Chapter VIII: Part 8

The reproach was not without effect. She looked at him more gently, with troubled eyes that seemed to express not only contrition, but a certain involuntary sympathy. "It's true," she said. "I have treated you badly, and broken the most solemn promise any one could make. I don't defend myself; but--I'm willing to make what amends I can. I can't give you myself, but at least I can give you what little money you would have had with me. When I am married to"--she paused and flushed, but concluded her sentence firmly--"to Mr. Gerard, I will give you--all the money I have."

Paul paced up and down, apparently in deep thought. It was evident that her offer tempted him, yet some impulse urged him to refuse it. He stopped suddenly in front of her. "Principal or interest, do you mean?" he asked, in a tone in which the thirst for gain distinctly predominated.

The doubtful sympathy in Elizabeth's eyes faded, and was replaced by a look of unmistakable disgust. "I suppose I could hardly give you the principal," she said, coldly. "But I will pay over the income every year." She named the sum. "Isn't it enough?"

"That depends," he said, looking at her coolly. "It is enough, of course, for Elizabeth Van Vorst, but for Mrs. Julian Gerard"--

He stopped as an electric shock of anger seemed to thrill Elizabeth from head to foot. "You don't suppose," she cried, "that I would give you _his_ money?"

"Then," said Paul, curtly, "he doesn't know?"

"Certainly not," she said, haughtily.

He began again reflectively to pace up and down. "I don't see," he said, "how you are to pay me over this money without his knowing it."

"Don't trouble yourself about that," said Elizabeth, contemptuously. "Mr. Gerard will never ask what I do with my money."

"Well he has enough of his own, certainly," said Paul, philosophically. "And yet, poor fellow, I am sorry for him if he ever finds out how you have deceived him."

"He never _shall_ find out," said Elizabeth. She rose and pulled down her veil. "It is so cold," she said shivering, and indeed she looked chilled to the core. "I cannot stay here any longer. This thing is settled, isn't it? You will promise?" There was a tone of piteous entreaty in her voice.

"How am I to know," he asked, still hesitating "that you will keep your word? Once married to Gerard, you might--forget."

"If I do," she returned quietly, "you will always have the power to break yours and ruin my happiness."

"So be it, then. I won't interfere with you. After all, we probably shouldn't have got on well. Come--let us part friends, at least."

He held out his hand, but hers was again securely hidden in her muff, and the smile that gleamed on her face was pale and cold as the winter day itself. "Good-bye," she said, and turned away. He fell back, with a muttered oath.

"Upon my word, my lady," he said, "you might be a little more gracious." At that moment Elizabeth came back. There was a softer look on her face.

"I loved you once," she said. "Good-bye." And she held out her hand. He took it in silence. Thus they parted for the last time.

It had been a successful interview. She had gained all that she dared hope for. Seated in the warm car going home, and shivering as from an ague, she told herself that she had silenced forever all opposition to her wishes. Yet it did not seem a victory. Words which Paul had said lingered in her mind, stinging her with their contempt, the fact that even he could set himself above her. "A crime!" She had never considered it in that light. Surely it was impossible on the face of it that she, Elizabeth Van Vorst, could commit a crime.... And then again--what was it he had said? "Poor fellow, I am sorry for him, if ever he finds out how you have deceived him."

"But he never shall," she said to herself, resolutely as before. "Crime or no crime, his love is worth it. He never shall find out."

_Chapter XXVIII_

Elizabeth had little time in those days for thought. There was still less time, even, when she was alone with Gerard. The days passed in a whirl of gaiety, in which she had been swallowed up since her return to town. It was a state of things which bored Gerard extremely, but secure in the promise he had at last obtained from her that the wedding should be at the end of January he possessed his soul in such patience as he could muster. And when he requested as a special favor, that she would refuse all invitations for the thirty-first of December and see the Old Year out in peace, she consented at once, and the hope of a quiet evening buoyed him up through other weary ones, when he would lean in his old fashion against the wall, and watch her across a ball-room, the center of an admiring court. Yet, even as he did so, the proud consciousness of proprietorship swelled his heart. She was his--his! He had no longer any doubt of her, or jealousy of the men who talked to her.

Why then was the expected evening, when it came, fraught with an intangible sense of gloom, of oppression, which made the time pass heavily? The old Dutch clock, which the Misses Van Vorst had brought with them from the country seemed to-night to mark the hours with extraordinary slowness, as if the Old Year were in no hurry to be gone, even though the noises in the street, the blowing of horns and of whistles were enough, one might have thought, to hasten his departure.

Elizabeth was pacing restlessly up and down the room. Her hands were clasped carelessly before her, her long house-dress of white cashmere, belted in by a gold girdle, fell about her in graceful folds. There was a flush in her cheeks, a somewhat feverish light in her eyes; she started nervously now and then as some enterprising small boy blew an especially shrill blast on his horn.

"I don't know why it is," she said at last with a petulant little laugh, coming back to her seat by the fire opposite Gerard, and taking up a piece of work, in which she absently set a few stitches, "New Year's Eve always gets on my nerves, I think of all my sins--and that's very unpleasant!" She broke off, pouting childishly, as if in disgust at the intrusion of unwelcome ideas.

He was watching her lazily, with the amused, indulgent smile which certain of her moods had always the power to call forth; the smile of a strong man, who felt himself quite able to cope with them. "With such terrible sins as yours, Elizabeth," he said, "it must be indeed a dreadful thing to think of them."

