The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret

"Never! You have come here to blackmail me! you wish to frighten me by trumped up suspicion; I will not buy your silence!" cried Mrs. Vance, passionately.

"Very well, lady, I will go to Mr. Lawrence, I will go to Mr. Darling, I will tell them what I have told you," said the lace-vender, rising to leave.

"Stay—who knows this lying tale besides yourself?"

"No one, lady. I, Haidee Leveret, am the only witness of your crime, and you can buy my silence with that purse of gold," said the old crone, sepulchrally.

"Take it, then," said Mrs. Vance, flinging it down at her feet "and keep the secret till your dying day! you need not return to blackmail me again. That is all the gold I have. I am a poor woman. I can get no more to give you!"

The old woman gathered up the purse of coins, hid it in her bosom, and trotted out, mouthing and mumbling to herself. Mrs. Vance fell down upon the floor writhing in terror. "My sin has found me out," she cried, wringing her white hands helplessly. "Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot, it was all for you!"

"A lucky day," said old Haidee to herself as she trotted down the street. "A fine piece of work, and well paid for! A purse of gold and a diamond! Well, well!"

She stopped and took poor Lily's note from her pocket where it had lain concealed, and tearing it into minute fragments threw it into the street. A gentleman passing by observed the action curiously. It was Mr. Lawrence. Ah! if he had but known whose hand had written the note whose coarse, brown fragments lay under his feet, if he had but turned and followed that hideous old witch, what months of sorrow might have been spared him. But he did not know, and he went on to his home, bowed and heart-broken, while old Haidee trotted quickly past, crooning a low tune in the pride of her gratified avarice and cunning.

As she went into the door of her home, Doctor Pratt came in suddenly after her.

"Now where have you been, Haidee?" he asked, suspiciously.

"Only to market, doctor," said she, trembling, sidling past him with the basket on her arm.

He found his patient restless and excited. She was tossing uneasily from side to side of the bed, and her cheeks were flushed and feverish. He took the small hand, and found the pulse bounding rapidly beneath his touch.

"This will not do," said he, "you must not excite yourself unduly."

The door opened, admitting Haidee with a bowl of fresh arrowroot. Lily looked wistfully beyond her, but she was quite alone. She saw in Haidee's cautious, negative shake of the head that her mission had failed. She fell back, crushed with her disappointment.

"Come, take your nourishment," said Pratt, kindly.

She shook her head. A choking sensation arose in her throat, and she could not swallow. She determined to make one appeal to this grim-looking man.

"Doctor," she said, clasping her hands imploringly, "I appeal to your honor, to your generosity, to your humanity, to restore me to my home and father!"

Doctor Pratt shook his head decisively.

"It is impossible for me to do that," he answered; "you are in the power of Mr. Colville; I am merely employed by him to attend you in your illness. You must make your appeal to him."

"He is a villain, a designing wretch!" she broke out, indignantly. "I will make no appeal to him. But, doctor, if you will go and tell my father where to find me, I will give you five thousand dollars the day I am liberated from this prison-house."

He laughed and drew a newspaper from his pocket. Putting it in her hands, he directed her attention to a marked paragraph. She read it with streaming eyes. It ran simply:

"Much sympathy has been excited for the Lawrence family in the painful discovery that the body of Miss Lily Lawrence has been stolen from the vault of her father. The well-known wealth of the great banker makes it seem probable that the foul deed was committed with a view to a heavy ransom. It will be seen in our reward column that Mr. Lawrence offers ten thousand dollars for the return of the corpse."

"So your father offers more for the repose of your dead body than you do for your living one," he said, laughing. "No, Miss Lawrence, I cannot accept your munificent bribe. My duty to Mr. Colville forbids. And au revoir. I must be going. I leave you some medicine and will see you again to-morrow. Take the best care of her, Haidee."

He went away, and they heard the hall door clang behind him. Lily turned to her silent attendant.

"Haidee, you did not go," she murmured, in a reproachful tone.

"Oh! yes, I did, miss, but your father was not there," readily answered the treacherous old woman.

"Oh! then you left the note for him, and also your address?" said Lily in a more hopeful tone.

"Aye, that I did, miss," said old Haidee, lying glibly; "I gave it to a very pretty lady."

