Dainty's Cruel Rivals; Or, The Fatal Birthday
room, and Love turned to greet him, saying anxiously:
"Some one has played ghost and frightened Miss Chase into such a long
spell of unconsciousness that I fear for her life."
The old doctor looked very grave when he saw his patient lying like one
dead among the pillows, in spite of all that the women were doing to
revive her, and he muttered in his irascible way:
"The person that was mean enough to frighten this sensitive young girl
into such a state deserves lynching."
And having delivered this frank opinion, he turned all his attention to
Dainty, and by his skill succeeded after some time in restoring her to
consciousness again, though it was indeed a pale, woeful face that
looked up at the anxious group around the bed.
"You are better, dear!" cried Love, gladly; and he took her little hand
and kissed it before them all in his great joy, heedless of his
step-mother's angry frown.
"Yes, she is better; but I shall stay and watch by her a little while,"
said Doctor Platt; and he did not go till the pale dawn glimmered
through the windows.
By that time Dainty was vastly improved, and able to corroborate mammy's
strange story of the abduction by the mysterious visitor that had
appeared to her imagination no less a person than his satanic majesty.
Doctor Platt was most indignant; but he laughed at the idea of a
supernatural visitant, and concurred in Love's belief of some malicious
person in the house playing ghost.
When he started home, leaving Dainty in a deep sleep from the effect of
a sedative he had administered for her nerves, he talked quite seriously
to Love as they stood on the steps in the struggling light of early
morn.
"It would seem as if Miss Chase has a malignant enemy who is trying to
frighten her into death or insanity," he said. "Another such experience
as this of to-night would probably effect her enemy's purpose. She is of
a very nervous physique, and this shock told most terribly upon her. I
warn you that the perpetrator should be discovered at once, and severe
punishment meted out for the offense. If this proves impossible, why not
send the young girl home to remain until her wedding-day?"
"I am loath to do so, because the weather in Richmond is so hot at this
season," Love replied; adding: "I shall take such measures, however,
that it will be impossible for this thing to occur again!"
The stern tone of his voice and the flash of his eyes assured Doctor
Platt that he would keep his word, and he went away much comforted, for
all his sympathies had been keenly enlisted by Dainty's misfortunes.
The young girl herself slept on heavily till noon, when she awoke,
refreshed by her long rest, and was able to meet the family at luncheon,
though her pallid cheeks and wistful eyes were enough to strike remorse
to the hearts of her bitter enemies, if they had not been hard and cold
as stone.
But her lover's looks and smiles were warm enough to atone for the
indifference of the rest, and the soft color flew to her cheeks again as
he took her hand tenderly, saying:
"Get ready, darling, and I shall take you for a long drive into the
country this evening."
Ah! how Olive and Ela envied her the bliss of the long tete-a-tete drive
as they watched the lovers going away in the elegant phaeton behind the
spirited gray ponies, the sunshine resting so lovingly on Dainty's curly
locks beneath the simple white hat. When they returned, in the last rosy
glow of sunset, Dainty seemed to have received a new baptism of beauty,
she was so changed from the pale, nervous girl of a few hours ago. Now
her cheeks and lips glowed rosy-red, and her eyes were bright with
happiness--the happiness of loving and being loved. It made her cousins
so angry they could have killed her in their jealous spite, for it
lacked but two weeks to the wedding now, and it seemed as if nothing
that spite or malice could invent had any power to break off the
consummation of the engagement.
They were so furious they would willingly have poisoned her, but for
fear of being found out.
No words could tell how they hated that fair face and golden hair, that
rosy mouth, those blue eyes and dimples that had rivaled them in the
prize they longed to win.
The sight of the happy lovers was gall and wormwood to their envious
hearts.
They were indignant, too, because they could see, beneath the surface of
Love's coldly courteous manner, that he vaguely suspected them of having
a hand in the mysterious plot to frighten his timid betrothed.
To-day he had carried matters with a high hand, interrogating all the
servants carefully, and offering a reward of a hundred dollars to any
one who should discover the identity of the person playing ghost.
Their greed thus excited, every hireling was anxious to earn the reward,
and it would certainly be dangerous for any one to attempt again the
cruel role of ghost, for detection seemed almost certain.
The young man had also made some investigations that resulted in showing
him how very easy it had been for the malicious enemy of Dainty to
intrude on her whenever it seemed desirable to do so.
The room adjoining hers was an unused bedroom that communicated with
hers by a narrow curtained door back of her bed. How easy it had been
for the intruder to enter the vacant room, imitate the monk's cough
there to the heart's content, then glide through the curtained door to
the bedside, alarming the sleeping girl by a cold touch or hacking
cough, and escaping before she could give any alarm!
Love even found that a small hole had been bored in the wall between the
two rooms, thus affording an opportunity for the use of chemicals in
displaying the grisly green light whose weird play upon the walls and
about the room had so alarmed the victims of the cruel joke.
