will come straight home to his stable.”

“Oh, thank you, Aunt Betsy. God bless you, you kind soul. I’ll try to pay you for this some day!” gushed Molly, gratefully, little dreaming how the keeping of that promise would come to pass.

She went with Betsy to the stable, where the old woman brought out and saddled a fine bay horse on which she mounted Molly. Then she hobbled to a gate which she threw open, saying kindly:

“Dar’s your road straight to Ferndale. Good-night, Miss Willie Whisk. Gib my ’spects to ole Miss Barry, and my lub to Ginny Ann and old Unc’ Abe, her husband, and to Nancy Jane, and all de res’, and tell ’em all to come ober.”

“I will, Aunt Betsy. Good-night to you,” Molly called back cheerily, as the bay horse pranced down the road in the deepening twilight and starlight.

CHAPTER V.

“How easy it is to ride horseback! This is perfectly delicious!” cried Molly, exultantly, as she gripped the reins in her little white hands, and gave herself up to the enjoyment of her novel adventure.

A feeling of buoyant delight came to her as she felt herself borne easily and swiftly along on the back of the gently pacing and splendid animal.

“Oh, I did not know what I missed in never learning to ride! I shall get Aunt Thalia to let me have a horse to go out every day now until Louise sends for me,” she resolved, gayly.

Alas! she felicitated herself too soon.

They had not made half the distance to Ferndale, when at a sudden turn of the road some distance ahead, Molly saw a tall, manly figure coming toward her with the inevitable fiery tip of a cigar gleaming through the semi-darkness. At sight of this pedestrian the bay horse, which had been pacing easily and beautifully, uttered a loud whinny of delight, and changed his easy gait for a sudden gallop that took Molly by surprise, and, losing her balance in the saddle, the reins slipped from her hands. Another moment and our luckless heroine went flying over the head of her noble steed and landed ignobly on her face in the dust of the road.

The bay horse stopped perfectly still with wonderful equine intelligence and the pedestrian dropped his cigar and rushed to the rescue.

As he came upon the scene the animal again uttered a whinny of delight and poked his cold nose into the new-comer’s hand.

“What, Hero, old fellow, glad to see me back?” the gentleman said, with a hasty caress on the graceful head.

Then he stooped over the heap of huddled-up humanity in the road.

“What mischief have you done in your haste to bid me welcome?” he continued, lifting Molly’s dark head out of the dust.

A moment’s examination assured him that the fall had either stunned or killed her outright.

“This is dreadful; and whom can it be, anyhow, riding my mother’s favorite bay?”

While he spoke he was carrying her across the road to a little spring bubbling between the rocks and ferns.

He laid her down then on the grass and bathed her face and hands with water.

But Molly lay for many minutes still and speechless, and he began to grow very anxious as well as curious over the girl whose face as seen by the light of the rising moon looked very lovely with its clear-cut, piquant features, round, dimpled chin, and slender black brows and thick, fringed lashes.

The man leaning over her was as handsome in his way as she in hers was lovely. He was tall and stately looking, with a splendid physique, and a noble, high-bred face, large eyes that looked black by night, but by day were blue as the violets of his native hills. His hair was of a chestnut tinge, and lay in luxuriant masses about his temples. It was the face of a man about thirty years old, and the golden brown mustache shaded lips that were strong, and grave, and proud, and perhaps a little stern. In dress and manner he was the perfect gentleman.

“Whom can she be? I am quite certain that she belongs to no one in the neighborhood,” he was thinking for at least the twentieth time, when suddenly a sigh heaved Molly’s breast, and the dark eyes opened wide on the face of the stranger.

At first she regarded him in dreamy surprise. Her head lay on his arm, but she did not seem to notice it, only murmured, quaintly, and with an air of relief:

“I thought I was dead!”

“I thought so, too, but I am very happy to find that you are not,” said the stranger in a pleasantly musical voice. “Tell me, do you feel any pain?”

Molly groaned as she half lifted her form from where it rested against him.

“I feel as if all my bones were broken. I fell out of a tree, you know,” she said.

An expression of uneasiness crossed his face.

“It was a horse you fell from—don’t you remember?” he asked.

“It was not a horse, it was a tree. I think I ought to know!” returned belligerent Molly.

CHAPTER VI.

The stranger regarded Molly’s saucy rejoinder as the effect of an injury done to her brain by her fall from the horse, and said to himself, pityingly:

“She evidently struck upon her head and the shock has disordered her brain, but I trust the affliction will prove but momentary.”

She was sitting upright now regarding him with vexed, dark eyes when he said, smilingly:

“Since you dispute my assertion permit me to prove it. Look yonder!”

Molly turned her head and saw the handsome bay horse standing still in the road as if conscious of his misdemeanor.

Her memory came quickly back.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.

“You remember?” he rejoined.

“Yes.”

Her face and eyes looked very arch and saucy as she continued:

“I suppose you take me for an escaped lunatic?”

“Oh, no,” with a provoking smile on the handsome lips, “only a very giddy girl whose memory was temporarily obscured by her fall.”

“And you don’t like giddy girls?” Molly interrogated, with a decisive pout.

“Not—usually,” he returned with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.

Molly sprang to her feet with considerable agility, considering that she had declared she felt as if all her bones were broken.

“Neither do I like hateful prigs!” she returned, with asperity. “So I will bid you good-evening, sir.”

Dropping him a pert little courtesy, she ran toward the horse, but as she lifted her little foot to the stirrup she found him at her elbow.

“Permit me,” he said, and lifted the light figure quickly to the saddle.

Then he detained the reins in his hands a moment.

“Do you know I was very much surprised to see a strange young lady riding this horse?” he said. “I know the horse and its owner—but—”

“Not the rider,” she finished his hesitating sentence. “Well, my name is Molly Trueheart, and I borrowed the horse from old Betsy Bell over there at the Laurens place. I will send him home in an hour. So, you see, I’m not a horse thief, although I may look like a lunatic. To tell the truth I’ve had quite a lark this evening, and I’m very anxious to get home.”

“A lark!” he repeated, with an expressive shrug, and Molly Trueheart uttered a merry, rollicking peal of laughter.

“Yes, a lark!” she said. “Oh, how horrified you look! Good-night, Mr. Prig!” and like a flash she caught the reins from his hands, touched Hero lightly with the whip, and he bounded gracefully away as if anxious to atone for the mishap of awhile ago.

The stranger stood looking after her with a smile in his violet eyes.

“What a merry little hoiden!” he uttered aloud, “and what a mercy she escaped unhurt. It was rather ludicrous to see her come flying over Hero’s head in that fashion, and landing in the dust at one’s feet!”

Still smiling, he resumed his walk toward Maple Shade, as the Laurens place was called, but before he reached the wide entrance gate of the park he was overtaken by Hero, who, on being liberated at Ferndale, had galloped rapidly back to overtake his friend.

“Good fellow!” said the gentleman, springing to the back of the delighted creature, and continuing his journey. “I hope, Hero, you have delivered our little madcap safe at home, and not flung her precipitately at the head of some other astonished pedestrian!”

Hero gave a delighted whinny which his rider interpreted as the former, which was indeed the case, for Molly Trueheart was at that moment running across the lawn at Ferndale, anxious to make her peace with old Mrs. Barry.

“I shall have to humble myself down to the ground, I know, but I’ll do it for Louise’s sake,” she muttered then. “Oh, dear, how my bones do ache! I know I’m all over black and blue from the tumbles I’ve had! I know very well I shall be as sore as a boil tomorrow, and have to stay in bed all day. Oh, what made Lou so determined on sending me here? She might have known,” dismally, “that I could not behave myself. Oh, Lordy, I do hope she’ll let me off from doing any more penance as soon as she gets my letter!”

A sudden thought of the dignified stranger she had encountered made her laugh aloud in spite of her sorry plight.

“My! what a prig he was! Handsome though, very!” she said. “I wonder who he was, the wretch? He frightened the horse, of course, or I shouldn’t have got that fall. I hope he doesn’t live in this neighborhood, for it wouldn’t do for Aunt Thalia to find out that I ran away. I must hold my peace on that point. And now to face the music!”

The hall-doors stood wide open, the light of the swinging-lamp shining on the tired, pretty face of the girl as she crept in and went softly to the door of her aunt’s sitting-room. At the same moment the tall Dutch clock in the hall loudly boomed out the hour of ten.

“Oh, I did not dream it was so late!” she muttered, and peeped around the door.

There lay her Aunt Thalia on the sofa with Ginny Ann mopping her face with camphor, and old Nancy Jane, the cook, swinging a huge turkey-wing up and down.

Molly forgot her selfish terrors in anxiety for the old lady, and rushed precipitately into the room.

“What’s the matter?” she exclaimed.

Nancy Jane and Ginny Ann squealed simultaneously:

“Lordy, Miss Lou, dat you?”

“Yes, or what’s left of me after tumbling out of the tree.” Walking up to her aunt’s side, then bending over her: “Aunt Thalia, are you sick?”

Mrs. Barry opened her eyes with a look of relief, but before she could speak Ginny Ann broke in:

“Missis almost c’azy, finkin’ you done runned away. You sartinly did gib us a skeer, chile! Ole mis’, she say jes’ now, ‘Run upsta’rs, Ginny Ann, and let dat chile out o’ dat garret. Guess she sorry for her sass now.’ And I went and foun’ dat windy wide open, and you gone. And ole mis’ flew in sech a rage, umph me, as you nebber saw, and mos’ went inter de highstrikes.”

“Ginny Ann, hold your tongue, you old fool!” cried Mrs. Barry, sitting upright, with a suddenness that made her domestics reel backward in dismay. “Is that you, Louise? Where have you been, child, giving us such a scare about you?”

Something like tenderness quivered through her voice despite its acerbity, and cunning Molly took instant advantage of the situation. She dropped theatrically upon her knees.

“Oh, Aunt Thalia, the big rats in the garret frightened me almost to death!” she sobbed. “I climbed out of the window into the tree, and then a big snake scared me, and I fell out of the tree down to the ground, and—and—oh—most killed myself! And—and—it just served me right, too! I ought to have been killed for my meanness to you, Aunt Thalia! I was just as naughty as I could be, but I’m downright sorry, and I’ll try never—or, ‘hardly ever’—to do it again. Won’t you please forgive me?”

Mrs. Barry looked down keenly into the lifted face. It did look pale and pathetic, and the big eyes were positively dewy. She put out her long, withered hand, on which a priceless diamond sparkled, and gently stroked the dark head.

“Louise, I don’t know but that I ought to beg your pardon,” she said, with a gentleness that was so rare in her it made the gaping negroes stare. “I—I don’t exactly think I did right putting you in the old garret. You—you might have been killed falling out of that tree! I think we must forgive each other and do better in future.”

“Oh, thank you so much, Aunt Thalia!” Molly cried, jubilantly. She even dared press a timid kiss on Mrs. Barry’s wrinkled cheek, she felt so glad that, by eating humble pie, she had saved Louise.

“Are you bruised very much, my dear?” the old lady inquired, sympathetically, and Molly responded lugubriously:

“Black and blue all over!”

Both the negro women groaned in concert at this statement, and Mrs. Barry exclaimed:

“Oh, how dreadful to think of such a fall! It’s a mercy you were not killed outright. I forgot about the rats in the garret, or I never would have shut you up there. Ginny Ann, you go upstairs with the child, and let her have a warm bath, then rub her from head to foot in arnica—from head to foot; do you hear?”

“Yes, ole mis’, sartinly. Come on, Miss Lou, honey.”

“Yes, Ginny Ann. Good-night, Aunt Thalia. I’m sorry I gave you such a scare; and I’m so glad that you were good enough to forgive me,” Molly said, as she followed Ginny Ann from the room to the bath-room upstairs, where the old lady’s instructions were carried out to the letter.

“Oh, I feel so much better! Thank you, Ginny Ann,” she exclaimed, as the latter tucked her into her cool, white bed. “But I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”

“No trouble at tall, Miss Lou. I’se always been use to waiting on de Barrys. It’s my pleasure and my dooty,” Ginny Ann replied, with the elaborate politeness of the well-raised Virginia negro. Then she paused, and said, mysteriously: “Honey, doane you mine ole missis’ capers; her bark worser ’n her bite. She gwine make it up to you fo’ treatin’ you so bad.”

“Make it up to me?” said tired and sleepy Molly, drowsily; and then Ginny Ann got down on her knees by the bed and whispered the secret of the evening’s work among the trunks of finery, and of the maid’s trip into town for the summer silk.

“Lay low, honey, and doane say a word to ole missis, but sho’ as you born, she’s gwine take you off on a trip whar you’ll hab a fine time dancin’ and eberyt’ing; and I shouldn’t wonder, no, I shouldn’t, ef she marries you off to some nice young gemplum,” she concluded, exuberantly.

Molly’s head popped up from the pillow like a cork.

“Indeed she won’t then! Marry me off, indeed! I should like to see any one try it!” she blazed, indignantly.

“Hi, honey, doane you want get married?” Ginny Ann inquired, in amazement.

“No, I don’t! I hate men, every one of them—deceitful prigs!” cried Molly, violently, adding to herself that the man she had seen tonight she hated worst of all.

Wanting to get rid of Ginny Ann, she put down her head again, pretending to snore audibly, and the woman retired, muttering to herself:

“Dat’s de strangest young gal I eber did see! Doane wanter git married, she say! Well, Lordy! she sartinly is diff’runt from any oder young gal in de worl’!”

CHAPTER VII.

Molly did not have any “larks” the next day, for she was so stiff and sore she had to remain in bed all day, and submit to the fussy attendance of Ginny Ann, and the kindness of her remorseful aunt who, blaming herself for the girl’s accident, did all in her power to atone for it, even to promising her a month at the White Sulphur Springs, and freely pardoning her for sending her money to Molly Trueheart, the actress’ daughter.

“And I sent Agnes Walker back to town yesterday and bought two new dresses for you,” she said. “And I’ve trunks full of things as good as new that she’s going to make over for you to wear.”

“Oh, Aunt Thalia, I don’t deserve ’em, I can’t take ’em,” Molly said, conscience-stricken at all this kindness. She said to herself reproachfully, “And I wrote to Lou that she was an old dragoness! What a shame! She has turned real good, and it makes me feel meaner than ever. Oh, I can’t take her presents and go to the Springs with her, and I mustn’t say a word, I must wait for Lou’s letter. She will certainly let me come home at once!”

