CHAPTER XXXI
When Lady Vera comes to herself at last with many sighs, and painful moans, she finds Lady Clive and the maid Elsie hovering around her like ministering angels, the latter, indeed, sobbing piteously in the belief that her young mistress is dead. But when the faint breath flutters over the parted lips, and the dark eyes unclose and stare around her with a blank, terrified look, Elsie sobs for joy, and even Lady Clive's bright blue eyes fill with glad tears.
"She is alive, my lady," the maid exclaims, joyfully. "That dreadful woman has not killed her with her vile chloroform."
Lady Vera shivers and puts her hand to her breast, withdrawing it, and gazing at it as though she expected to find it stained with blood.
"I thought she had killed me with that terrible dagger. I saw it gleam in the air above me. And, oh, those terrible eyes! They seemed to burn through me with their intense hate. Did you save me, Lady Clive?" she moans, feebly.
"No, dear, you owe your life to this brave Elsie," Lady Clive replies, turning an appreciative glance on the neat and pretty girl who was still busy over her mistress.
"Tell me how it was, Elsie," commands Lady Vera.
"You see, my lady," Elsie begins, "I had just finished packing your trunks, and thought I would go and see if you were asleep, or if you needed me before I went to bed. I had been packing very softly so as not to disturb you, and I crept softly in my stocking feet to the archway, and just parted the hangings to peep in at you. Then I saw you lying white as death, and a strange, sickening smell was in the room. I gazed around, and saw a head peeping around a curtain in the corner. The face was masked, and two blazing eyes shone through the eye-holes."
"You may well say blazing eyes," Lady Vera groans. "They seemed to burn through me when they looked down at me. And then, Elsie?"
"Oh, my lady, I was almost frightened to death! I knew that I was too light and small to cope with the robber, as I then thought him, but I had just enough sense left not to cry out, or make a noise. I ran swiftly and silently away out into the corridor where I met a gentleman going up into his room. I begged him to follow me at once, and he did so without a word. And, oh, my lady, we were not an instant too soon!" Elsie covers her face with her hands and shivers at the thought.
"She was about to murder me. I saw and knew all, though I could not move nor speak," exclaimed Countess Vera.
"She was, indeed, about to murder you," returns the maid. "She had crept from her corner and was standing over your bed with a shining dagger raised over you. Your night-dress had become unfastened at the throat, and your breast was bare. She was about to strike when your rescuer ran swiftly in and whirled her away from the bed, and the dagger fell on the floor. Oh, my dear lady, it is horrible how near you came to being killed," cries the faithful maid, bursting into floods of tears at the dreadful thought.
"But for you, my faithful girl, I should now be dead," the countess answers, deeply moved. "You shall be generously rewarded. But now tell me who was the gentleman that so opportunely came to your assistance?"
Elsie looks embarrassed, but Lady Clive comes to the rescue.
"We did not mean that you should know, dear," she says, "but I might have guessed that you would never rest until you knew. So I will tell you. It was Philip."
Lady Vera turns from deathly white to rosy red at that magic name.
"But he went away," she says, wonderingly.
"I know—he was down in the country visiting a friend. Last night he came in after you had retired, and he expected to go in the morning before you came down."
"Next to Elsie, I owe him my life," Lady Vera says, softly, as if there were a subtle pleasure in the thought, "and that dreadful woman—is she gone?"
"Marcia Cleveland? No, indeed. She is in the dressing-room, securely bound, and guarded by Philip and Sir Harry."
"I should like to see her," Lady Vera observes, after a moment's thought. "But first, Elsie, I should like my dressing-gown and slippers."
And wrapped in the soft, blue robe, with her splendid, golden hair floating loosely over her shoulders, like a shining veil, Lady Vera enters the presence of her enemy, closely followed by Lady Clive and Elsie, who guard her with nervous care on either side.
Marcia Cleveland, crouching like a baffled tigress, in the bonds they have cast around her, lifts her eyes and glowers with deadly rage and hate at the beautiful young girl.