"It was my sister Ada, then," said Lily.

"No, miss; your sister lies ill of a fever. I gave it to a lady called Mrs. Vance," lied Haidee, watching the patient's face keenly.

A startling change swept over the girl's white features. Fear, terror, resentment—all were blended in that look.

"Oh!" she cried, "then indeed I have no hope of release! She will not give the letter to my father. She is my murderess—she tried to kill me. She will come here and make her fatal work sure! Watch for her, Haidee—do not allow her to enter here. She will kill me, indeed she will kill me!"

"Oh, me, honey, I am so sorry that I gave her the note," said Haidee, artfully; "but do not be afraid, she shall not come here to finish her devil's work—no, not she, my poor deary."

Alas! alas! poor Lily! Doctor Pratt's opiates could not bring oblivion of her troubles that night. She raved and tossed through the long and weary night, while Haidee, thoroughly alarmed, was very glad to see the physician's face quite early the next morning.

CHAPTER VII

"Come home and dine with me, Lance," said Mr. Lawrence, meeting Lancelot Darling amid the bustle and stir of Wall street.

Poor Lance had been strolling carelessly up and down with a care-worn, wretched look upon his handsome face. Time went very slowly with him now. He turned about and, shaking hands with his friend, walked on by his side.

"Is there any news?" he asked, his mind reverting instantly to the painful event which occupied all his waking thoughts.

"None," answered the banker, sadly. "Some of the sharpest detectives in the city are trying to trace it, but as yet there is not the faintest clew."

He sighed and Lancelot echoed the sigh. Both walked silently on. At length the banker signaled a car and, entering it, they became at once the cynosure of all the eyes within it. Their recent terrible affliction was so well known that sympathy shone on them from every eye. But little was said to them even by the friends they encountered. The mute trouble of their faces seemed to repel the mere trivialities of conversation, and no one wished to speak of the mournful tragedy whose impress was written so legibly on the faces of both the sufferers.

"You are looking very ill," Mrs. Vance said, in a gentle tone of sympathy, when the banker had left the guest in the drawing-room while he went up to see Ada, whose illness had not as yet taken any favorable turn.

"I am quite well, thank you," he answered, absently, and with an unconscious, heart-wrung sigh. He was looking about him sadly, seeing in fancy the graceful, girlish form that had so often flitted through this grand room. She saw the turn his mind had taken, and instantly diverted it to the present.

"Has anything been heard from our poor Lily yet?" she asked, in low, mournful tones.

"Nothing, nothing. Oh! Mrs. Vance, this suspense is very hard to bear," said he, impetuously, won by the gentle sympathy in her face and voice to an outburst he had not intended. "It is almost killing me!"

"Poor Lance," said she, in a broken voice; "your features show the traces of your great suffering. It is hard for us all to bear, but harder still for you."

Her delicate hand fluttered down upon his own with a pressure of mute sympathy, while she buried her face in her handkerchief, sobbing softly.

"I should not have brought my gloomy face here to sadden you still more—forgive me for my reckless outburst," said he, pained by the sight of her womanly grief, which always goes to a man's heart.

"Do not regret it," she answered, through her sobs. "Let me grieve with you, poor boy, in your trouble. Believe me, sympathy is very sweet."

"Thank you," he answered, gently. "Ah! this indeed is a house of mourning. Is Ada any better to-day, Mrs. Vance?"

"I am sorry to say she is not," answered the lady, making a pretence of drying her eyes, which, however, had not been wet by a single tear. "She has a low, intermittent fever, which does not as yet yield at all to the physician's treatment. God grant we are not to lose our lovely Ada, too. Ah! that would indeed be a sad consequence of poor Lily's rash suicide."

He shuddered through all his strong young frame at that concluding word.

"Oh, God!" he groaned, "the mystery of it! Suicide! Suicide! If God had taken her from us, I could learn to say, 'It is well'—but that she should weary of us all, that she should rush out of this life that I thought to make so fair and beautiful to her in our united future! I cannot understand it—it is horrible, maddening!"

Musingly she murmured over a few lines from Tom Hood's mournful poem, "The Bridge of Sighs:"

"Mad from Life's history,Swift to Death's mystery,Glad to be hurledAnywhere, anywhere, out of the world!"

