Slighted love or, At her heart's expense
private club-house for his intimates. We have jolly times here, I tell
you--suppers, cards, wine, and--sometimes--pretty women, actresses
and dancers, you know, but all on the strictly quiet, for if it were
known of any woman that she ever set foot here she could never have any
social standing afterward.”
He paused, for the white horror and anguish of her lovely face showed
that she took in all his brutal meaning.
“Oh, Heaven!” she thought, “how careless I was to fall into this trap!
To think, only to think, how I drew back from Mr. Murray’s sight but a
few hours ago, when I ought to have been crying out to him to save me
from this demon! May Heaven guide me now!”
Her tormentor resumed calmly:
“You came here with me willingly, and in so doing placed the stain
upon your reputation that nothing can ever wipe out. But what does
that matter, since you have no friends to miss you? I love you madly,
and you are wholly in my power. I shall keep you shut up in this house
until you consent to love me and be mine. That will not be long, I’m
sure, for many other women have loved me, and so will you at last. You
need not look so pale and alarmed. I shall attempt no harshness. I
shall woo you like a lover till I win your heart. I will be patient,
darling, but one kiss you must give me now to pay me for my waiting!”
“Back! Do not dare to touch me!” she cried madly.
But his outstretched arms clasped the shuddering form, his hot breath
fanned her cheek.
She struggled wildly, but she was like a reed in his strong grasp, and
his lips almost touched hers, when--suddenly there rang through the
room a pistol-shot!
A pistol-shot--a flash of light so close that it scorched Italy’s
cheek, a thread of thin blue smoke, a sharp report--then--the arms that
held Italy so tight fell apart, the lips that would have pressed hers
parted with a groan, the blood spurted from Craig Severn’s heart, and
he fell backward--gasping, dying, _dead_! But who had fired the fatal
shot?
As the victim fell Italy heard one great cry of horror and despair.
“Oh, God, I have killed _him_!”
Her eyes flashed toward the window, for she recalled the crashing of
glass mingling with the sound of the shot.
She saw that the silken curtains were looped aside, and that some one
had opened the outside shutters of the window. In the sash there was
one pane, shattered into fragments. Above it Italy saw gleaming a wild,
white, anguished face, a woman’s face--one that she knew, one that she
had seen only that forenoon, bright, insolent, smiling.
One moment that face gleamed ghostlike in the gloom outside the
window, and it seemed to her, too, that there were white hands flung
upward--white, jeweled hands, writhing in fierce despair--then the
eerie vision faded from her sight, and Italy was alone--alone with the
dead man whose treachery had brought her to this awful pass, and whose
punishment had been meted out to him so swiftly.
She stood silent one moment, like one in a trance. She heard, as in a
painful dream, steps and voices in the hall outside the door--the key
grated in the lock. Somebody was coming. Perhaps it would be said that
she killed this monster--Craig Severn.
Her tortured senses reeled and failed. She fell in a crouching,
senseless heap behind the door, and her dark robes trailed in the pool
of warm blood.
CHAPTER V.
HER FATHER’S FRIEND.
To the guests of Mrs. Murray the news of Italy’s sudden departure had
proved as great a surprise as her coming.
Mrs. Murray had simply announced that Italy Vale, after a
misunderstanding with Francis, had left the house in a pet, going, no
doubt, to Lawyer Gardner, her mother’s old friend, in Boston. Francis
had gone to bring her back, but she supposed that the girl was too
deeply offended to return.
The lady had frankly told all that she knew. Her son had withheld from
her his suspicions of Italy and the sleep-walking incident. It seemed
to him a disloyal thing to betray her, so he kept everything hidden in
his own breast.
Mrs. Dunn and her niece, Alys, looked delighted at the news. Alexie and
the two young men frankly expressed regret.
“I was beginning to love her,” said Alexie, unmindful of her sister’s
frown.
“And so was Emmett, I think,” laughed Ralph Allen, with a twinkling
glance of raillery at his friend Harlow.
“Useless to attempt a denial. Circumstantial evidence convicts me,” was
the gay retort.
Mrs. Dunn looked disgusted.
“I do not admire your taste,” she said tartly. “That foreign creature
never had any attractions for me!”
“Oh, Aunt Ione, she was very charming!” cried Alexie warmly, but her
aunt silenced her with a scowl of displeasure, and Alys snapped rudely:
“I hope she will never come back!”
Mrs. Murray was too courteous to express her opinion aloud, but at
heart she agreed with Alys Audenreid.
Mrs. Dunn presently discovered that she wished to go to Boston that
evening, to remain until the next day.
“Some shopping,” she said carelessly, and declining the offered company
of the girls, and promising to return the next afternoon, she made a
smiling adieu and departed.
Francis Murray, too, remained in Boston until the next morning. At
breakfast he showed a very pale and anxious face to all.
“I am very much troubled,” he said frankly. “Lawyer Gardner, I learn,
has shut up his house and gone to Europe, so if Italy went to him she
was disappointed. I have been the round of the hotels, but she is not
at any of them, and I feel very uneasy over her fate.”
“You should not worry, for the girl is quite capable of taking care of
herself. Remember, she came here alone from Europe,” said his mother,
in a tone of slight impatience.
She felt sure herself that all was well with the wilful girl.
