My Pretty Maid; or, Liane Lester

"Had she but loved me, beautiful, hapless Liane, how different her lot in life would have been!" he thought, picturing her as the queen of his splendid home, her graceful form clothed in rich attire, her white throat and her tiny little hands glittering with costly gems, while she leaned on his breast, happy as a queen, his loving bride.

He wondered what had become of Malcolm Dean, and why his ardent admiration of Liane had waned so soon.

Almost simultaneously with the thought the doorbell rang, and Malcolm Dean's card was presented to him.

"Show the gentleman in."

They stood facing each other, the handsome blond artist and the dark-haired millionaire, and the latter recalled with a silent pang that Liane preferred men with fair hair and blue eyes.

They shook hands cordially; then, as Dean sank into a chair, he noted that he had grown pale and thin.

"You have been ill?"

"Yes, for weeks, of a low fever that kept me in bed in Philadelphia, while my heart was far away. Can you guess where, Devereaux?"

"Perhaps at Stonecliff?"

"Then you have guessed at my passion for the beautiful prize winner."

"It was patent to all observers that night," Devereaux answered, in a strangled voice, with a fierce thumping of the heart. Oh, God, how cruel it was to discuss her with his fortunate rival, who had only to ask and have.

Dean noticed nothing unusual. He continued earnestly:

"I don't mind owning to the truth, Devereaux. Yes, I lost my heart irretrievably that night to lovely Liane Lester, and I made up my mind to overlook the difference in our position and woo her for my own. But I had to go to Philadelphia the next day, and I was detained there some time getting my design ready for the magazine, and this was followed by a spell of illness. At length, all impatience, I returned to Stonecliff two days ago to seek the fair girl who had charmed me so. Fancy my dismay when I found her gone, and no clue to her whereabouts!"

Again Devereaux's heart thumped furiously.

"You loved her very much?" he asked hoarsely.

"I adored her. She was to me the incarnation of simple beauty and purity."

"And had you any token of her preference in return?"

"None. She was too shy and bashful to give me the sign the coquette might have deemed befitting. She hid her heart beneath the drooping fringe of her dark, curling lashes. Yet I dared to hope, and there was one thing in my favor: I did not have a rival."

"You are mistaken!"

"How?"

"I was your rival!"

"You, Devereaux!"

They almost glared at each other, and Devereaux said hoarsely:

"I was in love with Miss Lester before you ever saw her face!"

"After all, that is not strange. Who could see her and not love her? But was your suit successful?"

"No."

"Rejected?"

Devereaux flushed, then answered frankly:

"Yes."

Malcolm Dean could not conceal his joyful surprise.

"I cannot comprehend her rejection of your suit. I should have thought you irresistible."

Devereaux struggled a moment with natural pride and selfishness, then answered:

"She preferred you."

"Me? How should you know?"

"By her own confession to me."

Malcolm Dean was frankly staggered by his friend's statement. His blue eyes gleamed with joy and his bosom heaved with pride.

"You have made me very happy, but how very, very strange that she should have made such a confession to you," he cried, in wonder.

Again Devereaux had a short, sharp struggle with his better self and his natural jealousy of the more fortunate lover of Liane, then his pity for the girl triumphed over every selfish instinct, and he said:

"She was very frank with me—the frankness of innocence that saw no harm in the confidence. On the same principle I see no harm in confiding in you, Dean;" and he impulsively drew from his breast Liane's letter.

Had he dreamed of the fatal consequences, he would have withheld his eager hand.

There is love and love—love that has shallow roots and love that cannot be dragged up from its firm foundations.

"Read!" said Devereaux, generously placing in his rival's hand Liane's letter.

For himself he could have forgiven all her faults of innocence and ignorance could she but have returned his love.

It did not occur to his mind that the artist could be in any way different; that the ill spelling and the puerile mind evinced by the letter would inspire him with keen disgust.

It only seemed to him that all these faults could be remedied by Liane by the influence of a true love. The glamour of a strong passion was upon him, blinding him to the truth that instantly became patent to Dean's mind.

The artist, reading the shallow effusion, flung it down in keen disgust.