But several days passed and no reply came from the absent step-sister. Meanwhile the work of dress-making went briskly on, to the secret distress of the little fraud, as she called herself when alone.

“Oh, it’s too bad, ruining all these fine things cutting them up for me! I shall never wear them, and they will not do for Louise, she is so much bigger than I am! Oh, why don’t she write and put a stop to it all?” she thought impatiently, and in her trouble she wrote another letter, telling Louise of the sacrifice of the finery, and begging her incoherently to “do something.”

By the time that she could reasonably expect a reply to this second appeal several very pretty dresses were completed, and one evening soon after tea when she had hurried upstairs to have a real good cry over Louise’s unaccountable silence, she was startled by the abrupt entrance of Mrs. Barry’s maid with the muslin dress thrown over her arm.

“Mrs. Barry wants you to dress and come down to the parlor,” she said.

Molly stared.

“What for?” she inquired ungrammatically.

Agnes Walker shook her head laconically and answered:

“I can’t tell. She wants to see how your new dresses fit, perhaps, or to give you some lessons in managing your train. Anyway, she told me to dress you and send you down.”

“Here’s a lark,” said the merry girl to herself, forgetting all about her tears of a minute before.

She submitted coolly to Agnes Walker’s help, exclaiming gayly:

“I should like to see how I look in a fine dress. I never had one in my life.”

“Fy, Miss Barry,” cried the maid; but Molly persisted in her assertion.

“Well, it’s very becoming to you, anyway,” said Agnes, carefully adjusting the graceful demi-train with its embroidered flounces.

She had tied Mollie’s refractory dark curls back from her peach-bloom cheeks with a new rose-pink ribbon, and fastened a bunch of pink roses in with the lace of her square corsage. The round dimpled arms, bare to the elbows, were faultless in shape and contour as they escaped from their soft ruffles.

“You look very nice,” continued Agnes, critically.

“Thank you; but I feel like a peacock,” said the girl, with such ludicrous strut across the floor that the maid burst out laughing.

“Miss Barry, you haven’t got a bit of dignity. You’re just like a child!” she exclaimed. “But go, now, to your aunt. You know how impatient she is.”

Molly laughed; but she went along the hall quite sedately and down the stairs, pausing only once to take a gratified peep at herself in the mirror of the tall hatrack opposite the parlor door.

“I do look nice,” she said, nodding at the radiant reflection, and a sudden thought came to her. She muttered:

“I wish he could see me now, the hateful prig! I know I did look like a tramp that night.”

With that she crossed the hall, turned the handle of the parlor door and entered.

A blaze of light greeted her and made her pause in surprise. The big chandeliers in the double parlors were both lighted and Mrs. Barry was entertaining a guest.

She rose with suave dignity.

“Cecil, this is my niece, Louise—Miss Barry, Mr. Laurens.”

Taken by surprise, Molly made a bashful constrained little courtesy without looking up, but as she was about to sink into a seat by her aunt a manly hand grasped hers and a familiar voice said kindly:

“I am glad to meet you, Miss Barry. I hope we shall be as good friends as the Barrys and Laurens have been before us!”

Molly looked at him with dilated eyes. It was the stranger she had met a few nights before!

Her lips parted and closed again without a sound. In pitiable agitation she dropped into a large arm-chair behind Mrs. Barry, telling herself that he had betrayed the whole escapade, and that now the old lady’s wrath would be poured out upon her head in fullest measure. She waited in sheer desperation for the blow to fall on her pretty luckless head.

Not a word was addressed to her by either her aunt or the visitor. Mrs. Barry took up the thread of a momentarily dropped discourse about London. They discussed that famous city at some length while the culprit trembled in her chair.

Then Mrs. Barry’s gray silk rustled as she rose from her sofa.

“Cecil, you will kindly excuse me for ten minutes,” she said, suavely; and, like a wise old lady, left them alone to get acquainted with each other.

Molly drew a long, deep breath that was almost a sob, and looked up, thinking that she had escaped a threatening danger.

She thought, happily:

“He does not recognize me!”

But she was mistaken. Cecil Laurens was looking at her with a quizzical smile.

He drew his chair nearer—beside her, in fact—and said, reproachfully:

“You said your name was Molly Trueheart—”

“Oh, hush!” cried Molly.

She almost jumped out of her seat in her terror lest Mrs. Barry should have heard his words.

“I——I—told you—a—a story, Mr. Laurens,” she said, tremulously. “But please, please don’t tell Aunt Thalia!”

The violet eyes under the dark brows and high, white forehead regarded the pleading face rather sternly.

He said:

“Then your aunt did not know of your—your—” hesitating, then half smiling, “your ‘lark’ that night?”

Molly grew hot and angry under that peculiar smile.

“I don’t see what you’re smiling at,” she said, crossly. “No, she doesn’t know; and—if—you—are—a gentleman—you will not betray me!”

He flushed as the slow, emphatically uttered words fell from the girl’s lips, and answered, curtly:

“I claim to be a gentleman, Miss Barry, but I can not comprehend the motives of a lady who goes on such a madcap race by night unknown to her guardians, and under a fictitious name!”

The sarcasm in his voice stung deeply. Molly turned crimson and exclaimed, resentfully:

“It is not a fictitious name—it is my own—my step-sister’s name, and I have a right to use it if I choose!”

Cecil Laurens queried, gravely:

“Do you think your step-sister would be willing to allow such an escapade to go under her name?”

Tears of shame and anger flashed into Molly’s dark eyes.

“Molly Trueheart would not care—not a bit!” she declared, with a half sob. “And—and it’s none of your business, any way, Mr. Cecil Laurens, and I think you’re old enough to know better than to meddle with—anybody—like this. I would have told you all about it if you hadn’t been so smart, but now I won’t, so there! And you may go and tell Aunt Thalia all you know, if you’re mean enough, and of course you are!”

With that she bounced out of her chair and flew to the bay-window, where she stood with her back to him, her cheeks hot with anger, and her eyes so dim with tears that she could not see how brightly the stars were sparkling in the sky.

Cecil Laurens remained perfectly silent, and there was a glitter of anger in his violet eyes.

“What a little fury!” he was thinking. “I have always heard that the Barrys were high-spirited, but I never had an exhibition of their temper before. Pity to spoil such a pretty face flying into such a rage.”

Mrs. Barry’s ten minutes passed without bringing her back, and Mr. Laurens grew tired of watching Molly’s obdurate back. He opened the grand organ and sat down before it, pressing his fingers softly on the keys.

Music was his one passion, and he had devoted years to its study. He played now a low andante movement, full of grace and sweetness and tenderness that soothed his own perturbed spirit, and made him momentarily forget the audacious girl who had disturbed him. Gliding from one melody into another, he paused, at last, with a sudden remembrance, and, turning his head, saw Molly close beside him.

The music had drawn her against her will by a strange, magnetic power. All the anger had died from her face and eyes, leaving a dreamy softness in its place.

“So I have soothed your savage spirit?” he exclaimed, with a smile, and Molly started and blushed.

“I—I—am fond of music,” she stammered.

“Perhaps you will play for me now?” he said, rising.

“Oh, no!” starting back, and just then Mrs. Barry came in.

“I have been playing to your little girl,” Cecil Laurens said to her, with a smile.

“She may look like a little girl, but she is a grown-up young lady, Cecil,” Mrs. Barry answered, quickly, and Molly cried out, vexedly:

“I am not! I won’t be seventeen till August.”

Mrs. Barry glared at her displeasedly.

“Only hear her, Cecil! pretending to be a school-girl still! I never could understand why girls try to make themselves out younger than they really are. I am sure there is not such a charm in callow youth as they think,” she said, tartly.

Molly was already biting her lips in dismay.

“Aunt Thalia, I was jesting,” she said, soberly, without glancing at Cecil Laurens.

She was asking herself if he would betray her to her aunt, if he would accuse her then and there of that “lark” which she shuddered to remember now; but apparently he meant to put it off to some more convenient season, for presently he said good-night and went away without alluding to the subject. Molly drew a sigh of relief as he left, but his blue eyes and his wondrous music haunted her perturbed dreams that night.

CHAPTER VIII.

Next morning she said to Mrs. Barry:

“Aunt Thalia, I think I should enjoy my visit much more if I might ride horseback.”

“Can you ride?” looking up from her breakfast of fried chicken and hot rolls.

“I have been on a horse’s back only once, but I can easily learn if you will let me have a horse,” Molly answered, confidently, and a sudden light broke over Mrs. Barry’s face.

“The very thing,” she exclaimed. “I’m glad you thought of it. Cecil Laurens shall teach you.”

“Oh, no, no,” Molly cried, in consternation. “I won’t ride with him. I’ll go alone.”

“But Cecil will be perfectly willing, child, and he is a splendid equestrian.”

“But I hate him—I mean I don’t like men,” exclaimed the girl, flushing under Mrs. Barry’s gorgon stare.

“Louise Barry, you are a goose! I shall never cease to regret that Lucy Everett had the training of you. Any other girl would be glad of the chance of Cecil Lauren’s company. He is the richest and finest young man in the state.”

“I—don’t—like—young men, auntie.”

Mrs. Barry glowered at her angrily over her glasses.

“Do you like woolly headed, stupid old negro men?” she snapped.

“Ye-es, aunt,” demurely.

“Very well, then, you shall have the finest horse in the stable, and old Abe shall teach you to ride—but I wonder at your taste,” sneering.

Molly flushed, but finished her breakfast in silence, and then ran upstairs to arrange an impromptu riding-habit.

By letting out the tucks in her red cashmere dress she made a very presentable habit, combined with the velvet-trimmed jacket, and setting a little red-plumed turban on her mop of curls she ran down-stairs in the gayest spirits.

“I’m ready, Aunt Thalia.”

“Whew! You’re like a whirlwind, Louise,” exclaimed Mrs. Barry; but she summoned old Abe at once, and said:

“Miss Barry wants a ride, Abe, and you must go with her as she is not accustomed to riding. Saddle the young gray mare and take her at once.”

“Um-hum, gwine broke her neck now, fo’ sartain sure,” grumbled the old man, who did not like to be called from his pipe in the kitchen. But he set off obediently for the stable, while Molly danced with impatience awaiting his return.

“May I go into Lewisburg for letters? I am sure there must be one from my sister,” she said, and the brow of the old aristocrat gloomed over.

“You may go to the post-office, but—I told you, Louise, never to call that girl your sister again!”

“I beg your pardon, Aunt Thalia, my step-sister,” amended Molly, but she bit her red lips sharply to keep back indignant words.

“How she despises my mother’s memory and my mother’s daughter,” she thought bitterly, and it was well that Uncle Abe came up just then, mounted on a sturdy old bay horse and leading a handsome gray filly by the bridle, or her indignation might have over-flowed into words. As it was she turned off sharply, ran down the steps and sprang into the saddle, cantering off at a pace that startled Uncle Abe.

“Lor’-A’mighty! De gal gwine broke her neck in ten minutes!” he growled, as he galloped briskly after her, while Mrs. Barry looking on, thoroughly enjoyed the girl’s fearless riding.

“She will make a good rider. It is the first thing in which she has shown herself a Barry,” she muttered, for this gay little humming-bird of a creature had rather startled the old lady by her unlikeness to the Barrys, who as a rule were homely rather than handsome, and dignified rather than merry.

But on the whole, Mrs. Barry was proud of this lovely niece. She had all the fondness for beauty that is inherent in homely people, and it pleased her to gaze on that beautiful, spirited face, although very girlish-looking for the twenty-five years with which she was accredited.

She gazed after the girl with actual pride, and muttered:

“Cecil admired her, I am sure, although he left so soon! I hope from my heart that it will be a match. It would please me better than anything else in the world! How fortunate that he returned just now when he was least expected. It must have been fate!”

Unconscious of Mrs. Barry’s designs against her single blessedness, Molly jogged along soberly toward Lewisburg, having been scolded into sedateness by lazy old Uncle Abe.

There must have been a fate in it as the old lady said, for just as their horses came opposite the park gates at Maple Shade, Cecil Laurens rode out on a magnificent black horse, bowed and smiled, and cantered to Molly’s side.

“Good morning, Miss Barry, good morning, Uncle Abe. A bright day,” he said.

Molly bowed with a half defiant air. What evil sprite had sent this man again across her path?

Yet she gazed as if fascinated in unwilling admiration at his handsome face which in the clear open light of day showed at its best. What dark, tender depths there were to his violet eyes, how regularly handsome his features, how the sun brought out the rare shade of his thick mustache and clustering masses of gold-brown hair. Then his figure, how tall and manly it was as it sat with martial grace in the saddle.

“I hate him, but—he is rather good-looking,” she admitted to herself, with reluctant justice.

“Marse Cece,” burst in Uncle Abe, with startling abruptness, “aine you gwine to de pos’-office, too?”

“Yes, Uncle Abe.”

The artful old negro chuckled audibly:

“How fort’nit, how werry fort’nit,” he observed. “Now you kin take keer o’ Miss Looisy on her ride, ef you please, sah, fo’ my hoss done cast his shoe, and I got to turn off dis road and take him to de black-smiff!”

“Uncle Abe, you are an old story-teller. There is nothing the matter with the horse. I’ll tell Aunt Thalia if you don’t come straight along with me!” threatened Molly in comical distress and anger combined; but the cunning old fellow was already galloping off, leaving her to the tender mercies of Cecil Laurens.

“Do not mind him, Miss Barry,” said the young man. “I will take as good care of you as Uncle Abe.”

She pouted and turned her horse’s head.

“I am going back to Ferndale!”

He caught her reins and held them as he had done before.

“You are not!” he said, vexedly. “Why, what a baby you are! Why should you go back and get that old darky a scolding from Mrs. Barry? The old soul is only going into Maple Shade to chat with my servants. He has known me ever since I was a baby, and feels safe in trusting you to my care. Mrs. Barry is my godmother, too, so how can you be so unreasonable? Come.”

“I am acting foolishly,” she thought, and yielded to that one word of commingled command and entreaty, telling herself that she was too anxious for a letter to turn back now.

Cecil Laurens knew well the magnetic power of that low, winning voice of his. He smiled slightly as she turned and rode on by his side up the mountain.

“You and I almost had a battle last night,” he went on. “After I went away I thought it over, and decided that you—we—had been very silly. It seemed so strange for a Barry and a Laurens to quarrel. Why, our families have been neighbors and friends almost a century,” proudly.

