My Pretty Maid; or, Liane Lester

Beautiful Roma looked after Mr. Clarke with angry eyes, muttering:

"The idea of scolding me, his daughter and heiress, about that insignificant little sewing girl! And he thought her very beautiful. I wonder if mamma would be jealous if she heard of his open admiration! I think I will give her a hint, and see!" and she laughed wickedly, while she again turned her eyes toward the gate, watching for her laggard lover.

"Why doesn't he come?" she murmured impatiently, for Roma was so spoiled by overindulgence of a willful nature that she could not bear to wait for anything. She was imperious as a queen.

As the minutes slipped past without bringing the lover, for whom she waited so eagerly, her angry temper began to flame in her great, red-brown eyes like sparks of fire, and she paced back and forth between the arbor and the gate like a caged lioness, her bosom heaving with emotion.

Jesse Devereaux, who had known her only as a bright, vivacious girl, would not have known his sweetheart now, in her fury of rage at his nonappearance.

Angry tears sparkled in her eyes, as she cried:

"If he could not keep his word, he should have sent an excuse. He must know I shall be bitterly disappointed!"

All the beauty of the night mattered nothing to her now. The moonlight, the flowers, the murmur of the sea, were maddening to the girl waiting there alone for her recreant lover. Love and hate struggled for mastery in her capricious breast.

Jesse Devereaux had been hard to win, but she prized him all the more for that, and she could not bear the least apparent slight from him.

"He did not care to come; he has let some trivial excuse keep him away! I will have to teach him that he cannot trifle with my love!" she vowed darkly, flying into the house in a passion.

Seating herself angrily at her desk, she wrote:

Mr. Devereaux: Your failure to keep your engagement with me this evening, without any apparent excuse, seems to me a sufficient excuse for breaking our engagement.

Roma.

She tore a sparkling diamond from her finger, wrapped it in a bit of tissue paper, and inclosed it in the letter, hurrying downstairs again and sending it off to Stonecliff by a messenger, with special directions to deliver it personally to Jesse Devereaux at his hotel.

Her feelings somewhat relieved by this explosion of resentment, Roma laughed harshly, murmuring to herself:

"He will be here the first thing in the morning to beg me to take him back, promising never to slight me so cruelly again. Of course, I will forgive him, after pouting a while, and making him very uneasy, but from this day forward he will have learned a lesson that I must be first with him in everything. I will never tolerate neglect, and he must learn that fact at once."

She was so agitated she could not go into the house just yet. She wandered about the grounds, trying to overcome her angry excitement before she went in, for she knew that her mother was sure to come to her room for a little chat before retiring, and she could not bear her questioning.

"Dear mamma, I know she idolizes me, but at times I find her very tiresome," she soliloquized. "How tired I get of her lecturing on the beauty of goodness, as if I were the wickedest girl in the world! I know I am not goody-goody, as she is, and I don't want to be! Good people don't have much fun in this world; they let the wicked ones get the advantage and run over them always. However, I shall be as sweet as sugar to her to-night, for I want her to help me tease papa to-morrow for that set of rubies I want!"

She leaned upon the gate, letting the cool wind caress her heated brow, waiting for her cheeks to cool, and her heart to thump less fiercely with anger before she went in to encounter her mother's searching gaze; but it would have been a thousand times better for her if she had gone to sob her grief out on that mother's gentle breast, than waited here for the fate that was swiftly approaching.

The dark, sinister-looking stranger who had insulted Liane Lester on the beach had rowed back to shore as soon as Devereaux was out of sight.

He was interested in Roma Clarke, as his questions to Liane had plainly shown.

He came slowly, cautiously, up to the gate, his heart leaping with hope as he saw a beautiful head leaning over it that he hoped and believed must be Roma's herself.

"What luck for me, and what a shock for her!" he muttered grimly, as he advanced.

At the same moment Mrs. Clarke was sending Roma's maid out with a message that it was so chilly she ought to come in, or she might take cold.

She would not listen to her husband's remonstrance that Roma was with her lover, and might not wish to be interrupted.

"Jesse can come in, too; I am sure he would not wish Roma to get sick out in the night air with nothing on her head!" cried the anxious mother.