"Heavens, what a disappointment! Such beauty and apparent sweetness united to shallowness and vanity!" he exclaimed.

"It calls forth your pity?" Devereaux said.

"It excites my scorn!" the artist replied hotly.

"Remember her misfortunes—her bringing up by that wretched old relative in want and ignorance. Surely the influence of love will work every desirable change in the fair girl who loves you so fondly," argued Devereaux.

Malcolm Dean was pacing the floor excitedly.

"You could not change the shallow nature indicated by that letter, if you loved her to distraction," he exclaimed. "Mark how she confesses to deliberate coquetry to win you from your betrothed; how cold-bloodedly she gloats over her triumph. Why, my love is dead in an instant, Devereaux, slain by this glimpse at Liane Lester's real nature. Thank fortune, I did not find her at Stonecliff yesterday. I shall never seek her now, for my eyes are opened by that heartless letter. Why are you staring at me so reproachfully, Devereaux? You have even more cause to despise than I have."

"And yet I cannot do it; Heaven help me, I love her still!" groaned the other, bowing his pale face upon his hands.

"But, Devereaux; this is madness! She is not worth your love. Fling the poison from your heart as I do. Forget the light coquette. Return to your first love."

"Never!" he cried; but in all his pain he could not help an unconscious joy that Liane could yet be won.

He had not meant to turn Dean's heart against her, but the mischief was done now. Poor little girl! Would she hate him if she knew?

The old pitying tenderness surged over him again, and he longed to take her in his arms and shield her from all the assaults of the cruel world. Vain and shallow she might be; coquette she might be, yet she had stormed the citadel of his heart and held it still against all intruders.

"I am going now," the artist cried; turning on him restlessly. "This is good-by for months, Devereaux. I think I shall join some friends of mine who are going to winter in Italy, to study art, you know. Wish you would come with us."

"I should like to, but my father is lately dead, you know, and Lieutenant Carrington, my sister's husband, is ordered to sea with his ship. I cannot leave Lyde alone, poor girl."

"Then good-by, and thank you for showing me that letter. What if I had married her in ignorance?" with a shudder. "For Heaven's sake, Devereaux, be careful of getting into her toils again. Better go back to Miss Clarke, and make up your quarrel. Adieu," and with a hearty handclasp, he was gone, leaving his friend almost paralyzed with the remorseful thought:

"Would she ever forgive me if she guessed the harm I have done?"

CHAPTER XXI.

A HARVEST OF WOE

Devereaux's thoughts clung persistently to Liane. He could not shut away from his mind her haunting image.

Pity blended with tenderness, as putting himself and his own disappointment aside, he gave himself up to thoughts of bettering her poverty-stricken life, so toilsome and lonely.

He took up his pen and wrote feelingly to Edmund Clarke, telling him how and where he had found Liane again, and of his full belief in her purity and innocence, despite the cruel slanders circulating in Stonecliff, the work, no doubt, he said, of some jealous, unscrupulous enemy.

He assured Mr. Clarke that he was ready to assist in any way he might suggest in bettering the fair young girl's hard lot in life.

The letter was immediately posted, and went on its fateful way to fall into jealous Roma's hands and work a harvest of woe.

Affairs at Cliffdene were already in a critical stage, and it wanted but this letter to fan the smoldering flames into devastating fury.

Mr. Clarke, impatient of his lingering convalescence, had taken a decisive step toward recovering his lost daughter.

He had written a letter summoning old Doctor Jay, of Brookline, on a visit, and he had explained it to his wife by pretending he wished to avail himself of the old man's medical skill.

Doctor Jay was the physician who had attended Mrs. Clarke when her daughter was born, and he received a warm welcome at Cliffdene, a guest whom all delighted to honor; all, at least, but Roma, who immediately conceived an unaccountable aversion to the old man, perhaps because his little hazel-gray eyes peered at her so curiously through his glasses beneath his bushy gray eyebrows.

There was something strange in his intent scrutiny, so coldly curious, instead of kindly, as she had a right to expect, and she said pettishly to her mother:

"I detest Doctor Jay. I hope he is not going to stay long."

