A Dreadful Temptation; or, A Young Wife's Ambition

"Mamma, speak!" she cried, shaking her wildly by the arm; "what has happened to you? What has happened to Lora?"

Mrs. Carroll's eyes, full of a dumb, agonizing terror, turned upon Xenie's wild, white face.

She tried to speak, but the words died chokingly in her throat, and she lifted her hand and pointed toward the door.

Instantly Xenie turned, and rushed from the room.

As she crossed the narrow hallway a breath of the fresh, chilly morning air blew across her face. The door that Mrs. Carroll had securely locked the night before was standing wide open, and the wind from the sea was blowing coolly in.

With a terrible foreboding of some impending calamity, Xenie sprang through the open doorway of Lora's room, and ran to the bed.

Oh! horrors, the bed was empty!

The beautiful young mother and the little babe, the day-star of Xenie's bright hopes, were gone!

Xenie looked around her wildly, but the pretty little chamber was silent and tenantless.

With a cry of fear and dread commingled, she rushed toward the door, and encountered her mother creeping slowly in, like a pallid ghost, in the chilly, glimmering dawn of the new day.

"Oh, mamma, where is Lora?" she cried, in a faint voice, while her limbs seemed to totter beneath her.

Mrs. Carroll shook her head, and put her hands to her throat, while her pallid features seemed to work with convulsive emotion. The terrible shock she had sustained seemed to have stricken her dumb.

"Oh, mamma, mamma, cannot you speak? Cannot you tell me?" implored her daughter.

But by signs and gestures Mrs. Carroll made her understand that the terrible constriction in her throat made it impossible for her to utter a word.

For a moment Mrs. St. John stood still, like a silent statue of despair, but with a sudden inspiration she brought writing materials, placed them on a small table, and said to her mother:

"Sit down, mamma, and write what you know."

Mrs. Carroll's anguished face brightened at the suggestion. She sat down quickly at the little table, and drawing a sheet of paper toward her, dipped the pen into the ink, and began to write.

Xenie leaned over her shoulder, and watched eagerly for the words that were forming beneath her hand.

But, alas, the nervous shock her mother had sustained made her hand tremble like an aspen leaf.

Great, sprawling, blotted, inky characters soon covered the fair sheet thickly, but among them all there was not one legible word.

Xenie groaned aloud in her terrible impatience and pain.

"Oh, mamma, try again!" she wailed. "Write slowly and carefully. Rest your arm upon the table, and let your hand move slowly—very slowly."

And with an impotent moan, Mrs. Carroll took another sheet of paper and tried to subdue her trembling hands to the task for whose fulfillment her daughter was waiting so anxiously.

But again the blotted characters were wholly illegible. No effort of the mother's will could still the nervous, trembling hands, and render legible the anguished words she laboriously traced upon the paper.

She sighed hopelessly as her daughter shook her head.

"Never mind, mamma," she said, "let it go, you are too nervous to form a single letter legibly. I will ask you some questions instead, and you will bow when your answer should be affirmation, and shake your head to indicate the negative."

Mrs. Carroll gave the required token of assent to this proposition.

"Very well. Now I will ask you the first question," said Xenie, trying to subdue her quivering voice into calm accents. "Mamma, did Lora go to sleep after I left you together?"

A shake of the head negatived the question.

"She was restless and flighty, then, perhaps, still dwelling on her dream about her husband?"

This question received an affirmative answer.

"But after awhile she became composed and fell asleep—did she not?" continued Mrs. St. John.

Mrs. Carroll bowed, her lips moving continually in a vain and yearning effort after words.

"And then you lay down upon the lounge to snatch a few minutes of repose?" asserted Xenie.

Again she received an affirmative reply.

"Mamma, did you sleep long?" was the next question.

Mrs. Carroll shook her head with great energy.

"Oh! no, of course you did not!" exclaimed Xenie, quickly, "for it was midnight when I left you, and if Lora was wakeful and restless it must have been several hours before either one fell asleep. And it is not daylight yet, so you must have slept a very little while. Were you awakened by any noise, mamma?"

The question was instantly negatived.

"You were nervous and ill at ease, then, and simply awoke of yourself?" continued Mrs. St. John, anxiously.