“That is no reason why you should have been so—so domineering and overbearing to me,” she broke out, with defiant eyes.

He looked intently at the tall green ferns growing in the masses of mossy stone by the road-side several minutes before he replied, quietly:

“I am sorry. Will you forgive me?”

“If—you—won’t—tell Aunt Thalia,” she replied, half entreatingly.

The violet orbs turned from contemplating the ferns to her face. The two pairs of eyes met.

“Did you really think I could tell tales?” he queried, gravely, and something in those eyes impelled her to answer:

“No.”

“Ah, I thought you would learn to trust me,” he said, with that wonderful smile whose sweetness dazzled Molly’s eyes. “Now let us pledge friendship, for the sake of—our families.”

She began to smile, her anger melting under his kindliness.

“I—I—won’t claim your friendship on the score of our families. If you promise me your friendship, it must be for what I am worth myself—and if I like you, it must be for yourself, not because you are a Laurens,” she replied, with such seriousness and earnestness that he laughed, and quoted:

“‘Kind hearts are more than coronets,’

you think, Miss Barry. Well, I own I am proud of my family, but I am willing to take your good-will on your own terms.”

He held his hand out, and she laid her little gloved one in it. He pressed her shabby little gauntlet a moment, gently, and a thrill of pleasure ran along the girl’s nerves.

“He is so nice—and only last night I hated him!” she said, naïvely, to herself.

What a ride it was, and how charming she found her late foe! He praised her riding, and declared that it was splendid, considering this was only her second attempt.

“You must let me ride with you every morning. You will find me more trustworthy than Uncle Abe,” he said, and Molly, who had vowed only that morning that she would have nothing to do with him, agreed to his wish with frank pleasure.

But the violet eyes and the low, winning voice had disarmed her resentment. Molly was pleased to find a friend where she had dreaded an enemy.

“He will not tell Aunt Thalia, and if Louise will only let me come home before I do any other mischief, everything will go right,” she thought; then, looking up, suddenly: “If I get a letter from my sister this morning, I shall have to go home soon,” she said.

She saw a dark frown come over his face. He exclaimed, brusquely:

“I hate to hear you call that actress’ daughter sister!”

“Why?” sharply.

“Oh, it was a terrible mésalliance. Your father ought never to have married that woman, and your friends should never have allowed you to be raised as the companion of her child. The gulf between you is wide, and there is really no relationship, you know,” he said, proudly.

Molly looked at him strangely without reply. He was puzzled by her eyes—there was in them such a sudden look of anguish and pride, with something like reproach. He could not understand it, and asked himself if she meant to uphold the cause of that odious woman.

But here they were at the post-office, and there was a letter for Miss Louise Barry. She caught it eagerly from his hand.

“It is from my sis—my step-sister, and I know she has written for me to come home!” Molly cried, excitedly.

CHAPTER IX.

Molly rode very fast on returning, and she was so quiet that Cecil Laurens regarded her knit brows and pursed-up lips in surprise.

“You are leading me a sort of John Gilpin race, Miss Barry. What is the matter with you?” he said.

“I am impatient to read my letter,” she replied in a curt voice.

They were outside the limits of the town now, and riding up the mountain road beneath tall overarching trees that lined the road on either side. He said, kindly:

“We can stop long enough to read your letter, since you are so impatient.”

Molly let the speed of her gray filly slacken a little, and looked round at him with candid eyes.

“I would rather not,” she said.

“But there would be nothing improper in doing so, and I am not in a hurry,” he urged.

“Yes, I know; but I’m afraid. If I read the letter, and sis—I mean, Aunt Lucy—did not say yes, I should fly into a tantrum and alarm you,” with a sparkle of malice in the black eyes.

“I think I have seen you in a tantrum,” he replied, with equal malice. “But of course Aunt Lucy will say yes to any request of yours.”

She shook her curly head despondingly, but the filly had fallen unchecked into a slower pace.

“Ah, you don’t know, Mr. Laurens,” she said, dolorously. “You see, I wrote to Aunt Lucy that I was tired of Ferndale, and wanted to come home, but—but—I’m afraid she won’t let me go yet.”

“Tired of Ferndale?” he repeated.

“Yes, sick and tired,” she replied, emphatically. “I thought it would be jolly fun to come, at first, but I’ve been here three weeks now, and it’s the pokiest old hole I ever saw! I’d give anything to be back in Staunton.”

“She has left a lover behind her, of course,” the young man thought to himself, and he said, in rather a cross tone:

“Your aunt would be angry if she heard you abusing Ferndale like that. Do you know that it is considered a fine place?”

“Yes, and I wouldn’t have Aunt Thalia know my private opinion of it. You won’t betray me, will you?” smiling.

“No, but I’m sorry you want to get away from Ferndale,” with unaccountable inward irritation. “Why don’t you tell your Aunt Thalia so?”

“Oh,” with a horrified gesture, “not for worlds. You know—I’m to be her heiress. I must not offend her, or she may disinherit me.”

“So you are mercenary?” lifting his graceful brows into distinctive arches.

“It runs in the Barry blood, does it not?” she retorted.

And he answered gravely:

“I never knew it before!”

Molly laughed merrily.

“Now, you make me think you a hateful prig again. But there, we needn’t quarrel, only I must say again, I don’t want to stay at Ferndale, and I pray Heaven this letter may send me permission to go home.”

He would have joined her in that fervent prayer if he had known what that letter was to bring forth, but in his ignorance and blindness he began to say to himself that it was a pity old Mrs. Barry was going to lose her bright young companion so soon.

“But, it is lonely for such a little butterfly,” he thought. “I must try to brighten up her life at Ferndale for my old friend’s sake.”

Full of this generous impulse, he said:

“It shall not be dull any more at Ferndale. I know many of the pretty, lively young girls at Lewisburg, and I shall bring some of them to call on you. Then we will devise some parties and picnics to amuse you. I only wish my mother and sisters were at home so that you could come and make a visit at Maple Shade.”

“They would not care about me!” she replied with an odd touch of bitterness.

“Miss Barry, you ought to know better than that. Did I not tell you that our families are intimate friends? My mother and my sisters would take the greatest interest in you. I wish that Mrs. Barry had sent you abroad with my sisters to be educated.”

“Thank you,” with sarcasm.

He paid no attention to her outburst, but continued, as if struck by a sudden thought:

“I have an idea.”

“Really?” exclaimed Molly, with deeper sarcasm than before.

“Yes, impossible as it may appear to you,” he replied, flushing slightly under the fire of her large, magnetic dark eyes. “Miss Barry, you know that I have but lately left London and that I shall return in a few weeks?”

“Yes,” carelessly.

“Here is my plan, I shall ask Mrs. Barry to let me take charge of you and place you at school with my sisters to finish your education.”

Molly caught her breath quickly, and something like a sharp regret pierced her heart.

To herself she said:

“Ah, if I were not a little fraud what a future would lie before me!”

But looking up into his face with eyes that gave no sign of the pang she was enduring, she said:

“Mr. Laurens, you must have taken leave of your senses to talk about a girl of five-and-twenty finishing her education.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Barry, you look much younger than that, and you certainly do need a little more polish. The Barrys were always noted for their polished manners,” he replied, frankly, but the frankness on the whole was rather engaging.

Molly did not resent the imputation of brusquerie. She had heard it so often before that it was nothing new, and besides she was quivering all over with a tempest of excitement and regret, evoked by his words of a moment ago.

To go abroad, to cross that big, blue sparkling ocean had been the passionate desire of her life; oh, what would she not give to realize that dream!

She had never envied the Barrys before; indeed, she had openly cherished an amused contempt for their family pride, and had never sighed for their broad acres or the blue blood that flowed in their veins. In this moment of sore temptation, however, all was reversed.

“I wish—I wish—I were really Louise Barry instead of a contemptible little fraud!” she sighed. “But then how much better is she? It is all a muddle, and I can’t go, that’s all. And I hope and pray that Lou has fixed up some plan for me to come home, for everything is getting tangled up dreadfully!”

Poor child, she thought so truly, for at every step she was floundering deeper into “the tangled web of fate.”

They rode in presently across the lawn at Ferndale, and Mrs. Barry, from her seat in the wide hall, gave a smirk of satisfaction at sight of Cecil Laurens.

Molly sprang down from her horse without waiting for assistance, flew up the steps, across the porch and hall, and upstairs like a little tornado, wild to possess herself of the contents of that fateful letter.

Cecil Laurens, half-vexed at her unceremonious exit from the scene, dismounted more leisurely, and, handing his reins to a negro lad, went in to pay his respects to his old friend, Mrs. Barry.

“Now, this is kind of you, Cecil; but where did you pick up Louise?” beaming.

He explained, taking special care not to expose old Abe’s little artifice, by which he had gained a morning’s gossip with his darky friends.

“You must spend the day with us,” said the old lady. “Louise will be down in a minute. She has only run upstairs to change her dress.”

“And to read her letter,” he added.

“Her letter?”

“She had a letter from home,” he explained, and Mrs. Barry’s brow gloomed over.

“A letter from that odious relative, the daughter of the actress! Oh, how I wish I could break her off from those pernicious influences!” she sighed.

“Let me suggest a way,” cried Cecil Laurens, with sparkling eyes.

“So soon?” she thought, triumphantly; but her ardor was a little dampened when he continued:

“You know I return to Europe in a few weeks. Let me take your niece with me and place her at school with my sisters.”

She uttered a little gasp of dismay, and presently cried out:

“At school—Louise at school! What nonsense, Cecil! Why, she finished lessons long ago. She is plenty old enough to be married.”

And a minute’s silence ensued.

There was a lurking smile on Cecil’s faultless face, and he thought within himself:

“She may be old enough, but she is certainly not wise enough. I would as soon think of marrying a baby.”

But feeling himself snubbed, he did not voice these sentiments aloud. He said, simply:

“I forgot her age. She seems so very young—as young as my school-girl sisters.”

“She lacks training. Her aunt Lucy has spoiled her, that is why she seems so childish,” she replied, apologetically.

“So I thought. That is why I suggested a little more polish, such as can only be acquired in a first-class school,” he replied. “But, dear Mrs. Barry, please do not think me meddlesome. It was a hasty thought spoken out too freely.”

“My dear Cecil! I am sure I thank you for expressing such an interest in Louise. It is very flattering to her, coming from you,” Mrs. Barry said, pointedly, and then she took the young man into her confidence and told him of her wish to keep her niece at Ferndale, and so separate her from her objectionable step-sister, “that theater child.”

Cecil Laurens applauded her resolve warmly, although he felt somewhat like a traitor to the girl who had so frankly confided to him her honest dislike of Ferndale.

“Next week I shall take her to the White Sulphur Springs,” she said. “I mean to give her such a round of gayety that she will not longer regret her humdrum home in Staunton.”

And again Cecil Laurens applauded this resolve. He had as deeply grained a prejudice against “that theater child” as had old Mrs. Barry herself, and desired just as ardently to keep Louise at Ferndale.

“I shall go to the White for a week myself just as soon as I get my business here over,” he said, and Mrs. Barry replied that she was very glad. It would be pleasanter for her and Louise having an old friend there.

But when this confidential conversation was over, Mrs. Barry began to think that her niece stayed upstairs a long time. She sent Ginny Ann to call her down.

Ten, then fifteen minutes elapsed before Ginny Ann reappeared with the announcement:

“I done argyfied my breff mos’ away, mistis, but I carn’t budge dat chile! She done laid herseff down on dat flure, a-cryin’ and a-cryin’ her bressid eyes out!”

CHAPTER X.

Mrs. Barry rose with as much haste as her age and infirmities would permit, and excusing herself to Cecil Laurens, went upstairs after her obdurate niece.

The young man, left alone, said to himself:

“Mrs. Everett has proved herself a wise woman and refused to let her niece leave Ferndale. I applaud her good sense.”

And he did not alter his opinion even when Molly came down presently with red-rimmed eyes and a doleful expression that proved how deeply she had taken her disappointment to heart.

Mrs. Barry did not come down with her, and she went out on the wide porch and sat down sulkily in a big rustic chair.

Cecil Laurens followed her, and leaning his arms on the top of her chair, looked down into the pretty clouded face.

“What did Aunt Lucy say?” he asked.

Molly snapped out a vicious little “No!”

“A wise woman,” said Cecil Laurens.

Molly looked up at him with an angry gleam in the dark eyes.

“Do you think so?” she asked in an odd tone, adding sharply: “Time will tell.”

Then the bright eyes turned from him and wandered toward the grove of trees that inclosed the house. He saw her breast rise and fall quickly, and her little hands clinched themselves in silent anger. Plainly, Molly was in a passion.

“Miss Barry, you puzzle me!” said Cecil Laurens. “Why are you so anxious to return to Staunton? Have you a lover there?”

Molly glanced up, and a saucy smile broke through the gloom of her face.

“Pray, is that any of your business, sir?” she demanded, pertly, and was amazed when he answered, promptly:

“Yes.”

“But how?” curiously.

“Forewarned is forearmed. I did not want to fall in love with you myself if there were any prior claim on you,” he replied, coolly and teasingly.

“I am not the least afraid you will commit such a folly,” she replied, carelessly. “If it were my step-sister, now—but it could never be me!”

“Your step-sister!” with a frown. “That would be impossible, you know. But tell me why you think so.”

“Oh, she is dignified like the Barrys, and has such an odd, charming style of beauty—yellow hair and yellow eyes.”

“Like a tigress,” said Cecil Laurens, and Molly started.

“I never thought of it before, but she is like that,” she exclaimed. “She can be so sweet and purring, yet all the time you seem to feel that she has cruel claws hidden under her furred paws. She can be so hard, too—oh, you should see the letter she wrote me!”

“And you think I could fall in love with such a tiger-cat as you describe. Thank you,” he said, with frank pique.

“But perhaps you would not feel that the claws were there as I do,” her large eyes dilating with earnestness. “You would see only that odd beauty and that grand air.”

“Copied from the theater,” he said, and Molly flushed hotly.

“Well, copied from the stage if you will,” she replied, curtly. “But all the same you would admire her, I am sure.”

“I should not,” he replied with decision, and Molly half laughed, then relapsed into seriousness and wrath again.

“Oh, how mean she was in that letter today! What a dig she gave me with her vicious claws! She ought to have known me better—ought to have been afraid—” she paused and bit her lips.

“What do you mean?” he asked, curiously, and a light of anger and resentment flashed all over the girlish face.

