The bolt of Fate falls sometimes like a flash of lightning from a clear sky.
Thus it came to Mrs. Ellsworth and her scheming nieces in the moment when they felt themselves most secure.
On that golden May evening, when Love Ellsworth found his happiness again, they had been busy laying their plans for a summer campaign.
They decided to take an early trip to Europe, and return in August for a brief tour of the watering-places before the close of the season.
"We will get us some loves of dresses and bonnets while in Paris," cried Ela, while Olive added:
"And some rare jewels. I think I should like some fine rubies best of all."
With a slight sarcasm, Mrs. Ellsworth exclaimed:
"Really, for two young girls who were reared in poverty, you two have developed very extravagant tastes--so extravagant that I could not afford to gratify them if I had not so opportunely come into my step-son's fortune!"
"But, Aunt Judith, we thought you were quite wealthy in your own right," both cried in concert.
"So I was; but for years I have speculated in stocks, and sometimes I made large gains, at others lost heavily. To-day I received notice of a terrible loss by the failure of a bank in Richmond in which the residue of my money was invested. Had I not come into Love's money, I should not now have a thousand dollars to my name!"
"How unfortunate!" cried a ringing, sarcastic voice, and glancing up, all three beheld Lovelace Ellsworth standing before them in his right mind.
He was accompanied by the party that he had brought from the station, and on his arm leaned his drooping bride, pale from illness, but with the light of her joy shining in her great luminous eyes. Black mammy brought up the rear with the lovely infant in her arms.
To Mrs. Ellsworth's consternation all seated themselves as coolly as if they had a right in her elegant parlor, while Olive and Ela strained their eyes in horror at the fair cousin whose ashes they had believed to be lying still beneath the debris of the burned cabin.
Lovelace Ellsworth alone remained standing, and turning toward his startled step-mother, he began one of the most scathing arraignments to which any one had ever listened.
He told her in fiery words of all the crimes and cruelties she had practised on himself and Dainty, and how, through God's help, they had escaped all.
In vain were her frightened denials; he laughed them all to scorn.
"When Dainty was immured in that dungeon where you expected her to die, your tool, Sheila Kelly, threw caution to the winds, and betrayed to her in boastful words your agency in her kidnapping. It is not your fault that my wife did not die of the poison you gave her to swallow, but only that the wind and rain revived her when she lay out in the road where you had her placed, believing her dead, with her lips sealed to your part in the martyrdom.
"It is not your fault," he added, turning to Olive and Ela, "that you failed to destroy her when you followed to the cabin where she lay unconscious, and fired it like the remorseless fiends that you are. But for John Franklin, who discovered your crime and saved her sweet life, she must have perished in those flames. But my wife, like the angel she is, forgives you everything, and will not let me prosecute you for your crimes. But you three guilty, shameless ones must leave Ellsworth at dawn, and it is best never to show your faces here again; for in making public the proofs of my marriage with Dainty and the strange interruption of the second ceremony, I shall not hesitate to expose your treachery."
So at dawn they went away--as far as they could on their scanty means--and the veil of a merciful oblivion fell over their future fate as scheming adventuresses to the end of their days.
Love and Dainty did not punish their arch-enemies, but they did not fail to reward all who had befriended them in their days of adversity. Mamma Chase lived with them at Ellsworth, Ailsa Scott spent all her summers there, and Doctor Platt remained the beloved friend of the family to the last day of his life.
