Alas! nor words, nor tears, nor embraces, nor reproaches could move Love Ellsworth from his statue-like repose.
He suffered Dainty's caresses passively, but he did not return them, and his large, beautiful dark eyes dwelt on her face with the gentle calm of an infant whose intellect is not yet awakened.
"You see how it is, Miss Chase, and God knows how sorry I am to see my dear master so," Franklin said, sorrowfully, as she desisted at last, and gazed in silent anguish at the mental wreck in the chair.
A new thought came to her, and she exclaimed:
"Where is my mother?"
"She returned to Richmond almost a month ago, Miss Chase."
"Why did she not remain and nurse poor Love?" she groaned.
Franklin hesitated a moment, then returned in a respectful undertone:
"I can not say for a certainty, miss, but it is whispered among the servants that Mrs. Ellsworth sent her away because the young ladies wished it."
"The young ladies?" inquiringly.
"Miss Peyton and Miss Craye, your cousins. Mrs. Ellsworth has adopted them as her joint heiresses since she came into the fortune that my master lost by his failure to marry on his twenty-sixth birthday."
He gave a great start of surprise when the lovely, sad-eyed girl answered quickly:
"He did not lose it, for in the fear of some such treachery as afterward really happened, your master persuaded me to consent to a secret marriage in the middle of July, so that I have really been his wife going on three months."
"It is false!" cried an angry voice; and there in the door-way towered the tall form of Mrs. Ellsworth, pale to the very lips, but with an ominous flash in her dark eyes.
She had recovered from the faintness that had seized her at first sight of the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seen Miss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon as she could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time to hear her avowal of her marriage to Love in July.
"It is false!" she cried, furiously; but Dainty faced her bravely, clasping Love's cold, irresponsive hand in her own, exclaiming tenderly:
"He is my husband!"
"Can you prove it?" sneeringly.
Dainty was very pale, and trembling like a wind-blown leaf, but she summoned courage to reply:
"We were married the middle of July at that little church in the woods where we attended a festival one night. It was in the twilight when we were returning from a long drive into the country."
"Ah! there were witnesses, of course?" anxiously.
"No one was present but the minister who united us," Dainty answered.
"His name?"
"I do not remember it."
"Indeed! that is strange. But perhaps you can remember whether there was a license, without which such a marriage would not be legal?" continued Mrs. Ellsworth, still scornfully incredulous.
Dainty answered, dauntlessly:
"Yes, there was a license. Love went to the county seat to procure it just previous to the marriage."
They gazed into each other's eyes, and Mrs. Ellsworth drew a long, shivering breath as she exclaimed, menacingly:
"This sounds very fine, but you can not prove one word of it--not one! It is a plot to wrest a fortune from me, but it will not succeed. It was your falsity in forsaking Love at his wedding-hour that caused all his trouble, and the sight of you is hateful to me. You must leave here at once, and return to your mother at your old home in Richmond, for the roof of Ellsworth shall not shelter you an hour!"
"Madame, after all my wrongs at your hands--" began Dainty, reproachfully; but she was cruelly interrupted:
"Assertion is not proof! Until you can bring proof of all your charges, I decline to admit them. Again, Lovelace Ellsworth is now a pauper dependent on my bounty. Raise but your voice to assert a wife's claim on him, and out he goes to become the wretched inmate of an idiot asylum. On your silence as to this trumped-up charge of a secret marriage, and also of wrongs pretended to be done by my hands, depends the comfort of Lovelace Ellsworth. Now say whether you love yourself better than you do him!"
It was a crucial test; but the girl did not hesitate.
She pressed her lips to Love's pale brow solemnly, as we kiss the dead, murmuring:
"I would sacrifice my very life to purchase any good for him!"
The man Franklin gazed on in keen sympathy for the girl and bitter disdain of the cruel woman, but he did not dare to utter a word lest he should make matters worse.
Mrs. Ellsworth's eyes flashed triumphantly at her easy victory over the broken-hearted girl.
"Very well. You have made a wise decision. You would only come to bitter grief by opposing me," she asserted, loftily; and added: "Now you must go. Here is ten dollars; take it, and go back on the first train to your mother in Richmond."
The girl clung to her husband, sobbing:
"Oh, let me stay and be his slave! I love him so I can not leave him!"