“Never mind,” she said. “Never mind, but I mean to pay her back, that is all, and—no one can blame me now!”

He was gratified at seeing her mind set against that odious step-sister.

“Miss Barry, I am glad you have had your eyes opened to the worthlessness of that girl,” he said, earnestly. “Her mother was an adventuress who inveigled your father into a low marriage that alienated from him all his friends and relatives. It is most fortunate for you that Mrs. Barry relented after his death and decided to make you her heiress.”

“Oh, yes, very fortunate,” said Molly, but it distressed him to notice that her tone was distinctly sarcastic, and that she clinched her little fists again as if in a secret fury.

“I suppose,” he went on, excitedly, “that the girl is envious of your good fortune, hence her disagreeable letter to you.”

“Of course,” agreed Molly.

“Do not let her rancor trouble you. She is beneath the notice of a Barry. Her spleen is not worth paying back,” Cecil said.

“Oh, yes, it is, and I propose to pay her interest on the debt,” she replied, angrily, and for the present he saw that it would be useless to oppose her will. He decided to humor her whim.

“By all means pay her back then, and perhaps I can help you with the interest,” he said, lightly.

“Thank you; I was counting on your assistance,” she replied, with a strange smile, and in a tone of decided earnest.

The dark eyes met his with a look of triumph he could not understand.

“What can I do to help you to your vengeance?” he asked, but she shook her head and made no reply.

CHAPTER XI.

Days came and went, and Cecil Laurens was a daily visitor at Ferndale, filled with the laudable desire to please his old friend, Mrs. Barry, by making time pass pleasantly for her niece. At least, that was the reason he assigned to himself when he set out every morning for a canter with Molly over the rough mountain roads, in the golden June weather.

If any one had told him that he was taking an unusual interest in the madcap girl whose acquaintance he had made in such a ludicrous manner, he would have been indignant at the imputation. He would have told you, as his family and friends said of him, that he was not susceptible, not a marrying man. In his thirty years of life he had met many beautiful and charming women, had

“Knelt at many a shrine,

Yet laid the heart on none.”

So little had he cared for women that he had not, as many men have done, created an ideal woman in his mind; but if he had done so, she would not have resembled Molly Trueheart in the least; she would have been full of gracious ease and dignity:

“A perfect creature, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command,

And yet a spirit still and bright,

With something of an angel’s light.”

Molly Trueheart did not come up to this ideal at all. She was a merry, willful little maid, reminding one of April weather with her alternations from frowns to smiles, and from laughter to tears. Cecil Laurens never suspected her of a bit of sentiment until one day when he came upon her unexpectedly, and found her reading Mrs. Browning with the page open at “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.”

“You read poetry, then? I am surprised,” he said.

Molly left her finger between the pages and looked up at him without a trace of surprise at his sudden coming. Perhaps she had seen or heard him.

“You are surprised—why? Did you think I could not read?” she inquired flippantly.

“Certainly not—but poetry! I thought you had no romance about you—only fun,” he rejoined.

“You were mistaken. I am romantic. If I had not been I should never have come to Ferndale.”

“I fail to see the romance of your coming here, Miss Barry.”

“It is not necessary that you should see it,” with a twinkle of mirth in her eyes.

“No,” he returned, piqued at the brusquerie of the retort. In a minute he added: “Since you confess to being romantic, perhaps you will read ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship’ aloud for me. It is just the scene for reading poetry—this grassy seat, these nodding ferns, overarching trees, sunshine, and all the rest of it.”

“Yes, I will read it for you. That will be better than hearing you sneer at me,” said Molly.

She let her stony, dark eyes meet his violet ones for a moment coolly, then dropped her gaze to the book. In a minute she began to read with a clear, pure enunciation and a faultless accuracy that amazed him. Throwing himself down on the velvety greensward by her side, he listened like one fascinated to the poet’s flowing numbers rendered with faultless accuracy by Molly’s fresh, young voice.

Who does not know the story of “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship”?—the story of the poor poet’s love for a lovely, noble lady who trampled under her dainty feet the prejudices of pride and rank and wedded the young genius, her lover? Molly’s eloquent voice gave full value to the story, rose in passion, sank in pathos, thrilled and trembled alternately, while her eyes sparkled or melted to tears in sympathy. Cecil Laurens, the handsome, gifted man of the world, indolent, self-conceited, proud, gazed and listened in unfeigned astonishment.

“The little witch has been teasing me all this while. She is not the little ignoramus and madcap I believed her at first. She has been well-educated, her voice is thoroughly trained. No wonder she laughed when I wanted her to go to school again,” he said to himself, but instead of being angry with her, he experienced pleasure in finding out that she had culture he had not dreamed she possessed.

The long poem came to an end at last and Molly folded her small hands together over the page. Her listener started up to a sitting posture.

“Thank you, for the pleasure you have given me,” he said, earnestly. “It is indeed a grand poem.”

“I scarcely expected you to say so,” she retorted, meaningly. “I thought you were too proud. How can you reconcile yourself to the idea of the Lady Geraldine marrying so far beneath her in station—you who are always taking for a text my poor father’s mésalliance?”

“This case was different—the poet’s genius leveled the barrier between him and the earl’s daughter—raised him to her rank,” he replied.

“My—step-mother—had genius. She was a star of the dramatic stage. She gave up a brilliant career to marry the man she loved, yet you condemn her as unworthy,” Molly said, excitedly, with flashing eyes.

He frowned.

“Why will you always drag that into the conversation? You have owned of your own accord that that woman’s daughter was sly and disagreeable—a real tiger-cat!” he exclaimed.

“Ah, I see that poetic license is not to be carried into real life,” she replied, falling from seriousness into levity. Then, gayly: “And are you sure, quite sure, that you should not fall in love with golden hair and golden eyes, and l’air noble?”

“Quite sure,” he replied, with disdain.

She laughed, and there was something hidden in the laugh that vexed him; but she said, politely enough, the next moment:

“Now you will read to me, will you not?”

“Pardon me; I would rather talk to you. When are you going to the White?”

But he had taken the book from her hands, and was turning the leaves while he spoke. Molly answered, reluctantly:

“I—don’t know. Aunt Thalia said something about—about waiting until you got ready.”

“How kind! I shall be delighted. I can go in about three days, I should say. But you don’t look very glad at the thought of my company.”

“I would as soon excuse you,” she replied, with her usual frankness.

He frowned, but would not answer, and in a minute began to read aloud, as it seemed, at random:

“‘She was not as pretty as women I know,

And yet all your best made of sunshine and snow

Drop to shade, melt to naught in the long-trodden ways,

While she’s still remembered on warm and cold days,

My Kate.’

“There,” he said, looking down at her with a half smile, “those words seem to have been written of you, you provoking child! Do you know that when I’m away from you my thoughts always return to you, and that the hard things you say to me hurt me worse than when first uttered? I resolve firmly not to go near you again, but ‘a spirit in my feet’ brings me back to Ferndale the next day. What have you done to me, Miss Willy Whisk, as old Betsy calls you, to make me your abject slave? I certainly,” laughing, “do not approve of you, so I can not have lost my heart to you.”

“Heaven forbid!” Molly Trueheart exclaimed, starting to her feet in such dismay that he said, hastily:

“Pray do not be alarmed. You could not suppose I really meant it!”

“Of course not. It would be the worst possible taste,” she returned sarcastically, and Cecil Laurens, angered out of his usual good breeding, cried out, sharply:

“I agree with you, Miss Barry!”

That was enough. Molly’s eyes blazed upon him in such wrath that they almost withered him. She snatched her book rudely from his hand, and stalked away with the pace of a tragedy queen.

Left alone thus suddenly under the big tree, Mr. Laurens watched Molly’s white garments flutter into the big porch, then he muttered something under his breath not very complimentary to his tormentor, remounted his horse, which was waiting under a tree, and rode home.

The next day he stayed away from Ferndale, and the next day he sent his old friend a short note saying that he had been so busy he had no time to call, and found that unexpected business would take him into Lewisburg for several days. He hoped she would not wait for him any longer, as it might not be possible for him to go to the White at all.

With a very sober face Mrs. Barry read this aloud to her niece, watching the guilty young face with covert eyes.

“Louise Barry, you have done something to Cecil,” she said, with conviction.

But Molly protested loudly that she hadn’t said a word to Mr. Laurens. Then she went off to one of her wildest haunts by a secluded little mountain stream and flung herself down on the green bank to rest and think.

She caught a glimpse of her pale face and heavy eyes in the clear stream, and started in surprise.

“Molly Trueheart, is that you looking so pale and big-eyed? What is the matter with you, silly? It is the best thing that ever happened. You ought to thank your lucky stars that you got rid of him so soon, the hateful wretch!”

And then very inconsistently she burst into a storm of angry tears.

CHAPTER XII.

Mrs. Barry and her niece had been at the White two weeks, when Cecil Laurens made his appearance quite unexpectedly one evening, and explained to Mrs. Barry that as he was going away soon he had come over to bid her good-bye.

To Molly he was very stiff and formal indeed, although he could almost have sworn that a sudden light of joy leaped into her eyes at his abrupt approach—a light instantly veiled beneath the fringe of her dark lashes, and her voice was distinctly careless as she gave him a brief greeting and went away from her aunt’s side with her partner in the dance.

For Molly had become in the weeks of her sojourn here one of the belles of the place, and was enjoying her prestige with all the ardor of youth and a light heart. No one was more sought in the dance than she, no one had more bouquets and invitations, and she would not have owned to herself that pique lay at the bottom of her gayety.

Her girlish pride had been cruelly wounded by Cecil Laurens’ sarcastic words, and a strange longing came over her to know if they were really true.

“Would it indeed be such poor taste for any one to love me?” she asked herself, soberly; and the gravity of the thought turned the child into a woman.

She threw aside the carelessness that had distinguished her, and put on what she called grown-up ways. As she had a good education, and a high order of intellect, she succeeded in making the change very striking and charming, and in less than two weeks disproved the truth of the ungallant Cecil’s assertion.

On his part, he was astonished when, after two weeks of sulky exile, he saw her again, the cynosure of all eyes at this famous resort of fashion, bright, beautiful, and admired, as he had not believed it possible for any one to admire the will-o’-the-wisp creature, as she had always seemed to him, even while she drew him to her side by a charm which he would not understand.

“But she is beautiful, certainly, and very brilliant here—most unlike the forlorn creature that Hero threw over his head that night at my feet,” he said to himself with a smile, followed by a frown—the smile for the ludicrousness of the adventure, and the frown for the secret that lay behind that night’s “lark,” as she called it—the escapade so carefully hidden from her aunt.

“I had no right to keep it hidden from my old friend. I wish I had not promised to do so,” he thought, vexed at the sight of Molly gliding like a fairy down the long ball-room in the arms of as handsome a partner as ever made maiden’s heart throb faster in the gay waltz.

Mrs. Barry saw his eyes following the light form, and said with a touch of pride:

“Louise is a graceful waltzer?”

“Yes,” he answered, then a little testily: “But I do not approve of indiscriminate waltzing for young ladies.”

“No?” said Mrs. Barry, turning her inquisitive glasses on his rather moody face.

After a minute’s study of its grave lines, she added:

“I can not say that I think it matters except in the case of engaged girls. Of course a betrothed lover would have a right to object, but then you know Louise is free.”

Did he fancy it, or was there really a pointed significance in her tone? He rejoined half-resentfully:

“Are you sure she is free, and that she did not leave a lover behind her in Staunton?”

She started, and looked at him keenly, then she laughed:

“Cecil, you actually frightened me for a moment; but now you make me laugh,” she said, gayly, with a laugh that would have been merry, only that it was so cracked with age. “My dear boy, there is no lover in Staunton in the case. The child never thought of a lover until she saw you. But she has offended you. I believed it all the while, now I am sure of it. You are jealous.”

“You are mistaken,” Cecil cried, furiously.

Then he shut his lips tightly. He did not like to contradict his old friend, but it was ridiculous, this fancy she entertained. Jealous! He would have to be in love first, and the idea of loving Louise Barry was—absurd.

“Yes, it is absurd! A spoiled baby in spite of her twenty-five years, with the audacious frankness of youth so freely indulged that it degenerates into lack of manners. Mrs. Barry must be losing her mind, indeed!” he exclaimed to himself, deciding that he would certainly go in the morning.

But he did not do so. Something held him back, something kept him always in the vicinity of the girl he fancied he disliked more than ever now, for she seemed bent on keeping up their feud. She was so cool, so reserved, so dignified, taking as she said to herself grimly “a leaf out of his own book.” So apparently indifferent was she that many times when he lingered near her she remained in ignorance of his proximity, so that day when she thought herself alone for a minute with a charming novel, Cecil was quite close to her swinging in a luxurious hammock hung between two trees, his lazy, sleepy glance resting on the lovely, spirited face as it bent over the book.

“Poor Madelon!” she sighed, referring to the heroine, and then there came a sudden interruption.

A man had come straight across the greensward toward her—a young man with a grave, sad face, handsome but rather weak, while his attire, partaking wholly of the shabby genteel, proclaimed that he was certainly not a favorite of fortune.

Cecil Laurens saw this man going toward Molly with a bright, eager light in his eyes, and he was filled with indignant wonder.

“Does Miss Barry know that shabby man? Surely not,” he thought, and leaned forward to watch with jealous eyes.

Molly was so intent on her reading that she heard and saw nothing until a shadow fell on her book as the man stopped by her side. She glanced up, and the face that Cecil was watching grew radiant with surprise and pleasure.

“Johnny!” she exclaimed, and held out her little hand.

He took it, clasped it tightly a moment, and Cecil heard him murmur, hoarsely:

“How good you are! You never fail one! But I had no right to expect a welcome. It is the old story—no work yet, and no money to make a home for my darling! But I heard you all were here, and I could not keep from coming for just one sight of my cruel darling’s face, although I feared her reproaches. Where is—”

“Hush-h-h!” Molly whispered, pinching his arm severely; “some one may hear us from the cottage yonder. Come this way, Johnny, toward the trees.”

They moved away, and Cecil Laurens’ face grew dark and gloomy.

“The impecunious lover has come upon the scene!” he muttered, with angry sarcasm.

CHAPTER XIII.

Molly Trueheart walked under the trees with that mysterious “Johnny” for a long half hour. While Cecil Laurens in the hammock raved and fretted against the little fraud, as he began to call her in his thoughts.