She turned quickly towards him. "You don't think that they can be very bad?"

"I should be willing to take the risk of offering you absolution."

She bent down over her work so that her face was hidden. "Ah, you--you don't know"----she rather breathed than spoke. He only smiled incredulously, as one who knew her better than she did herself.

"Play for me, darling," he said, after awhile, and she went mechanically to the piano. But her playing was always a matter of mood, and to-night her fingers faltered, the keys did not respond as usual. She passed restlessly from one thing to another--snatches of Brahms, Chopin, Tschaikowski, with the same jarring note running through them all.

She broke off at last, with a wild clash of chords. "I can't play to-night," she said, and came back to the fire. "How calm you are!" she said, standing beside Gerard and looking down at him with eyes almost of reproach. "This horrible evening doesn't get on your nerves at all."

"How can it?"--Gerard possessed himself of her hand and raised it to his lips.--"How can I waste any regrets on the Old Year," he said, "when the New Year is to bring me--so much happiness?"

She started and caught her breath, as if the words held a sting. "Ah, yes," she repeated, very low "it is to bring you--so much happiness!" For a moment she left her hand in his and then withdrew it with a stifled sigh. She went back very still and pale, to her seat on the other side of the fire, and taking up her work, she fixed her eyes upon it intently.

"And so you think it is to bring you happiness?" she said, in a low voice, continuing the subject as it seemed in spite of herself. "You are quite sure of that, Julian, you have--no doubts?" She raised her eyes with a wistful questioning that puzzled him.

"Doubts, Elizabeth!" He stared back at her reproachfully, his brows drawn together frowning. "Why do you harp so much on that, my darling? Why should I have doubts?"

"Why, some men might, you know."--Her eyes were bent again upon her work.--"You yourself--you had them, you know, when you first knew me."

He flushed. "Don't remind me of that," he said, hastily.

"Well, it may have been a true presentiment."--She gave him an odd, furtive look. "I've wondered--sometimes--if I were as nice naturally as other girls I know. I hadn't, to begin with, the sort of mother that--most girls have"----She hesitated, a painful crimson flooded her face, her eyes filled with tears. Gerard stared at her in amazement. He had never heard her allude to her mother before, and had supposed her entirely ignorant of all painful facts in the family history.

"Darling," he broke out, indignantly, "who has told you--things like that?"

"Who? Oh! I don't know."--She put the question aside listlessly.--"One always hears unpleasant facts, somehow. I always knew that she wasn't the--the sort of person that the Neighborhood would call on"--a painful smile hovered about her lips. "It used to make me very unhappy--but lately--it hasn't seemed to matter. And yet--I think of it sometimes"----She broke off suddenly and looked at Gerard with a strange light in her eyes. "Doesn't it make a difference to you? Doesn't it occur to you sometimes that I may be--my mother's daughter; that it would be wiser to--distrust me?" Her voice died away at the last words into a hoarse whisper.

"Elizabeth!"--Gerard sprang to his feet. He went over to her and took both her hands in his strong grasp. "Elizabeth, never let me hear these morbid fancies again. Never suppose that anything your mother did or left undone, can make a difference in my faith in you!"

He stood looking down at her with eyes full of an imperious tenderness. She trembled and shrank away before them, as if frightened. "You trust me, then?" she repeated, and she drew a long sobbing breath. "You're quite _sure_ you trust me?"

"Absolutely."--Gerard's smile lit up his face.--"How often, you exacting woman," he asked, "do you want me to promise that I will never doubt you again."

There was silence for a moment. The noises in the street sounding suddenly with redoubled violence in the stillness, seemed to punctuate Gerard's words with an outburst of derision. To Elizabeth's fancy the whole atmosphere of the room was tense, vibrant, filled with jarring echoes of the noise without. Even the old Dutch clock, whose ticking was one of her earliest memories, seemed to beat with a new, discordant note of mockery, as if it too were uttering its ironical comment on the wisdom of a man's faith.

Elizabeth shuddered and thrust Gerard's hands away. "I wish--I wish I deserved your trust, Julian," she broke out, wildly. Then she laid her face on the arm of the chair and sobbed. He fell back and stared at her aghast. The tender smile was arrested, frozen on his lips. For him, too, as for her, the room was suddenly filled with discordant vibrations, a sense of unreasoning dread.

In a moment Elizabeth looked up; with a great effort she conquered her tears. She went to Gerard and put her hand on his arm. The face she raised to his was white, trembling in a pathetic appeal. The tears still glistened on her long lashes, there was a tremulous sweetness in her great dark eyes, in the quivering lines about her pale lips. "Julian," she said, "if I'm not--not worthy of your trust--not worthy of your love, even"--she faltered--"if I had deceived you--_were_ deceiving you still"----she paused and looked him in the face with an agonized questioning.

"Yes?"--Gerard's hoarse voice urged her on.--"If you were deceiving me? It isn't--it can't be true, but if you were?"----

"If I were," she went on, steadily, "if I had kept one thing from you--against my will--oh, God knows! sorely against my will"--her voice broke--"if it had been a weight on my mind day and night--if I had longed to tell you and had tried to do it and always--my courage failed me, and--and--if at last--at last, I told you--would you--think me so very much to blame, couldn't you--forgive?"--Her voice again faltered piteously, the last word was barely audible.

He broke away from her and took two or three turns up and down the room, breathing heavily, like a man who had been running. "Tell me what this secret is?" he broke out, fiercely, pausing suddenly in front of her. "How can I tell if----I could forgive, till I know what it is?"