Mrs. Carroll's earnest, dark eyes said yes almost as plainly as her bowed head.

"And when you woke, Lora and the babe were gone, mamma, and the front door stood wide open—is that the way of it, mamma?" continued Xenie, anxiously watching her mother's face for the confirmation of her question.

Mrs. Carroll gave assent to it while a hoarse wail of anguish issued from her drawn, white lips.

Xenie echoed the wail, and for a moment her white face was hidden in her hands while the most terrible apprehension stabbed her to the heart.

Then she looked up and said quickly:

"She must have wandered away in a momentary fit of flightiness—don't you think so?"

And again Mrs. Carroll gave a quick motion of assent.

"Then I must find her, mamma," said Xenie, quickly. "She cannot have gone very far. She was too weak to get away from us unless– Oh! my God! she cannot have gone to the water!" moaned Xenie, clasping her hands in horror.

Mrs. Carroll looked as if she were going into a fit at the bare suggestion.

Her face turned purple again, her eyes stared wildly, she clutched at her throat like one choking.

Xenie forced her back upon the lounge, applied restoratives, then exclaimed wildly:

"Mamma, I cannot bear to leave you thus, but I must go and seek for my sister. Even now she may be perishing in reach of our hands. Ninon, the maid, will be here in a little while. She will care for you, and I will bring back my poor little Lora."

She kissed her mother's face as she spoke, then hurried out, shawlless and bare-headed, into the chill morning air.

It was a dark and gloomy dawn, with a drizzle of rain falling steadily through the murky atmosphere.

A fine, white mist was drawn over the sea like a winding sheet. The sun had not tried to rise over the dismal prospect.

Xenie ran heedlessly down the veranda steps, and bent her steps to the seashore, looking about her carefully as she went, and calling frantically all the time:

"Lora, Lora, Lora! Where are you, my darling? Where are you?"

But no answer came to her wild appeal.

The soft, low patter of the steady rain, and the solemn sound of the waves as they madly surged upon the shore, seemed like a funeral requiem in her ears.

She could not bear the awful voice of the sea, for she remembered that Lora had hated it because her husband was buried in its illimitable waves.

But suddenly a faint and startling sound came to her ears.

She thought it was the moan of the wind rising at first, then it sounded again almost at her feet—the shrill, sharp wail of an infant.

Xenie turned around and saw, not twenty paces from her, a little bundle of soft, white flannel lying upon the wet sand.

She ran forward with a scream of joy, and picked it up in her arms, and drew aside one corner of the little embroidered blanket.

Joy, joy! it was Lora's baby—Lora's baby, lying forlorn and deserted on the wet sand with the hungry waves rolling ever nearer and nearer toward it, as though eager to draw it down in their cold and fatal embrace.

With a low murmur of joy, Xenie kissed the cold little face and folded it closely in her arms.

"Lora cannot be very far now," she thought, her heart beating wildly with joy. "She was so weak the babe has slipped from her arms, and she did not know it. She will come back directly to find it."

She ran along the shore, looking through the gray dawn light everywhere for her sister, and calling aloud in tender accents:

"Lora, Lora, my darling!"

But suddenly, as she looked, she saw a strangely familiar form coming toward her along the sand.

It was a man clothed in a gray tweed traveling suit, such as tourists wear abroad.

He stopped with a cry of surprise as they met, and there on the wild shores of France, with the rain beating down on her bare head and thin dress, with Lora's baby tightly clasped in her bare arms, Xenie St. John found herself face to face with her enemy.

CHAPTER XV

Like one stricken motionless by terror, she stood still and looked up into the proud face and scornful blue eyes of the man she had thought far, far away beneath the skies of his native land.

The ground seemed slipping from beneath her feet, the wild elements seemed whirling aimlessly over her head; she forgot Lora, she forgot the child that nestled against her breast; she remembered nothing else but her enemy's presence and the deadly peril to which her secret was exposed.

"Howard Templeton," she panted forth wildly, "why are you here?"

"Mrs. St. John," he returned, with a bitter smile, "I might rather ask you that question. What are you doing here in this stormy dawn, with your bare head and your thin slippers and evening dress? Permit me to offer you my cloak. Do you forget that it is cold and rainy, that you court certain death for yourself and the—the–"

He paused without ending the sentence and looked at the little white bundle lying helpless in her arms, and a steely gleam of hatred flared into his eyes.

