CHAPTER XXII.

UNMASKED.

Dainty fell back, sobbing, on her hard couch, her frame shaking as with

an ague chill.

The horror of her position was enough to drive her mad.

It seemed to her that she was entombed alive, and left to her fate--left

to die of darkness, terror, grief, and starvation, the wretched victim

of a most cruel persecution; she who had so much to live for; youth,

health, beauty, and a loving young husband!

Her faltering voice rang out in a despairing prayer:

"Oh, God, have mercy on me, and on my poor unhappy husband and mother,

whose hearts I know are aching with grief over my mysterious absence!

Oh, send some pitying angel to guide them to my dreary prison!"

As if in answer to the wild aspiration, a key suddenly clicked in the

lock outside, and she sprang upright on the cot with a strangling gasp

of fear and hope commingled.

Slowly the heavy oaken door swung outward wide enough to admit a tall,

dark-gowned figure, then shut inward again, locking Dainty in with the

feared and abhorred ghost of the old monk.

In the dim, flickering light of the cell, the horrible figure towered

above the girl, who crouched low in breathless fear at the dreaded

apparition, speech frozen on her lips, her heart sinking till the blood

seemed freezing in her veins, not observing in her alarm that the ghost

had a rather prosaic air by reason of carrying a large basket on one

arm.

Suddenly the ghastly creature spoke: the first time it had ever opened

its lips in all its visitations to Dainty.

"You don't seem glad to see me," it observed, in hoarse, mocking accents

that somehow had a familiar ring in her ears.

There flashed over her mind some words that Lovelace Ellsworth had said

to her lately:

"I am convinced that the pretended monk is a creature of flesh and

blood, and if you could only summon courage to tear away its mask when

it calls on you again, you would most likely find beneath it the coarse

Sheila Kelly, or very probably one of your malicious cousins. Try it

next time, and you will see that I am right, darling."

At sound of that gibing voice, with its oddly familiar ring, a desperate

courage came to poor Dainty, and suddenly springing erect on her bed,

she made a fierce onslaught on her foe, tearing away in one frantic

clutch the ghastly mask, skull-cap, wig, and all, and leaving exposed

the astonished features of the coarse Irish woman, Sheila Kelly.

The woman uttered a fierce imprecation in her surprise, recoiling a

step, then laughing coarsely:

"What a little wild-cat, to be sure! But why didn't you do it long ago?"

"I never thought of it being you, Sheila Kelly! How could I, when I've

seen you lying asleep in my room and the old monk standing by my bed?"

faltered Dainty in surprise and bewilderment.

"Och, thin it was Miss Peyton playing the part. Shure, she's as tall as

mesilf, and I don't mind satisfyin' yer cur'osity now, seein' as yer'll

never git out o' this alive to blow on us!" returned the woman, with

cool effrontery.

"What do you mean, Sheila?" cried the young girl in alarm.

"Shure, I mane what I say! Ye're a pris'ner fer life, Miss Dainty Chase,

sintenced by yer aunt and cousins to solitary confinement on bread and

water till you die--and the sooner you do that last the better they will

be pleased!" returned the coarse woman letting down her basket and

taking out a glass tumbler, two large bottles of water, some loaves of

stale bread, and some of Dainty's clothes, saying, facetiously: "Here's

yer duds and yer grub--enough o' both ter last yer a week--and at the

end of a week I'll call again with more provisions, miss--and likewise,

if you get tired of living in such luxury, here's a bottle of laudanum

to pass yer into purgatory," coolly putting it on the only chair the

room contained, while Dainty's blue eyes dilated in horror at her

fiendish brutality.

"Sheila, Sheila, surely this is some cruel jest! You can not mean to

leave me here alone as you say! Oh, what harm have I ever done to you

that you treat me so cruelly?" she cried in anguish.

"As for the harrum, none; but I always hated ye from the first time I

looked on yer bonny face. As for the raison, 'tis soon towld. I fell in

love with the young masther soon's ever he kem home from Yurrup, and I

did me best ter make up ter him; but he would none of me. And I seen

straight away his heart was wid you, and I hated yer ever since, and

forby yer two cousins and t' ould Leddy Ellsworth turned against yer for

the same raison, because yer won the masther's heart. So whin they

offered ter make me fortune for scaring yer ter death, I was ready and

glad ter take the job ter pay off me own score agin ye! So there now,

ye see it's small good luck yer pritty face got ye!" concluded the cruel

Irish woman, exultantly.

Poor Dainty, gazing into that hard face, felt the utter uselessness of

all appeals for mercy. The woman had the heart of a fiend, and was

openly glad of her victim's misery.

She determined to appeal to her cupidity, and ventured, timidly:

"If you will only give me my liberty, Sheila, I give you my word of

honor Mr. Ellsworth will make you rich."

"Rich, is it? and him a-dying!" grunted Sheila Kelly, indifferently.

"Dying! Oh, what mean you, Sheila? Speak! What has happened to my

darling?" shrieked poor Dainty, in wild alarm.

Sheila Kelly shrugged her shoulders, and proceeded to fill the dying

lamp with fresh oil from a tin can she had brought in her capacious

basket. Then sitting down on the foot of the narrow cot, she began and

recounted the events of the morning to her anxious listener, ending

with:

"Shure, the mane, murtherin' Ashley is safe in jail, t' ould Leddy

Ellsworth, going from one fainting fit ter another, and Masther Lovelace

a-laying with ter bullet in his head, niver spakin' a worrud since he

was shot, niver opening his eyes, jist a-dying by inches, sez all the

docthers."

Oh, the shrieks of despair that filled the gloomy cell! They were enough

to move a heart of stone; but Dainty's tormentor was cruel as a fiend.

She listened unmoved to the expressions of despair and the prayers for

liberty, and laughed incredulously, when the girl cried, desperately:

"Oh, Sheila! for God's sake, let me go to the side of my dying husband!

Yes, he is my own dear husband, and my place is by him now, to soothe

his last hours. We were married secretly two weeks ago, because he

feared our cruel enemies would devise some scheme to tear us from each

other, as indeed they have done. But now that you know the truth, you

would not keep a young wife from the side of her dying husband, would

you? You will set me free, to go to him?"

But the wretch shook her head, with a mocking laugh.

"You will never see the light of day again!" she said, calmly.

"Oh, Sheila, do you forget that I have a mother to mourn me as well as a

husband? A poor widowed mother, who has no one but me in the wide, wide

world! I am the light of her eyes and her heart. She will die of a

broken heart at my mysterious fate! For her sake, Sheila, if not for my

own and my husband's, I beg you for my liberty!" prayed the wretched

prisoner, kneeling on the cold floor at her tormentor's feet.

But she might as well have prayed to the cold stone wall as to such a

fiend in human form.

"Ye're wastin' worruds, Dainty Chase!" she said, mockingly, as she rose

to go. "Ye'll niver come out of this cell alive, I tell you; so the

sooner yer make up yer mind ter die, the better; and I'll kem ag'in this

day week, hoping ter find yer cold corp on the bed!"

"One word!" implored the wretched girl, detaining her. "Where am I,

Sheila Kelly? Is this, as I suspect, a dungeon beneath the ruined wing

of Ellsworth?"

"Yes, ye're right; 'tis the underground chambers, where t' ould

Ellsworths hid from the Indians and kept their prisoners, and this will

be yer tomb, Dainty Chase. Better try the laudanum, and put yersilf out

of misery at once!" flashing out, and locking the door on the outside as

before.