Again the silence. Elizabeth's white lips tried, apparently in vain, to form an answer. The courage which a moment before had possessed her, seemed to shrivel up and die away, before that fierce light in his eyes.

"Tell me," he repeated, inexorably, "what it is."

She put out her hand suddenly with a pleading gesture. "Ah, let us first see the Old Year out together," she murmured, "as we planned. I should like to feel that you loved me till--the very end of it. You may not--afterwards. It won't be long. See--it's nearly time." She glanced up at the clock. It was ticking faster now, as it seemed, and steadily, the hour hand well towards midnight.

Elizabeth went to the window and flung it open. The current of cold air which flooded the room seemed to give her relief; she leaned out as far as she could, inhaling it in long, fevered gasps. Gerard followed and stood behind her, in an agony of impatience, distraught by a hundred incongruous, terrible suggestions. The prolonged suspense seemed, in his over-wrought state, a very refinement of cruelty, yet some instinct kept him silent, left to her the mastery of the situation.

In the street there was unwonted stir and bustle. A crowd assembled to greet the New Year. Small boys, whose horns made the night hideous, pranced about like uncouth imps of darkness; the street-lamps, as they flickered, cast a weird, uncertain light on the snow-covered ground. But the moon, riding overhead, shone peacefully, and myriads of stars studded the wintry sky. Down towards the Battery one could hear, above all coarser sounds, the chimes of Old Trinity ringing faint but true.

Elizabeth's eyes were riveted upon St. George's clock, which stood out, not many blocks away, above the roofs of intervening houses. Her lips moved, but no sound came; one hand grasped convulsively the curtain behind her. To Gerard as he watched her those fifteen minutes before the New Year were the longest of his life.

Suddenly all noises slackened; upon the listening crowd outside there fell a pause, a hush of expectation. St. George's clock boomed out the hour in twelve majestic strokes. The old Dutch clock within the room echoed it in quieter tones. And then, as the last stroke died away, the crowd stirred, there arose a hideous Babel of sound--cat-calling, shouting, blowing of horns and whistles; pandemonium set loose. It raged for several minutes, and stopped abruptly, exhausted by its own violence. There was again silence, and then a burst of laughter. Some one in the crowd cried loudly and heartily: "Happy New Year!"

Elizabeth shivered, as if with a sudden consciousness of the cold. She shut the window and faced Gerard. Against the vivid background of the crimson curtain, in her clinging white dress, her pale beauty, crowned by her red-gold hair, stood out with a strange, unearthly quality, like that of some pictured saint. There was a look on her face which was tragic in its despairing resolution, yet which had in it a certain exaltation, as if she had risen for the moment at least, above herself, to heights hitherto unknown.

"You shall know the worst of me, at last. You won't"--she gave an odd little laugh--"you won't grant me absolution, Julian, I'm afraid. But oh, I'm sick--God knows, I'm sick of lies!" She paused and caught her breath as if for one supreme effort. "This is the truth," she said. "I was married to Paul Halleck--before I knew you, more than a year ago."

He staggered back, as if she had struck him a blow. "You were--married--to Paul Halleck?"

"Yes," she repeated, in a dull monotone, "married to him--more than a year ago."

He was still staring at her as if stupefied. "Married!" he repeated, "married all this time!--when you professed to love me! When"--a pause--"you promised to marry me! Oh, it's impossible," he cried, with a sudden flash of incredulity, and he put out his hand and touched her involuntarily. "Say you're only playing with me," he begged her, "trying my faith--say it's not true." His voice shook, unconsciously his hand closed upon her wrist with a grasp that might have hurt her, had she been capable just then of feeling physical pain.

"It--it is true," she said, and stood motionless, white and rigid as a statue, her head bent.

He still stared incredulous for a moment, and then the reality of what she said seemed to sink into his soul. With a quick, involuntary gesture, which wounded more than words, he let her hand fall, and began to pace up and down the room.

"Good God!" she heard him mutter. "Married all these months!--and I, who loved you, trusted you!"----He broke off with a gesture of angry despair. Her lip quivered, her eyes followed him for a moment and then filled with tears. She went over to the mantel-piece, and resting her arms upon it, she hid her face.

It was a long time before he stopped beside her, but then his voice showed recovered self-control. "Will you tell me," he said, "exactly how and when this marriage took place?"

She turned with a little shuddering sigh and raised her white, exhausted face to his. "It was at Cranston," she said, quietly, "one day in July. I did it hastily. My aunts were opposed to it, and--I hated to make them unhappy. But I--I thought I loved him. It was a mistake. I went up to Cranston to meet him, and--we were married. It was in church--there were witnesses, we signed a register--it was all legal, or at least I suppose so. And then--when we came out"----she paused.

"Yes--when you came out?"--Gerard repeated the words hoarsely, his brows drawn together, his eyes fixed upon her in an agonized questioning.--"What then, Elizabeth?"

She hesitated, staring straight before her, as if she were trying to recall the whole thing exactly as it happened. "When we came out of the church, I felt--I don't know why--I felt frightened. I seemed to realize--indeed, I think I _had_ realized all the time--what a mistake it was. He begged me to come away with him, and I--I refused. He had promised me that I should go home, and that he wouldn't claim me for six months, and--I held him to it. He gave in at last, and so--we parted"----

"Ah!"--Gerard drew a long breath.--"You--parted?"