“Suppose I go and bring her aunt upon the scene?” he thought, with grim resentment.

Then he mentally shook himself.

“Cecil Laurens, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Where is your honor that you can be led away like this by petty spite? Let the girl alone. This is no business of yours!”

A few minutes later Molly and her good-looking, shabby companion came back to the rustic seat, still unobservant of the hammock and its occupant. By leaning forward a little he could look into both faces, and he noticed that Molly’s was pale and annoyed, the man’s eager and excited.

“You must not come here again,” he heard her say. “It would not be safe. And you must not go after her. She would be furious if you interfered with her plans. Better keep quiet for awhile. I will help you all I can, Johnny,” with a sob, “but you know how little I can do.”

“You are an angel,” said the man, tenderly. “If she were only you, there would be no trouble. My dear, you’ll write to me?”

“Yes, yes, only do keep quiet and not go after her, or you’ll spoil everything! I’ll write to you at the old address! Johnny, I’m sorry for you from my heart, but I’m under her thumb as well as you. We must both have patience. Good-bye, now, some one will be coming.”

“Good-bye, dear,” said the man, sadly, and Cecil saw him clasp her little rosy fingers tightly in his broad palm. “God bless you, little one. I shall look for a letter soon. Write me everything about her, and I’ll try to stay away, hard as it seems!”

He sighed and turned away, going straight across the lawn to the broad gates that led to the railroad. There was something pathetic in his worn, shabby garments and slow, dejected pace in that scene of wealth and gayety, and Cecil would have been touched only for that fierce pain tugging at his heart. But he turned his eyes away from the man back to Molly, who had dropped down on her seat and was gazing after him with sad, wet eyes. He heard her murmur passionately, “It is a shame!” then she dropped her face in her hands and sobs shook her slender form.

Cecil had seen Molly in many moods, but here was a new one, and it excited in him a strange feeling, that of pity mixed with a bitter resentment, as if he had suffered some personal wrong at her hands. After a minute, and still watching the sobbing girl, he began to analyze his emotions, and as a result the color flew hotly to his face and he muttered:

“I have actually taken an undue and sentimental interest in this girl—pshaw, why mince matters? Through some unexplainable madness I have lost my heart to a madcap, and am suffering all the torments of jealousy because another man has a claim on her. Mrs. Barry was wiser than I thought, and is no doubt laughing in her sleeve this moment at my folly.”

The flush deepened on his face, and he remained for some moments watching Molly in moody silence.

It was a dangerous occupation for a man who had just found out that she was fatally fair, for Molly, as she crouched in a forlorn and drooping position on the hard bench, was a very tempting little specimen of femininity.

The day was warm and she wore a dress of thin white mull, through whose transparent texture her plump arms and shoulders gleamed rosy-white. Her hat had fallen off, and the loose dark curls half confined by a scarlet ribbon, drooped against the graceful neck, and contrasted with the warm pink of a round cheek nestled in a dainty hand. On this picture of beauty in distress fell pretty flecks of sunlight from between the green boughs overhead, bringing out glints of brightness from the wavy curls, that in the shade always looked so dark and rich, and Cecil remembered that there were golden lights in her eyes, too, when she was pleased and happy.

Then he caught himself up again with a jerk.

“Happy! How can she ever be happy again with that tramp of a lover on her mind?” angrily.

Something—he scarce knew what, but most probably that sullen misery that was so new, so bitter, and so humiliating—drove him to her side. Slipping noiselessly from the luxurious hammock he stole around the tree and sat down by her side, touching the bowed head lightly with his hand, and murmuring with uncontrollable fondness:

“Louise!”

Molly gave a great, frightened start and whirled around.

“Oh, it’s you, Cecil Laurens, is it? Well, then, what do you want?” she demanded, wrathfully, angered because he had caught her in distress.

For once he was not angered at her sharp retort. He comprehended now something of what she was enduring, and made patient allowance for her pain.

“Do not be angry, Louise. I want nothing only to tell you how sorry I am for you, and how gladly I would help you in your trouble,” he said so gently that she stared at him in amazement, although she said brusquely:

“Trouble! I have no trouble!”

“Ah, Louise, you can not deceive me any longer. Look yonder! I was in that hammock just now and saw your companion, also heard some of his words!”

“Spy!” she exclaimed indignantly, although she grew pale and trembled like the leaves on the tree above her head.

Again he put a stern guard on himself, and would not resent her rudeness.

“It is despair that makes her hard!” he thought, and answered gently:

“I did not mean to be a spy, Louise, I was in the hammock when you came here, and presently he came and spoke to you. I could not help hearing what was said until you walked away with him. But—do not look so frightened—I did not follow you!”

He saw a gleam of palpable relief flash into the white face, and comprehended that she was glad he had not heard what was spoken in that walk under the trees.

“But I had heard enough!” he said slowly, after a pause. “Ah, Louise, I was right when I told you that it was a lover who was drawing your heart back to your old home.”

She looked at him pale and startled, but with mute defiance.

“A—a—lover!” she echoed, wildly. “Now I suppose you will go and tell Aunt Thalia of your wonderful discovery!” in a tone of terrified entreaty.

“Why will you wrong me so?” he cried, smarting under the lash of her injustice. “You know I did not betray you before?”

“But—but—why do you meddle with me so?” she cried, with a bewildered air. “You are always finding out things—and—and always blaming me!”

“No, no, child, I do not always blame you, I do not want to meddle—yet I—yet you—seem so ignorant, I ought to—to advise you. Will you listen to me kindly, Louise?”

“Go on,” she answered, folding her hands in her lap and looking so like a martyr that he cried out hastily:

“Do not look as if a big bear was going to eat you, Louise. I only want to tell you that it is not right to have secrets from your good aunt—to have a shabby lover whom you write to and meet by stealth. No good will come of such a clandestine affair.”

“Heaven give me patience!” cried Molly indignantly. “Poor Johnny, to think of this rich man calling you shabby! But, Mr. Laurens, that was no meeting by stealth just now. If you heard his first words you must know that it was not an appointment.”

“No, he came because he had heard you were here—that was the difference,” dryly. “But the first time I met you, you know—when Hero flung you over his head at my feet—perhaps you met him that night, perhaps—”

“Perhaps you are a great simpleton, Cecil Laurens!” Molly cried, indignantly. “I did not meet him that night, nor any night. Morover, he is no lover of mine. I never had a lover in my life!”

“You have one now!” Cecil Laurens said softly, but Molly did not comprehend.

“I have not!” she declared angrily. “Poor Johnny came here because he thought that my step-sister was here. They have been engaged two years, and he can not get a salary large enough to support them, and Lou—I mean my sister Molly,” crimsoning, “is angry and wants to break it off. And I promised to beg her to make it up with the poor fellow, and to write to him, so there!”

“That step-sister again! It is the first time I ever was glad to hear her name!” exclaimed Cecil, radiant. “Oh, Louise, how glad I am that he was her lover and not yours!”

“What have you got to do with it any way?” she demanded pettishly.

“I love you!” he replied, audaciously.

CHAPTER XIV.

The black eyes and the blue ones met for an instant, Cecil’s full of passion, Molly’s full of incredulous amazement, but her lover did not wait for her to utter a protest, he caught her little hands in both his own—and said eagerly:

“Louise, darling, I owe you an apology for the unjust words I said to you that day at Ferndale. They were not true, for I love you as I hinted to you then, and it was pique at your rejoinder that made me blurt out those untruthful words. Will you forgive me, and let me love you?”

He had never spoken such words to any woman before, but carried away by the strength of his newly discovered passion, they rushed from his lips eloquent with the heart’s emotion. He had a right to expect a serious reply, but to his horror, mortification, and distress, Molly blurted out a curt:

“Nonsense!”

Her elegant lover gave a gasp as if some one had thrown cold water over him, and a momentary anger struggled with the delicious emotion of love. He lifted his violet eyes to her face full of reproachful tenderness.

“Louise!” he exclaimed.

She hung her pretty head in bashful confusion.

“You did not mean it!” she muttered, deprecatingly.

“I did mean it. I do mean it. Do not coquette with me, Louise, when I am so much in earnest. You said just now you never had a lover. You have one now—will you reject him, or will you accept the heart he offers? Will you be my wife, little one?”

He felt her trembling as he held her hands tightly in his, and dropping one, he placed his hand beneath her chin and lifted her face so that he might look into her eyes. To his surprise and joy they drooped bashfully, and the warm color rose over her face.

“Louise, what are you going to say to me in return for my confession? Won’t you love me a little in return? Won’t you give me some hope?”

Was this Cecil Laurens, the cold, the proud, the dignified, pleading to the girl he had disapproved of, the girl he had called such a baby? She looked at him in wonder and consternation.

“Oh, what have I done?” she cried out in dismay.

“You have bewitched me, I think,” her lover replied with his rarely beautiful smile.

“Mr. Laurens, do you really mean it? I—I believed you disliked me, hated me,” she breathed in a low, half-tender tone, very different from her usual mocking one.

“I mean it all, Louise. I love you passionately, and I have suffered torments in the last three weeks from pique and jealousy that I mistook for anger. Now, my dear, I have been very frank with you. Will you be as candid in return?” asked Cecil Laurens in a low, winning tone, and with a glorious smile. Certainly although he had learned his love so suddenly, he knew how to play the lover well.

She trembled and drew back from him as he leaned toward her. All the sweet vivid color faded from her face, and her dark eyes sought the ground.

“I believe you now, Mr. Laurens, although at first I thought you were jesting,” she said, and her voice was distinctly tremulous. “I—I—yes, I will be candid with you. I am—am—sorry—you—care for me—for—it—is—useless, hopeless!”

“Hopeless, Louise? Are you sure?” he asked. “If you have no other lover, let me try to win you. Your heart is free?”

“No, no, for I love some one else,” she said, desperately.

He was very clever, this Cecil Laurens, and at that moment he read the heart of the simple girl as he had read his own as by a flash of light. Smilingly, and with a man’s masterful air, he returned:

“It is my turn now to cry out nonsense, my darling, for I do not believe that my love is hopeless. I saw in your sweet, shy eyes just now a tenderness that belonged not to ‘some one else,’ but to me. Look up, Louise, and own that in these weeks while we seemed to be playing at cross purposes we were falling headlong into love!”

She tried to deny it, but the usually pert little tongue faltered under his quizzical and tender gaze.

“Let me alone!” she began frantically, but Cecil Laurens’ arms had slipped around her waist and he smothered the remonstrating words on her lips with a long, sweet, lingering, lover’s kiss—one that seemed to draw the girl’s pure soul from her body and merge it into his.

Faint with the sweetness of this exquisite emotion, Molly rested passive in his clasp for a moment, then drawing back from him, sighed bitterly.

“Oh, this is dreadful! Why did I ever come to Ferndale?” she exclaimed to herself, while Cecil Laurens’ eyes glowed upon her full of passionate love. Under their warmth, the girl hung her head bashfully, all her usual effrontery conquered by the thrilling consciousness of her love and the bitter pain she suffered in her secret knowledge of its folly.

“Ah, if he but knew!” she thought with an inward shudder, and looking up at him with eyes full of pain, she said:

“I did not try to make you love me, you must always remember that!”

He laughed as he answered:

“No, you did not court my love, dear, certainly. I never saw a rose so full of thorns as this one that I have won.”

“You have not won me!” she cried with a frightened start, but the triumphant lover, sure of his prize, replied:

“I do not think you will deny that your heart is mine, Louise, although I no more tried to win your love than you did mine. But this being so, the fact remains we were mutually strongly attracted to each other, so we must charge our union to the score of fate.”

“A strange fate!” Molly muttered, but her lover, who saw nothing but perfection now, where a short while ago he found so much fault, answered fondly:

“A very beneficent fate. Only think, we shall not only make ourselves happy by our marriage, but we shall please our families, who have been neighbors and intimates almost a century.”

“I have not said I would marry you, Mr. Laurens!” she cried out, quickly, more and more frightened, but he only smiled at what seemed to him maidenly bashfulness.

“Marriage naturally follows love like ours, dear,” he said, tenderly. “And, Louise, darling, I shall make you a very good husband. You will not find me such a bear as I have been these past weeks, when your coldness hurt my unconscious love and stung me to anger. You will be different, too, my pet, for our love will change our thoughts and our lives.”

“Yes,” she murmured, faintly, for she knew far better than he the extent of that change, but just now she did not contradict him again.

“What is the use? He will not listen,” she thought, feverishly. “I will let him love me while he is here and when he is gone I will write him very positively that I can not marry him.”

Her love and his happy masterful air made a coward of her, and she was willing to put off the fatal declaration, feeling a guilty pleasure in basking in this sunshine to which she had no right, and from which she must soon steal away into the gloom of a life made sad by an unhappy love.

For deep down in her heart Molly Trueheart knew already that this mutual love between her and Cecil Laurens was a catastrophe, not a blessing, as he believed it. She knew that she could never marry him, but her feeble declarations to that effect had been silenced by his objections, so she decided to filch from fate a few bitter-sweet hours before she parted forever from this splendid yet forbidden love.

Afterward, when the storm-rains of despair beat on her defenseless head, and her heart ached on amid fiercest tortures, Molly looked back on this hour, the beginning of it all, with a great wonder at her weakness and cowardice. Why had she yielded even for an hour to this madness? Why had she let her love make her a craven and a coward?

She laid all the blame upon herself in wonder and sorrow and repentance, too ignorant and unversed in the mysteries of life and nature to comprehend that it was not so much her honesty that had been at fault as that through her love her will-power had been dominated by the magnetic force of her lover. For grand, handsome, noble Cecil Laurens, although unconscious of his power, was possessed of a strong magnetism that subtly influenced all with whom he came in contact, and doubly attracted the susceptible girl whom he loved. She did not realize the power of this magnetic will any more than Cecil himself did, yet certainly it was more than half to blame for poor Molly Trueheart’s treachery.

CHAPTER XV.

All in a minute, as it seemed, he was putting on her first finger the splendid solitaire diamond from his own hand.

“Will you wear this for an engagement ring, or shall I buy you a new one?” he asked.

“I prefer this because you have worn it,” she answered, frankly, and blushing very much, at which Cecil was delighted.

To herself she said, sadly:

“That is the truth, but there is another reason still for my preference. I must not put him to the expense of a new ring, for this will do for the few days that I shall be able to keep up the farce of an engagement.”