"The child," she said, finishing the sentence for him with a passionate quiver of joy in her voice, "my child—Howard Templeton—the little one that has come to me to avenge his mother's wrongs. Look at him. This is your uncle's heir, this tiny little babe! He will strip you of every dollar you now hold so unjustly, and his mother's revenge will then be complete."

She turned back a corner of the blanket, and gave him a glimpse of the little pink face, and the babe set up a feeble and pitiful little wail.

It was as though the unconscious little creature repeated its mother's plaintive remonstrance against making such an innocent little angel the instrument for consummating a cruel revenge.

But Xenie was deaf to the voice of conscience, or she might have fancied that its accusing voice spoke loudly in the wail of the little babe.

She looked at Howard Templeton with a glow of triumph in her face, her black eyes shining like stars.

The wind and the rain tossed her dark, loosened ringlets about her, making her look like some mad creature with that wicked glow of anger and revenge in her beautiful, spirited face.

"Say, is it not a glorious revenge?" she cried. "You scorned me because I was poor. I was young, I was fair, I was loving and true, but all that counted for nothing in your eyes. For lack of gold you left me. Did you think my heart would break in silence? Ah, no, I swore to give you back pang for pang, and I have taken from you all that your base heart ever held dear—gold, shining gold. Through me you will be stripped of all. Is it not a brilliant victory? Ha! ha!"

His blue eyes flashed down into her vivid, black ones, giving her hate for hate and scorn for scorn. In a low, concentrated voice, he said:

"Are you not afraid to taunt me thus? Look there at that seething ocean beneath its shroud of mist. Do you see that no one is near? Do you know that there is no one in hearing? Suppose I should take you up with your revenge in your arms and cast you into yonder sea? The opportunity is mine, the temptation is great."

"Yet you will not do it," she answered, giving him a glance of superb scorn.

"Why do you say I will not do it?" he asked; "why should I spare you? You have not spared me! You are trying to wrest my inheritance from me. We are sworn and deadly foes. I have nothing to lose by your death, everything to gain. Why should I not take the present opportunity and sweep you from my path forever?"

He paused and looked down at her in passionate wrath while he wondered what she would say to all this; but she was silent.

"Again I ask you why should I spare you?" he repeated; "are you not afraid of my vengeance, Xenie St. John?"

"No, I am not afraid," she repeated, defiantly, yet even as she spoke he saw that a shudder that was not of the morning's cold shook her graceful form. A sudden consciousness of the truth that lurked in his words had rushed over her.

"Yes, we are deadly foes," she repeated to herself, with a deeper consciousness of the meaning of those words than she had ever had before. "Why should he spare me, since I am wholly in his power?"

His voice broke in suddenly on her swift, tumultuous thoughts, making her start with its cold abruptness.

"Ah, I see that you begin to realize your position," he said, icily. "What is your revenge worth now in this moment of your deadly peril? Is it dearer to you than your life?"

"Yes, it is dearer to me than my life," she answered, steadily. "If nothing but my life would buy revenge for me I would give it freely!"

He regarded her a moment with a proud, silent scorn. She returned the gaze with interest, but even in her passionate anger and hatred she could not help owning to her secret heart that she had never seen him looking so handsome as he did just then in the rough but well-fitting tweed suit, with the glow of the morning on his fair face, and that light of scorn in his dark-blue eyes.

Suddenly he spoke:

"Well, go your way, Xenie St. John. You are in my way, but it is not by this means I will remove you from it. I am not a murderer—your life is safe from my vengeance. Yet I warn you not to go further in your wild scheme of vengeance against me. It can only result in disaster to yourself. I am forewarned of your intentions and your wicked plot. You can never wrest from me the inheritance that Uncle John intended for me!"

"We shall see!" she answered, with bold defiance, undaunted by his threatening words.

Then, as the little babe in her arms began to moan pitifully again, she remembered the dreadful trouble that had sent her out into the rain, and turning from him with a sudden wail of grief, she began to run along the shore, looking wildly around for some trace of the lost one.

