They Looked and Loved; Or, Won by Faith

The Courtneys were eager to return to the United States, whither they expected Sir George Merlin to follow them. They wanted to astonish their old set in New York with Azalea's grand match. Then, too, Mrs. Courtney did not desire to offend the old man who had ordered her with no uncertain sound to bring Nita home.

But her charge had set her face like a flint against returning. Rebellious and desperate thoughts were working in the young girl's mind. Why should she return to America? That was the question that tortured her night and day. She had resolved to die rather than live with her husband, and in a few more weeks the end of the year would come. A dreadful existence stretched before her—the price she must pay for this year of luxury—this year that might have been almost happy but for the madness of love that had come so suddenly and so irresistibly into her life.

"Oh, Dorian, Dorian, I loved you but to lose you—yet I cannot live without you—so I will end my life and its sorrows," she sobbed in the sleepless silence of the night. In her short, eventful life she had had few chances to make real friends, and she had no kins-people except old Meg Dineheart, who had declared herself on that first night at Pirate Beach to be her grandmother. For this reason Nita had protected her from arrest for her crimes, but she shuddered and grew heart-sick at the thought of sustaining any relationship to the wicked old hag, and often longed for a mother's love.

"I am alone in the world, with no right to love and happiness like other girls, and surely God will forgive me for ending my wretched life," she sobbed, and began to plan the way in which to end "life's fitful fever."

Mrs. Courtney thought it a strange whim when, instead of attending the opera one evening, Nita went to church. She knew afterward the meaning of the fancy she had combated all in vain. Nita went to church to pray and ask God's pardon for the wicked deed she was about to commit.

She smiled in mournful mockery when her worldly-minded chaperon tried to argue her out of going.

"Dear Mrs. Courtney, I can take my maid; I need not deprive you of the pleasure," she said sadly. "But as for me, I do not care for music to-night. I would rather hear some godly words and prayers."

"It is time enough for piety when you are old and gray," the woman said cynically, and Nita gave her a strange, sad glance.

"What if I do not live to grow old—if I die in my early youth?" she queried.

Mrs. Courtney shrugged her shoulders without replying; but after Nita had gone out, she said significantly to Azalea.

"I think she is suffering from a temporary aberration of the mind. You have noticed how quiet, almost morose, she has been lately. I shall take her home to her guardian without delay. There must be something wrong with her mind, the way she has carried on since she married Dorian."

But Nita had her way and went to church, and if ever a tortured soul, about to launch itself into eternity, prayed earnestly for the pity and pardon of Heaven, she did that night.

And the next morning Mrs. Courtney had a shock that she never forgot till her dying day. Nita's maid came rushing into her room with a pallid face and staring eyes.

"Oh, madam, I've found Miss Farnham dead in her bed with a bottle of poison by her side!" she almost shrieked.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"YOU SHALL KNOW THE SECRET."

In a shabby third-story room of a cheap apartment-house in New York, old Miser Farnham was sitting alone. The hideous old man was, if possible, even more forbidding than on that day in Central Park when the unhappy Nita had shuddered at the first sight of him, then yielded to his temptations, and became his reluctant bride.

The leering hideousness of his face a year ago was increased now by several livid scars received in the railway accident that had almost cost him his life, and his stooping frame was lean and gaunt, his shabby clothing hanging loosely on him.

Thin, grizzled locks straggled over his brow under the worn old hat that he wore habitually in-doors and out, and his keen, gray eyes gleamed with a diabolical light of triumph as they scanned the pages of a letter received several days previous from Mrs. Courtney.

"So she is coming home, my lovely bride," he chuckled to himself. "Coming home, and it lacks barely two weeks to the day when I shall claim her for my own. I wonder if she has come to her senses yet, and if she has concluded that life as an old man's darling with unlimited cash is better than the deep, dark river."

"More beautiful than ever, with a score of titled lovers," he read from Mrs. Courtney's sycophantic letter. "Ha, ha! to think of carrying her off from them all. To think of marrying Juan de Castro's daughter. It is a wonder he does not rise from the grave! Ugh! what if he should"—and he shrank and cowered in sudden fear, whining out—"I do not believe in ghosts."

The miser had one weakness. He believed in the supernatural, and feared it. Many a night he cowered beneath the counterpane, with his hand before his eyes, afraid to look out into the dark lest he encounter some menacing ghost from a wicked past.

