Chapter XLVIII

That agonized shriek brought Pierre Carmontelle rushing from his room, followed by Maud, while Edith came from another direction, and men-servants and maid-servants came flying up the stairs, all with one thought in their minds. The sufferer was dead, and that bitter cry had come from the lips of the bereaved young wife.

But when they rushed into the room, a tragic scene greeted their eyes.

Una, in the center of the floor, was struggling heroically with a man, who was holding a pillow over her face and head, and on the floor lay a gray wig and beard and goggle glasses. Una's assailant was Louis Remond. One fierce blow from Carmontelle's fist knocked the villain down, and before he could rise, an emphatic kick temporarily relieved him of consciousness. Two men-servants, comprehending the scene with uncommon rapidity, dragged the wretch out into the corridor and speedily bound him hand and foot. In the meantime, Una, from the bedside to which she had instantly flown, was explaining, through hushed sobs:

"I peeped in at the door, and Johnson was holding a pillow down over Eliot's face. I screamed, and he rushed at me with the pillow, and would have smothered me in another instant but for your entrance."

"The hound!" Carmontelle said, fiercely; then, kicking the disguises into view, he said: "These must have been knocked off in the scuffle. Johnson was Louis Remond in disguise."

Una shuddered, then turned toward the bed. She stifled a cry of unutterable joy.

Eliot was unharmed, for at that instant he opened his eyes naturally, like one awaking from a long sleep, and their calm, steady gaze rested on that lovely, agitated face with its dark, loving eyes and the golden hair shadowing the wan temples.

"Una, darling!" he said, not as one surprised or excited, but gently and quietly, as one who has been very sick always accepts even the strangest things as a matter of course.

The crisis had passed, and Eliot and Una had escaped the malignancy of the two enemies who sought their lives, for a plot was unearthed that night that led to the conviction of Mme. Remond as well as her husband.

She was found in the house, in the guise of a female servant, and had arranged to take Una's life that night, by means of poison in her drinking-water, while Remond, who had bribed the hospital nurse, and so usurped his place, was to smother Eliot with a pillow.

Fortunately, the cruel conspiracy was discovered and averted, and the two conspirators were soon tried, convicted, and sentenced to a long term in the penitentiary. Madame died before her term expired, but Remond escaped from prison and made his way out of the country, never returning to it, through fear of apprehension.

At Mme. Remond's trial, when she found that everything was going against her, she sullenly confessed that she lied when she tried to palm off upon Una the story that she was of shameful parentage.

"I thought, when I married Lorraine, that all the money was his, and I hated him and the heiress, too, when I found out the real truth. I only wish I had killed her when she was a baby, then all this trouble had been avoided," she said, with vindictive frankness.

Eliot convalesced very fast, to the great delight of Una and the family, and one day, when the little lawyer had fretted over the missing will of M. Lorraine, she said to her husband:

"Tell me what a legal document looks like?"

He described it to her, and her eyes grew bright with excitement.

"Eliot, you remember the great dictionary in which you showed me the definition of Friend, that first night we met? Well, there was just such a paper in that book, and if it has escaped madame's search, is there yet, and may prove to be the missing will."

Her surmise was correct, and the lawyer was very happy when he got the legal document into his hands. It proved Una, beyond a doubt, Colonel Carmontelle's daughter, and the richest heiress in New Orleans.

"But you loved me, Eliot, when I was only Little Nobody. I shall always be prouder of that, darling, than of my wealth," said happy Una.

THE END.

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Transcriber's Notes:

Added table of contents.

Italics are represented with _underscores_.

Several instances of the word "eat" being used where "ate" would seem more appropriate have been retained from the original.

Page 14, changed "beauiful" to "beautiful."

Page 59, added missing quote before "_Ciel_!"

Page 69, changed "thinkng" to "thinking."

Page 73, changed "and" to "an" in "chirped an 'oh!'"

Page 83, changed "soemthing" to "something" ("something very strange").

Page 92, corrected end punctuation from period to question mark and added missing quote after "opening of the hidden door."

Page 95, changed "sight" to "sigh" in "sigh of dismay."

Page 126, corrected "Eilot" to "Eliot" in first line of chapter XXVIII.

Page 130, corrected "he" to "she" in "under which she had chafed."

Page 132, corrected "ready" to "read" in "read her whole chapters."

Page 133, removed duplicate "the" from "the the dark eyes only looked."

Page 135, changed "more sense that" to "more sense than."

Page 136, changed "went down-staris" to "went down-stairs."

Page 146, removed extraneous period after "too fine for Eliot's wife."

Page 148, added missing period after "half-frightened tone."

Back cover advertisement, normalized punctuation. Corrected "Barabara" to "Barbara" in #57. Corrected "Gorvice" to "Garvice" in #90.

End of Project Gutenberg's Little Nobody, by Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller