knew and loved your dear one? Promise to come every day, dear Lance, and let us share our trouble together."
"I will try," he answered, moved by her gentle friendliness, and thinking as he looked up that she was a very handsome woman. Not with the beauty of his lost Lily. Her angelic, blonde fairness typified the highest beauty to him. But handsome with a certain queenliness that was very winning. How dark and soft her eyes were—how beautiful the sweep of the long, dark lashes. And her cheeks—how rich and soft was the color that glowed upon them and deepened to crimson tints upon her full lips. And when that dark, bright face glowed with tenderness and feeling how very fascinating it became. When she took on herself the role of comforter how softly she could pour the oil of healing on the troubled waves of feeling. She had Lance soothed and quieted before Mr. Lawrence came down, with a pale and troubled face, from Ada's sick room.
Dinner went off rather soberly and solemnly. The array of silver and cut-glass was dazzling, the edibles costly and dainty, but Lance scarcely made a pretence of eating. Mr. Lawrence merely trifled with the viands, and Mrs. Vance was the only one whose appetite was equal to the demands of the occasion. Conversation lagged, though the beautiful widow tried to keep it up with all the consummate art of which she was mistress. But the gentlemen did not second her efforts, and she was relieved when the formal ceremony was over and they went out to smoke their cigars.
"I will go in and see Ada a little," thought she. "The nurse says the fever is not infectious."
She tripped lightly up the steps and into the room where poor Ada lay tossing in her burning fever. She was very much like her sister in appearance, but the luxurious chamber where she lay was in great contrast with that in which poor suffering Lily was now immured. True, Lily had all the comforts her sickness needed, but here the capricious eyes of an invalid found everything to charm and soothe the weary eye. Here delicate curtains of silk and lace shut out the too dazzling light of day; here dainty white hangings delighted the eye with their coolness and purity. Here and there were set vases of freshly-cut flowers filling the air with sweetness, and rare and costly paintings looked down from the softly tinted walls.
An expression of annoyance swept over the girl's fair, ingenuous face as Mrs. Vance bent airily over her and touched her feverish brow with her delicately rouged lips.
"You should not kiss me," said she, pettishly, "this fever may be infectious."
"The doctor said it was not infectious, my dear," murmured the lady sweetly. "I asked him myself this morning."
"Oh! you did, eh? I suppose wild horses could not have dragged you in here to see me if it had been," said Ada, sarcastically.
"Is there anything I can do for you, my love?" asked Mrs. Vance, gracefully ignoring the spoiled girl's incivility.
"Nothing—only do not talk to me—talking hurts my head," replied the invalid, turning her face away.
"Ah, then, if I only disturb you I will take my leave," said the handsome widow, tripping out of the room.
"You were rather rude, my dear," said the nurse, surprised at her gentle patient's sudden petulance.
"I don't care," said Ada vehemently, "I hate that woman! I cannot tell why it is, but I have hated her ever since she came here to live, nearly two years ago. She knows I do not like her, but she affects unconsciousness of it. Keep the door locked, nurse, and do not let her come in here again—tell her I am too ill to see anyone. When she kissed me just now I felt as if a great slimy snake had crawled over me—ugh!" she said, shuddering at the recollection.
CHAPTER VIII
The great agitation of poor imprisoned Lily Lawrence culminated in a severe fit of illness, and Doctor Pratt found need for all his skill before convalescence set in again. Mr. Colville prudently kept himself in the background now, so she was not troubled by the sight of the villain's face for several weeks. Haidee proved herself a careful and efficient nurse, and in three weeks' time poor Lily rose from her sick-bed pale, weak and weary, her girlish heart filled with heaviness and despair. She had again and again entreated old Haidee to go to her father, but in vain. The old woman stubbornly turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties. The old crone's husband Lily had not yet seen, though she frequently heard his gruff and brutal tones in the next room to hers, which appeared to be his sleeping-apartment.
She was sitting up one day in the great arm-chair puzzling her brain over some plan of escape. She looked very lovely still, though wasted by illness and sorrow. Haidee had provided her with a neat blue wrapper, and her fairness was almost dazzling by contrast with its becoming hue. Her rich golden hair was gathered in a loose coil at the back of her graceful little head, showing the whiteness of her neck, and the rosy tinting of her small, shell-like ears. A fancy seized her to look out of the window which was always covered with thick curtains. It was warm and sultry and she longed for a breath of the sweet and balmy air outside her gloomy-looking room.
Rising with feeble steps she went to the window, and pulled aside the curtain.
Horrors! the window was barred with great, heavy iron bars!
Some vague, indefinite plan of escape through that window had been forming in her mind. She almost screamed in her despair as she saw the futility of her plan.
"Hateful prison-bars!" said she, angrily, and clenching one in her small hand she shook it with angry violence. To her surprise the rotten wood-work yielded, and the bar fell from its place and remained in her hand. Very cautiously she looked through the aperture just formed.
She saw that she was in an old and weather-beaten house set in the midst of a large garden whose overgrown shrubs and bushes had grown wild and tangled, and over-run the paths. There was not another house within half a mile of this one. She was far out on the suburbs, she comprehended at once.
A noise below startled her from her reconnoissance. Hastily fitting the heavy bar back to its place, she dropped the curtains and tottered back to her seat, assuming an air of indifference and weariness.
The door opened and Harold Colville entered.
"Good-evening, Miss Lawrence," said he, coolly; "I trust you find yourself improving."
Lily vouchsafed him no answer save a look of scorn and contempt.
"Come—come, fair lady," said he, seating himself near her, "have you no kinder greeting for your devoted admirer?"
"Leave the room, if you please," said she, while the indignant crimson suffused her cheeks. "I have nothing to say to you, sir!"
"Nothing? surely it were wiser, Lily, to try to make terms with me than to bandy angry words. Remember you are in my power. I love you, and I want your love in return. But, proud girl, beware how you change my love into hate."
"Mr. Colville," said she, "it is cruel, it is unmanly thus to persecute a defenseless girl. I beseech you, restore me to my home and my father. Think of my poor father, my suffering sister. There are other women who will love you, women who have not given away their hearts as I have done."
"There is but one woman on earth to me, Lily, and I have sworn to make her my own. You cannot move me by all you say—as well try to topple a mountain from its base as to move me from my firm will. Better, far better were it for you, Lily Lawrence, to waive all this useless pleading, make yourself as charming as you well know how to do, and become my wife. If you still persist in refusing there may be worse things in store for you."
She could not misunderstand the insulting meaning of his angry speech. The hot blood flushed into her face, then receded and left her pale as death. In bitter shame at his rudeness
