Laurel Vane; or, The Girls' Conspiracy

But "fate is above us all!" At this moment a trained obsequious servant opened the door, and announced respectfully:

"Miss Gordon."

CHAPTER IV

The agitated lady and her haughty, handsome son both looked at the door with an irrepressible start.

A sixteen year old girl was wavering on the threshold, staring into the elegant room and at the cold, curious faces of the mother and son with parted lips, and large, somber, frightened dark eyes. Over the simple, short traveling dress, of plain, dark-gray material, her rich, burnished golden hair flowed in billows of brightness beneath the wide brim of her simple hat. A neat pretty maid hovered in the background, looking far more cool and self-possessed than her lovely young mistress.

St. Leon Le Roy's quick eyes caught and held for a moment the gaze of those startled ones. He saw a pale, pure face, exquisitely molded, with perfect features, save, as he said to himself, her nose was a trifle too short, and her lips too full. But then the defect of her nose lent character to her face, and the pouting lips showed tenderness. "A baby face," he said to himself, disdainfully, noting the quiver of the lips, that trembled like a child's about to cry.

The girl's dark eyes turned quickly from that haughty, handsome face as if in fear, and sought comfort in the woman's, but it was cold and haughty too. There was no welcome on it save what cold, conventional courtesy required. She advanced and gave the newcomer the tips of her fingers and the side of her cheek to kiss.

"Welcome to Eden, Miss Gordon," she said, chillingly, and then she led her up to her son. "Allow me to present my son, St. Leon. He only returned from Europe yesterday," she added.

They bowed to each other with chill courtesy, these two, and that was all. He was too annoyed at her coming to be ordinarily civil, and she was too frightened at her grave, stern-looking host to put out her little mite of a hand to him.

"You have quite surprised me, Beatrix—I suppose I must call you Beatrix," said Mrs. Le Roy, trying to infuse some warmth into her frigid manner. "You see, your mamma's letter miscarried, and I have but just received it, so you must excuse my not sending the carriage to meet you."

"Certainly," Beatrix murmured, coloring warmly for a moment, and veiling her splendid eyes beneath their long fringed lashes, while a sigh of relief escaped her lips as her hostess continued:

"I dare say you would like to be shown your room now, that you may remove the dust of travel. It is very unpleasant, taking a journey this warm weather."

Beatrix agreed with her, and when she had herself conducted her and the maid Clarice to a lovely suite of rooms, all silver and azure, Mrs. Le Roy returned to her son.

He still stood in the embrasure of the window, pulling his dark mustache rather sulkily with his slender brown fingers.

"Was there ever such a contretemps!" she exclaimed, going up to him. "What shall we do, St. Leon?"

"Nothing," he answered, rather shortly.

"Nothing?" she echoed, helplessly, yet with an accent of relief in her voice.

"Why, what is there to do?" he inquired, impatiently. "She is here, whether we want her or not. We are not barbarians; we cannot send our guest away. Besides, I have changed my mind; Mrs. Gordon was right."

"Right!" she echoed, gazing up into his face inquiringly.

"My lady-mamma, has our guest quite upset your equanimity?" he inquired, smiling down at her perturbed face. "You echo my words with parrot-like pertinacity!"

"If I am disturbed, St. Leon, it is on your account," she replied, with dignity. "I could endure the girl's visit very well myself."

"So can I, I think," he returned, musingly. "She is not at all what my fancy painted her—a self-possessed fashionable beauty, who would rather compel me to dance attendance upon her. I could see that the little thing was rather afraid of me; I dare say she will keep out of my way."

"I have no doubt of it. She was positively shy and awkward. Not at all like her mother, whom I remember as a brilliant belle who held her own with queenly dignity," said Mrs. Le Roy. "I cannot blame Isabel for her caution; Beatrix looks too young to have a lover."

"'She's o'er young to marry yet,' certainly," assented her son. "We will keep the ewe-lamb safe, mamma, and woe be to the wolf that comes prowling around the precious fold."

He spoke so dryly that she could not tell whether he was in jest or earnest, and his expression was just as inscrutable as his tone. While she was puzzling over both, Beatrix returned.

Her plain gray traveling-dress had been exchanged for a pretty, soft, white robe with delicate laces about it, and she carried a wide sun hat in her small, dimpled hands.