The words seemed to madden him. Impatiently he strode up and down the floor.

"She never loved me as I loved her!" he broke out, passionately. "I could not have done aught to grieve her so. If earth had been a desert, it must still have been Paradise to me while she walked upon it. Oh! Lily, Lily, you were very cruel!"

"Do not grieve so, I beseech you," said the widow's gentle voice. Timidly she took his hand and led him to a seat. "You will make yourself ill. We cannot afford to lose you, too. You were so near becoming one of the family that you seem almost to take the place of our dear one who has left us."

"You think me almost a madman," said he, remorsefully. "I startle you with my wild words. I should not have come here."

"Yes, you should," she answered, kindly. "You should come oftener than you do and let me sympathize with you in your trouble. Who can grieve with you so well as I who knew and loved your dear one? Promise to come every day, dear Lance, and let us share our trouble together."

"I will try," he answered, moved by her gentle friendliness, and thinking as he looked up that she was a very handsome woman. Not with the beauty of his lost Lily. Her angelic, blonde fairness typified the highest beauty to him. But handsome with a certain queenliness that was very winning. How dark and soft her eyes were—how beautiful the sweep of the long, dark lashes. And her cheeks—how rich and soft was the color that glowed upon them and deepened to crimson tints upon her full lips. And when that dark, bright face glowed with tenderness and feeling how very fascinating it became. When she took on herself the role of comforter how softly she could pour the oil of healing on the troubled waves of feeling. She had Lance soothed and quieted before Mr. Lawrence came down, with a pale and troubled face, from Ada's sick room.

Dinner went off rather soberly and solemnly. The array of silver and cut-glass was dazzling, the edibles costly and dainty, but Lance scarcely made a pretence of eating. Mr. Lawrence merely trifled with the viands, and Mrs. Vance was the only one whose appetite was equal to the demands of the occasion. Conversation lagged, though the beautiful widow tried to keep it up with all the consummate art of which she was mistress. But the gentlemen did not second her efforts, and she was relieved when the formal ceremony was over and they went out to smoke their cigars.

"I will go in and see Ada a little," thought she. "The nurse says the fever is not infectious."

She tripped lightly up the steps and into the room where poor Ada lay tossing in her burning fever. She was very much like her sister in appearance, but the luxurious chamber where she lay was in great contrast with that in which poor suffering Lily was now immured. True, Lily had all the comforts her sickness needed, but here the capricious eyes of an invalid found everything to charm and soothe the weary eye. Here delicate curtains of silk and lace shut out the too dazzling light of day; here dainty white hangings delighted the eye with their coolness and purity. Here and there were set vases of freshly-cut flowers filling the air with sweetness, and rare and costly paintings looked down from the softly tinted walls.

An expression of annoyance swept over the girl's fair, ingenuous face as Mrs. Vance bent airily over her and touched her feverish brow with her delicately rouged lips.

"You should not kiss me," said she, pettishly, "this fever may be infectious."

"The doctor said it was not infectious, my dear," murmured the lady sweetly. "I asked him myself this morning."

"Oh! you did, eh? I suppose wild horses could not have dragged you in here to see me if it had been," said Ada, sarcastically.

"Is there anything I can do for you, my love?" asked Mrs. Vance, gracefully ignoring the spoiled girl's incivility.

"Nothing—only do not talk to me—talking hurts my head," replied the invalid, turning her face away.

"Ah, then, if I only disturb you I will take my leave," said the handsome widow, tripping out of the room.

"You were rather rude, my dear," said the nurse, surprised at her gentle patient's sudden petulance.

"I don't care," said Ada vehemently, "I hate that woman! I cannot tell why it is, but I have hated her ever since she came here to live, nearly two years ago. She knows I do not like her, but she affects unconsciousness of it. Keep the door locked, nurse, and do not let her come in here again—tell her I am too ill to see anyone. When she kissed me just now I felt as if a great slimy snake had crawled over me—ugh!" she said, shuddering at the recollection.