"Oh, no, I suppose not, but I am very fond of Doctor Jay. He was very kind and sympathetic to me at a time of great suffering and trouble," Mrs. Clarke replied so warmly that she aroused Roma's curiosity.

"Tell me all about it," she exclaimed.

Mrs. Clarke had never been able to recall that time without suffering, but she impulsively told Roma the whole story, never dreamed of until now, of the loss of her infant and its mysterious restoration at the last moment, when her life was sinking away hopelessly into eternity.

Roma listened with startled attention, and she began to ask questions that her mother found impossible to answer.

"Who had stolen away the babe, and by what agency had it been restored?" demanded Roma.

Mrs. Clarke could not satisfy her curiosity. The subject was so painful her husband would never discuss it with her, she declared, adding that Roma must not think of it any more, either.

But, being in a reminiscent mood, she presently told Roma how she had been deceived in old Granny Jenks' identity, and how indignantly the old woman had denied the imputation of having been her nurse.

"I was so sure of her identity that her anger was quite embarrassing," she said.

Roma's thoughts returned to granny's affection for herself, and she felt sure the old woman had lied to her mother, though from what object she could not conceive. Her abject affection for herself seemed fully explained by the fact of her having been her nurse child.

But she was, somehow, ill at ease after hearing her mother's story, and longed eagerly to know more than she had already heard.

"I wonder if I dare question papa or the old doctor?" she thought when her mother had left her alone, resting easily in her furred dressing gown and slippers before a bright coal fire, while in the room beyond Dolly Dorr was getting her bath ready.

Roma was devoured by curiosity. She sat racking her brain for a pretext to intrude on her father and the old doctor, who were still in the library together, chatting over old times when the Clarkes had lived in Brookline.

A lucky thought came to her, and she murmured:

"I will pretend to have a headache, and ask Doctor Jay for something to ease it. Then I will stay a while chatting with them and making myself very agreeable until I can bring the subject around, and get the interesting fact of my abduction out of them."

Stealing noiselessly from the room, she glided downstairs like a shadow, pausing abruptly at the hall table, for there lay the evening's mail, just brought in by a servant from the village post office.

Roma turned over the letters and papers, finding none for any one but her father, but the superscription on one made her start with a stifled cry.

She recognized the elegant chirography of Jesse Devereaux on the back of one letter.

"Now, why is he writing to papa?" she wondered, eagerly turning the letter over and over in her burning hand, wild with curiosity that tempted her at last to slip the letter into her bosom.

Then, taking the rest of the mail in her hand, Roma went to the library, thinking that the delivery of the mail would furnish another plausible pretext for her intrusion.

There was a little anteroom just adjoining the library, and this she entered first to wait a moment till the fierce beating of her heart over Devereaux's letter should quiet down.

Her slippered feet made no sound on the thick velvet carpet, and, as she rested for a moment in a large armchair, she could hear the murmur of animated voices through the heavy portières that hung between her and the library.

Believing that the whole family had retired, and that they were safe from interruption, Doctor Jay and his host had returned to the tragedy of eighteen years before—the loss of the infant that had nearly cost the mother's life.

Roma caught her breath with a stifled gasp of self-congratulation, hoping now to hear the whole interesting story without moving from her chair.

In her hope she was not disappointed.

"I have never ceased to regret the substitution of that spurious infant in place of my own lovely child," sighed Mr. Clarke.

Roma gave a start of consternation, and almost betrayed herself by screaming out aloud, but she bit her lips in time, while her wildly throbbing heart seemed to sink like a stone in her breast.

Doctor Jay said questioningly:

"You have never been able to love your adopted daughter as your own?"

"Never, never!" groaned Edmund Clarke despairingly.

"And her mother?"

"She knows nothing, suspects nothing; for the one object of my life has been to keep her in ignorance of the truth that Roma is not her own child. She has an almost slavish devotion to the girl, but I think in her inmost heart she realizes Roma's lack of lovable qualities, though she is too loyal to her child to admit the truth even to me."

"It is strange, most strange, that no clue has ever been found that would lead to the discovery of your lost little one," mused the old doctor, and after a moment's silence the other answered:

"One thing I would like to know, and that is the family from which Roma sprang. It must have been low, judging frankly from the girl herself."