The big dark eyes did not look quite so frightened now. They looked yearningly out at the beautiful grounds.

"May I go out there?" she asked. "I have never seen such a beautiful spot in my life before!"

CHAPTER V

St. Leon looked at the girl as she made her timid request. Her eyes drooped from his quickly, and the frightened look came into them again.

He was unaccountably vexed, although a moment before he had been pleased, because she was afraid of him.

"Why should the little goose fear me? I am not an ogre," he said to himself, shortly, turning back to the window, while Mrs. Le Roy answered politely:

"Certainly, child, and I will go with you to show you the way."

They went out together, and St. Leon watched them from the window, appearing and disappearing among the winding walks, the girl's white figure bending here and there among the gay parterres of flowers, the morning sunshine lighting her waving tresses into splendor. Mrs. Le Roy had given her carte blanche as to the flowers, and she was eagerly filling her hands with the scented beauties.

After a little, he remembered that his mother was growing old, and that she must be weary of keeping pace with those light, quick footsteps. He hesitated, and then went out to them.

"Chère maman, you must be tired," he said. "Sit down here on this garden-seat and rest, and I will take your place with Miss Gordon."

Beatrix turned with quick compunction.

"Are you tired?" she said, looking at Mrs. Le Roy with the long, curling lashes lifted from her expressive eyes. "I am so sorry. I forgot that it isn't new to you as it is to me. Shall we go in?"

"By no means," answered the lady. "I will sit here and rest, and St. Leon shall be your escort."

She flashed him a little glance, quickly withdrawn.

"Perhaps you wouldn't like," she said.

He laughed, and walked on by her side by way of answer, thinking to himself that she was rather prettier than he had thought at first. The wide sun-hat was tilted carelessly back from the fair low brow with its childish fringe of sunny locks, and the dark eyes with their long curling lashes looked darker still by contrast. A soft color had come into her face, and shy smiles of pleasure hovered around her lips. She looked like a child, with the front of her white overskirt held up in her hands and filled with flowers.

"Do you like flowers?" he asked her.

"I love them," she answered, with a distinct emphasis on the words. "I love them, and I never saw so many and such lovely flowers as you have here."

"Then you ought to enjoy your visit to Eden," he said, pleased at her pleasure in his home, and little thinking how she would enjoy that visit—how all the joy and sorrow of her life would date from these summer hours.

"Yes, I should enjoy it—I know that—only—only—" she said, and paused in confusion.

"Only what? Tell me," said St. Leon Le Roy, thinking suddenly of the lover from whom the girl had been torn by her scheming parents.

"She is thinking of that fortune hunter—that wretched entanglement," he said to himself, wondering what her next words would be.

"Only," she went on with childish frankness, and giving him one of her swift, dark glances, quickly withdrawn, "I am afraid you are—are angry that I have come here!"

Oh, wondrous perceptions of innocence! He flushed a little under his handsome brown skin, and pulled nervously at his silky mustache.

"Why should you think so?" he queried.

"I don't know. I—I seemed to feel it in the air," she said, vaguely, and in a little troubled tone. "You are vexed about it—aren't you?" and she turned on him fully for the first time the full gaze of those large wondrous black eyes, before whose searching gaze even the most accomplished Ananias might have hesitated to answer falsely.

"I should be discourteous if I answered in the affirmative," he said.

"You needn't mind that—not the least bit in the world," she said, eagerly. "You see, I didn't know when I came that you were here. I thought there was only an old lady—your mamma. If you don't want me here, I must go back to– I can go away," she said, growing strangely pale as the words left her lips.

"Perhaps you would have been better pleased if I had not been here," he said, curiously, as they walked on down a wide, graveled path, leading to the river.

"Perhaps so—I don't like men very much," she answered, with innocent frankness.

"Ridiculous affectation, when she is dead in love with a fortune-hunting scoundrel!" thought he, gnawing his mustache vexedly.

Somehow since Beatrix Gordon had come to Eden he chose to take the most contemptible view of her lover.

"Perhaps you would like me to go away?" he said, with fine sarcasm.

They had come to the pretty rustic fence that bordered the lawn. Below it was the public road, beyond this the wide, beautiful river, with the white sails coming and going on its glassy breast. Beatrix sunk down on a convenient seat with a crimson, dismayed face. Some of the flowers fell from her overskirt in the surprise with which she regarded him.