CHAPTER VIII

The great agitation of poor imprisoned Lily Lawrence culminated in a severe fit of illness, and Doctor Pratt found need for all his skill before convalescence set in again. Mr. Colville prudently kept himself in the background now, so she was not troubled by the sight of the villain's face for several weeks. Haidee proved herself a careful and efficient nurse, and in three weeks' time poor Lily rose from her sick-bed pale, weak and weary, her girlish heart filled with heaviness and despair. She had again and again entreated old Haidee to go to her father, but in vain. The old woman stubbornly turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties. The old crone's husband Lily had not yet seen, though she frequently heard his gruff and brutal tones in the next room to hers, which appeared to be his sleeping-apartment.

She was sitting up one day in the great arm-chair puzzling her brain over some plan of escape. She looked very lovely still, though wasted by illness and sorrow. Haidee had provided her with a neat blue wrapper, and her fairness was almost dazzling by contrast with its becoming hue. Her rich golden hair was gathered in a loose coil at the back of her graceful little head, showing the whiteness of her neck, and the rosy tinting of her small, shell-like ears. A fancy seized her to look out of the window which was always covered with thick curtains. It was warm and sultry and she longed for a breath of the sweet and balmy air outside her gloomy-looking room.

Rising with feeble steps she went to the window, and pulled aside the curtain.

Horrors! the window was barred with great, heavy iron bars!

Some vague, indefinite plan of escape through that window had been forming in her mind. She almost screamed in her despair as she saw the futility of her plan.

"Hateful prison-bars!" said she, angrily, and clenching one in her small hand she shook it with angry violence. To her surprise the rotten wood-work yielded, and the bar fell from its place and remained in her hand. Very cautiously she looked through the aperture just formed.

She saw that she was in an old and weather-beaten house set in the midst of a large garden whose overgrown shrubs and bushes had grown wild and tangled, and over-run the paths. There was not another house within half a mile of this one. She was far out on the suburbs, she comprehended at once.

A noise below startled her from her reconnoissance. Hastily fitting the heavy bar back to its place, she dropped the curtains and tottered back to her seat, assuming an air of indifference and weariness.

The door opened and Harold Colville entered.

"Good-evening, Miss Lawrence," said he, coolly; "I trust you find yourself improving."

Lily vouchsafed him no answer save a look of scorn and contempt.

"Come—come, fair lady," said he, seating himself near her, "have you no kinder greeting for your devoted admirer?"

"Leave the room, if you please," said she, while the indignant crimson suffused her cheeks. "I have nothing to say to you, sir!"

"Nothing? surely it were wiser, Lily, to try to make terms with me than to bandy angry words. Remember you are in my power. I love you, and I want your love in return. But, proud girl, beware how you change my love into hate."

"Mr. Colville," said she, "it is cruel, it is unmanly thus to persecute a defenseless girl. I beseech you, restore me to my home and my father. Think of my poor father, my suffering sister. There are other women who will love you, women who have not given away their hearts as I have done."

"There is but one woman on earth to me, Lily, and I have sworn to make her my own. You cannot move me by all you say—as well try to topple a mountain from its base as to move me from my firm will. Better, far better were it for you, Lily Lawrence, to waive all this useless pleading, make yourself as charming as you well know how to do, and become my wife. If you still persist in refusing there may be worse things in store for you."

She could not misunderstand the insulting meaning of his angry speech. The hot blood flushed into her face, then receded and left her pale as death. In bitter shame at his rudeness she bowed her face in her hands.

"You understand me," said he with a low, malignant laugh; "so much the better! Now listen to reason, Lily. I love you, and you are in my power! you are dead to the world, dead to the father who reared you, the sister who loved you, the man you would have wedded. Consent to marry me, and within an hour after I call you my wife you shall see your friends again, and tell them the romantic story of my love, and how it saved your life; you can tell them that such devotion won you to reward my fidelity with your hand. All this I offer you in good faith and honor, and give you time for decision. But refuse—and—well, you know you are still in my power!"

She rose and stood confronting him in all the pride and dignity of outraged and insulted purity. She was rarely, peerlessly beautiful with that scarlet tide staining her cheeks, that lightning flash in the violet eyes.

"Villain, coward, dog!" she cried, in the white heat of passionate resentment, "how dare you threaten me thus? Know that I defy you! I spurn you! I will never be your wife! I will die first, do you hear me? I will die by my own hand rather than be so disgraced."