The old man had reached the acme of his plans and hopes and ambitions. His marriage to Nita had secured things that else were doubtful. Let her but come now willingly or unwillingly to his arms, and the triumph of his life would be achieved.

He chuckled in fiendish glee, remembering these things, and thinking of the life he would lead with Nita, for he determined that then he would throw off his miserly habits and live in splendor.

What though all New York had sneered at Farnham, the miser, it would open its doors to the millionaire with the beautiful bride for whom titled lovers had sighed in vain, and with whom one of the richest men in New York had eloped in his yacht, creating the greatest sensation of the hour.

Yes, society would rave over her wealth and her beauty; and, by and by—if she used him well—perhaps it might be discovered that the unknown waif had descended from rich and high-born parents. Yes, this was just possible, if Nita should be kind to him. If she were not, if she were not—and he ground his teeth—woe to the heiress, her fate be on her own head.

Just then there came a swift and loud rat-tat upon his door. Visitors to Miser Farnham were things unknown. He started up, trembling. Again there sounded a loud, impatient knock. He advanced with faltering steps and threw open the door.

Before him stood two men. He had seen them both before, and as they stepped over the threshold of the room he confronted them with a snarl of hate.

"I know you both, Captain Van Hise and Mr. Mountcastle. What is your business with me?" he queried curtly.

Van Hise laughed sarcastically at this cool reception.

"Mr. Farnham, you certainly come to the point at once," he exclaimed airily, "so we will not delay what we came for. You know this gentleman, of course, as the husband of your lovely ward, Miss Farnham?"

He nodded at Dorian, and the old miser scowled.

"I have heard of the gentleman," he said angrily.

"Very well. Mr. Farnham, we have come here to ask if you have any objection to him as your ward's husband."

Dorian, with his hat in his hand, stepped in front of the old man, and gazed earnestly into his face.

What a contrast they presented, these two, Dorian in his fair beauty, and the grotesquely ugly, snarling old miser.

Van Hise's courteous question shook the old man with jealous rage, and he asked sullenly:

"What can my objections matter since he is already her husband? If the bond is a legal one, I have no power to break it."

Then Dorian spoke.

"We know that," he said in a troubled voice, yet with a frank, manly, half-appealing air. "Yet, strange to say, sir, my bride stands in such mysterious fear of your displeasure that she refuses to live with me—throws me off as if I had no claim on her loyalty."

"You have seen Nita? When?" queried Farnham, with a grin.

"In London, barely a week ago—our first interview since our marriage-night—and I sailed the next day to see you."

"To see me! Why? If she repudiates the marriage, what can I do?" insolently.

"You can remove the mysterious barrier you have placed between my darling's heart and mine. She loves me, but she fears you with a strange, unreasoning terror. She has told me that only for the report of your death she would not have married me at all. My God, sir! what is the secret of your malign power over the hapless girl?" demanded the unhappy young husband stormily.

Farnham glared back at him with a savage fury, as though he would be glad to rend him limb from limb. He put his clenched hands behind him, as though to restrain the wild beast in him.

"So you acknowledge my power over your bride? You would like to know the secret of it?" he hissed in a voice of exultant malice.

"Yes," groaned Dorian in a hollow voice.

And for a few moments there was silence. The miser took a few slow, meditative turns up and down the room. Suddenly, he turned back to Dorian, and said:

"You wish to know the secret of my power over Nita? Very well. I cannot gratify you to-night, but I will appoint a day not far distant for the important disclosure."

"But, my dear sir, my friend is positively ill with suspense, and the sooner you gratify his desire the sooner can the barrier to his happiness be removed," interposed Captain Van Hise suavely.

Farnham turned on him with a grim smile.

"You think the barrier can be removed, eh? We shall see," he said, laughing sardonically; then added: "Gladly would I gratify Mr. Mountcastle's wish to-night. In fact, I should be delighted to do so, but I am not at liberty to reveal the secret. I am bound by a solemn contract not to speak of it for one year. That year, gentlemen, expires on the tenth day of June—barely a week hence."

"We must wait, then," Dorian said, with a suppressed sigh, turning to go.