"How you love that girl!" he cried testily, and she laughed sweetly.

"Are you getting jealous of my love for our daughter, dear? You need not, for the first place in my heart is yours, but remember how devoted I have always been to Roma, ever since she was born."

"I know, but has she ever seemed to show the right appreciation of your devotion?" he exclaimed abruptly.

A deep and bitter sigh quivered over the wife's lips, but she parried the question with a complaint:

"You are always insinuating some fault against my darling. Your heart is cold to her, Edmund."

He put his arms around her, and kissed the still lovely face with the passion of a lover.

"At least it is not cold to you, my darling!" he cried; and pleased at his love-making, she momentarily forgot Roma, and nestled confidingly against his breast.

He was glad that she could not know his secret thoughts, for they ran stubbornly:

"She is right. My heart is indeed cold to Roma. I shall be glad when Devereaux marries her and takes her away, and I do not believe it will break my wife's heart, either; for she seemed to bear it well enough when her daughter was away at boarding school those three years."

Meanwhile Sophie went away most reluctantly with her message, thinking:

"I am sure Miss Roma will not thank me for breaking up her tête-à-tête with her lover, for, of course, she is staying out just to keep him all to herself. But I cannot disobey Mrs. Clarke's commands, though I'll saunter along as slowly as I can, so as to give Miss Roma a little more time."

Sophie was an intelligent and good-hearted girl, and might have been invaluable to Roma, if she could have appreciated such a treasure; but by her selfishness and arrogance she had completely antagonized the young woman, who only stayed, as she had frankly told Liane, for Mrs. Clarke's sake.

As she strolled along, picking a flower here and there, and giving Roma all the time she could, she thought of Liane with pity and admiration.

"There's a lovely girl for you! If she had been rich instead of Miss Roma, I fancy she'd make a better mistress," she murmured, and then the sound of subdued voices came to her ears.

"There she is at the gate with Mr. Devereaux, sure!" she thought, as she saw two heads together, the man's outside, while the murmur of excited voices came to her ears.

"I hope they aren't quarreling already! She had trouble enough hooking him, to be sure!" she thought as she went forward noiselessly, perhaps hoping to catch a word.

She was rewarded by hearing Roma say:

"I will come outside and talk with you. We must not run the risk of being overheard by any one from the house."

The gate latch clicked as she stepped outside and joined her companion, a tall, dark man, whom Sophie did not doubt must be Jesse Devereaux.

She led her companion out toward the high cliff, washed at its base by the surging sea, and Sophie stole after them, thinking curiously:

"Now, what secret have they got, these two, that no one from the house must overhear, I wonder? It is very strange, indeed, and I'll bet they have a mind to elope, just to make a sensation! These rich folks will do any foolish thing to get their names and pictures in the papers! They think it's fame, but any jailbird can get published in the papers. Well, I'll follow you, my lady, and there's one from the house who will hear your secret in spite of your precautions."

She crept along after them, so near that if they had turned their heads they must have seen the skulking figure; but neither Roma nor the man looked back, but kept along the edge of the cliff on the narrow path, talking angrily, it seemed to Sophie, though their words were drowned by the roar of the sea, to the great chagrin of the curious maid.

"But they are certainly quarreling! Ah, now they are stopping! I don't want to interrupt them yet; so I'll hide!" she thought, darting behind a convenient ledge.

In the clear and brilliant moonlight the two figures faced each other, perilously near to the edge of the cliff, and Sophie, peering at them from her concealment, suddenly saw a terrible thing happen.

The man had his back to the sea, facing Roma, and both were talking vehemently, it seemed, from their gestures; when all at once the girl thrust out her foot and struck her companion's knee, causing him to lose his balance. The result was inevitable.

The tall figure lurched backward, swayed an instant, trying to recover itself, toppled over with a shriek of rage, and went over the cliff a hundred feet down into the foaming waters.

CHAPTER VI.

AFTER THE CRIME

Sophie Nutter could hardly believe the evidence of her own startled eyes when she saw the terrible crime of her young mistress.

She knew that Roma was selfish and cruel, but she had never realized that such depths of wickedness were concealed beneath her beautiful exterior.