"How careless I have been! I should have discovered all this long ago if
I had believed it was aught but a girl's nervous fancies; but mammy's
corroboration assures me it was reality. Now I shall take such steps
that she will never be annoyed again," he said, sternly; and suited the
action to the word by giving up the room next his own, an airy
dressing-room, to Dainty's use, making it perfectly safe by having in a
carpenter to attach a wire to the young girl's bed, that, running along
the ceiling, passed through into his own room, with a large bell at the
end.
The whole household was made aware of this unique ghost alarm, and Love
said, sternly:
"At the least disturbance in Miss Chase's room, she has but to touch the
wire by her bed, and the communicating bell will ring close to me, so
that I can fly to her rescue. I do not need to say that the practical
joker will fare badly at my hands."
Poor, nervous, shaken black mammy had been sent home to rest.
Dainty would not need any one, now that she had her ghost alarm, the
young man said, smilingly; and every one understood his determination to
protect his love at every hazard. The guilty party must have felt rather
disconcerted at the turn affairs had taken.
Black mammy had not told any one yet that she had a clew by which she
hoped to win the reward Love had offered for the detection of the
impostor; but after she had grappled with the wretch who was bearing off
Dainty, she had found in the claw-like grasp of her fingers some bits of
torn torchon lace that might have been clutched forcibly from the sleeve
of a night-dress.
She kept the fragments carefully, determining to find the garment they
matched.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE WEDDING.
Apparently the Ellsworth ghost became disgusted with the prosaic means
adapted to secure its identification.
From that horror-haunted night it ceased to invade Dainty's chamber with
its grewsome cough and ghoulish presence.
It was true that in some of her occasional solitary moments, in some
quiet twilight hour, she had been startled by the sound of that hateful
cough, coming from apparently nowhere; but she fled at once in terror
from the spot, and forebore to mention it to her lover, who was
radiantly happy, deeming that the malicious ghost was exorcised forever.
The beautiful summer days flew past on wings of joy, bringing the
fateful first of August that was to witness Dainty's bridal, as well as
the twenty-sixth birthday of the handsome master of Ellsworth.
Everything was in readiness for the wedding when the last day of July
brought Mrs. Chase to her daughter's arms again, and Dainty's happiness
seemed complete.
Everything seemed to be going on so propitiously that Dainty cast her
dismal forebodings to the winds.
Surely nothing could part her from her lover now! The malice of her
enemies had fallen harmless to the ground.
Mrs. Ellsworth and her two favorite nieces were playing propriety with
perfect ease. Indeed, the former had persuaded Olive and Ela to act as
bridemaids, and provided them with elegant gowns of sheer white organdie
over rich white silk. Mrs. Chase had brought with her Dainty's pretty,
simple traveling gown and hat, and she had yielded to her lover's wish
that the marriage vows should be spoken in the same beautiful white
robes that had graced his mother at her wedding, twenty-eight years
before.
They had been folded away in linen and lavender many years--the lace
veil and satin gown--and the owner would never need them more, for she
was wearing the robe of righteousness in the great procession of angels
before the Great White Throne. While Love was yet in his babyhood she
had passed gently away to heaven like a lily fading on its slender stem.
Love cherished her memory as something holy, and his heart ached with
silent grief when, five years later, his father gave him a step-mother,
a handsome, stately woman, who had been uniformly kind to him until now,
when her imperious nature overstepped the mark in her anxiety to have
him marry Olive or Ela.
But thwarted in her will, the lady was bearing her disappointment with
what appeared to be graceful resignation, and she spared no efforts in
preparing for the grand wedding, that it might do honor to the proud
master of Ellsworth. A magnificent banquet was ready, and the floral
decorations of the mansion were superb. It was to be a morning wedding,
followed by a summer _fete_ on a magnificent scale, and that evening the
bride and groom would leave for a Northern tour, and thence to Europe.
Sweet, shy Dainty, so like a lovely, modest violet, gazed in wonder at
all the preparations for the magnificent wedding, scarcely able to
realize that it was to do honor to her, the simple girl with whom her
rich and noble lover had seen fit to choose to share his heart, and
name, and wealth. She said to herself that she was surely the happiest,
most fortunate girl in the whole world, and that her love story read
like some romantic fairy tale, with Lovelace Ellsworth as the grand
Prince Charming.
Oh, how proud and happy Mamma Chase was, too, in her daughter's good
fortune! The years seemed to fall from her like a cast-off garment, and
on her gentle face, Mrs. Ellsworth, who had wondered so where Dainty got
her radiant beauty, read the traces of what had once been rare
loveliness before time and sorrow had faded her flower-like bloom. Mrs.
Ellsworth could not help being courteous to the gentle lady who was her
half-brother's lonely widow, so that last day passed away busily and
happily, crowded with excitement, and that night the guest-chambers of
Ellsworth were full to overflowing with visitors who had been bidden
from a distance to their kinsman's wedding.
Until far into the moonlit summer night the halls and parlors of
Ellsworth echoed with music and laughter, for the gay young people
crowded together could scarcely be persuaded to retire even for "a
beauty sleep" to enhance their charms to-morrow.