Franklin dared not open his lips, but his blood boiled at the cruel scene that followed, when Mrs. Ellsworth tore the weeping wife from her husband with resolute hands and harsh, cruel words, thrusting her outside the door as she cried:
"Go, now--leave the house at once, or I will send him instantly to an idiot asylum! What! you will not take my money? High airs for a pauper upon my word!"
She slammed the door, shutting the wretched young wife out into the hall, and turned fiercely upon Franklin.
"As you have been a witness to this scene," she cried, "I must also command your silence. Will money purchase it?"
"No, madame," he replied, with secret indignation.
"Then love for your master must be the motive," she cried, with a fierce stamp of the foot. "Do you want me to send him to an idiot asylum, where he can no longer have your faithful care?"
"No, madame, no!" the middle-aged servant replied, trembling with emotion.
"Then you will hold your tongue upon what has just occurred in this room? Do you promise?" she cried, harshly.
"I promise," replied Franklin, sadly.
"Very well. See that you do not violate it on pain of serious results to your master. I am tired of the charge of him anyhow; for who knows how soon his simple idiocy may turn to dangerous insanity? So the least provocation from you would cause me to send him to a pauper asylum for idiots!" she cried, warningly, as she hurried from the room to make sure that none of the officious servants should dare to harbor her persecuted victim.
Dainty had already dragged herself out of the house, passing an open door where Olive and Ela looked out with derisive laughter at her blighted appearance, with the golden curls all shorn away, and the pale face stained with tears, while her faded summer gown and the old-fashioned scarf drawn about her shivering form did not conduce to the elegance of her appearance.
"Ha! ha! she looks like a beggar!" sneered Olive, adding: "Let us follow, and see where she goes for shelter. Of course, she will have shocking tales to tell on us if she can get any one to listen. I should like to prevent her if I could."
"Nothing will shut her mouth but death!" returned Ela, significantly, as, unnoticed by any one, they stole out to track the despairing girl on her wretched exile.
The deep gloom of twilight had now fallen, and Dainty stood irresolute where to go, clinging forlornly to the gate, her wistful, white face turned back to Love's window, her tender heart wrung by the torture of leaving him forever.
"Oh! who could have dreamed of such a strange and cruel fate for my darling? It is indeed worse than death!" she sighed, miserably, thinking how cruel Mrs. Ellsworth had been to drive her away so heartlessly, when she had prayed to her humbly on her knees to let her remain as an humble servant and nurse him.
It seemed like the cruelest irony of fate that she, Love Ellsworth's wife, the real mistress of Ellsworth, should be driven in scorn from its gates, penniless, hopeless, and without a friend, her lips sealed to the truth of her wifehood, lest by speaking she should consign her beloved husband to a more cruel doom than he was already enduring.
Mrs. Ellsworth had carried things with a high hand; but she had been reasonably sure of her position, having investigated Love's story of a secret marriage, and satisfied herself that it would be well-nigh impossible to prove it.
Owing to Love's desire for secrecy, there was no record of the license on the books of the clerk of county court who had issued it. The clerk himself, a feeble, aged man, had died suddenly two months ago--the day previous to Lovelace Ellsworth's birthday.
The minister of the little church where the ceremony had been performed had also died a month previous of a malignant fever contracted in visiting a squalid settlement of shiftless sand diggers.
A terrible fatality seemed to attend poor Dainty; for in all probability these two dead men were the only persons who held the secret of her marriage, and dead men tell no tales.
As the worse than widowed bride clung to the gate, taking that farewell look at her husband's window, she suddenly remembered that she had one true though humble friend in the neighborhood--poor old black mammy.
"I will go to her cabin and stay to-night, and to-morrow I must try to go home to mamma," she sighed, turning toward the dark patch of woods where the lonely negro cabin stood, and followed by relentless fate in the shape of her pitiless rivals, Olive and Ela.
"She is going to old Virginia's cabin, but she does not know that the negroes have all moved away to the station, and that she will find it deserted," whispered Ela. "However, she can shelter herself there for the night, though it will be very cold without a fire."
"Some one ought to build one to keep her warm," Olive returned, with a significance that was not lost on her keen-witted cousin.
