Molly’s Treachery

By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller

HART SERIES NO. 62

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

Printed in the United States of America

MOLLY’S TREACHERY

[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.