"Oh, what have I said? I didn't mean that—never!" she cried, as he stooped to restore her treasures. "I wouldn't have you go away from your beautiful home for me, Mr. Le Roy."

"Very well, I will stay. I dare say Eden is wide enough for us to keep out of each other's way," he answered, as he sat down by her side.

"Yes, surely," she cried; "and if—if you will only tell me how, I won't bother you—I won't come in your way at all."

"Very well," grimly. "We will both stay at Eden and compromise that way. We will try not to intrude upon each other. My favorite haunt is the library. If you will keep out of there, you may have the right of way in the rest of the house without materially disturbing me."

Palpable dismay lowered over the lifted face that looked so lovely in the golden sunlight.

"The library? And the books are all there—aren't they?" she asked, with a note of keen yearning in her voice.

"Yes; do you like books?" he asked, curiously.

"I love them," she answered, discarding the word "like" as she had done about the flowers. There was no half way strain in her nature. Fervent, ardent, impetuous, the word was too cold for her.

Those things that pleased her she loved.

"Then, perhaps I will lend you some books sometimes, if you will only keep out of my sanctum," he said, coolly. "Do you promise?"

"Yes, I promise," she replied, with a gentle, smothered sigh.

Then suddenly she lifted her eyes and asked him the last question he would have expected to hear from a girl nurtured in the lap of wealth and luxury.

"Mr. Le Roy, if you were a girl like I am—and if you hadn't any parents, nor home, nor friends—nor any money—nor any practical education—what would you do to earn an honest living?"

There was a palpable anxiety in voice and face. She had grown very pale, her dark eyes were distinctly wistful.

"She is thinking of that obnoxious lover. She would even dare poverty for his sake," he said to himself in displeasure.

Aloud he answered carelessly:

"It is hard to say what I should do in such a case, Miss Gordon. I believe I should throw myself into that beautiful river yonder and so end all."

In the dark after-days he remembered those words.

CHAPTER VI

Beatrix Gordon looked at the beautiful river with wide, dark eyes. The summer sunshine gilded the blue waves, the white sails dotted its wide expanse like fairy shallops gliding to and fro. It was grand and dazzlingly beautiful, but the young girl shivered as she thought of the dark depths below. She turned from it to look gravely into St. Leon Le Roy's handsome face with its cold, cynical eyes.

"You would throw yourself into the river and so end all," she repeated. "Oh, Mr. Le Roy, is it so hard for a poor girl to live that suicide is the least choice of evils?"

Her little hands clasped each other tightly over the mass of glowing flowers in her lap, and her red lips trembled with earnestness. He looked at her in something like wonder.

"I do not see why Mr. Gordon's daughter should trouble herself over such a question," he said. "But since you ask me I must answer yes. The world is full of pitfalls for the young and beautiful girl who has her own living to gain. Were I in the situation you describe, I believe I should speedily end the struggle with fate by a leap into the river."

These hastily spoken words, too, he was fated to recall in an hour of which he dreamed not now.

Beatrix did not answer him. She sat very still, looking before her with a strange, far-away expression on her face. A long, deep, unconscious sigh quivered over her lips.

"You are troubled over what I said—why?" he asked, curiously.

And the girl answered, with a shiver:

"I am afraid of life."

St. Leon began to feel vaguely interested in this girl whose coming he had dreaded so much. She was not like other young ladies he had known—not what he had expected the rich Mr. Gordon's daughter to be. There was a spice of originality about her. Why should she, the petted child of wealth and luxury, think about these things of which she had talked? Was it because her lover was poor?

He did not like to think of that lover from whom her parents wished to separate her. She was a child, he said to himself—too young to burn her heart in the flame of love.

"I do not see why you should fear life. It is likely to prove very fair and bright to you, if you do your duty—if you implicitly obey the wishes of your parents," he said, watching her keenly.

The lovely face flushed crimson, but she made him no answer. She played with her flowers nervously. She was afraid of St. Leon Le Roy's keen, merciless eyes.

"You do not wish me to lecture you upon your duty?" he said, after waiting in vain for her to reply.

"No, I do not think I do," she replied, frankly.

"Then I beg your pardon. Indeed, I am not worthy of lecturing any one upon that cold, hard word, duty," he said to himself rather than her. "I have not been a very dutiful son myself," a shadow crossing his dark features.