"Yes. I left him and came home. I got there about four--my aunts suspected nothing. He went abroad. And--after a while he stopped writing, I thought he had forgotten me. It all began to seem like a dream. And then--Eleanor Van Antwerp asked me to come to town, and--the rest you know."

"No, not all." Gerard insisted. "When the fellow came home, why didn't he claim you? How have you kept him quiet, all this time?"

"Ah, that was easy."--She spoke listlessly.--"He didn't care anything about me; I used to give him money. I sold my pearls--all my jewelry, in fact. Yes"--as Gerard uttered a horrified exclamation--"it was a terrible bondage, but what could I do? He had me in his power. I used to wonder if the marriage were legal, but there was no one whom I dared ask. And then I thought sometimes that he might die--I had all sorts of wild ideas; but nothing happened, and meanwhile he threatened--to tell you everything. I bought him off twice, and then--this last time"--she paused--"this last time I promised him all my income if he would give me up forever, and never trouble me again. Ah, you think it unpardonable, I see"--she put out her hand with a deprecating gesture--"but you don't know what it is to be tempted--desperate. I was determined I wouldn't ruin my life. And then--then"--her voice faltered--"this evening when you seemed so happy, so trustful--that was what hurt me, Julian--it was easier when you were jealous, suspicious, as you were at first--it came to me suddenly that I couldn't begin the New Year--I couldn't begin our life together with this--this terrible secret weighing on my soul. And so I--I told you"----

Elizabeth's voice faltered, she raised her eyes in a half conscious appeal. It seemed to her for the moment as if the agony of that confession must make amends to some extent even for such deceit as hers. But Gerard's face did not soften. Her whole conduct seemed to him monstrous, incredible. He could not accept as atonement this tardy repentance, the fact that she had told him the truth--at the eleventh hour.

The thought occurred to him, which she had herself suggested, earlier in the evening. He remembered chance gossip of the Neighborhood about her antecedents, listened to vaguely even before he knew her, and haunting him afterwards in the first days of their acquaintance, till love had made him cast it aside, as a thing of no importance. Now it recurred to his mind as the only explanation--he did not accept it as an excuse--of this weakness which seemed otherwise inexplicable. No doubt there must be, he told himself, in the child of such parents,--it would be strange if there were not--some hereditary taint, some lack of moral fibre, which curiously imperceptible in other ways, must needs assert itself in any great moral crisis. The thought, which might have softened him, seemed at the time only to steel him the more against her.

He fell again to pacing up and down, thinking it over; seeing past incidents afresh in the merciless light of his present knowledge; recalling this or that insignificant circumstance which at the time had aroused, unreasonably as it seemed, his distrust;--her occasional uneasiness and distress, that air she had of being on her guard, the look in the picture--ah, he understood it now! It was the shadow of falsehood, which for months had clouded her every thought and action. What a fool he had been, he reflected fiercely--how he had allowed himself to be deceived--made an easy prey by the extent of his infatuation--how she had juggled with the truth, telling him the worst of herself in such a way that he had believed, all the more determinedly, the reverse.

He stopped at last his restless pacing to and fro and paused beside her. The fierce tide of anger, the first bitterness of his disillusion, had subsided. He was cold, with the coldness of despair. His face was worn and haggard, as if from the suffering of years, but it was set in rigid lines, from which all feeling seemed to have vanished. His eyes were dry and hard.

"I think," he said, and there was a dull, toneless sound in his voice; he spoke slowly, like one who either weighed his words with great care, or was afraid to trust himself too far, "I think there had better be an end to this. I should only say, if I said all I thought, things I might afterwards--regret; and I wouldn't"--his voice broke ever so little--"God knows I don't want to be unjust! But I cannot"--he let his hand fall with a look of dull despair--"I _cannot_ understand how you have kept this from me all these months!"

He paused, as if expecting an answer, an excuse, perhaps of some sort; but she said nothing, and he went on, after a moment, his voice growing more uncertain: "It isn't so much the marriage--that could be, perhaps"--He hesitated, his heavy brows drawn together frowning--"The man must be an absolute wretch," he said, suddenly, "there must be--for your sake I hope so--some way out"----

"Oh, for me"--she made a little gesture of utter carelessness--"for me it can make no difference--now."

"For myself," he went on, not heeding her words, perhaps not fully grasping their meaning, "I couldn't--whether the marriage held or not--I couldn't forgive--being so deceived."

He stopped and again seemed to expect some protest, but she only repeated, in a dull voice of complete acquiescence: "No, I didn't think you could forgive--being so deceived"----

"Even if I could forgive," he said, "I could never trust"----

"No," she repeated, "you could never trust." Her face was colorless, but impassive, as if it had been turned to stone, her voice was almost as firm as his. "You are quite right," she said. "I deserve all the harsh things you could say. It is kind of you to say--so few. Perhaps, later, you'll judge me more gently; but--I couldn't expect it now. And so"--she faltered and caught her breath, as if her strength failed her--"and so good-bye," she said at last. "I think it can only hurt us both to--discuss this any longer."