When she saw Roma push the supposed Jesse Devereaux over the face of the cliff to a dreadful death, the hair seemed to rise on her head with horror, and from her lips burst an uncontrollable shriek of dismay and remonstrance, while she tried to spring forward with outstretched arms in a futile impulse to avert the man's awful fate.

Too late! The writhing, struggling body went hurtling down over the high cliff, and struck the water with a loud thud that dashed the spray high in air. Then Sophie's limbs relaxed beneath her, and she fell in a heap like one paralyzed, behind the ledge of stones, while her terrified shriek went wandering forth on the air of night like a wailing banshee.

But Roma had shrieked, wildly, too—perhaps in nature's recoil from her own sin—so Sophie's protesting cry lost itself in dismal echoes. Then all grew still save for the voice of the sea and the dash of water churning itself to fury at the foot of the bluff.

The maid, crouching low in her concealment, heard Roma flying with terror-haunted footsteps from the scene of her awful crime, and muttered distractedly:

"She has murdered her handsome lover, the beautiful fiend! God in heaven alone knows why! I thought she loved the very ground he trod on!"

The maid was suffering from severe nervous shock. She sobbed hysterically as she thought of handsome Jesse Devereaux lying drowned at the foot of the cliff, and beaten by the cruel waves that would wash him out to sea when the tide turned, so that Roma's sin would be forever hidden from the sight of men.

"I will go and inform on her at once! She shall suffer the penalty!" she vowed at first; but when she thought of gentle, loving Mrs. Clarke her resolution wavered.

"It will kill her to learn of her child's wickedness, the good, gentle lady who has been so kind and generous to me! I do not know what to do! I would like to punish the daughter, and spare the mother, but I cannot do both," she groaned, in a state of miserable indecision.

It was some time before her trembling limbs permitted her to drag herself from the spot; and when she gained the house and her bed she could not rest. She tossed and groaned, and at length was seized with hysterical spasms, obliging the housemaid to call for assistance.

In the meantime Roma, far less excited than Sophie, had also retired to her room and flung herself down by the open window to await impatiently the inevitable good-night chat with her mother.

"I wish she would not come. Her affection grows really tiresome at times," she muttered rebelliously, as she heard the light footsteps outside her door.

Mrs. Clarke entered and sat down close to her daughter, putting her white hand tenderly on the girl's shoulder.

"Good girl, to come in when mamma sent for you," she said caressingly, as to a child.

"You—sent—for—me!" Roma faltered, in surprise.

"Yes, by Sophie. I feared you would take cold, bareheaded out in the night air."

"I have not seen Sophie," Roma muttered sullenly, with a downcast face.

"Why did Jesse leave so soon?" continued the mother curiously.

"He did not come. I have been walking in the grounds alone."

"But your papa said, dear–"

"Yes, I know; papa told you I was waiting for Jesse at the gate, but he never came. He disappointed me!"

"Why, that is very strange, dear. And you are grieved over it, I see. Your face is pale, and your whole frame trembles under my touch. Do not take it so hard, darling. Of course Jesse was detained. He will come to-morrow."

"He should have sent me an excuse, mamma!"

"He must have been prevented. I am sure he would not neglect you purposely. He will explain to-morrow."

Roma tossed her proud head, with a bitter laugh.

"I tell you, mamma, I will not brook such negligence. I have broken our engagement."

"Roma!"

The girl gave a reckless laugh of wounded pride.

"Yes; I sent him a note, with his ring, just now, setting him free."

"You were precipitate, Roma; you should have waited for an explanation."

"I did not choose to wait!"

"I fear you will regret it."

"I do not think it likely."

Mrs. Clarke gazed at her in sorrowful silence, whose reproach goaded Roma into adding haughtily:

"I wished to teach Jesse, early, a lesson that I am not to be neglected for anything; that I must be foremost always in his thoughts."

"But have you not gone too far in giving him this lesson? His thoughts will not belong to you now."

"He will bring back his ring, and beg me to take it back to-morrow."

"Are you certain, Roma?"

"As sure as I am of my life!" with a confident laugh.

"Well, perhaps you know him better than I do, Roma, but I fancied Jesse Devereaux very high-spirited—too high-spirited to bear dictation."