Beatrix again had no answer ready.

She went on quietly grouping her flowers into a large bunch. He watched the white hands with a lazy, æsthetic pleasure in their beauty as they gleamed among the crimson flowers of which she had gathered a larger quantity than of any other color.

He began to talk to her of the city where she lived, of the places she had visited, of people whom he supposed the Gordons would know. He was amazed at her ignorance on subjects where he would have supposed her to be at home.

"I have been to very few places, and I know very few people," she said, blushing. "I—I haven't been introduced into society yet. I am too young."

"Then where did she pick up that lover?" he asked himself. "She must have become infatuated with her dancing-master or her music-master."

But that evening when Mrs. Le Roy opened the piano and asked her to play, Beatrix begged to be excused. Being pressed, she declared that she had never learned the piano, she did not care for music—at least not very much.

No one expressed the surprise they felt. St. Leon played an aria for his mother, then they closed the piano.

"So it was not her music-master who won her heart. The circle narrows down to the professor of the terpsichorean art," he said to himself.

"My dear, I have been watching you closely," said Mrs. Le Roy, suddenly. "You do not at all resemble your mother. She had blue eyes, yours are black. Her features were quite different from yours. I have seen your father, but I forget how he looked. I suppose you are like him."

"Yes, I am like my father," Beatrix answered, but her face crimsoned, and she looked as if she were about to burst into tears. She commanded herself with an effort, and a little later, declaring that her head ached, she begged to be excused, and left the room.

"Poor girl! she is very unhappy!" said Mrs. Le Roy. "Isabel Gordon was very careless to let that child have a lover! She has no business out of the school-room."

CHAPTER VII

Beatrix went swiftly to the pretty dressing-room, where the maid was, busy sewing on a dinner-dress of pink nuns' veiling for her beautiful young mistress. She sunk down upon a chair and looked at Clarice with somber, miserable eyes.

"Oh, Clarice, I shall have to give it all up," she panted. "They suspect me—I am quite sure they do!"

Clarice looked frightened and disturbed, and even reproachful.

"Oh, Miss Gordon, don't say that," she exclaimed. "After all the drilling you've had, a clever, pretty girl like you ought to be able to act your part. But it's just as I told you to-day. You're too timid and nervous."

"Because I am conscious of my guilt," answered the girl, sadly. "I should not be timid and nervous in my own proper character, Clarice. But you know 'conscience makes cowards of us all.' Besides, I am ignorant on many subjects which Beatrix Gordon ought to know well. The people and places they ask me about I know nothing of, and they look surprised. To-day Mrs. Le Roy asked me to play on the piano. When I said I did not know how, I wish you could have seen their faces!"

"That was rather bad. The most of young ladies know how to play on the piano," said Clarice. "But anyhow they couldn't make out a case against you for that. You might have said that you didn't care for music."

"So I did, but the lie almost blistered my lips," said the girl, "for I love music dearly, and when Mr. Le Roy played a beautiful aria I was afraid he would see my delight on my face."

"You must be careful over that. Stick to your text," warned the maid. "If you make them think you don't like music they will not think it strange you cannot play. Was there anything else unpleasant?"

"Yes; Mrs. Le Roy told me I did not at all resemble my mother. Oh, I was so frightened when she began. My heart sprung to my lips!"

"What did you say?" asked Clarice, attentively.

"I told them I resembled my father—that was true at least," answered Beatrix, sighing.

"Well, the game is not lost yet," said Clarice. "Courage, Miss Gordon—hold your own bravely as you can. Remember all that is lost if you fail."

"I try to remember it," sighed the girl. "If it were not for her, Clarice, I should break down, I know I should. It is terrible to be living a lie. Oh, Clarice, do you think she is very happy now?"

"Happy as a queen," said Clarice, enthusiastically: "and she was so good and sweet she deserved it. Oh, you mustn't regret that you made a little sacrifice for her! And is it a sacrifice, after all? Look at this grand, beautiful home, all this luxury around you. Where would you be if my mistress hadn't sent you here?"

Where, indeed? The false Beatrix Gordon shivered as if with ague, her face blanched to a pallid hue. She thought of the homeless outcasts in the horrible streets, of the dark, flowing river, of St. Leon Le Roy's careless words to her that day: "I would throw myself into the river, and so end all!"