Her calmness stunned him. He had been prepared for tears--excuses--but she offered no defence and made no effort to arouse his pity. There was a dignity in her complete submission. He looked at her, his face working with varied emotions; and then he said "Good-bye" mechanically and took her hand for an instant. It was icy cold and lay impassively in his. He dropped it and moved towards the door, as if under some spell, deprived of all capacity for thought or feeling. Involuntarily, her eyes followed him. Was this the parting, after so many months? But at the door he paused, he looked back. The firelight played on her hair, on her white dress, the drooping lines of her slender form, the deathly pallor of her face, the despair in her eyes.... He softened, perhaps, or it might be that the mere physical spell of her beauty held him, even when all that made the glory of his love, had been rudely shattered. He came back, caught her in his arms, and pressed burning kisses on her lips. She trembled as if they had been blows, but she made no effort to free herself. And then, as if ashamed of his weakness, he let her go and went out hastily. A moment later she heard the front door close, with a dull sound that echoed through the quiet rooms.

She stood where he had left her, staring blankly about her at the familiar objects which seemed to have acquired, during the last hour, an air of change, of unreality. What had happened, what had she done? Awhile ago she had been borne up by a courage that seemed almost heroic, a sense of moral victory. Now that had failed her. She was simply a woman despised and heart-broken, who by her own suicidal act had destroyed her happiness.

"How--how can I bear it?" she broke out, at last, fiercely, and sinking down on the hearth-rug, she lay prostrate, her face hidden, while her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs. The old Dutch clock ticked softly, pitifully, in the silence; the fire flickered and died away. But outside in the street spasmodic whistles kept on blowing, and belated wayfarers still bade each other, with laughter and jollity, "Happy New Year."

_Chapter XXIX_

It was eight days later. Elizabeth's trouble and the New Year were both a week old. She had lived through the time somehow or another, had even faced those smaller trials which follow in the wake of any great catastrophe. She had told the whole truth to her aunts--it was only less hard than telling Gerard--she had written to her friends to announce the breaking of her engagement, and had countermanded the orders for her trousseau. These affairs disposed of, she was ready to face the world with such strength as she had left.

For Gerard the situation was simpler. He had taken at once his man's way out of it, and pacing the deck of an ocean steamer, he tried to distract his mind and forget his trouble in plans for extensive travel and scientific research. They had been his resource once before, when a woman had disappointed him.

He had not seen Elizabeth again. He dreaded, perhaps, to trust himself, or perhaps his anger was still too great. But he had written before he left to her aunts, urging them to consult a lawyer and take steps at once to free her from the results of her rash marriage. To himself, he justified this weakness--if it were weakness--by the thought of Halleck's baseness. "I could not bear to think of her as his wife," he said to himself, "a fellow who could give her up for money!"

Upon Elizabeth's aunts the affair had come like a thunderbolt. They were quite unprepared for it, though many suspicious circumstances--the mystery as to Elizabeth's jewels, her own occasional words--might have suggested the idea that something was amiss. But absorbed in their delight in the engagement, their affection for Gerard, they had not the heart to formulate any doubt they might have felt. Now, in the first shock of their awakening, they remembered unwillingly the same facts of family history which had occurred to Gerard. What could they have expected from Malvina's child but deceit, folly and disgrace? But they were gentle souls, and had no reproaches for Elizabeth, only a silent, sorrowful pity, which hurt the girl's proud spirit more than the sharpest words.

She was lingering that morning, pale and languid, over her untasted breakfast, and Miss Cornelia, from behind the coffee-urn, stole anxious glances towards her, all sense of injury lost in her distress over the girl's wretched looks, and fear that she was going to be ill. They two were alone, Miss Joanna having already started to do her marketing, when the maid entered with the belated newspaper. Miss Cornelia held out her delicate, tremulous hand for it, nervously apprehensive of that paragraph which no doubt in the society columns, announced that the engagement between Miss Van Vorst and Mr. Gerard had been broken "by mutual consent."

It was not this notice which met her eyes, but some exciting head-lines on the first page which had already attracted the attention of the cook and the housemaid.

"Elizabeth," said Miss Cornelia, in a stifled voice. "Elizabeth--what is this?"

Elizabeth raised her vacant eyes, and saw Miss Cornelia deathly white and staring in horror at the paper. "Is it?" she said. "It must be. What a dispensation! So young, too."

"Auntie," said Elizabeth, impatiently, "why don't you say what it is?"

"I am afraid he was very ill prepared," said Miss Cornelia, apparently talking to herself and oblivious of her niece's presence. But suddenly she seemed to realize it and placed her hand over the paper. "My dear, don't look at this yet," she faltered. "You--it will be a shock, Elizabeth. Prepare yourself."

Elizabeth did not wait to hear more, but went to her and seized the paper from her hand. The headline told, in large type, how Paul Halleck, the prominent young singer, had died the evening before of a mysterious draught of poison, which had been sent to him by mail.

There followed in smaller type the details of the affair, but Elizabeth did not read them. She sank into the nearest chair and sat staring before her with dilated eyes, that seemed to express less surprise or terror than a sort of awe, as at some unexpected manifestation of Providence.

"It was I who killed him," she said. She spoke in a dull, dream-like way, not in the least conscious, as it seemed, of anything extraordinary in the words. Poor Miss Cornelia could form no other conclusion than that she had suddenly lost her mind.

"Elizabeth, my darling," she remonstrated, "what do you mean?" But Elizabeth was still staring before her vacantly, absorbed in her own thoughts.

"And so it has happened!" she said, in a low voice, "at last!--when I had given up hope!"--She was quite oblivious of her aunt's horror or of the staring eyes of the maid, who stood listening, the coffee-pot in her hand, her mouth wide open. But at that moment Miss Cornelia suddenly remembered her presence and signed to her to leave the room--an order obeyed reluctantly.

