Countess Vera 13

Countess Vera 13

"You need not tell her," he answers. "No need to alarm her needlessly.

After all, our forebodings may be vain. Fairvale is the most fearless

and accomplished rider I ever saw. He may even conquer King."

 

But even then the loud and startling peal of the door-bell rings like a

wild alarm through the house.

 

* * * * *

 

Sir Harry's fears have had only too good a foundation. They have picked

up the earl from the hard and flinty pavement, where the maddened brute

had flung him, and brought him home bleeding, senseless--mortally

injured, all the surgeons agree.

 

And Lady Vera? The shock of the awful tidings had almost rent her heart

in twain. Passing from one swoon into another, she lies on her couch,

white and horror-stricken, shuddering sighs heaving her breast. At last

they come to tell her that the awful stupor is over. He is conscious,

and has asked for her.

 

"How long?" she asks, faintly, for they have told her that his hours

are numbered.

 

"Calm yourself, for he cannot bear the least excitement."

 

But when Vera goes into his presence, and sees him lying so

marble-white, with the black hair tossed back from the high, pale brow,

and the eager, asking eyes fixed upon her anguished face, a great,

choking knot rises into her throat--it seems as if she will choke with

the violence of her repressed emotion.

 

"Father!" she wails, with a world of grief in that one word, and falls

on her knees by his bed-side.

 

"I am going from you, dear," he answers, with the strange calmness of

the dying. "The black river of death yawns at my feet. The pale and

mystic boatman is waiting to row me over. Already the cold waves splash

over me. Vera!"

 

"Father," she answers, placing her hand in the cold one feebly groping

for it.

 

His hollow, dark eyes roll around the room.

 

"Are we alone?"

 

"Alone," she answers, for all the kindly watchers have withdrawn,

leaving father and child to the sweet solace of this last moment

together, undisturbed by alien eyes.

 

The dark eyes seek hers--sad, wistful, full of vain remorse.

 

"Vera, I was reckless, mad, defiant of fate. I have thrown my life

away, my poor, blighted life. Can you forgive me, my poor, orphaned

girl?"

 

Only her stifled sobs answer him.

 

"I did not mean it, Vera. I was tormented by my burning thoughts, and I

only sought diversion. I thought I could hold the fiery brute in check.

But the devil threw me. No matter; I am to blame. I was too reckless.

But you forgive me, darling?"

 

She kisses him because she cannot speak.

 

"I have lost my life," he murmurs, sadly; "lost it before my work on

earth was done. My daughter, you recall what I said to you so short a

while ago?"

 

She shivers, and lifts her dark, foreboding eyes to his face.

 

"Yes, father."

 

"Bring me the Bible from yonder stand, dear. You must swear a solemn

oath."

 

The beautiful young face quivers with nameless dread and fear.

 

"Oh, father," she prays, with lifted hands and streaming eyes, "leave

it to Heaven!"

 

The dark eyes, fast glazing over with the film of death, grow hard and

stern.

 

"Vera, child of my martyred wife, will you be false to your father's

dying trust? Will you refuse to obey his dying commands?"

 

"No, father, no," she weeps.

 

"Then place your hand on this Bible, my darling."

 

Silently she obeys him, the pale, chill light of the waning day

glimmering in on her ghost-like, pallid face, and the dark eyes full of

pain and despair.

 

And the voice of the dying man rises strangely on the utter stillness.

 

"Swear, Vera, swear by all your hopes of happiness, that you will

punish Marcia Cleveland through her dearest affections, that at any

cost to yourself you will avenge your mother's wrongs!"

 

A gasp; the words die on Lady Vera's parched tongue.

 

"Speak, my little countess. Repeat my words," he urges, anxiously.

 

With a terrible effort she murmurs them over:

 

"I swear, by all my hopes of happiness, that I will punish Marcia

Cleveland through her dearest affections; that at any cost to myself I

will avenge my mother's wrongs!"

 

She glances down at the loved face for his smile of approval. An icy

hand seems to clutch her heart. Her father has died as the last words

left her lips--died with a smile of triumph on his marble-white face!

 

One piercing cry of anguish, and the Countess of Fairvale falls

lifeless across the still warm body of the dead.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIII.

 

 

Long days of illness for Lady Fairvale follow upon the tragic episode

of her father's death.

 

Nights and days go by like utter blanks to her, with only slightly

recurring intervals of consciousness. It has been a great shock to her,

this swift and terrible rending apart of the last filial tie earth

holds for her. Near kindred she has none. Her father's death has seemed

to leave her utterly alone on earth. It is true there is some distant

cousin and heir-at-law who would, no doubt, take it as a favor if she

would die and leave him title and estates, but him she knows not.

 

"There is no one living who has the least claim upon my affection,"

she thinks, forlornly, to herself that day, when, with agonized heart

she bends to press the last farewell kiss on her father's marble lips;

but even with the words a sudden memory stabs her heart and crushes

her senseless to the floor with the silent whisper of one name--Leslie

Noble!

 

That feared and dreaded name has power to blanch poor Vera's cheek and

drive the blood from her heart at any moment.

 

"What if, dazzled by my wealth and title, he should come and claim

me?" is her dreadful thought, never dreaming of that stately monument

in fair and flowery Glenwood, on which Leslie Noble has caused to be

inscribed the simple name of:

 

"VERA,

WIFE OF LESLIE NOBLE.

Died, ---- --th, 18--; aged 17."

 

thus trying to atone to the dead in some slight measure for the

pitiful, unmanly cowardice that had driven her desperate.

 

But after that terrible brain fever, that great struggle between the

opposing forces of life and death, Vera lies still upon her couch with

wide, dark eyes that look out from her small, white face drearily upon

the world--the great, wicked world in which, though she has so much

wealth and power, she cannot claim so much as a single true friend.

 

"Unless Lady Clive be one," she muses, "and--and," but then she stops,

and takes herself to task because she has so strangely thought of

Captain Lockhart just then.

 

"Where can he be?" she wonders. "Perhaps he has taken himself off to

livelier quarters. The house must have been as dull as a tomb while I

lay so ill. I wonder if Lady Clive will ever forgive me for spoiling

her 'season' like this."

 

She propounds this latter question gravely to Lady Clive herself, who

responds with an encouraging smile, and the gay little answer:

 

"I will try."

 

But when she sees how pale and wistful is Countess Vera's lovely face,

she folds her in her arms and kisses her.

 

"My dear, do not give a thought to _that_," she says. "There is nothing

to forgive, believe me. I am very glad that you were with us when you

fell sick. I have nursed you with all the love and tenderness I could

have given a sister."

 

Why should Countess Vera's heart beat so fast at the thought of being

Lady Clive's sister, and why should her pale cheeks flush, and the

grateful words falter on her lips?

 

"We all love you," her friend goes on kindly. "The children have been

dolorous over you. 'When will Vera come and see us again?' they ask

every day. Have you looked at the pretty bouquets they sent in for you this morning?"