"I should not do that unless I were driven to desperation," said the girl to herself with unconscious bravery.

She looked through the window out upon the beautiful grounds.

"It is a lovely home," she said. "I could be very happy here if I had no shadow on my heart. But I cannot forget my sin. I remember always some lines that I have read:

'Some flowers of Eden we still inherit,But the trail of the serpent is over them all.'"

"I would not call it a sin if I were you," said Clarice. "That is too harsh a name. My mistress did not call it so. She said it was only a justifiable counter plot, only a harmless, girl's conspiracy."

"She ought to know best. She is older and wiser than I am," said the girl, with a gleam of hope on her face.

Clarice was very clever for a girl in her situation. As she worked away steadily on the pink dress, she artfully followed up the impression her last words had made:

"For my part I think it is the best joke I ever heard of. I do not pity the Gordons one bit. They deserve to be fooled!" she said. "There was no fault in Miss Gordon's lover, only he was not as rich as she was."

"Poverty is almost a crime in the eyes of the rich—is it not?" asked her mistress thoughtfully.

"Yes," Clarice answered, almost tartly, and she began to hum under her breath:

"'Dollars and dimes, dollars and dimes,An empty pocket is the worst of crimes!'"

Her young mistress remained gazing thoughtfully from the window, the sad expression of her face hidden by the falling waves of her golden hair. Deep, heavy sighs breathed at intervals over her lips.

Several days passed quietly without anything occurring to frighten our masquerading heroine again. The Le Roys gave no sign of their surprise at anything that occurred. They had, in fact, concluded that a great deal of her oddness and originality arose from the fact of the lover in the case. When she looked sad, as she often did, they concluded she was thinking of him. When St. Leon actually came upon her weeping silently one day he thought it was on account of the separation from our hero.

It vexed him. He did not go away and leave her alone, as his mother would have done. He said to her, sarcastically:

"Are you crying for your mamma, little girl?"

Beatrix flashed him a swift, angry look through her tears, and answered:

"No!"

"At least she has the grace to be honest," he said to himself.

Some curiosity came over him regarding the man who had won the heart of this girl. He would have liked to know his name, and what he looked like, and if he was worthy of the prize he had won.

"Confide in me, Miss Gordon," he said, obeying an impulse he could not himself understand. "Tell me what your trouble is. Perhaps I can help you."

Beatrix shuddered in horror. Ah, if he knew, how little he would be inclined to help her. Rather he would spurn her from the proud gates of Eden.

"You are very kind," she faltered. "I thank you, but it is nothing."

He looked at her a little scornfully.

"I have heard that women cry for nothing," he said. "I suppose it must be true, as I now hear it confirmed by one of the sex."

She seldom saw him except at meals, and a little while in the drawing-room of an evening. The most of his time was spent in the library or out riding and walking. But one day he came to her abruptly.

"I am going up to New York for a few days," he said. "I hope you will make use of my library while I am out of the way."

"Thank you," she said, radiantly.

"If I should see your parents," he continued, "shall I give them any message for you?"

She started, and the crimson rose she was holding fell from her hands. He wondered why she grew so deadly pale, and trembled so. The sudden radiance of a moment ago had all gone from her face.

"Give them my love," she said in a husky voice, "and tell them—tell them that I am greatly enjoying my visit to Eden."

CHAPTER VIII

St. Leon came home one afternoon and made his way straight to the library. The thickly carpeted floor gave back no echo to his footfalls, and he stood on the threshold of the room several minutes gazing in at the open door unobserved by the single occupant of the apartment.

As he had shrewdly suspected, his mother's guest had availed herself to the full of his permission to use the library in his absence.

Quite oblivious of his near presence now, Beatrix was curled up in his great easy-chair in a cozy, kittenish attitude, her warm flushed cheek buried in the hollow of one small hand, her dark eyes bent in rapt interest on an open book in her lap. A ray of sunshine stealing through the lace curtains at the window penciled golden bars on her white dress and bright hair, making her look like a picture to whose beauty St. Leon's cultured eyes were by no means oblivious. He hesitated to startle her from her pretty negligent attitude, but as he gazed his mesmeric eyes irresistibly attracted hers. She glanced up and met his dark, burning eyes fixed with a strange inscrutable expression upon her own.