"Now, Elizabeth," Miss Cornelia faltered out, as the door closed, "do, my darling, explain what you mean. It's quite absurd, you know, to say that you had anything to do with this."

"I wished it," said Elizabeth, gazing at her with dull, expressionless eyes. "I wished, I even prayed, that he might die. And my wishes always come true--only it is in such a way that it does no good."

"But you can't," urged Miss Cornelia, in desperation, "you can't kill people by _wishing_, Elizabeth. Of course, there are things that one can't--feel as sorry for as one would like"--Her voice faltered, as she thought of certain individuals connected with her own life, whose death it had been hard to regard in the light of an affliction. "We can't help our thoughts," she murmured, "we can only pray not to give way to them."

"Ah, but I didn't," said Elizabeth. "I encouraged them. And now I shall have remorse, I suppose, all my life." She sat pondering a moment, while the expression on her face grew softer. "I am sorry he is dead," she said, at last. "It does me no good now--and he seemed so full of life the last time I saw him. But it was his fate, no doubt--a fortune-teller told him he would die before the year was out. It was his unlucky year, as well as mine. And the prediction has come true--in both cases."

"But how did it happen?" urged Miss Cornelia. "Do read, Elizabeth, how it was. Did he drink poison by mistake?"

Elizabeth took up the paper and read the story, which grew to be a famous one in the annals of New York crime. Halleck had received on New Year's Eve a package which contained a small hunting-flask of sherry. There was no name or card with the present--if present it _were_; nothing to identify the giver, except the hand-writing on the package, which he did not recognize.

He suspected nothing, however, imagining the card to have been forgotten, and accepted the flask as a belated Christmas present; but kept it unopened, in the hope of discovering from whom it came. He had brought it out and showed it the night before to some friends, and the flask and the box in which it arrived were passed from one to the other, but each disclaimed all knowledge of them.

"To me," said D'Hauteville, who happened to be present, "it looks like a woman's handwriting, disguised to seem like a man's. Perhaps"--he smiled--"it contains a love potion."

"Or a death potion," suggested another man, laughing.

"I'm not afraid," said the young singer, lightly, "of either catastrophe." With a smile he poured some of the wine into a glass and raised it to his lips. "To the health," he said, "of the mysterious giver." He emptied the glass and put it down, observing that it must be, after all, a woman's gift, since no man would have chosen such poor wine. "Try it," he said, but by some fortunate chance no one did. And in a few minutes Halleck was taken desperately ill, and died before the hastily-summoned physician could save him.

This is, briefly put, the account which Elizabeth read, at first with a strange sense of unreality, as if such tragedies, of which she had often read before in the papers, could not possibly occur within the circle of her own acquaintance. Then followed a growing horror, a feeling of passionate remorse for her own indifference.

"Read it, auntie," she said, thrusting the paper into Miss Cornelia's hand. "I--I must be alone to think it over." She went quickly and shut herself in her room. But when there she did not lie down and cry, as might have been best for her; she had not shed any tears since New Year's Eve. She paced up and down, going over the whole thing in her mind, imagining the details with a feverish vividness, struggling, above all, with this irrational, yet terrible sense of guilt.

It _was_ irrational--this she realized even in her state of feverish excitement. The vindictive wish which had crossed her brain would never have gone beyond it and resolved itself into action. She would not even--she knew this now--have been a passive factor in Paul's death; she would have been the first to go to his aid, had she seen him suffering. No selfish remembrance of her own gain would have stopped her. And yet--and yet--with all her reasoning, her mind always returned to the same point. She had wished for his death, and her wishes had been fulfilled, too late for her own advantage, only as it seemed, to add to her punishment.

The idea occurred to her all at once that she must go and look at his dead body. It presented itself, in some irrational way, in the light of an atonement. The fever in her blood, the beginning of an illness, made the strained, hysterical thought seem natural and almost inevitable. She was not conscious of doing anything unusual. Hastily, she dressed herself, choosing instinctively a black gown and tying a black veil over her face, and went out into the street, where the cold air, which she had not faced for a week, blew refreshingly on her burning cheeks. She walked all the way, rapidly, choosing unfrequented avenues, and looking neither to the right nor the left, her mind intent on the one object, yet with a strange relief in motion and the intense cold. She reached Carnegie Hall in a surprisingly short time, but here she encountered unexpected difficulties.

"Take you up to Mr. Halleck's studio?" said the elevator-man, looking with surprise and suspicion at this veiled young woman, who made such an extraordinary request. "I can't take you up. The police has charge, and there ain't a soul allowed to go in but Mr. D'Hauteville."

Elizabeth was not in a mood to be gainsaid. She placed a coin in the man's hand. "I must see him," she said, in a hoarse whisper. "If you won't take me up, I'll walk. I am his wife," she went on, as he still stared at her, wondering. "I have a right to see him."

"Well, it's the police that settles that," he rejoined, gruffly, but still he took her up, reflecting that, after all, it was no business of his. He brought the elevator to a stand-still, with a shake of the head and an anxious look towards the fatal studio, but Elizabeth moved towards it as if she had no doubt whatever of entering. And at the same moment, Mr. D'Hauteville opened the door of his rooms on the same landing, and came face to face with her.

"Miss Van Vorst!" he exclaimed, staring at her; then, in a lower voice: "For Heaven's sake, don't come here. Halleck is dead. Haven't you heard?"