CHAPTER XXXII
For a moment there is complete silence, while the wicked and vindictive woman glares with all the bitterness of baffled hate and vengeance upon her beautiful foe who had so nearly been her victim.
The Lady Vera speaks in a tone of cold and withering contempt:
"Could you not have been satisfied with the wrongs you have inflicted on me and mine, Marcia Cleveland, without attempting my life?"
"You should have known better than to think I could remain quiescent under your malicious vengeance! Did you think I could stand idly by and see you ruin my daughter's whole life without striking back at you?" the woman answers, sullenly.
"No, for I knew that there was too much of the venomous serpent in your nature," Lady Vera answers, with stinging scorn. "But I believe that even malevolence like yours would have shrunk abashed before such a terrible crime as this which you have attempted. Do you not tremble at the consequences of what you have done?"
"I have done nothing. I have only failed in what would have been a source of pride and joy to me if I had succeeded," Mrs. Cleveland answers, with sullen bravado.
"Infamous wretch!" Sir Harry Clive mutters audibly, while Colonel Lockhart, with a deathly-pale face and blazing eyes, appears to restrain himself with difficulty from springing upon her and tossing her out of the window.
"Should you indeed have been so glad to see me dead?" Lady Vera inquires, with a slight tone of mournfulness.
It seems incredible to her pure mind that this woman, in whose veins runs some slight strains of her own blood, being her mother's half-sister, could so coldly and heartlessly wish her dead—could even attempt to kill her.
"Yes, I should be glad to see you dead," Mrs. Cleveland answers, viciously. "I have hated Vera Campbell and wished her dead ever since she was born. I hated her mother before her. She robbed me of the only man I ever loved, and earned my eternal hate! And if you are really Edith Campbell's child, as you assert, be assured that I hate you, too, and wish you dead with all my heart!"
"Lady Vera, do not bandy words with the heartless creature! She can only wound you more and more," exclaims the baronet, indignantly. "Let us take her away. She contaminates the air we breathe."
For the first time a look of fear whitens the woman's reckless, daring face.
"Take me away—where?" she mutters, under her breath.
"To prison," Sir Harry answers, sternly, "to answer for your crime."
"Crime? I have committed no crime. I have not harmed a single hair of my lady's head," the woman answers, with sarcastic insolence.
"That is not your fault, woman," he answers, coldly and rebukingly. "You failed in the endeavor, but you shall pay dearly for the attempt. Have you done with her, Lady Vera? We are waiting on your pleasure."
Lady Vera stands silent a moment, regarding the wretched creature groveling on the floor in the cords with which they have securely bound her. In spite of her air of reckless bravado, Vera sees that her face is ghastly pale, and the dew of fear beads her brow. The angry eyes fall for the first time before the young girl's gaze of steady contempt. For a moment the silence continues, then Vera asks, clearly and calmly:
"Can I do anything for you, Mrs. Cleveland?"
"No," she answers, in an enraged snarl, like an angry canine.
Lady Vera continues, calmly:
"Pray understand me. I have no wish to wage further warfare upon you. With the fulfillment of my oath of vengeance my feud against you ended. I despise your hatred and your attempt to injure me, and I have no desire to punish you more than I have already done in obedience to my oath of vengeance. If there is anything I can do for you, speak."
Mrs. Cleveland looks wonderingly at the beautiful, calm, white face of the girl as she stands waiting for her answer.
"Do you mean that you will not prosecute me for this attempt on your life? That you will suffer me to go free?" she inquires in a doubtful tone, in which hope faintly struggles.
"Yes, I mean that, if you wish it—do you?" Vera asks, still quietly.
"Yes, but I hate to take a favor from you," the woman answers, sullenly.
"Do not take it as a favor. Consider that I am heaping coals of fire upon your head," Lady Vera answers, with a slight, cold laugh. "I choose to take my revenge that way. Sir Harry, will you please loose her bonds?"