She sat silent, twisting the costly gem uneasily about her finger, when suddenly she saw coming toward her across the lawn Mrs. Barry, attended by Agnes Walker, her maid.

The sight roused Molly from the dream of bliss into which she was falling. She pulled the ring from her finger.

“Here, take it back; I—I can’t marry you. Don’t tell Aunt Thalia, please,” she faltered, desperately.

Cecil took the ring and her hand with it, and pushed the jewel back on the slim, rosy finger.

“My darling, what a bashful little goose you are!” he returned, laughingly; and just then Mrs. Barry came up and found him holding the little hand tightly in his own.

“Louise, I was so uneasy about your long absence, I took Agnes and came to hunt you; but if I had known that Cecil was with you, I should not have been alarmed,” she said.

Molly muttered something incoherently, and tried to wrest her hand from its captor, but Cecil held it up triumphantly before Mrs. Barry, who laughed in glee as she caught the glitter of the diamond.

“Engaged!” she exclaimed, gladly.

“Yes,” he replied, jubilantly. “Will you give us your blessing, Aunt Thalia?”

“With all my heart,” replied the old woman. “Louise, do not look so bashful and frightened, my dear, for I am very much pleased at your choice;” and she actually kissed the little bit of white forehead that was visible above the arm with which Molly had hidden her face.

Agnes Walker, too, looked very proud and pleased, and uttered a few words of congratulation that would have delighted Molly if this had not been, as she said to herself, “all a dreadful sham.”

She sat like one in a dream, listening to Mrs. Barry’s cracked voice in its complacent chatter.

“Of course you will not go abroad so soon now, Cecil?”

“I am afraid I ought to go. Mother and father will expect me, and I promised to go as soon as I had attended to that business. But—it will be hard to go now. I have a bright idea. Can not you and Louise go with me?”

Molly’s heart leaped wildly, then calmed again as Mrs. Barry shook her head.

“I am too old to cross the sea again. I want to die in my native land,” she said.

“Louise, then—with a maid, of course?” he said, but again the old woman shook her head.

“I’m afraid it would not be exactly proper then,” she replied.

“Then I shall write to my folks that I shall delay my return until my bride is ready to accompany me,” he replied, with a tender smile at Molly, who replied, in a fright:

“No, no, I’m too young yet.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Barry, sharply. “Why, Louise Barry, in my young days a girl of five-and-twenty was considered an old maid, and here you are talking of being too young. Don’t mind her, Cecil. I’ll order her wedding things at once, and she shall be ready as soon as you wish.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Barry!” exclaimed the prospective bridegroom, radiant.

But Molly muttered, frantically:

“I know Aunt Lucy will not be willing!”

“Lucy Everett has nothing to do with it. I shall not ask her advice, nor Cecil her consent. If you love Cecil, there is no more to do but to marry him and settle down,” proclaimed Mrs. Barry with the air of an autocrat, and she added, after a minute, sharply: “I don’t think I shall even invite Lucy Everett to the wedding, for she would want to bring that Trueheart girl, and she shall never with my consent cross the threshold of a Barry!”

“As for the wedding things, don’t they order them always from Paris? Then, what more will Louise need but a traveling-dress, since we will go straight to Europe on our wedding-tour. She can get all the dresses she wants, then,” said Cecil Laurens, eagerly.

“That is true,” said the old lady, adding slyly: “What a hurry you are in all at once, Cecil!”

He flushed and laughed, then said, with a fond glance at Molly:

“I am in a hurry for my happiness; but then you know, Mrs. Barry, I have been a spoiled boy always, and never had patience enough to wait for anything I wanted!”

“You never had to wait, being one of Fortune’s favorites, always!” she replied, indulgently.

And Molly thought, with a hushed sigh:

“He will hate me one day, because he will meet his first disappointment through me!”

Mrs. Barry believed in taking time by the forelock, and, unknown to the young fiancé, she sent an order that very day to New York—an order for a recherché wedding-dress, a traveling costume in all its details, several dresses besides, comprising walking, dinner, and ball dresses, hats and bonnets ad. lib., and a dozen outfits of embroidered lawn and linen underwear. These articles were to be furnished within three weeks.

“They will be as much as she will need until she gets to Paris. I will give her a large check to take with her for a trousseau there. I can afford to be generous as all my money will go to her some day, and as she is marrying so well,” said the old lady to Agnes Walker, feeling very complacent over the happy turn events had taken. She was very fond of the bride-elect from that time forward, and often thought remorsefully of the time when she had locked the girl into the garret.

Cecil Laurens was greatly altered, too, for the better, by his love. He ceased to see a single fault in the gay, young girl whom he had at first condemned. He lavished the whole wealth of his heart upon her, and he could not fail to see through all her shyness that his love was fully returned.

Molly had not known herself capable of such depths of passion as her lover’s devotion roused in her breast. She gave herself up with feverish delight to the happiness of the flying weeks, salving her conscience with the thought that her deception would soon be over—that at the very last she would break off with him even though he would go away from her hating her memory forever.

But day by day the bonds of love grew stronger. That which she thought but a garland of roses strengthened into a chain that held her fast. A mad love made the brave, honest little girl a traitor.

The day that had been set for her marriage dawned, yet she had never spoken the words that were to save Cecil Laurens from wedding a deceiver.

“For I could not break it off without telling him the truth, and that would ruin Louise. And how could I part with him now?” she would sigh to herself when alone, and gradually her love and his made a bond that she could not break through.

“I should die if I were parted from him now,” she sighed. “Of course I know that he would find me out some day, and then I should lose him forever. But I should have a little happiness first. It would not be so terrible to die of grief, having had my day first.”

Then Molly would sob bitterly until she fell asleep upon her tearwet pillow. Truly the love to which she clung so desperately was not all unalloyed pleasure, but perhaps its element of uncertainty made it all the more precious.

They went back to Ferndale, and Mrs. Barry, in the seventh heaven of delight, made preparations on a grand scale for a real old-fashioned country wedding. Invitations were sent out far and near to the friends of the family. A dozen cooks took possession of the kitchen and dining-room. Flowers were ordered from a New York florist. The old lady declared that her niece’s wedding should be the grandest that ever took place in Greenbrier County.

It was. A hundred guests danced at Molly Trueheart’s wedding with Cecil Laurens. Ferndale did not look like the “poky old hole” she had called it two months ago. By the aid of lights and flowers and music it was temporarily transformed into fairy-land. The trees were illuminated by picturesque Chinese lanterns. The old house in every corner was as bright as day, and the light glowed resplendently on the trailing lengths of Molly’s white satin bridal-dress as she came down the wide stairway almost an hour later than the time appointed, for at the very last her conscience had stung her so cruelly that she had hidden herself in a closet, from which she was dragged forth after vigilant search by her almost distracted aunt.

“Louise Barry, what do you mean by such a caper? You’ve given me such a fright as I never had in my life! I’ve a mind to give you a good shaking!” she vociferated, excitedly, and Molly whimpered, faintly:

“Please forgive me, Aunt Thalia. I—I was so frightened, I thought I’d rather not—”

“Rather not what?” sharply.

“Not—get—married,” sighed the delinquent, and Mrs. Barry burst out laughing.

“What under the heavens makes girls so silly when they are going to be married?” she cried, and just then one of the bridesmaids tapped at the door.

“Is the bride ready yet? It’s almost an hour past the time, and Mr. Laurens sent me to ask—” she began, but Mrs. Barry cut the sentence short by opening wide the door.

“She’s ready. Tell the bridesmaids to come in,” she said; and then she whispered in Molly’s ear: “Behave yourself like a little lady now, and I’ll never tell Cecil that you were such a baby as to hide in the closet because you were afraid to have a husband.”

“I’ll behave,” Molly answered, desperately; and so well did she keep her promise that Mrs. Barry had no occasion to tell her husband of that hour in which Molly’s good angel had been pleading for the right.

CHAPTER XVI.

Cecil was waiting at the foot of the stairs, so eager, so happy, so grand looking in his wedding garments, that all her regrets vanished in passionate love and admiration. She clung to his arm, sighing to herself:

“Oh, Heaven grant that he may never, never find me out!”

Five minutes more and the ring was on her finger, the marriage vows had passed her lips, and Cecil Laurens’ lips had called her wife. She stood in the middle of the room, pale, but with a quiet dignity, receiving the congratulations of the guests.

Suddenly there was a stir and bustle at the door where the servants were congregated, looking on at the brilliant scene. A shabby young man, ghastly pale, with eyes of fire blazing out of his weak, good-looking face, pushed through the crowd of guests, crying out, fiercely:

“The bride—let me see the bride!”

A wild hubbub arose as he advanced, for in the hand that hung down at his side a score of eyes had caught the gleam of a knife. Insane fury flashed from his eyes as he advanced upon the beautiful bride.

Her eyes dilated with terror, her face waxed ghastly as she faced him, but not a sound came from her pallid, parted lips.

“Ha! ha!” the intruder cried with a horrible laugh as he stopped so close to her that his hot breath fanned her brow, while his eyes fairly devoured her terrified face.

Then—

All in an instant, and as suddenly as he had rushed upon her, the infuriated man fell back a pace and his hand dropped to his side, while the glare of his eyes changed to a stupid stare.

“You!” he muttered, “you!” and the murderous knife fell from his hand upon the floor.

Some one shrieked aloud:

“A madman! Take him away!”

The men rushed upon him and dragged him from the room. Molly clung sobbing to her new-made husband.

“Oh, Cecil,” she whispered, “he is not mad. It is John Keith, my sister’s lover. He has made some strange mistake, I am sure! He must have thought it was his own sweetheart being married instead of me! Oh, let me go and speak to him, poor tortured Johnny!”

A shout came back from the hall.

The captive had broken loose and escaped into the darkness of the night.

“I am so glad!” sighed Molly, with infinite relief.

And Cecil Laurens looked down at her with grave eyes.

“Louise, are you sure the man is not an old lover of yours?” he asked in a tone divided between jest and earnest.

“I have never had a lover but you!” she replied, fondly, and lifting her dark eyes to his face that he might read the love written there.

“Darling!” he whispered, rapturously, as he led her to a seat.

Every one had run out into the hall to look after the maniac, and they were for a moment alone.

Molly whispered, anxiously:

“Dear Cecil, don’t you pity that poor fellow? He is not rich like you, and he can not find work enough to support a wife! She is growing tired of waiting, and he will lose her, unless something happens in his favor. You will help him, Cecil? You’ll find him some work?”

So earnest was the plaint that tears rushed into the dark eyes, and Cecil, moved to sympathy, answered ardently:

“I believe you are an angel, Louise, as I once heard that unlucky fellow call you. Certainly, I’ll try to find him some work; but I doubt if I’ll be doing him a good turn helping him to marry selfish Molly Trueheart. And then, you know, we leave tomorrow on our wedding-tour, and shall not know where to find him, as he has run away.”

“I know where to write to him. I have his address; and, oh, Cecil, I shall love you more than ever for this!” Molly cried, impetuously.

“Thanks, my little love. With that reward in view, I shall strive earnestly to set your forlorn friend up in business before we leave tomorrow,” Cecil Laurens replied, gayly, but tenderly and earnestly.

CHAPTER XVII.

Molly crossed with her noble, handsome husband the beautiful ocean of which she had dreamed, and the skies seemed to smile on the fair young bride, for the weather was beautiful throughout, and the water so smooth and calm that many of the passengers escaped even a touch of seasickness. In ten days they were in London, where the bride met her new relatives, Cecil’s parents, and two school-girl sisters. When she went to Paris she met there Doctor Charlie Laurens, Cecil’s younger brother, who was studying at the medical school in that gay city.

All of these new friends Molly found very agreeable people, who were disposed to make a special pet of Cecil’s wife, and who were pleased and happy as he knew they would be because he had married a Barry. They dwelt on this latter fact so much that it was actual torture to Molly’s guilty soul.

“Oh, what will they say if they ever find me out?” she sighed often to herself, and her sin weighed upon her soul so heavily that even Cecil’s devotion fell short of making her happy. There kept whispering in her ear the still, small voice of conscience, and sometimes she would sob bitterly when alone in blind terror of the future, when she should be found out in her sin.

But life went on very brightly for many months in a whirl of gayety and pleasure. Mrs. Laurens, who was fond of society, managed to have her beautiful daughter-in-law presented at court, and after that invitations rained upon the beautiful couple. London lavished admiration on the lovely American bride, and Molly enjoyed it all with a feverish, fearful pleasure, knowing that at any moment her house of cards might tumble to pieces.

Mrs. Barry wrote her occasional letters from Ferndale, and in one of them she said that she had written to Lucy Everett all about her niece’s grand marriage and tour to Europe. She added that they had never answered the letter, by which she guessed that she and that Trueheart girl were too angry and envious to reply.

“They know it all now—oh, what will they do?” the little fraud gasped in a fright, but months went on and there came no signs from the real Louise Barry.

“They do not care about it, or they are afraid to speak as long as old Mrs. Barry lives,” the girl concluded at last, gladly, and many were the prayers she sent up to Heaven for the old lady’s long life.

“But will Heaven listen to such a sinner?” she would often gravely exclaim at the close of these petitions.

In the spring following her marriage she met, during the London season, Sir Edward Trueheart, with his wife and daughter, some country people who had come up to the city to enjoy the pleasures of the gay season, and were residing at their town house in Park Lane. It was their name that attracted Molly at first, and then they began to win upon her by a subtle charm that she could not explain.

The cross old baronet and his faded, sad old wife, with their handsome, rather elderly daughter, all took to the young American bride with pleased interest, as she did to them. It was a mutual attraction.

Miss Trueheart, the daughter, was a tall, handsome brunette, several years past thirty; but she had many admirers, and among them one whom it was believed she favored; but he knew, as did all the rest, that Madelon Trueheart had declared she would never marry as long as her mother lived.

Molly felt sorry for that pale, sad Lady Trueheart, but sorrier still for Lord Westerly, Madelon’s faithful lover, who had loved her so long and vainly. She wanted these two to be happy, as she was with her adored Cecil.

“Only, she would be happier still with her husband, for no hidden barrier would lie between them,” she sighed to herself.

It was odd what a close intimacy grew up between the bride of seventeen and the woman of thirty-three. They managed to be together very often, and Molly went several times a week to the house in Park Lane, and had the entrée of Miss Trueheart’s boudoir, and even her dressing-room; so at last she felt bold enough to keep a promise she had made Lord Westerly, to plead his cause with his obdurate fair one.