She heard Howard's footsteps behind her, and redoubled her speed, but in a minute his hand fell on her shoulder, arresting her flight. He spoke hastily:

"I heard you calling for Lora before I met you—speak, tell me if she also is wandering out here like a madwoman, and why?"

She turned on him fiercely.

"What does it matter to you, Howard Templeton?"

"If she is lost I can help you to find her," he retorted. "What can you do? A frail woman wandering in the rain with a helpless babe in your arms!"

Bitterly as she hated him, an overpowering sense of the truth of his words rushed over her.

She hated that he should help her and yet she could not let her own angry scruples stand in the way of finding Lora.

She looked up at him and the hot tears brimmed over in her black eyes and splashed upon her white cheeks.

"Lora is missing," she answered, in a broken voice. "She has been ill, and last night she wandered in her mind. This morning while mamma and I slept she must have stolen away in her delirium. Mamma was prostrated by the shock, and I came out alone to find her."

"You should have left the child at home. It will perish in the rain and cold," he said, looking at her keenly.

She shivered and grew white as death, but pressed the babe closer to her breast that the warmth of her own heart might protect its tender life.

"Why did you bring the child?" he persisted, still watching her keenly.

"I will not tell you," she answered, defiantly, but with a little shiver of dread. What if he had seen her when she found it on the sands?

"Very well; you shall not stay out longer with it, at least. Granted that we are deadly foes—still I have a man's heart in my breast. I would not willingly see a woman perish. Go home, Xenie, and care for your mother. I will undertake the search for Lora. If I find her you shall know it immediately. I promise you."

He took the heavy cloak from his own shoulders and fastened it around her shivering form.

She did not seem to notice the action, but stood still mechanically, her dark, tearful eyes fixed on the mist-crowned sea. He followed her gaze, and said in a quick tone of horror:

"You do not believe she is in there? It would be too horrible!"

"Oh, my God!" Mrs. St. John groaned, with a quiver of awful dread in her voice.

He shivered through all his strong, lithe young frame. The thought of such a death was terrible to him.

"You said she was ill and delirious?" he said, abruptly.

"Yes," she wailed.

"Poor Lora—poor little Lora!" he exclaimed, with a sudden tone of pity. "Alas! is it not too probable that she has met her death in those fatal waves?"

"Oh, she could not, she could not," Xenie moaned, wildly. "She hated the sea. Her lover was drowned in it. She could not bear the sight or the sound of it."

He did not answer for a moment. He was looking away from her with a great, solemn dread and pity in his beautiful, blue eyes. Suddenly he said, abruptly:

"Go home, Mrs. St. John, and stay there until you hear news. I will go and arouse the village. I will have help in the search, and if she is found we will bring her home. If she is not, God help you, for I fear she has drowned herself in the sea."

With a long, moaning cry of anguish, Xenie turned from him and sped along the wet sand back to her mother. Howard Templeton watched the flying figure on its way with a grave trouble in his handsome face, and when she was out of sight, he turned in an opposite direction and walked briskly along the sand, looking carefully in every direction.

"They talk of judgment," he muttered. "Has God sent this dreadful thing upon Xenie St. John for her sinful plans? If it is so, surely it will bring her to repentance. In the face of such a terrible affliction, she must surely be afraid to persist in attempting such a stupendous fraud."

CHAPTER XVI

Half dead with weariness and sorrow, Mrs. St. John staggered into her mother's presence with the wailing infant in her arms.

She sank down upon the floor by the side of the couch and laid the child on her mother's breast, moaning out:

"I found him down there, lying on the wet sand all alone, mamma—all alone! Oh! Lora, Lora!"

A heart-rending moan broke from Mrs. Carroll's lips. Her face was gray and death-like in the chill morning light.

She closed her arms around the babe and strained it fondly to her breast.

"Mamma, are you better? Can you speak yet? I have much to tell you," said Xenie, anxiously.

Mrs. Carroll made a violent effort at articulation, then shook her head, despairingly.

"I will send for the doctor as soon as the maid returns. She cannot be long now—it is almost broad daylight," said Xenie, with a heavy sigh. "And in the meantime I will feed the babe. It is cold and hungry. Mamma, shall I give it a little milk and water, warmed and sweetened?"

Mrs. Carroll assented, and Xenie went out into the little kitchen, lighted a fire and prepared the infant's simple nourishment.