The baronet looks his disapproval.
"Lady Vera, pray do not give way to such a Quixotic impulse," he urges. "If you do, this woman will live to make you regret it. You owe her no forbearance. I say let her suffer the penalty of the law for her attempted crime."
Lady Clive and Elsie echo his words, but the countess shakes her golden head.
"It is my wish that she shall go free," she answers, with resolution. "Colonel Lockhart, will you not loose her bonds?"
It is the first time she has seemed to be conscious of his presence. The deep color mantles her cheek as she speaks his name, and lifts a timid, appealing glance to him that makes his heart beat fast in his breast.
"Since you wish it, Lady Vera, yes," he answers, with a low bow, and hastens to execute her will, while the baronet, a little chagrined at her willfulness, looks silently on.
A moment and the strong cords that bind her enemy fall to the floor. Mrs. Cleveland rises erect and tall, and faces Vera.
"Do not expect me to thank you for this release," she says, bitterly. "Although I am glad to go free, I hate you if possible even more that you have had it in your power to do me a kindness."
"I expect no thanks," the countess answers icily. "I only desire to be rid of your presence." She lifts her white hand, and points commandingly at the door.
"Now go."
"One moment," exclaims the baronet. "How did you gain admittance to Lady Vera's bedchamber, and conceal yourself there?"
"By my woman's wit," she answers, curtly and decisively.
"Then, perhaps, you can find your way out in the same manner," the baronet rejoins, sarcastically.
"Perhaps so, but I think, on the whole, I should prefer a guide," she answers, with cool insolence.
"I am at your service, madam," Colonel Lockhart says, obeying a pleading look from Lady Vera, and preceding her to the door, followed by Sir Harry.
In a moment more, without word or backward glance, the wicked woman sweeps from the room.
Then Vera, broken down by the fierce strain upon her feelings, breaks down utterly, and weeps on Lady Clive's breast until she is thoroughly exhausted.
"You see it is all for the best to go away to-morrow," she has said to her friend. "Even my life is not safe here against the machinations of my relentless enemies."
CHAPTER XXXIII
It is very lovely down in the country at Fairvale Park in the golden summer weather. A pang goes through Lady Vera's heart as she recalls Sir Harry Clive's warning, and thinks of losing this grand, picturesque place, the only true home she has ever known. Her sweetest, tenderest memories of her father are twined around the spot.
Bereft of this, she must indeed be desolate. Not even one spot of brightness will remain in the cold and cruel darkness that has settled over her life.
Perhaps it is this thought that drives her, as soon as she is at home again, to seek diligently through her father's papers for some writing bearing on the subject of her supposed death and burial.
Sir Harry Clive has so confidently believed in the existence of some such document, that it is with a pang of the bitterest disappointment she sees the first day pass with no tangible success, though her brain is tired, and her eyes weary with poring over the contents of his desk.
"I have found nothing, although I have closely scrutinized every little bit of paper," she tells Sir Harry, when they meet at dinner, in a tone of sad disappointment.
"You have examined all the papers?" he asks, with disappointment equal to her own.
"All, except an old memorandum-book, which I intend to look over to-morrow," she answers, "though I scarcely think it will result in anything. Do you think it worth my while to examine it?"
"Yes. It is a forlorn hope, at least, and we must try everything. Strange that your father should have neglected so important a duty," the baronet continues, musingly.
"Poor papa! You must remember, his mind was all distraught by grief," Lady Vera answers, with rising tears. "He thought only of his sorrows and his longed-for vengeance on the destroyer of his wedded happiness. We must forgive him for his want of thought."
"You must not think that I am blaming him, dear Lady Vera. Nothing is further from my thoughts," Sir Harry answers, gently, but there is a shade of anxiety on his brow that does not clear away during the evening.