"He will have to bend to my will!" Roma cried arrogantly, and the gentle lady sighed, for she knew that her daughter made this her own motto in life. Power and dominion were hers by the force of "might makes right."

Mrs. Clarke rose with a sigh and touched Roma's cheeks with her lips, saying kindly:

"Well, I hope it will all come right, dear. Good night."

She returned to her own room, thinking: "Poor girl, she is the miserable victim of her own caprice. I could see that she is too terribly agitated to sleep an hour to-night."

CHAPTER VII.

GRANNY'S REVENGE

The half dozen pretty young girls who served for Miss Bray were light-hearted, hopeful young creatures in spite of their poverty, and at their daily work they sociably discussed their personal affairs with the freedom and intimacy of friends. Beaus and dress were the choice topics just as in higher circles of society. Liane Lester was the only quiet one among them, granny's edicts barring her both from lovers and finery.

Dolly Dorr was turning them all green with envy the next morning by boasting of the attentions she had received from the grand Mr. Devereaux, when one of the girls, Lottie Day, interposed:

"He is not likely to call on you again very soon, for I heard Brother Tom saying at breakfast this morning that Mr. Devereaux had broken his arm by a fall last night."

A chorus of compassionate remarks followed this announcement, and Dolly exclaimed vivaciously:

"I wish I might be allowed to nurse the poor fellow!"

Nan Brooks replied chaffingly:

"Miss Roma Clarke might have some objection to that scheme. They say she is engaged to him."

"That's why I want a good chance to cut her out. The proud, stuck-up thing!" cried Dolly indignantly, and from the remarks that followed it was plainly to be seen that Miss Clarke was not a favorite among the pretty sewing girls.

Roma had never lost an opportunity to impress them with the difference in their stations and her own, as if she were made of quite a superior sort of clay, and the high-spirited young creatures bitterly resented her false pride.

Not one of them but would have been glad to see Dolly "cut her out," as they phrased it, with the handsome Devereaux, but they frankly believed that there could be no such luck.

In their gay chatter, Liane alone remained silent, her beautiful head bent low over her sewing to hide the tears that had sprung to her eyes while they talked of Jesse Devereaux's accident.

"It was for my sake!" she thought gratefully, with rising blushes, though her heart sank like lead when she heard them saying he was engaged to Miss Clarke.

"He belongs to that proud, cruel girl! How I pity him!" she thought. "Yet, no doubt, he admires her very much. She does not show him the mean, selfish side of her character, as she does to us poor sewing girls."

She would have given anything if only she had not yielded to her passionate gratitude, and kissed his hand.

"He was disgusted at my boldness. He believed I had given him my love unasked, and he turned away in scorn. Yet how could I help it, he was so kind to me; first saving me from that ruffian, then from granny's blows? Oh, how could I help but love him? And I wish, like Dolly, that I might be permitted to nurse him as some reparation for his goodness," she thought, her cheeks burning and her heart throbbing wildly with the tenderness she could not stifle.

Every way she looked it seemed to her she could see his dark face, with its dazzling black eyes, looking at her with an admiration and tenderness they should not have shown, if he were indeed betrothed to another. Those glances and smiles had lured Liane's heart from her own keeping and doomed her to passionate unrest.

She listened to everything in silence, nursing her sweet, painful secret in her heart, afraid lest a breath should betray her, until suddenly Ethel Barry, the girl next her, exclaimed:

"How quiet Liane is this morning, not taking the least interest in anything we say!"

"No interest! Oh, Heaven!" thought Liane, but Dolly Dorr interposed:

"You would be quiet, too, if you had been beaten as Liane was by granny last night, and forced to seek refuge with a friend."

Liane crimsoned painfully at having her own troubles discussed, but granny's faults were public property, and she could not deny the truth.

"She is old and cross," she said, generously trying to offer some excuse.

"You need not take up for her, Liane. She doesn't deserve it!" cried one and all, while Mary Lang, the oldest and most staid of the six girls, quickly offered to share her own room with Liane if she would never return to the old woman.

She was an orphan, and rented a room with a widow, living cozily at what she called "room-keeping," and the girls had many jolly visits taking tea with Mary.

