Countess Vera 3
"Not that you are of much account, anyway," pursues the heartless girl,
angrily. "You can never be trained into a proper maid, you stiff-necked
little pauper. If mamma were not so mean and stingy she would let me
have a real French maid like other girls. Never mind, when once I am
Mrs. Leslie Noble I'll show her how I will spend money!"
Vera shivers, and her heart thumps heavily against her side. The
one idea of Ivy's life is to marry Leslie Noble. He is handsome,
fascinating, wealthy, in short, her _beau ideal_ of perfection. He has
come on a month's visit to her mother from a distant city, and both
_mater_ and daughter are sure, quite sure, that the object for which
he was invited is accomplished; they have hooked the golden fish, they
have no doubt. What will Ivy say when she knows that she, the despised
Vera, is Leslie Noble's chosen bride?
"She will kill me, just that!" the girl murmurs to herself in terror,
while a second terror shakes her slight frame.
"What are you trembling for?" Ivy demands, shortly. "Are you afraid I
will slap you as I did last night? Well, you richly deserve it, and I
don't know but that I may. Hurry, now, and fix my hair and bring my
_robe de nuit_. It will be broad daylight before I get into bed. And I
want to rise early to find out why Leslie did not come to the ball."
Vera moves about mechanically, obeying orders, but answering never a
word.
A golden gleam has come into the eyes beneath the drooping lashes, a
heavy, deep red spot glows in the center of her death-white cheeks.
Half-frightened as she is at the thought of Ivy's rage when she learns
the truth, she is yet filled with triumph at the thought of her own
vengeance on her enemies, this glorious vengeance that has come to her
unsought.
_She_ will be Leslie Noble's wife, she will queen it over Ivy and her
mother. She will wear satin and laces and diamonds, she will have
French maids to wait on her, and then a sudden anguished recollection
drives the blood from her heart and forces a moan of despair from her
white lips--what is all her triumph since it cannot bring back the dead?
She is moving to the door, having tucked the blue satin counterpane
about Ivy's small figure, when the straw-gold head pops up, and the
frivolous beauty recalls her.
"I say, Vera, is the embroidery finished on my Surah polonaise? Because
I shall want it to-morrow night to wear to Mrs. Montague's _german_.
Tell your mother I shall want it without fail. I am tired of this
shamming sickness. It's nothing but laziness--just _that_. Did you say
it was finished?"
"No," Vera answers her, through her white lips. Ivy springs up
tumultuously in the bed.
"Not finished!" she screams, shrilly.
"Scandalous! I tell you I want it to-morrow night! I will have it--you
hear! Go and tell your mother to get up this instant and go to work at
it. Go and tell her--you hear?"
Vera, with her hands on the latch, and that crimson spot burning dully
on her cheeks, answers with sudden, passionate defiance:
"I will not!"
All in a moment Ivy is out of bed, and her small, claw-like fingers
clutch Vera's arm, the other hand comes down in a ringing slap on
Vera's cheek.
"Take that, little vixen!" she hisses, furiously, "and that, and that!
How dare you defy me?"
Vera pushes her off with a sudden passionate defiance.
"Because I am not afraid of you any longer," she says, sharply.
"Because poor mamma has escaped you. She is free--she is dead!"
"Dead!" Ivy screams in passionate wrath. "Dead--and the embroidery
not finished on my Surah polonaise! It is just like her--the lazy,
ungrateful thing! To go and die just when I needed----"
But Vera slams the door between her and the rest of the heartless
lament, and flies along the hall laughing like some mad thing. In truth
the horrors of this dreadful night have almost unseated her reason. She
shuts and bolts herself into her room, her young heart filled with wild
hatred for her heartless cousin.
"To-morrow I shall have my revenge upon her," she cries, with clenched
hands. "I would not tell her to-night. My triumph would not have been
complete. I will wait--wait until to-morrow, when Leslie Noble will
take me by the hand and tell her to her face that he loves me, and that
I am his wife!"
And her strange, half-maddened laugh filled the little room with weird
echoes.
CHAPTER III.
To-morrow, Vera's to-morrow--dawns, rainy, chilly, cheerless, as only a
rainy autumn day can be. The wild winds sigh eerily around the house.
The autumn leaves are beaten from the trees and swirl through the air,
falling in dank, sodden masses on the soaked grass of the lawn. The sun
refuses to shine. No more dreary and desolate day could be imagined.
With the earliest peep of dawn Vera makes her way to her mother's room.
It is lonely and deserted save for the sheeted presence of the quiet
dead. The lamps burn dimly, and there is a silence in the room so deep
it may be felt.
With a trembling hand Vera turns down the cold linen cover for one
long, lingering look at the beloved face--the strangely-beautiful
marble-white face, on which the story of a life-long sorrow has carved
its mournful record in the subtle tracery of grief.
Mrs. Campbell has been that most sorrowful of all living creatures--a
deserted wife!
The beautiful, dark eyes of her daughter have never looked upon the
face of the father who should have loved and nurtured her tender life.
But it is all over now--the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness, the deep
humiliation. The small, toil-stained hands are folded gently together
over some odorous white tube-roses that Vera has placed within them!
The jetty fringe of the long, black lashes rests heavily against the
thin, white cheeks, the beautifully-curved lips are closed peacefully,
the golden brown hair, thickly-streaked with gray, is parted sweetly on
the peaceful brow.
As Vera gazes, the tears, which have remained sealed in their fountains
till now, burst forth in healing showers, breaking upon the terrible
calm that has been upon her.
Again and again she presses her hot, feverish lips to the cold, white
brow of the only friend her lonely life has ever known.
"Oh, mamma, mamma, if you might but have taken me with you," she sobs,
bitterly.
"The best thing that could have happened," says a curt, icy voice
behind her, and turning with a shiver of repulsion, Vera beholds
her aunt, Mrs. Cleveland, who has entered noiselessly in her furred
slippers and crimson dressing-gown.
She comes to the foot of the bed and stands silently a moment regarding
the cold, white features of her dead sister, then hastily turns her
head aside as if the still face held some unspoken reproach for her.
"Cover the face, Vera," she says, coldly. "It is not pleasant to look
at the dead."
"Not when we have wronged them," the girl murmurs, almost inaudibly,
and with deep bitterness.
"What is that you are saying?" demands Mrs. Cleveland, sharply. "'Not
when we have wronged them,' eh? Beware, girl, how you let that sharp
tongue of yours run on. You may chance to see the inside of the
alms-house!"
But Vera, biting her lips fiercely, in mute shame at that angry slip of
the tongue in presence of the dead, makes no answer. Dropping the white
sheet back over the sealed lips that cannot open to defend her child,
she buries her face in the pillow, trembling all over with indignation
and grief.
Mrs. Cleveland stands contemplating her a moment with a look of
contemptuous scorn on her high, Roman features, then, to Vera's
amazement, she exclaims:
"One of the servants told me that Leslie Noble brought a preacher in
here last night. Was it to administer the sacrament to the dying?"
No answer from Vera, whose face remains buried in the pillow.
"Speak!" Mrs. Cleveland commands, coming a step nearer, "did he come to
administer the consolations of religion to the dying?"
"No," Vera answers, lifting her white face a moment, and looking
steadily into her enemy's questioning eyes. "No."
"No," Mrs. Cleveland echoes, with a look of alarm. "What then, girl,
what then?"
But Vera, with the strange reply, "You must ask Mr. Noble--he will inform you," drops her pallid face into her hands again.
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