He is full of sorrow for the fair young countess, full of fears that he will not speak aloud, for he has heard far more of Raleigh Gilmore's intentions than he would even hint to Vera or to Lady Clive. He knows that she will have to make a fight for title, name and fortune, and that her case before the law is so terribly weak that there is large danger of her being cast out from her inheritance, and branded as adventuress and impostor.
But of all that is in his mind Sir Harry says nothing. Why should he grieve her more, he thinks, looking at the pale, suffering young face, on whose white and wasted lineaments the traces of sorrow were so plainly and sadly outlined.
"Upon her face there was the tint of grace,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye
As if its lid were charged with unshed tears."
The next day, taking the old memorandum-book, she goes for a solitary ramble. Lady Clive is going for a drive with her children, so she will not be missed.
A favorite resort of Lady Vera's is a silvery little lake on the green border of the wide, level park. Water-lilies with their wide green leaves and waxen-white petals rock softly on the bosom of the lake, and feathery-green willows fringe it softly round. Lady Vera finds a quiet, sequestered seat with her back against a willow tree, and applies herself to her task, turning page after page softly and unweariedly in the pursuit of her object.
A weary quest. The simple, leather-bound memorandum volume, with plain gold clasps, had been Earl Fairvale's bosom companion in the days when he was simple Lawrence Campbell. Patiently Vera reads on and on, and the morning sun mounts higher in the heavens, the water ripples softly at her feet, the wind sighs in the grass and the willows.
But it is not the most delightful reading in the world, studying the dull entries of an old memorandum-book. Lady Vera's sweet patience begins to flag at last. Her red lips quiver with disappointment and suspense. She shuts the book with one taper finger between the pages and leans her golden head back against the tree, wearily.
"There is nothing here—absolutely nothing," she tells herself, sadly, all unconscious that but one thin leaf intervenes between her and success. "I shall lose all," she continues, with a choking sob; "I have lost my lover and all my happiness. Now I shall have to lose my name, my title, my home, all the lavish wealth to which I have become so accustomed that I shall not know how to do without it. All my life I have seemed to be the foot-ball of fate. Sorrow is ever near me. It is like Philip's song. Oh, how often I recall it:
"'As the blade wears the scabbard,
The billow the shore,
So sorrow doth fret me
Forevermore!'"
She rests a little, letting the tears steal unchecked down her pale cheeks, while her bosom heaves with emotion—a little while, and then she dashes the blinding drops away, chiding herself for her weakness.
"I am childish and silly; I must remember I have not got to the end of the book yet. Time enough to despond then," she says, bending to her task with renewed ardor and energy.
The dark eyes under the shady fringe of the lashes rove patiently down the page—they finish it, and find nothing—the white, taper finger turns another leaf, and lo! there at the top of the page, this mysterious entry:
"Oct. 30th, 188—, Mem. To-day presented Joel McPherson, sexton at Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D. C., with a check for a thousand dollars, as a slight testimonial of my undying gratitude for his skill and co-operation with me in the act by which my darling daughter, Vera, was restored to me from the grave itself, in which she had been immured alive."
A cry breaks from the lips of the overjoyed girl—the tears start afresh—this time the shining drops of gladness.
"Eureka! I have found it!" she quotes, with a low and happy laugh, and bending her graceful head, she kisses the precious record made by that beloved hand now mouldering into dust.
It is some little time before she grows quite calm. The happy excitement of joy has made her pulse beat and her heart burn. At last, with the book still lying open on her lap, and her head leaned back against the tree, the tired lids fall over the dark eyes, she relapses into pleasant musings over this happy chance, and so—drops asleep, little dreaming of the baleful presence hovering so near her.
The winds sigh past her cheek, fanning it softly with a touch as soft as a kiss; the silver waters murmur at her feet, lulling her into sweeter, softer slumber. And no instinct warns her of the baleful gaze that watches her through the screen of the bending willows, nor of the stealthy footsteps creeping, serpent-like, nearer and nearer, until the eager gaze peers over her shoulder at the precious page spread open on her knee.