"Yes, I--I have heard." She looked pleadingly at him. "Mr. D'Hauteville," she said, "take me in to see him. I--I must see him. It was such a shock. I am his wife, you know," she added. The disclosure, which she had once so dreaded, fell from her lips indifferently, as if it were a thing of small importance, compared with the gaining of her purpose.

"His wife!" D'Hauteville fell back and stared at her incredulously. Then his mind quickly grasped the explanation of facts which had puzzled him. He looked at her and saw that she was suffering from terrible distress and excitement. "Do you really wish to see him?" he said. "It would be painful."

"Yes, I--I must see him." Elizabeth raised confidingly her troubled eyes, and D'Hauteville apparently could not resist their appeal. Slowly and reluctantly he unlocked the studio door and allowed Elizabeth to enter. The hall was empty, but from behind the portière at the end came the sound of voices. D'Hauteville cast an anxious glance towards them, but he opened quickly another door, and led the way into the bedroom, which was still and dark, and close with a strange, oppressive atmosphere. D'Hauteville, treading softly, drew up the shade. Then he fell back and turned his eyes away.

Elizabeth felt no fear, though her only recollection of death was connected with a horrible moment in her childhood, when they had led her in trembling to look at her father in his coffin. But now she felt indifferent to any trivial terrors. She stood by the bedside looking down at the dead man, and put out her hand and touched the curls which clustered about his forehead. He was not much changed; the greatest difference which death had made was in a certain look of dignity, which his face had never worn in life. It was impossible, standing there, to think of his faults, or of any harm that he had wrought in her life. She only remembered that he had been her first lover--nothing more.

A few moments passed, and then D'Hauteville pulled down the shades and drew her gently from the room. The tears were falling fast behind her veil, and the hand that rested against his was icy cold.

"I had better see you home," he said anxiously, but she shook her head.

"No, no, thank you. You have been very kind, but I--I would rather not. Mr. D'Hauteville," she said, raising piteous eyes to his "who--who could have done it?"

"God only knows!" said D'Hauteville, with a sigh. "No one else, I believe, ever will."

He had rung the bell, and they stood waiting for the elevator, when she turned to him. "It was not I," she said, "don't ever think that it was I." And at that moment the elevator stopped and she was borne away, before there was time for further words. But D'Hauteville stood paralyzed.

"For Heaven's sake," he asked himself, "why did she say that? Who accused her?"

Elizabeth, as she went her way, was quite unconscious of the impression her words had produced. Her head felt confused, and after she left Carnegie there followed a blank interval, during which she wandered aimlessly, but found herself at last, as if led by some involuntary instinct, in the Park beside the lake, into which a few weeks before she had thrown her wedding ring. Now, as before, it was nearly covered with a thin coating of ice, yet there was a strip of water visible, and upon this her eyes fastened with a thrill of terrified fascination. She pictured it involuntarily, closing over her, dragging her down, blotting out all thoughts, all feelings.... A moment of agony, perhaps, and then? Rest, oblivion, an end of all struggle, no more to-morrows to be faced, no more regrets.... The thought of death, the one way out, the only remedy, swift and sure, appealed to her with a force almost irresistible.

If only the water were not so cold!--In an instant there swept over her, quite as inevitably, the natural, healthy reaction; the revulsion against the icy pond, and all the weird, uncanny, frightful, unpleasant associations that it conjured up. Ah, she had not the courage!--not then, at least. She closed her eyes, shutting out the strange fascination of the water gleaming in the pale chill sunlight, and promising its sure and terrible relief--she closed her eyes and turned resolutely away. A horror seized upon her of herself and of loneliness, of the bleak desolation on every side. She hastened, breathing heavily, towards the entrance of the Park, her hurried foot-steps on the crisp, hard path sounding unnaturally loud in the wintry silence.

_Chapter XXX_

Several weeks later the Halleck poisoning case was still, so far as the general public was concerned, an impenetrable mystery. For a day or two various clues were investigated, with a great appearance of zeal; and then a lull fell upon the efforts of the police. Their final investigations, if they made any, were conducted behind closed doors. But no result appeared from their labors; the coroner's inquest was postponed from week to week for lack of sufficient evidence. The public grew impatient, and clamored that some one should be arrested;--it did not seem greatly to matter whom. And then there began to be strange rumors of influence exerted to conceal the truth, of suspicion which pointed in such high quarters, that the police were afraid to continue their search.

These rumors were still comparatively new when Eleanor Van Antwerp took up one day a scandalous society journal--(one of those papers which no one reads, but whose remarks, in some mysterious way, every one hears about)--and came across a paragraph, which seemed to her at once insulting and inexplicable.

"They say"--it began with this conventional formula--"that certain highly dramatic developments are to be expected soon in the famous poisoning case. The evidence that the District Attorney has collected is now said to be complete and to inculpate rather seriously a well-known beauty. The lady is related, though on the father's side only, to one of our old Dutch houses, and was introduced to society, where she was before entirely unknown, by the representative of another old Knickerbocker family. Under such circumstances her success was certain. Not content with taking the town by storm, she made special capture of a certain prominent society man and eligible parti, to whom her engagement was announced. This gentleman has, however, according to latest reports, left the forlorn beauty and fled to parts unknown."

What did it mean? The hot, indignant color rushed to Mrs. Bobby's cheek, and then, retreating, left her deadly pale. She took the paper to her husband, and pointing out the offending paragraph, she stood beside him as he read it, her dark eyes fixed intently upon his face, and seeing there, to her dismay, more indignation than surprise.

"Well," she said, as he looked up at the end. "Tell me--what does it mean?"