"One moment!" exclaimed the miser, lifting a detaining hand as he continued:

"When you came in I was reading a letter from Mrs. Courtney, in which she writes me that she will bring Nita home at once—in fact, will meet me at Pirate Beach the tenth of June, for the transaction of some very important business between my ward and myself. Gentlemen, I invite you also to meet me on the evening of the tenth of June, at my seaside home, Gray Gables, at Pirate Beach. You shall hear then, from Nita's own lips, the story of the barrier between your hearts, and then you can judge better if it be removable. Will you come?"

"We will come," they both answered in a breath, and bowed themselves out, full of wonder and consternation, for the old miser's manner had impressed them both with grim forebodings.

The tide was coming in with its low, murmurous monotone, washing the silvery sands at Pirate Beach, and the moon was rising full-orbed and majestic, lighting the twilight scene into weird beauty.

It was the tenth of June, the fatal anniversary of Nita's marriage to the old miser—the anniversary of her meeting with Dorian, the one love of her life.

Up at Gray Gables lights flashed from all the windows, and rumor said that the travelers had come home. Far up the beach old Meg Dineheart was pacing back and forth, watching for her son's bark, that had been absent several months.

"Will Jack ever come home again, I wonder? It seems a year since he went," she muttered, with a touch of forlornness, for the one affection of her lonely life was big, burly Jack, her handsome, wicked son. She had been expecting him now for several days, and was growing uneasy and impatient at his strange delay. Suddenly, a rude hand gripped her shoulder, and whirled her around face to face with Farnham.

"Good evening, old lady! 'Pon my soul, you look quite romantic star-gazing here alone," he exclaimed gibingly.

"So you're back, you devil!" she hissed. "What fiend's errand are you on now, I wonder?"

"To ask you to congratulate me on my success in achieving the great ambition of my life, Meg."

"I don't know what you mean, Farnham."

"No, but I am here to tell you that the propitious fates have brought to me an hour of glorious triumph, and rewarded all my schemings with success. Come inside the house, and let me tell you the sequel of the story you heard one year ago to-night."

She turned toward the cabin, the old miser following closely, and neither noticed that Jack Dineheart's trim fishing-boat had come into sight, and was riding into anchor close to shore. When the door had closed upon the wicked pair of plotters, the sailor rowed over to land in a tiny little boat, and sprang lightly up the beach toward his mother's cabin.

"Poor old soul, I wonder if she's yet alive," he pondered.

And, stepping lightly to the smoke-grimed old window of the cabin, he peered through with bated breath for a sight of old Meg. He recoiled with a stifled cry just as Nita had done a year ago that night, for the self-same sight met his startled eyes.

Old Meg and Miser Farnham were seated by a table in earnest conversation.

"Humph! hatching some new mischief, I suppose," muttered Jack, bending his ear to a convenient knot-hole in order to catch their words.

The sea boomed on the shore, the moonlight silvered the waves, the wind sighed eerily round the old cabin, and the words that Jack Dineheart heard that hour paved the way for a fateful tragedy.

"You say that Nita has come home to Gray Gables, yet how can that be?" cried Meg. "It was only yesterday that I was up there, and Mrs. Hill, the old housekeeper, was wringing her hands and crying because she had seen in a New York paper several days old that Nita had killed herself in a London hotel by taking poison."

"It was true—and false," answered Farnham angrily. "I had a letter from Mrs. Courtney telling me all about it. She drank laudanum, and it threw her into a deep sleep. At first they thought she was dead, but a physician succeeded in rousing and restoring her to life, although she has been in a strange, dazed state ever since, and it is thought that she may never recover from the effects of the drug she used. But Mrs. Courtney telegraphed me this morning that they had arrived in New York from Europe, and would proceed immediately to Gray Gables."

Old Meg listened with keen interest to every word, then exclaimed:

"If Nita had committed suicide in the old, wretched days when she was my hard-worked slave I should not have wondered at it, but it puzzles me that she should attempt it now when she is rich and happy as old Farnham's ward."

With a gulp of rage he answered:

"I will tell you why she wished to die. She was married to a man she hated so much that she would die rather than live with him."

"Hated that handsome swell that she eloped with? I don't believe it. The girl loved the very ground he walked on!" cried Meg.

"Yes, she loved Dorian Mountcastle, but he was not her husband," answered the old man. "Listen, Meg, to one of the strangest stories you ever heard."