“We have been lovers for ten years, Mrs. Laurens, and my patience is almost exhausted,” he said. “I have told Madelon that she might be with her mother most of the time, but she seems to think nothing but the sacrifice of her whole life will satisfy her parents.”

“It looks hard,” said cordial Molly, with misty eyes. “I’ll speak to her for you, Lord Westerly.”

“Heaven bless you, you good little soul!” exclaimed his lordship, to whose forty years Molly seemed nothing but a child.

So Cecil’s carriage rolled down Park Lane one day and a vision of beauty stepped therefrom, and held up her rosy lips for Cecil’s parting kiss, careless of the coachman’s stare and the footman’s grin.

“Bye-bye, Cecil; call for me in an hour,” she said, smiling, and after waiting until she had entered the house, he went away.

The baronet was out, and Lady Trueheart was shut up with her maid and a headache. Molly went at once to Miss Trueheart’s boudoir and happily found her alone.

“Now is my chance!” thought the lovely young matron.

She brought the conversation cleverly around to Lord Westerly, talked of his manly worth, his good looks, his ample fortune: then she startled her friend by crying out, abruptly:

“Oh, Miss Trueheart, why don’t you marry this good man and put him out of his pain?”

No one had ever arraigned Madelon Trueheart like this before, and at first she was a little constrained and stately in her answers.

“I have told Lord Westerly long ago that it was useless waiting for me, and that he would do better to love some woman who was free to leave her mother and marry.”

“But, dear Miss Trueheart, daughters do leave their mothers and marry,” remonstrated Molly.

“I shall never leave mine!” said Miss Trueheart, firmly.

“She has her husband, even if you should leave her, and he ought to be sufficient comfort if she lost all else!”

“But he is not, Mrs. Laurens, for he needs me almost as much as she does. My father, although he seems so cold and cross and sarcastic is in reality almost near being broken-hearted as my mother. But, dear Mrs. Laurens, how much surprised you look. Has no one told you of our trouble?”

“Trouble?” Molly stammered.

“I should have said bereavement,” said Madelon Trueheart, tears softening the glitter of her cold, dark eyes, and Molly exclaimed, tenderly:

“Forgive me, I have heard nothing.”

“Then I must tell you, for I do not like for you to think that my parents are selfish, and that I am cruel to the man I love.”

“Forgive me for interfering. I did not know there was anything serious behind your refusal to marry.”

“Listen,” said Madelon, gently, “I am not angry with you for interfering. You did not know what others do. Dear Mrs. Laurens, my parents had two children once, a son and daughter. Their son, my senior by several years, died in the prime of youth, and it almost broke their hearts.”

“Died in his youth—oh, how sad!”

Tears that had been gathering on Molly’s lashes rolled down her cheeks.

“That was not the saddest part of it,” said Madelon Trueheart. “My dear, he was dead to us long before the coffin lid covered his handsome face from the sight of men. He offended my father and was disinherited and driven from home because he contracted a mésalliance.”

“A mésalliance,” Molly faltered, with a half sob that this time was for herself, not Madelon Trueheart’s dead brother.

“Yes,” answered Madelon, sadly. “He was traveling in America and in New York he fell in love with a pretty actress. He married her and sent a letter to tell us what he had done. Father cursed his only son and forbade him to ever return to the home he had disgraced.”

“An actress. It is always an actress that must break hearts. What a cruel, wretched, proud world it is,” Molly cried, with startling vehemence.

Madelon Trueheart looked at her in sad surprise.

“It is very kind of you to feel for us like that,” she said. “It was bitter, was it not! We are such an old family and so proud! But we loved Ernest so—dear mother and I—that we would have forgiven him, and made the best of his low-born bride. But, alas, father would not have it so. He forbade us sternly ever to think of the erring one again. Then in just a little while—two years, no more—came the message that he was dead.”

Molly lay back among the silken cushions of her easy chair pale, but with burning eyes. She moved her lips slightly in an almost inaudible whisper:

“Ernest—Ernest Trueheart.”

“Was it not dreadful?” sighed Madelon. “I think father must have been gradually growing more tender, for he almost went mad with remorse at the news of Ernest’s early death. And mother, poor soul, you can easily see that her heart is broken, and her health fading. She has never held up her head since he died, though it is nearly fifteen years ago. Can you blame me now, dear, that I feel it my first duty to stay with my afflicted parents?”

Molly did not answer. She was sobbing softly in her handkerchief, and Madelon went on:

“If Ernest’s wife would have come to us when he died we would have received her, and loved her for the sake of the dead. But she was proud as we had been, and refused our proffers with scorn. Mother wrote to her that if she had a child we wanted her to give it to us. But she did not even reply. None could blame her, could they since father had been so hard at first?”

“What was her name?” asked Molly, almost in a whisper.

“It was Molly Glenn—so plain and common, father said, but Ernest wrote that she was good and beautiful and a clever actress. I have no doubt she was all three, for my brother was very fastidious. But my story has been too sad for you, dear Mrs. Laurens. It has grieved your gentle heart!”

CHAPTER XVIII.

Molly was saved from replying, for Miss Trueheart’s maid knocked softly to say that Mr. Laurens had called for his wife, and was waiting. Hurriedly kissing her friend, the young wife ran down to join her husband.

“Louise, my darling, your eyes are red. You have been crying,” he said to her, full of solicitude.

“Miss Trueheart was telling me a sad story about one of her friends,” she replied, evasively, and he rejoined:

“I am sorry for that, for I, too, have a sad story to relate—one that will distress you, I am sure.”

Molly gave a guilty start, and looked anxiously at her husband. He was looking pale and grave.

“Some one has betrayed me,” she thought, with her heart leaping into her throat, and his next words confirmed her terror.

“Child, you have deceived me,” he said, with portentous sternness.

The clear blue sky, the streets and houses, all whirled up in a wild confusion before Molly’s blurred sight. She fell heavily back against the carriage cushions, and it seemed to her as if the hand of death gripped her heart.

“Oh,” she moaned, in a faint, almost dying voice. “I knew you would find me out some day, Cecil; for the Lord’s sake forgive me!”

Cecil Laurens looked at his beautiful young wife in amazement. She had grown ghastly pale, even to the lips, and her pallor was startling by contrast with her dark hair and brows, and wild, dilated eyes. He put his hand on hers and found that it was icy cold.

“My darling, my darling; do not look so frightened. I am not an ogre. I am not going to kill you for one little deception!” he exclaimed.

He was afraid she was going to faint, but at those kindly uttered words, the warm color rushed suddenly into her face, and she turned her eyes on him, with an expression little less than adoring.

“Cecil,” she murmured, in an indescribable tone, leaning close to his shoulder, so close that he could feel the convulsive trembling that shook her form.

He was alarmed, and exclaimed, reassuringly:

“Darling, your little deception did not matter much. You kept the secret for your sister’s sake. Remember, I am not blaming you much.”

“Yes, oh, yes, for her sake!” faltered the girl, humbly. “I promised her never to betray it, but I thought—thought you would be ready to kill me when you found me out! And you take it easily as this? Oh, my darling husband, you are an angel!”

“No, my dear, only a very faulty man, but passionately in love with my charming wife,” returned Cecil Laurens, with a wonderful sweetness in his violet eyes. Then drawing a letter from his breast, he added: “But you will want to read John Keith’s letter?”

“John Keith!—was it he who betrayed me?” Molly exclaimed, with sudden anger blazing from her dark eyes.

“Darling, what does it matter now? The truth could no longer be hidden. And your poor friend in writing to tell me that he was about to throw up his situation and go south, gave as a reason for it that dastardly divorce!”

“Divorce!”

“Yes, dear, but read it and see for yourself!”

“I—I can’t. The carriage goes too fast, and it makes my head dizzy. Tell me, please,” Molly said, with white lips and startled eyes.

Cecil replaced the letter in his pocket, and said, excitedly:

“John Keith told me what you knew already—that your sister Molly Trueheart had been his wife by a secret marriage almost two years, and he added what I suspected, that she was a mercenary, calculating woman. She refused to live with him even after I had placed him in a situation where he could support her in comfort. Do not look so shocked, Louise, darling, for I have more to tell you. She, his unworthy wife, went away secretly from her old home, and while in close hiding, secured a divorce from her unlucky husband on a plausible plea of desertion and non-support. Louise, Louise!”

The last words were uttered in a tone of alarm, for his wife had quietly fainted away.

Fortunately, they were almost home, for they were staying just then at The Acacias, a pretty, villa-like residence occupied by Cecil’s parents.

“Drive faster!” Cecil thundered to the coachman, and held Molly’s limp form tightly against his heart, little dreaming that this was a parting embrace.

In a minute they paused in front of The Acacias, and Cecil got out of the carriage and went through the gate with his wife in his arms.

“Poor little one, I did not know she was so nervous and weak. She has had too much excitement lately, too much gayety. I must be more careful with my tender-hearted little wife. I will take her away from London for a time to some quiet retreat where she can get her strength back,” he was thinking as he went up the steps, and as he rang the bell he pressed an adoring kiss on the pale face lying on his breast.

The door was opened at once, and seeing the drawing-room open and hearing his mother’s voice, Cecil went in hastily with his burden.

CHAPTER XIX.

He had not expected to find any one in the room except his father and mother, but the first person his eyes encountered was a stranger—a tall, handsome woman with abundant hair of the color of dead-gold, and eyes that matched the hair in hue with just a little more of brightness caught from a yellowish gleam in the dilated orbs. Brows and lashes of the same peculiar color as her hair went with a clear-white complexion brightened with a tint of rouge upon the cheeks. Her tall, symmetrical figure was draped in rich black silk and jet and a bonnet of the same crowned her small head, the dark costume intensifying her peculiar beauty.

Cecil Laurens’ gaze took in this stranger for just an instant before he saw behind her a tall, gaunt figure in gray silk that took him back with a rush to Ferndale. It was old Mrs. Barry herself, grimmer and grayer than ever, and with a stern aspect that was enough to daunt the bravest soul.

Cecil laid his unconscious wife hurriedly down upon a sofa and exclaimed:

“Dear Mrs. Barry, this is very sudden and pleasant—but see, my wife has fainted. Mother!”

Stately, aristocratic Mrs. Laurens trailed her silken robes slowly across the room, her husband following, until both stood in front of the sofa where Molly lay in her unconscious beauty like one dead.

“She fainted in the carriage,” Cecil said, anxiously. “What must I do for her? Shall I summon a physician?”

“No!” said a sharp, sibilant voice before Mrs. Laurens could speak, and old Mrs. Barry crossed the room stiffly and stood before Cecil.

In her feeble, cracked voice, sharpened by anger, and with features distorted by fury, she exclaimed:

“Call nobody, do nothing, Cecil Laurens! Let the impostor who tricked an old woman and fooled a young man lie there and die! It is the best thing that could happen to you both!”

“Mrs. Barry, you are certainly out of your mind!” exclaimed the young man, indignantly. He had already fallen down on his knees and was chafing Molly’s cold, limp hands in both his own.

“Louise, Louise!” he called, anxiously, and the lady in black silk rustled forward.

“That is my name, sir,” she said, coolly. “I am Louise Barry, and that girl there,” contemptuously, “is only Molly Trueheart, my step-sister, who became your wife by one of the most stupendous frauds ever perpetrated on a confiding man!”

He stared at her as he had done at Mrs. Barry, and answered, angrily:

“You must be mad, woman! How dare you make such an assertion?”

Mrs. Laurens burst into bitter tears and laid her hand on his head.

“Oh, my son, it is the fatal truth!” she sighed. “That girl there, your wife, whom we loved and respected as one of the Barrys, is only the daughter of the actress that Philip Barry married, and this lady is indeed Miss Louise Barry.”

“Mother, how can you say such false things? Father, can you stand there silent and let them traduce my pure and honorable wife?”

Mr. Laurens, who had a good, kind face, and looked distressed beyond measure, replied, sadly:

“My poor Cecil, I fear it is the bitter truth. Mrs. Barry has every proof that she was imposed on by that poor girl there, who took advantage of her credulity to make herself your wife.”

“I will not believe it!” thundered Cecil Laurens, fiercely. He caught his mother’s vinaigrette from the chain that secured it to her belt, and held it to Molly’s nostrils. “My darling, my darling!” he cried, frantically: “arise and face your accusers!”

But Molly never stirred from her death-like swoon, and the golden-haired stranger cried out, imploringly:

“Oh, sir, listen to me, and I will convince you of my truth! Aunt Thalia, after long years of estrangement because of my father’s second marriage, wrote to me that she had relented, and would make me her heiress if I were still unmarried, but would have nothing to do with me in case I were. She also invited me to make her a visit, that we might become acquainted with each other, as we had not met since my early childhood.”

“Yes, yes; that was what I wrote to Louise,” muttered old Mrs. Barry, nodding her head till her cap-strings fluttered as if in a breeze; and still Molly lay there unconscious.

The new claimant resumed:

“That letter fell into the hands of my madcap step-sister, Molly, instead of mine, and she instantly formed a clever plan of personating me, and becoming my aunt’s heiress. She was a wild girl, and fond of what she called ‘larks,’ and I suppose she thought this would be a capital one. So she hid the letter and ran away to Ferndale, arranging everything so cleverly that we thought she had run away to marry an objectionable lover whom she favored, one John Keith.”

At that name a stifled groan escaped Cecil Laurens, and Louise Barry said, quickly:

“Ah! you have heard of him, perhaps?”

“Yes,” he muttered; and the scene of his wedding night rushed freshly over Cecil, and a red-hot shaft of jealous doubt tore through his heart.

“Then,” said Louise Barry, significantly. “I shall say no more about John Keith as she is your wife. What is the use,” pointedly, “of making bad matters worse?”

“Hush!” he said, sternly, pointing to Molly, whose breast began to heave with signs of returning life.

“She will have to know it all, so as well hear it now as any other time,” said Louise Barry, and she went on relentlessly, “About a month ago by an accident I became possessed of the letter Aunt Thalia had written to me, and I instantly suspected that I had been deceived. My aunt, Mrs. Everett, wrote to Mrs. Barry asking for information, and received all the details of the impostor’s career up to the time of her marriage with you. Then we went to Ferndale and Aunt Thalia insisted that we should cross the ocean and free you from the toils of an adventuress!”

“I will not believe this horrible story of my dear young wife. It is you who are the impostor, the adventuress!” muttered Cecil, angrily.