The listener clinched her hands till the blood oozed from the tender palms on hearing these words, and she would have liked to clutch the speaker's throat instead.

But she sat still, like one paralyzed, a deadly hatred tugging at her heartstrings, listening as one listens to the sentence of death, while Doctor Jay cleared his throat, and answered:

"I am sorry, most sorry, that your surmises are correct, but naturally one would not expect to find good blood in a foundling asylum, though when I sent Nurse Jenks for the child, I told her to get an infant of honest parentage, if she could."

"Then you know Roma's antecedents?" Mr. Clarke questioned anxiously.

"My dear friend, I wish that you would not press the subject."

"Answer me; I must know! The bitterest truth could not exceed my suspicions!" almost raved Mr. Clarke in his eagerness, and again the clinched hands of the listener tightened as if they were about his throat.

Hate, swift, terrible, murderous, had sprung to life, full grown in the angry girl's heart.

She heard the old doctor cough and sigh again, and a futile wish rose in her that he had dropped down dead before he ever came to Cliffdene.

Doctor Jay, all unconscious of her proximity and her charitable wishes, proceeded hesitatingly:

"Since you insist, I must own the truth. Nurse Jenks deceived me."

"How?" hoarsely.

"She never went near the foundling asylum. She had at her own home an infant, the child of a worthless daughter, who had run away previously to go on the stage. Leaving this child on her mother's hands, the actress again ran away, and the old grandmother palmed it off on you as a foundling."

"My God! I see it all," groaned Edmund Clarke. "The old fiend exchanged infants, putting her grandchild in the place of my daughter, and raising her in poverty and wretchedness. I have seen my child with her, my beautiful daughter. Listen to my story," he cried, pouring out to the astonished old physician the whole moving story of Liane Lester.

CHAPTER XXII.

AT A FIEND'S MERCY

Doctor Jay listened with breathless attention, and so did Roma.

Pale as a breathing statue, her great eyes dilated with dismay and horror, her heart beating heavily and slow, Roma crouched in her chair and listened to the awful words that told her who and what she was, the base-born child of Cora Jenks, and granddaughter of old granny, whose very name was a synonym for contempt in Stonecliff.

She, Roma, who despised poor people, who treated them no better than the dust beneath her well-shod feet, belonged to the common herd, and was usurping the place of beautiful Liane, whom she had despised for her lowly estate and hated for her beauty, but who had become first her rival in love and now in fortune.

To the day of her death beautiful, wicked Roma never forgot that bleak November night, that blasted all her pride and flung her down into the dust of humiliation and despair, her towering pride crushed, all the worst passions of her evil nature aroused into pernicious activity.

Stiller than chiseled marble, the stricken girl crouched there, listening, fearing to lose even a single word, though each one quivered like a dagger in her heart.

Her greatest enemy could not have wished her a keener punishment than this knowledge of her position in the Clarke household—an adopted daughter, secretly despised and only tolerated for the mother's sake, holding her place only until the real heiress should be discovered.

No words could paint her rage, her humiliation, her terrors of the future, that held a sword that might at any moment fall.

Oh, how she hated the world, and every one in it, and most of all Liane Lester, her guiltless rival.

While she listened, she wished the girl dead a hundred times, and all at once a throbbing memory came to her of the fierce words Granny Jenks had spoken in her rage against Liane.

"I would beat her; yes, I would kill her, before she should steal your grand lover from you darling!"

Roma could understand now the old hag's devotion to herself. It was the tie of their kinship asserting itself. She shuddered with disgust as she recalled the old woman's fulsome admiration and adoration, and how she had been willing to sell her very soul for one kiss from those fresh, rosy lips.

How eagerly she had said:

"I will scold Liane, and whip her, too. I will do anything to please you, beautiful lady!"

No wonder!

Roma was bitterly sorry now that she had not let granny kill Liane when she had been so anxious to do it. She felt that she had made a great mistake, for her position at Cliffdene would never be assured until Liane was dead.

Edmund Clarke was certain now that Liane was his own child, and he swore to Doctor Jay that he would find her soon, if it took the last dollar of his fortune.