And, slowly, and with infinite gusto, as though he enjoyed the telling, he related to her the story of that day in Central Park when he had wooed and won beautiful Nita for his reluctant bride. She listened like one turned to stone; not a syllable escaped her, and he ended with ghoulish glee.

"As her husband all of Juan de Castro's wealth is legally mine. I can take open possession of it now, and if questions should be asked I can point to my bride, his daughter, as the lawful heiress."

She started from her trance of silence muttering hoarsely:

"You—you promised to marry me when you took possession of the spoil."

"Be patient, Meg. She will not live long, you ought to know that well. You have known some people who hated me, and then died mysteriously, did they not? Well, this girl, this dark-eyed beauty, she loathes me, and some day—not far distant, perhaps—I shall take deadly revenge for her scorn. But, first, to force her to my arms, to humble her haughty spirit, and break her proud heart. Then your turn will come, Meg. Be patient and wait."

"You are deceiving me, Farnham. You love the daughter as you loved the mother. You will never kill Juanita de Castro when she looks at you with her mother's eyes. You will grovel at her feet for a word of kindness, and Jack and I—Jack, your son, for whose sake I crave the treasure—we will be thrust aside, forgotten! No, no, you traitor, we will not," she rose up and shook her clawlike hands in his face, "no, we will not be trodden upon! We will have revenge, Jack and I will betray you."

He grasped and shook her violently till the breath was almost out of her body, then flung her roughly back into her seat.

"You cat who did my bidding—you and your villainous son—how dare you threaten me? One word from me and you both would swing from a scaffold!" he hissed furiously. "Hold your cursed tongue, or beware of my vengeance!" and with an oath he left the house and took his way toward Gray Gables.

Meg crouched like one dazed in a chair where her assailant had flung her, but Jack Dineheart did not go in to see if she were dead or alive. He followed the miser almost to the gate of Gray Gables with a stealthy, sullen stride, then, suddenly, flung himself on him with resistless fury, and bore him down to the ground.

"Oh, you wretch, you devil, to have married her, the girl you promised in her bonny childhood should be mine, my wife! Oh, you fiend, to take her from me! But I will save poor Nita and avenge myself. Here at the gates of fancied bliss, you die."

A keen blade flashed in the air, then sunk in the man's breast.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE TENTH OF JUNE

It was true, as the old miser had told Meg Dineheart, Nita had been saved from death by the skilful efforts of a London physician, and in the stupid, weakened state induced by the drug she had taken, and the measures used to counteract its effects, she was like wax in Mrs. Courtney's hands, so that she was brought home with scarcely a protest.

In fact, she was so ill that during the whole voyage to New York she scarcely remembered the old miser's existence, and the dreadful fact that the year of her marriage-contract was drawing to its close.

When she was taken to Gray Gables some glimmerings of memory returned to her, but she did not remember that it was the fatal tenth of June.

It was May when she made the frantic effort to end her life. Since then, in the pangs of keen physical distress, time had slipped by unheeded.

It was touching to see the joy of good Mrs. Hill at the return of her beloved young mistress. She wept with joy, and hugged Nita close to her motherly bosom, kissing the top of the drooping little head, with its crown of dark, wavy tresses, threaded with gold.

She did not say one word to her of the story she had read in the New York paper, but when she looked into the pale and lovely face she knew that the shadow of some pathetic sorrow had fallen darkly on the young girl's heart.

Nita lay wearily on a sofa until it was time to dress for dinner. Then Mrs. Hill came up to help her, for her English maid had not accompanied her home.

"It does not matter what I wear," she said listlessly.

"But Mrs. Courtney expects company this evening, I think," said Mrs. Hill.

"It does not matter," the girl again replied wearily, her eyes full of tears.

But Mrs. Hill had excellent taste, and she laid out a dainty white gown for her young lady.

"I may be old-fashioned in my notions, but to my mind a young girl always looks best in white, and to you, Miss Nita, it's wonderfully becoming," she said, as she shook out the soft, shining robe of feather-light Lansdowne, with its profuse, airy trimmings of white, embroidered chiffon. "This is pretty enough for a bride," she said admiringly. "Won't you wear your moonstone jewelry with it, Miss Nita? It will suit you so well, and I will bring you some pale-pink roses and white jasmine flowers for your corsage. The garden is beautiful now, since the gardener had it in charge. You know last year when we first came it was all of a tangle."