Liane thanked her warmly for her offer.

"But will you come?" asked Mary.

"I cannot."

"But why?"

The girl sighed heavily as she explained:

"Granny came to Mrs. Dorr's this morning, all penitence for her fault, and begged me to come home, promising never to beat me again."

"Do not trust her; do not go!" cried they all; but it was useless.

"She is old and poor. How could she get along without me? She would have to go to the poorhouse, and think how cruelly that would disgrace me!" cried Liane, who had no love for the old wretch, but supported her through mingled pride and pity.

And she actually returned to the shanty that day when her work was done, much to the relief of the old woman, who feared she had driven her meek slave off forever.

"So you are back? That's a good girl!" she said approvingly, and added: "They may tell you, those foolish girls, that I am too strict with you, Liane, but I'm an old woman, and I know what's best for you, girl. It was through letting your mother have her own way that she went to her ruin; that's why I'm so strict on you."

"My mother went to her—ruin!" faltered Liane, flushing crimson, but very curious, for she had never been able to extract a word from granny about her parents, except that they were both dead and had been no credit to her while living.

"Yes, her ruin," granny replied, with a malicious side glance at the startled girl. "She ran away from me to be an actress when she wasn't but seventeen, and a year later she came back to me with a baby in her arms—you! She had been deceived and deserted, and you, poor thing, had no lawful name but the one she had picked out of a book—Liane Lester."

"Oh, Heaven!" sobbed the girl, burying her white face in her hands, thinking that this blow was more cruel even than one of the old woman's beatings.

At heart Liane had a strange pride, and she was bitterly ashamed of her low origin and her cruel grandmother, whom no one respected because of her vile temper.

To be told now that she had no lawful name, that her mother had been deceived and deserted, was like a sword thrust in the poor girl's heart.

She sobbed bitterly, as granny added:

"I didn't never mean to tell you the truth, but now that you are getting wild and willful, like your mother was, it's best for you to know it, and take her fate as a warning."

Liane knew the accusation was not true, but she did not contradict it; she only sobbed:

"Did my mother die of a broken heart?"

"No, indeed, the minx; she got well and ran away again, and left you on my hands."

"Is she living now?"

"She is, for all I know to the contrary. But she takes good care never to come near me, nor to send me a dollar for your support."

"I take care of myself, and you, too, granny."

"Yes, the best you can; but she ought to help—the ungrateful creature!" granny exclaimed so earnestly that she could scarcely doubt the truth of her story.

It was a cruel blow to Liane's pride, and up in her bare little chamber under the eaves that night she lay awake many hours sobbing hopelessly over her fate.

"I would rather be dead than the daughter of a woman who was deceived and deserted! Mr. Devereaux would never give me a second thought if he knew," she sighed, with burning cheeks, as she sank into a restless sleep, troubled with dreams in which her hero's magnetic, dark eyes played the principal part—dreams so sweet that she grieved when the cold gray light of dawn glimmered upon her face and roused her to reality and another day of toil.

Very eagerly the girls questioned her when she reached Miss Bray's as to granny's mood, and she answered quietly:

"No, she did not scold me or strike me this time; she was kind in her way."

But she did not tell them granny's way of kindness, for her heart sank with shame as she looked around the group of her light-hearted friends, thinking how different their lot was from hers; all of them having honorable parentage, and dreading lest they would not wish to associate with her if they knew she had no right to her pretty name, Liane Lester, that her wronged mother had simply picked it out of a story book.

Miss Bray had a hurry order this morning—a white gown ruffled to the waist—so she set all the girls to work, and as they worked their tongues flew—they knew pretty nearly everything that had happened in the village since yesterday.

The choice bit of gossip was that Miss Clarke's maid, Sophie Nutter, had left her, and gone to Boston.

"They say she had a sick spell night before last, and went out of her head, talking awful things, so that the servants were quite frightened, and called up their mistress herself. Sophie had hysterical spasms, and accused Miss Roma of dreadful crimes right before her mother's face," said Mary Lang.

"Miss Roma must have been very angry—she has such a temper," cried Dolly, as she threaded her needle.

"Oh, Miss Roma wasn't present, and her mother took steps never to let her find it out, you may be sure."