Returning to Lora's room, she sat down in a low rocker, took the child in her arms, and carefully fed it from a teaspoon, first removing the cold blanket from around it, and wrapping it in warm, dry flannels.

Its fretful wails soon ceased under her tender care, and it fell into a gentle slumber on her breast.

"Now, mamma," she said, as she rocked the little sleeper gently to and fro, "I will tell you what happened to me while I was searching for my sister."

In as few words as possible, she narrated her meeting with Howard Templeton.

Mrs. Carroll greeted the information with a groan. She was both astonished and frightened at his appearance in France, when they had supposed him safe in America.

She struggled for speech so violently that the dreadful hysteric constriction in her throat gave way before her mental anguish, and incoherent words burst from her lips.

"Oh, Xenie, he will know all now, and Lora's good name and your own scheme of revenge will be equally and forever blasted! All is lost!"

"No, no, mamma, that shall never be! He shall not find us out. I swear it!" exclaimed her daughter passionately. "Let him peep and pry as he will, he shall not learn anything that he could prove. We have managed too cleverly for that."

And then the next moment she cried out:

"But, oh, mamma, you are better—you can speak again!"

"Yes, thank Heaven!" breathed Mrs. Carroll, though she articulated with difficulty, and her voice was hoarse and indistinct. "But, Xenie, what could have brought Howard Templeton here? Can he suspect anything? Did he know that we were here?"

Xenie was silent for a moment, then she said, thoughtfully:

"It may be that he vaguely suspects something wrong. Indeed, from some words he used to me, I believe he did. But what then? It is perfectly impossible that he could prove any charge he might make, so it matters little what he suspects. Oh, mamma, you should have seen how black, how stormy he looked when I showed him the child, and told him it was mine. I should have felt so happy then had it not been for my fear and dread over Lora."

"My poor girl—my poor Lora!" wailed the stricken mother. "Oh, Xenie, I am afraid she has cast herself into the sea."

"Oh, no, do not believe it. She did not, she could not! You know how she hated the sea. She has but wandered away, following her wild fancy of finding her husband. She was too weak to go far. They will soon find her and bring her back," said Xenie, trying to whisper comfort to the bereaved heart of the mother, though her own lay heavy as lead in her breast.

She rose after a moment and went to the window.

"It is strange that Ninon does not return to get the breakfast," she said, looking out. "Can her mother be worse, do you think, mamma?"

"She may be, but I hardly think it likely. She was better of the fever the last time Ninon went to see her. It is likely that the foggy, rainy morning has deceived her as to the lateness of the hour. She will be along presently, no doubt," said Mrs. Carroll, carelessly; for her trouble rendered her quite indifferent to her bodily comfort.

Xenie sat down again, and rocked the babe silently for a little while.

"Oh, mamma, how impatient I grow!" she said, at length. "It seems to me I cannot wait longer. I must put the child down and go out again. I cannot bear this dreadful suspense."

"No, no; I will go myself," said Mrs. Carroll, struggling up feebly from the lounge. "You are cold and wet now, my darling. You will get your death out there in the rain. I must not lose both my darlings at once."

But Xenie pushed her back again with gentle force.

"No, mamma, you shall not go—you are already ill," she said. "Let the child lie in your arms, and I will go to the door and see if anyone is coming."

Filled with alternate dread and hope, she went to the door and looked out.

No, there was naught to be seen but the rain and the mist—nothing to be heard but the hollow moan of the ocean, or the shrill, piping voice of the sea birds skimming across the waves.

"It is strange that the maid does not come," she said again, oppressed with the loneliness and brooding terror around her.

She sat down again, and waited impatiently for what seemed a considerable time; then she sprang up restlessly.

"Mamma, I will just walk out a very little way," she said. "I must see if anyone is coming yet."

"You must not go far, then, Xenie." Mrs. Carroll remonstrated.

Xenie dashed out into the rain again, and ran recklessly along the path, looking far ahead of her as if to pierce the mystery that lay beyond her.

Presently she saw a young French girl plodding along toward her.

It was Ninon, the belated maid. Over her arm she carried a dripping-wet shawl.

It was a pretty shawl, of warm woolen, finely woven, and striped with broad bars of white and red.