So she rambled on, and listless Nita let her have her way, and barely looked in her mirror when the good woman said enthusiastically:

"Now you are finished, dearie. Look in the glass what a beauty you are!"

She was a beauty. The soft, shining robe draped her form exquisitely, and the filmy chiffon rufflings made a soft mist about her lovely half-bare neck and arms that were clasped with moonstones, set in frosted silver, looking soft and fairylike as linked moonbeams.

On her breast heaved a cluster of starry-white jasmine flowers mixed with pale-pink, half-opened rose-buds, making a delicate contrast of color with the whiteness of her costume.

Beautiful, yes—but with a tragedy of sorrow in the midnight eyes and on the pathetic curves of the exquisitely chiseled lips. She smiled faintly, and murmured some words of thanks, then went down-stairs.

The drawing-room, wearing a holiday air, with profuse decorations of flowers, was deserted as yet. Azalea and her mother were still dressing. With a sigh of relief Nita turned her footsteps to the garden, that, under the care of a gardener had been rescued from the tangle of last year, and made into a fairyland of beauty and fragrance.

Nita walked slowly along the graveled paths, now in the full beams of the rising moon, now in the long dark shadows of the tall fir-trees.

She paused to rest by the fountain where last year she had come with her lover's letter in her bosom, and her wild heart thrilling with pain and rapture. A sob swelled her throat as she lifted her sad gaze to the star-gemmed sky, and murmured:

"Dorian, my love, Dorian, it breaks my heart to know that you are lost to me forever!"

"Your Dorian is here, darling Nita," answered a voice by her side, and his arm drew her fondly to his breast.

A low, shuddering cry, and Nita struggled out of those fond, clasping arms, and faced her lover with startled eyes.

"Dorian," she breathed, in mingled joy and pain—"Dorian, oh, why are you here?"

"I followed you, my sweet. Ah, Nita, I know the story of your mad attempt to end your life. Love, love, why did you do it?"

"Fate was against us, Dorian, and I could not live without you, I begged you to die with me, but you were cruel. Life was more to you than love. That is a man's way. But, being only a weak woman, I chose death—only they were so hard they would not let me die."

Her voice sank into his heart.

"Oh, my poor, little love. I did not believe your wild words. How could I think you would try to end so sweet a life?" he cried, but Nita did not reply; she only gazed at him with the fixity of despair.

"Nita, I distrusted you that night. I spoke cruelly to you. Will you forgive me my harshness, my dear wife?"

"Oh, not that word—not that!" and Nita shrank and shivered, drawing back as he approached her. "Oh, Dorian, do not think of me, nor speak to me as your wife ever again," she continued wildly. "Remember that grim old man—remember Miser Farnham, Dorian. Have I not told you I never can be your wife while he lives! Oh, why does Heaven permit such wretches to walk the earth, a barrier to the happiness of true lovers?" and she wrung her hands despairingly.

"Do not give up like this to your sorrow, my darling," he said soothingly, "for I believe that the mysterious barrier to our happiness will soon be removed. I do not like to fight with shadows, Nita, so after my interview with you in London, I came to New York to see your guardian, and ask him frankly what was the secret of his objection to your marriage."

"You asked him—that?" Nita faltered in an indescribable tone.

"Yes, dearest, for it seemed best to know his reasons and combat them in a practical fashion."

"But he did not tell you—he dare not yet!" she muttered, rather to herself than him.

"He did not tell me then, but he made an appointment to meet me here to-night, the tenth of June—when he said I should hear the secret, Nita, from your own lips."

He never forgot the awful look on Nita's lovely face. It was convulsed with agony and deadly fear.

"To-night," she muttered hoarsely—"to-night, the tenth of June—oh, how could I forget that day—of all days in the world? And he—is coming here to-night?" The voice did not sound like her own.

"Yes, Nita; and bade me meet him here with my friend, Van Hise, who went with me to see him. Mrs. Courtney told me you were in the garden, so I left my friend with her and came to seek you here. Farnham will be here presently, and soon the worst will be over. Courage, sweetheart; you are my wife, after all, and he cannot really keep us apart!"