"Rave on, my beauty," he answered, laughing tauntingly. "Flap your pretty wings against your prison bars, my little bird, you will only ruffle your feathers in vain. By Jove, you only make me more determined! I never saw you so beautiful, so utterly fascinating! I did not think you had so queenly a spirit, my fair one! you would make your fortune on the tragic stage!"

"Oh! go, go," she gasped, lifting her hand with a wild gesture toward the door, "go, leave me, unless you wish to see me dying!"

He paused irresolute an instant; then her flashing eye and dauntless air cowed his craven spirit into submission. With a slight bow he turned and went out of the door.

Face downward on the bed, Lily wept and sobbed unrestrainedly. She was determined, if release did not come ere long, to die by her own hand. "Better than dishonor," thought she with another burst of anguished tears.

She looked about her for some instrument to secrete in case she should be driven to the last stronghold of honor. There was nothing to secure. Old Haidee had made sure of that. "Well," she thought, "if there is nothing else I can strangle myself with my handkerchief."

The hours wore on to twilight. Old Haidee brought her supper, grumbled because she did not eat it, and scowlingly withdrew. Lily was left alone with her sad thoughts for companions. She went to the window, pulled aside the curtain, and looked out. The twilight had faded, a few pale stars glimmered in the cloudy sky, a crescent moon gave forth a weak and watery light. A wild thought darted into her mind. "Oh! if I could escape through these broken bars. Ah! why not?"

She stood still and listened. Familiar sounds from the adjoining room informed her that the Leverets were retiring. She crouched down and waited perhaps half an hour. Then a dual chorus of snores announced that her lynx-eyed guardians slept.

Breathlessly she stole to the window and removed the iron bar. It left an aperture large enough to admit her slight form. She tried the other bars, but they seemed more firmly fixed than the first one she had tried. They resisted her strongest efforts.

"If I only had a strong rope," she thought to herself, "I could secure it to these bars and slide down it to the ground."

She leaned her head through the aperture and looked down to see how far she would have to descend. The distance appeared to be about thirty feet.

"If I only had a rope," she thought again, "I could certainly gain my freedom—freedom! that means home again, papa, Ada, Lancelot!"

She sat down, her heart beating wildly at the thought. They believed her dead. She pictured their wild, incredulous joy at first when she burst in among them, their own living darling. What a story she would have to tell, and how swiftly the vengeance of papa and Lancelot would descend on Mrs. Vance and Harold Colville. Her breath came quick and fast, her courage mounted high within her.

"I must escape," she murmured with passionate vehemence; "surely there must be some way out of this horrible prison."

She thought of all the stories she had heard and read of the escape of prisoners—she remembered that she had read of one man who had torn his bed-clothes into strips and made a rope of them by which he descended from the window. Why could not she do the same?

Cautiously, so as not to awaken the sleepers in the next room, she removed the bed-covers. There were not many, for the sultry summer weather precluded the possibility of their use, but there were two strong linen sheets.

"These would do, I think," she murmured to herself. "I am so light it would not need a very strong rope to bear my weight. I will tear these sheets into four long strips each. That will make eight strips. I will tie them together in knots, fasten the rope thus formed to a bar, and lower myself from the window. If the rope is not long enough I must jump the remainder of the distance. Then, free from this dreadful prison, I must trust in Providence to find the way home."

She set to work diligently. She was obliged to be very cautious for fear the sound of her work should penetrate the ears of her jailers. She had nothing with which to cut the cloth, and it was strong and difficult to tear. But by dint of hard labor with teeth and fingers she at length accomplished it, and set to work tying the slips of linen together.

It took some time to make these knots secure. When that was done she secured the end of her impromptu rope to the lowest bar of the window, and looked out to see how far the end escaped the ground. Joy, joy! it was only about ten feet.

"I can easily jump that distance," she thought, with a thrill of triumph at her success.

She looked about for some wrapping to put over her thin blue dress. A long dark cloak with hood attached hung conveniently against the wall.

"They must have put that around me when I was brought here," she said, "so I will wear it to go away in," and, taking it down, she rolled it into a compact bundle and threw it out of the window.