“Aunt Thalia, will you show him the proofs?” asked Louise Barry calmly, and with a cold, triumphant gleam in her golden colored eyes.

Mrs. Barry eagerly produced them, and in the midst of the heated argument Molly’s dark eyes opened suddenly upon the scene with an incredulous stare, falling first on Mrs. Barry’s ugly, angry face.

“Aunt Thalia—or, do I dream?” she exclaimed weakly, and the old lady answered tartly:

“You’re waking up now from a very fine dream that you’ve been dreaming almost a year, Molly Trueheart!”

Molly gave a gasp of terror. Her eyes had taken in everything. Cecil’s stern white face, Louise Barry’s triumphant one, and these coupled with Mrs. Barry’s words, assured her that all was discovered, that her dream of happiness was ended, her life with Cecil over and done.

CHAPTER XX.

Cecil was standing close to his wife with his arms folded across his breast, his grave, troubled blue eyes fixed anxiously on her face. She met that expressive glance, cowered, shivered, and flung up her hands to hide her guilty face.

At that expressive action in which Molly mutely acknowledged her sin, a moment of intense silence fell. Cecil Laurens himself broke it in a voice of poignant anguish.

“It is true then, child? You have deceived Mrs. Barry, deceived me, and become my wife under a borrowed name!”

Molly drew one hand from before her face and pointed at the real Louise Barry.

“It was her fault,” she said, passionately, and Louise Barry answered, coldly:

“Do not add any more falsehoods to what you have already done, Molly, for no one will believe you now!”

There was a veiled significance in the tone that the poor, cowering girl understood but too well. Shudderingly she lifted her dark eyes to the face of Cecil Laurens which had suddenly grown ashy pale and stern. She half extended her trembling hand to him.

“Cecil, you will believe me when I explain all?” she said, beseechingly.

But he replied with unmoved sternness:

“First tell me, is it really true that that lady is the real Louise Barry?”

“It is true!” she replied, faintly, and shrinking from the fierce anger that leaped into those blue eyes as she acknowledged the truth.

“And you,” he exclaimed, in a low, deep voice of angry bitterness and scorn, “you are the daughter of the actress—you are Molly Trueheart!”

The ineffable scorn with which he named that name fired her soul as it always did with sharp resentment, and her eyes flashed with proud fire as she exclaimed:

“I am no longer Molly Trueheart, I am your wife, Mrs. Laurens.”

Louise Barry’s voice, sharp and clear and cruel, broke in maliciously:

“You are mistaken. Your marriage with Mr. Laurens being contracted under a false name and personality was illegal. You are therefore still Molly Trueheart, and he—is free—free as air!”

Cecil Laurens gave a quick start, and looked at Molly. Her face was white and wild with agony as she sprang from the sofa and fell down at his feet.

“It is not—it is not true!” she gasped, in an agonized voice. “Cecil, Cecil, I am your wife, you are my husband! Speak, tell her she speaks falsely!”

He was blindly, madly angry at the deception that had been practiced on him. In his bitter wrath and outraged pride he caught quickly at Louise Barry’s cue.

“Get up, Molly Trueheart, do not kneel at my feet, for she speaks the truth!” he exclaimed, hoarsely. “Such a marriage would not stand in law. I am therefore free of you, as Miss Barry has just told you.”

A shriek of mortal agony rang through the house; as Molly sprang upward and stood before the handsome, angry man she loved, with an awful corpse-like anguish on her girlish face. Her dark eyes clung to his face despairingly, and she trembled like a wind-blown leaf.

No one spoke or moved, so intensely was the interest of all concentrated on those two central figures—the outraged husband and the agonized young wife. Ere her cry of anguish had ceased to re-echo through the room, she wailed out, sharply, supplicatingly:

“You will forgive me, Cecil, you will make me your wife, in truth, as I—thought I was. Oh, I can not bear this shame! I sinned through my love of you, and my remorse has been so great that I have never known one happy hour. But you loved me, Cecil, and you can not unlearn your love so soon. You will make me your wife?”

Such tears as fell from her eyes were hot enough to blister the fair face, such pain as racked her heart was enough to atone for her sin, but the outraged husband was wild with wrath, and he answered in that voice of smoldering fury and indignant pride:

“Why, you are John Keith’s divorced wife. You were bound to him when you went through that farce of a marriage with me. Ah, I see through it all now, but I can not understand how you duped him, so as to get away with me, and then secure your divorce from him. I—”

“Hush, you shall not accuse me of that,” she interrupted, wildly. “There stands the heartless woman who broke poor John Keith’s heart. She is his divorced wife,” pointing an accusing finger at handsome Louise Barry.

The magnificent-looking beauty lifted her hands and eyes to heaven with an expressive shrug of her graceful shoulders.

“Heavens, what a false and wicked creature!” she exclaimed. “Aunt Thalia, you have Aunt Lucy’s letter telling you of Molly Trueheart’s entanglement with John Keith although we did not know it had gone as far as a secret marriage.”

“Yes, I have the letter. Here, Cecil, read it,” exclaimed Mrs. Barry, thrusting it into his hand.

Mechanically he ran his eyes over the open page, but presently a little hand plucked timidly at his sleeve.

“I do not believe Aunt Lucy Everett wrote those falsehoods about me,” cried Molly, dauntlessly, “she was a good woman and as kind to me as cruel Louise would allow her to be. You see she has not followed me to persecute me like these others.”

“She was sick and could not come,” Louise Barry said, with scornful composure, and again a silence fell that was broken by Cecil’s voice, low and stern:

“This letter has the stamp of truth upon it. I have indeed been cruelly, shamelessly imposed on by an adventuress.”

“No, no!” in a voice of agonized remonstrance.

“Hush!” he said, looking at her sternly, rebukingly. “I know you now for the false, treacherous creature you are, and your denials will not be heeded. I have loved you, but I will tear you out of my heart and life. After this hour I will never willingly see your face again.”

She cried out, desperately:

“Oh, for sweet pity’s sake take back your words. I am not the vile creature you believe me. The only wrong I have done was in wedding you under a false name. But you will be merciful, you will repair that ignorant deed, you will make me your real wife for the sake of—” the beseeching prayer was never ended, for exhausted nature gave way and the girl fell gasping, and in a moment lay still as death upon the floor.

She came to herself after what seemed a long, long time, and found that she was alone in the room but for her maid, who was bathing her face and hands in eau de Cologne.

“Oh, Mrs. Laurens, I was afraid you were dead!” she exclaimed.

“I wish I were!” sighed the poor girl, bitterly, realizing all her desolation, and the maid, who had cleverly found out all that had passed, thought that it would indeed be better for the deserted wife.

She saw the dark eyes wandering wistfully around the room, and said, compassionately:

“All the family are gone away, ma’am, and Mr. Laurens gave me this note for you.”

Molly took it with trembling fingers and read the angry words:

“The same roof could not shelter you and those whom you deceived, traitress! so we have all gone away and left you. Pray accept the use of the house as long as you wish. It was taken for the season, and no one will molest you in its occupancy. The servants also you may command, but for myself and my family we are from henceforth strangers to one so false and wicked. Still, for the sake of the love I had for you once, I will arrange with my lawyers for a sum to be paid you yearly, that you may be kept from want or further sin. You may call on them and get all particulars. Farewell forever.

“Cecil Laurens.”

The sheet of paper dropped from Molly’s fingers and unconsciousness again stole over her—unconsciousness so deep that she did not rouse at the furious ringing of the door-bell that announced an impatient visitor who a minute later was admitted into the room.

It was Cecil Laurens’ brother, Dr. Charley, who had run over from Paris for a little visit with his home folks, and who now cried out in amazement as he stumbled and nearly fell over the form of his beautiful sister-in-law.

CHAPTER XXI.

Doctor Laurens had a profound admiration and regard for his brother’s wife, and declared that Cecil, who had always been a lucky fellow, had capped the climax of his good fortune in securing such a beautiful and charming bride. It was therefore with the greatest consternation and distress that he beheld Molly’s condition, and heard from the indignant maid the cause of it—a cause which lost nothing in the telling, for Phebe had warmly espoused the side of her helpless young mistress.

Doctor Laurens ran his eyes hastily over his brother’s letter that lay where it had fallen by Molly’s side, and then he bent his attention to restoring her to life from the deep swoon that had enchained her consciousness.

“Poor little girl, poor little girl!” he sighed over and over as he lifted her in his strong young arms and bore her to her chamber preceded by the attentive maid, who turned down the covers of the white bed and deftly disrobed Molly’s slight form, while Doctor Laurens waited patiently outside.

“Now then, you may come in, sir,” she said, opening the door; and entering quickly the young physician exerted himself to the utmost limit of his skill in restoring Molly to consciousness.

Phebe, who was an intelligent, middle-aged woman, aided him all she could; but success came slowly, and the woman cried out in alarm that she feared her young mistress was dead.

“No, she is not dead. Her heart beats faintly. She will revive presently,” said Doctor Laurens, and he added something in an undertone at which the woman exclaimed, excitedly:

“I thought so myself, and I hinted it to the dear child sometime ago, but she was so bashful she would not believe me. Oh, this makes it all the worse for the poor creature, and Mr. Laurens was cruel to leave her, no matter what she had done.”

Doctor Laurens answered, gravely:

“I am sure my brother did not know this important fact or he would have acted differently, Phebe.”

“Yes, sir,” said the woman, dropping him a profound courtesy.

“Are any of the servants beside yourself aware of what has happened?”

The woman answered promptly in the negative.

“I saw Mr. Laurens bringing my mistress into the house in his arms and ran into the room to assist her—that is how I overheard all,” she said, with such a frank, truthful air that Doctor Laurens immediately enjoined:

“You seem to be a good, intelligent woman, Phebe, and I want you to keep this secret locked in your own breast. Will you do so?”

“It shall never pass my lips, sir; for I’m sure my poor young lady never did all them dreadful things that lady said.”

“Thank you, Phebe, for your confidence in my sister-in-law. She does not look like an arrant sinner, does she, with that sweet, innocent face? Any way, no matter how she has sinned, her condition gives her a claim on my brother that he can not in honor disregard. So we will try to patch up a reconciliation between them, and a remarriage may be necessary. I speak frankly to you, Phebe, seeing what a good woman you are, and devoted to that poor girl,” said the young man.

“Devoted—yes indeed, sir, for no servant ever had a sweeter, kinder mistress,” said the woman, in tears.

“Then you understand the vital necessity of saving her name from scandal, and I need caution you no more about the strict keeping of her secret,” said the young physician as he again bent over his patient, in whom he detected signs of returning life.

In fact Molly’s eyes opened languidly a few minutes later with a puzzled air at finding herself in bed with the gas lighted in the room, whereas her last recollection had been of the sunset hour.

“Cecil,” she murmured, with a restless movement, and Phebe said, soothingly:

“He is not here just this moment, Mrs. Laurens. You have been sick, and here is your brother-in-law, the doctor, who has been attending to you.”

She met Charley Laurens’ compassionate blue eyes fixed on her, and instant consciousness returned to her mind. Burying her face in the pillow her slight form shook heavily with anguished sobs.

“Let her alone, Phebe. Let nature have its way, and she will feel better after weeping,” said the sympathetic young doctor.

He was right, for when the tempest of sobs and tears had exhausted itself Molly began to grow quiet, and at last turned her pathetic, wet eyes on his face, and said, with a sort of wistful anger:

“Why are you here when all the rest have turned against me and gone away?”

He answered, gently:

“I came and found you sick and alone save for your faithful maid. I stayed then to help to make you well.”

With a restless movement she rejoined:

“I do not want to get well! You ought to know that. I want to die!”

“That is nonsense, my dear little sister, and I do not want to hear any more of it,” was the cheerful response.

“Do you know all?” she asked, looking fixedly at him.

“Phebe has told me as well as she could, so I don’t want you to talk about it tonight, as you are in too excited a state to do so. I have a little powder here which I want you to take so that you may sleep well tonight, for I must go away in a little while and leave you in your good Phebe’s care,” he said, gently, like one speaking to a sick child.

“Then I shall be quite deserted,” she murmured, plaintively.

“No, for I shall come again.”

“When?” pleadingly.

“Tomorrow.”

She caught his arm as he bent down to hold the medicine glass to her lips.

“You do not look scornful like the rest,” she panted. “Ah, won’t you—won’t you—beg him to forgive me? I was wicked, I know, but I have suffered so much since that it almost seems as if my remorse and sorrow had washed out my sin. And—I loved him so! How could I help it when we loved each other so, and that secret would have parted us forever? Tell him, tell him—” her voice broke in hysterical sobs, and he pushed her gently back among the pillows as he said:

“I’ll see him. Only be quiet, dear, and I’ll tell him all you said and more, for he shall know the sweet secret you have been hiding from him—the secret that will surely bring him back to you.”

“No, no, he will not return; he has left me forever,” she sobbed, and turned her face from him so that it was hidden from sight. He sat down patiently until the heaving breast grew quiet in the stillness of a drugged sleep, then leaving her in Phebe’s watchful care, went in search of his brother.

It was only as he went down the steps of The Acacias and out into the gas-lighted street that he remembered that he had not the address to which his relatives had gone.

“But it is to the Langham, of course. They always go there when they have not taken a house in town,” he said to himself, and turned his steps thitherward.

“It is early, thank Heaven, so they will not have retired or gone out,” he thought, as he walked slowly along, pondering over the painful affair, and feeling profoundly sad at the thought of Molly’s treachery.

“Her youth is her only excuse, and yet it seems strange that one so young and seemingly guileless could have conceived and carried out such a clever, wicked plan,” he thought, in wonder, and knowing Cecil’s proud, honest nature as he did he could not feel surprised at the latter’s indignant action in deserting the girl who had thus deceived him.

“But according to Phebe’s description the real Louise Barry can not be one-half as charming as the pretended one,” he said to himself, recalling with some amusement the maid’s spiteful description of the latter as a “yellow-headed, yellow-eyed, deceitful cat.”

His musings brought him at last to the Langham, where he found as he had hoped and expected, his father, mother and brother registered.

He sent up his card, and his father sent down to him to come upstairs to their private parlor, where he found his parents looking pale and dejected as they sat together alone.

CHAPTER XXII.

Molly slept quietly the long night through, under the influence of the doctor’s soothing medicine, and it was far into the morning when she awakened and found her faithful Phebe sitting by her side.

“Well, I thought you were going to sleep all day, Mrs. Laurens,” she exclaimed.