“You do not suppose that she can have--committed suicide?” queried
tender-hearted Alexie anxiously.
“Certainly not!” he answered almost sharply, but his face grew paler
still, and he wished to himself that Alexie had not put such an uncanny
thought into words.
Alys had drawn the morning’s paper from her host’s plate, and was
scanning it eagerly. She looked up, and said, with a malicious smile:
“Here is a young girl found wandering the streets of Boston in her
night-dress at midnight. Perhaps that is your protegée, Mr. Murray.”
“Read it aloud, Alys!” cried her sister eagerly.
Alys smoothed out the paper with deliberate white fingers while they
waited impatiently, then she said:
“I don’t like to read aloud, and this is such a long paragraph, so
I’ll tell it in my own words. A beautiful young girl was found last
night by a policeman walking along the street, clad only in a thin,
white night-dress. She seemed to be in a somnambulistic sleep, and was
frightened nearly to death when the policeman woke her. She would not
or could not tell anything about herself, so they carried her to a
police-station, and placed her in the matron’s care.”
No one was usually more calm and courteous than Francis Murray. But at
this thrilling moment excitement overcame him. He took the newspaper
hastily from Miss Audenreid’s hands, exclaiming hoarsely:
“Permit me!”
What he read there decided him. He rose hastily without finishing his
breakfast.
“I will go and see this girl,” he said, and his mother cried out
impatiently:
“Do finish your coffee, Francis, before you start on such a wild-goose
chase, for I am sure the girl cannot be Italy Vale.”
He did not tell her what good grounds he had for supposing that the
mysterious somnambulist was Italy. He only answered:
“Something tells me I had better go! Mother, I should like you to send
your maid along with me, with some clothing for Miss Vale to wear home.”
“Certainly,” she answered, but her heart was at war with her promise.
The eager interest he betrayed in Italy Vale troubled her mind.
“Surely the girl has some other friends in the world, and I hope she’s
gone to them,” she thought. “I am frightened at the strange interest my
son has suddenly displayed in this missing girl. Last night was spent
in the search for her, and this morning he looks careworn and haggard.
What if he is unconsciously falling in love with this beautiful
creature whom no one would care to marry, on account of her mother’s
deep disgrace?”
She sighed deeply. She was proud--very proud. She could not contemplate
such a thing without horror.
“Yet what can I do?” she thought helplessly. “Francis will do as he
pleases. There’s no fool like an old fool, they say, and my son is
really getting on in years--thirty-two his next birthday. Italy is too
young for him, but there’s Alys just of a suitable age, and a better
match. She loves the ground he walks on, too, and if he would only
marry her I would be quite happy.”
But it is not given to many people in this world to be “quite happy,”
and the Fates we pursue elude us ever. What is to be, will be.
Francis Murray, with all his years and experience, was stumbling
blindly forward on a road that he called Duty.
He had no difficulty in finding out the police-station where the
beautiful somnambulist had been detained until she could give some
account of herself or her friends.
The elderly matron was cheerful and polite. She told him that her
charge had been very strange--like one dazed--and refused to tell her
name, begging for clothes in which to go away.
“She is asleep on my little cot now, sir, but if you wish I will open
the door and you may look in to see if it’s the one you’re looking
for,” she said kindly.
He had told her simply that a young schoolgirl, an habitual
sleep-walker, had wandered away from her home last night. Her friends
had searched for her in vain, and were glad to find out her whereabouts
from the morning papers, but thankful that she had declined to give her
name. If it proved to be the girl he thought, he hoped no more facts
might get into the papers. As he said this, the gentleman slipped the
good soul a bank-bill, murmuring something about “a new bonnet.”
Her heart was instantly won, and, whispering back that she would see
that his wishes were obeyed, she opened the door and beckoned him to
approach.
He followed with a quickened heart-throb, and gazed eagerly into the
tiny apartment where, on a narrow cot-bed lay the form of a young
girl at rest, the white coverlet drawn up to her shoulders, a mass
of tumbled, black silken curls straying over the pillow, her cheeks
flushed with the warmth of slumber, her red lips parted a little with
now and then a sobbing breath, as though she could not forget her
sorrows, even in sleep--Italy!
“It is she!” he said, in a strange voice, and beckoned to the maid.
“Go in and awake her. Help her to dress, and tell her I am waiting to
take her home,” he said.
He withdrew and closed the door. In a little while the maid came out
again.
“Miss Vale is up and dressed, sir, and wishes to speak to you alone a
few moments.”
The maid had brought Italy a dark summer silk figured with violets, and
a dainty hat to match. She looked very lovely in them as Mr. Murray
entered with a quiet:
“Good morning.”
“How did you find me?” she exclaimed abruptly, and when he told her she
blushed deepest crimson.
“Walking again in your sleep,” he said. “Really, Miss Vale, I would
advise you to lock your doors and hide the keys before retiring
hereafter.”
“I will,” she replied earnestly, and he continued:
“I ought to scold you for running away like a naughty child, but I
suppose you have been sufficiently punished by finding Mr. Gardner gone
away.”
“Yes, oh, yes,” she sighed.
“Do you know that I was in Boston all night searching for you? I went
the rounds of all the principal hotels, and I was surprised not to find
you at any of them. Where did you stay last night?”