The sun climbs higher, broad noonday throws a lance of golden light into Vera's shady retreat and shines into her face. She wakes with a start, and springs to her feet.
"I have been asleep! How came I here?" she cries; then suddenly she remembers. "I was looking over papa's book, and I found the record of my burial and my rescue from the grave. Where is it, now? It lay open on my lap when I fell asleep. I hope it has not fallen into the lake."
A hurried survey of the green, mossy bank convinces her that such must be the case. The memorandum-book is nowhere to be seen. Most probably it has been precipitated into the water by her startled spring to her feet on awaking.
"How could I have been so careless?" she cries, in poignant grief and dismay. "I should have gone straight to the house and shown Sir Harry my important discovery. But I remember every word of it just as it was written. Perhaps that will do as well. I will go and seek Sir Harry at once and tell him all."
Carelessly donning her wide-brimmed sun-hat she leaves the spot, little dreaming that she has been ruthlessly robbed of her treasure.
"Are you sure—quite sure that you have not dreamed the whole thing, Lady Vera?" Sir Harry Clive asks her, incredulously, when she told him her story.
The sensitive color mantles her delicate cheek.
"I am perfectly certain of what I have stated," she answers. "It was only after I had found the entry that I fell asleep a few delicious moments. It must have been the greatness of the reaction from suspense and grief to success and joy that caused my sudden, overwhelming drowsiness. I remember that I kissed the precious words a few minutes before I fell asleep. I read them over and over. Listen, Sir Harry, I am quite sure I can repeat every word with perfect accuracy now."
Slowly she repeats:
"Oct. 30th, 188—. Mem. To-day presented Joel McPherson, sexton at Glenwood Cemetery, Washington, D. C., with a check for a thousand dollars, as a slight testimonial of my undying gratitude for his skill and co-operation with me in the act by which my darling daughter, Vera, was restored to me from the grave itself, in which she had been immured alive."
As she slowly utters the words, Sir Harry jots them down in his own memorandum-book. There is a puzzled look on his broad, fair, intelligent brow.
"If only you had not fallen asleep," he says, regretfully. "But, dear Lady Vera, this sounds so much like the vagaries of sleep. It seems real to you, I know, but I am almost afraid to pin my faith on it."
"The lake is not deep; I will send one of the servants to dive for the book. I am sure he will find it. Then I shall convince you of my credibility," she answers, quietly, as she leaves the room.
As she has said, the lake is not deep, and several of the men-servants at Fairvale Park are skillful swimmers, but for all that they cannot find the earl's memorandum-book beneath the shallow waves. All trace of it is gone.
"Are you quite sure you carried it down to the lake with you?" the baronet asks, unfeignedly perplexed.
"I am quite sure," she replies, with decision. "It lay open on my lap when I fell asleep."
"Can any one have stolen it?" he asks, unconsciously hitting the truth.
"Impossible," she answers. "I am sure if any one had come near me, I should have awakened. I am a very light sleeper."
"There is something very mysterious about its loss. I am quite confident it did not fall into the lake," muses Sir Harry Clive.
Lady Vera, on the contrary, is quite sure that it did, but she does not urge her belief, feeling a little wounded by his incredulous air, but after a little, she says, thoughtfully:
"I am so sure that what I have told you is the truth and no dream, Sir Harry, that I shall write to this Joel McPherson in America, and offer him a large reward to come to England and explain that strange entry in the lost memorandum-book. What do you think of my plan?"
"It can do no harm," he answers, after a moment's thought, "and it might be a good plan."
"Then I shall lose no time in executing it," she answers, decisively.
The baronet detains her to say, hesitatingly:
"Do not think me officious, Lady Vera, if I suggest that you advertise the loss of the earl's memorandum-book, and offer a suitable reward for its recovery. It is just possible that some strolling tramp has quietly pilfered it while you lay sleeping, attracted by the golden clasps."
"It may be," Lady Vera answers, incredulously, but she duly writes out the advertisement, and it is forwarded without delay to the county papers.