"It--the editor of that infernal thing ought to be horsewhipped," he said, fiercely.

She put the remark aside as irrelevant. "Why, that should have been done long ago. But what does it mean?" she persisted, holding to the main point.

He put the paper down with a sigh. "It means what it says, Eleanor, I'm afraid," he said.

She stared at him, a shade paler, while the dread in her eyes grew more pronounced. "Means what it says?" she repeated. "Then it isn't merely a wild concoction of the kind they're always inventing?"

"It's more than that, I'm afraid." Bobby rose and began to pace up and down. "They do say nasty things," he said, apparently addressing the walls, or anything rather than his wife.

Her eyes followed him with an intense anxiety, as her white lips barely framed the question: "At the clubs?"

He nodded. "Yes, there, and--at other places besides. At the District Attorney's, for instance"--

"You don't mean?"--she began incredulously.

"That they suspect her? Yes."

Mrs. Bobby sat down as if her strength suddenly had failed her. "But that's absurd--impossible!" she said, after a moment.

"Perhaps; but--it's the impossible that some times happens." Mrs. Bobby was silent in incredulous horror; and he went on, after a pause: "You see, she's in a confoundedly unpleasant position. There are all kinds of queer stories going the round. They say now that she was secretly married to Halleck; that he had some kind of power over her, at least; and then having every motive to get rid of him, being engaged to Gerard"--

"Bobby," said his wife, in a horrified tone "how can you repeat such disgusting gossip?"

"I'm only telling you what they say," said Bobby, apologetically.

"I don't wish to know it." Bobby held his peace. "Why should she have any motive?" said his wife, after a moment's reflection "when her engagement was broken?"

"They say--but I thought you didn't wish to know."

"I don't, but I suppose, I must know. What do they--these disgusting people--say?"

"They think that Gerard found out something which made him break the engagement. As for the poison, that was sent before, you know"--

"Bobby," said his wife, with a little cry, "you don't mean to suggest that she--that Elizabeth Van Vorst"--She paused as if at a loss for words, and Bobby concluded the sentence.

"Sent the poison?" he said, quietly. "No, I don't suggest it--not for a second; I don't _believe_ it, even," he cried, with sudden emphasis, "but there are other people who--who do both."

"Then they must be fools." Bobby made no reply. "Where," she said, in a moment, "do they suppose she got it--the poison?"

"That they don't know--as yet; but they know--or they think they do--where she got the flask. There's a shop in Brooklyn where they sell others like it"--he stopped.

"Well," she said, "what of it? I daresay there are a good many shops where they sell them."

"The man who keeps this particular shop, said, I believe, that he sold one on the twenty-third of December to a young woman thickly veiled, rather tall and with wavy red hair."

"Her hair isn't red," said Mrs. Bobby, quickly.

"Some people call it so, you know," said Bobby. She was silent.

"Hundreds of women have that sort of hair," she said, presently. "Half the actresses in town"--

"He said it seemed to him natural."

"How should he know?" said Mrs. Bobby, contemptuously. "And why on earth should she choose a place like Brooklyn? I don't think she ever went there in her life."

"She seems," said Bobby, gently, "to have done a great many things that you--didn't think of, Eleanor." And again his wife fell silent.

"Have they any other evidence?" she asked, after thinking a moment, "or what they call evidence? I might as well know the worst."

"They have her letters, which were found among Halleck's papers--she told him to burn them, but he didn't. They were signed 'E. V. V.' One of them was about her engagement to Gerard--it seemed he had threatened her, and she offered him money to keep him quiet; the other was just a line, asking him to meet her in the Park. It's evident that she was afraid of him and had to keep him supplied with funds. She sold all her jewelry, they say, to do it."

"Ah--her jewelry!" Mrs. Bobby drew a long breath. "That is what she did with it, then," she remarked, involuntarily.

Bobby turned to her sharply. "You noticed, then," he said, "that she didn't have it?"

"Of course. There were her pearls, which she never wore last summer; the watch I gave her, too--I used to feel hurt that she never carried it, but I never suspected--Oh, what a fool I was--what a fool! And I who thought myself so clever in bringing about a match between her and Julian!" She stopped and suddenly burst into tears. "I made a nice failure of it all, didn't I?" she said. Then in a moment, her mood changed, and she turned upon Bobby indignantly. "Why didn't you tell me all this before?"

"I didn't want to tell you," said Bobby, slowly, "a moment sooner than was necessary. Personally, I don't see the use of having all this exploited--as a matter of fact, I'd pay a good deal to have it kept quiet; partly for your sake, and partly because--well, I like Elizabeth. She may not have behaved well, but I don't think she deserves to be made conspicuous in this way. I don't mind confessing that I've done what I could to arrest the zeal of the police, but I'm sorry to say, without success."

"You don't mean," she said incredulously, "that they refused money?"

"Well, the new District Attorney is very zealous," Bobby explained, "and, between ourselves, I think he wants the éclat of a sensational case. To put a young society woman in prison, against the efforts of all her friends, shows Roman stoicism,--or so he thinks."

"But you don't believe," said his wife, piteously, "you don't think it could come to that, Bobby?"

"To prison?" he said. "I don't know, Eleanor--upon my word I don't know." And he began again thoughtfully to pace up and down.

"What did Gerard say," he asked presently, "when he wrote to you before he sailed?"

"It was just a hurried note, hard to make out. He said the engagement was broken by her."

"Of course he'd _say_ that. What did she tell you?"