The old doctor replied:

"I do not blame you, my friend, for it does, indeed, appear plausible that this Liane Lester must be your own lost child, and I can conceive how galling it must be to your pride to call Nurse Jenks' grandchild your daughter, while, as for your noble wife, it is cruel to think of the imposition practiced on her motherly love all these years. But it is certain that she must have died but for the terrible deception we had to practice."

Edmund Clarke knew that it was true. He remembered how she had been drifting from him out on the waves of the shoreless sea, and how the piping cry of the little infant had called her back to life and hope.

"Yes, it was a terrible necessity," he groaned, adding:

"And only think, dear doctor, how sad it is that Roma, with a devilish cunning, that must be a keen instinct, has always hated sweet Liane, and has succeeded in poisoning my wife's mind against her, arousing a mean jealousy in my uncomprehended interest in the girl! Think of such a sweet mother being set against her own sweet daughter!"

"It is horrible," assented Doctor Jay, and he continued:

"But this excitement is telling on your nerves, dear friend, weakened by your recent severe illness. Let me persuade you to retire to bed, with a sedative now, and to-morrow we will further discuss your plan of employing a detective to trace Liane and the fiendish Nurse Jenks."

"I believe I will take your advice," Roma heard Edmund Clarke respond wearily, and Doctor Jay insisted on preparing a sedative, which he said should be mixed in a glass of water, half the dose to be taken on retiring, and the remainder in two hours, if the patient proved wakeful.

"I wish it was a dose of poison," Roma thought vindictively, as she hurried from the room and gained her own unperceived, where she found her maid waiting most impatiently to assist her in her bath.

"Never mind, Dolly, you can go to bed now. I went to mamma's room for a little chat, and we talked longer than I expected, so I will wait on myself this once," she said, with unwonted kindness in her eagerness to be alone; so Dolly curtsied and retired, though she said to herself:

"She is lying. She was not in her mother's room at all, for I went there to see, and Mrs. Clarke had retired. She must have been up to some mischief and don't want to be found out. She had a guilty look."

Meanwhile Roma flung herself into the easy-chair before the glowing fire, stretched out her slippered feet on the thick fur rug, and gave herself up to the bitterest reflections.

"There are four people who are terribly in my way, and whom I would like to see dead! They are Liane Lester, Granny Jenks, old Doctor Jay, and Edmund Clarke, the man I have heretofore regarded as my father," she muttered vindictively.

She knew that the two last named would know neither rest nor peace till they found Liane and reinstated her in her place at Cliffdene as daughter and heiress, ousting without remorse the usurper.

"Ah, if I only knew where to find her, granny would soon put her out of my way forever!" she thought, regretting bitterly now that she had not made the old hag keep her informed of her whereabouts.

The spirit of murder was rife in Roma's heart, and she longed to end the lives of all those who stood in her way.

"I wish that Edmund Clarke would die to-night! How easy it would be if some arsenic were dropped into his sedative—some of that solution I was taking a while ago to improve my complexion," she thought darkly, resolving to wait until all was quiet and herself attempt the hellish deed.

One death already lay on her conscience, and the form of the man she had remorselessly thrust over the bluff stalked grimly through her dreams. To her soul, already black with crime, what did the commission of other deeds of darkness matter?

The death of Edmund Clarke so quickly decreed, she began to plan that of the old doctor.

This was not so easy. He did not have a convenient glass of sedative ready by his bedside. But she had noticed at supper that he was fond of a glass of wine.

"I must poison a draught for him before he leaves Cliffdene," she thought, regretting that she could not accomplish it to-night.

But Edmund Clarke's speedy death would delay the search for Liane a while, even if it did not postpone it forever.

For the old physician was not likely to prosecute it after the death of his patron. He could have no interest in doing so, though she would make sure he did not by putting him out of the way if she could.

Her mind a chaos of evil thoughts, Roma rested in her chair, waiting till she thought every one must be asleep before she stole from the room to poison the draught for the man she had regarded until this hour as her own father, and to whose wealth she owed her luxurious life of eighteen years.

Neither pity nor gratitude warmed her cold heart. She had never loved him in her life, and she hated him now.