CHAPTER XXIX.

AS WE KISS THE DEAD.

Alas! nor words, nor tears, nor embraces, nor reproaches could move Love

Ellsworth from his statue-like repose.

He suffered Dainty's caresses passively, but he did not return them, and

his large, beautiful dark eyes dwelt on her face with the gentle calm of

an infant whose intellect is not yet awakened.

"You see how it is, Miss Chase, and God knows how sorry I am to see my

dear master so," Franklin said, sorrowfully, as she desisted at last,

and gazed in silent anguish at the mental wreck in the chair.

A new thought came to her, and she exclaimed:

"Where is my mother?"

"She returned to Richmond almost a month ago, Miss Chase."

"Why did she not remain and nurse poor Love?" she groaned.

Franklin hesitated a moment, then returned in a respectful undertone:

"I can not say for a certainty, miss, but it is whispered among the

servants that Mrs. Ellsworth sent her away because the young ladies

wished it."

"The young ladies?" inquiringly.

"Miss Peyton and Miss Craye, your cousins. Mrs. Ellsworth has adopted

them as her joint heiresses since she came into the fortune that my

master lost by his failure to marry on his twenty-sixth birthday."

He gave a great start of surprise when the lovely, sad-eyed girl

answered quickly:

"He did not lose it, for in the fear of some such treachery as afterward

really happened, your master persuaded me to consent to a secret

marriage in the middle of July, so that I have really been his wife

going on three months."

"It is false!" cried an angry voice; and there in the door-way towered

the tall form of Mrs. Ellsworth, pale to the very lips, but with an

ominous flash in her dark eyes.

She had recovered from the faintness that had seized her at first sight

of the supposed ghost, on being assured by a servant that she had seen

Miss Chase in the flesh entering the room of Mr. Ellsworth. As soon as

she could command her shaken nerves, she followed Dainty just in time to

hear her avowal of her marriage to Love in July.

"It is false!" she cried, furiously; but Dainty faced her bravely,

clasping Love's cold, irresponsive hand in her own, exclaiming tenderly:

"He is my husband!"

"Can you prove it?" sneeringly.

Dainty was very pale, and trembling like a wind-blown leaf, but she

summoned courage to reply:

"We were married the middle of July at that little church in the woods

where we attended a festival one night. It was in the twilight when we

were returning from a long drive into the country."

"Ah! there were witnesses, of course?" anxiously.

"No one was present but the minister who united us," Dainty answered.

"His name?"

"I do not remember it."

"Indeed! that is strange. But perhaps you can remember whether there was

a license, without which such a marriage would not be legal?" continued

Mrs. Ellsworth, still scornfully incredulous.

Dainty answered, dauntlessly:

"Yes, there was a license. Love went to the county seat to procure it

just previous to the marriage."

They gazed into each other's eyes, and Mrs. Ellsworth drew a long,

shivering breath as she exclaimed, menacingly:

"This sounds very fine, but you can not prove one word of it--not one!

It is a plot to wrest a fortune from me, but it will not succeed. It was

your falsity in forsaking Love at his wedding-hour that caused all his

trouble, and the sight of you is hateful to me. You must leave here at

once, and return to your mother at your old home in Richmond, for the

roof of Ellsworth shall not shelter you an hour!"

"Madame, after all my wrongs at your hands--" began Dainty,

reproachfully; but she was cruelly interrupted:

"Assertion is not proof! Until you can bring proof of all your charges,

I decline to admit them. Again, Lovelace Ellsworth is now a pauper

dependent on my bounty. Raise but your voice to assert a wife's claim on

him, and out he goes to become the wretched inmate of an idiot asylum.

On your silence as to this trumped-up charge of a secret marriage, and

also of wrongs pretended to be done by my hands, depends the comfort of

Lovelace Ellsworth. Now say whether you love yourself better than you do

him!"

It was a crucial test; but the girl did not hesitate.

She pressed her lips to Love's pale brow solemnly, as we kiss the dead,

murmuring:

"I would sacrifice my very life to purchase any good for him!"

The man Franklin gazed on in keen sympathy for the girl and bitter

disdain of the cruel woman, but he did not dare to utter a word lest he

should make matters worse.

Mrs. Ellsworth's eyes flashed triumphantly at her easy victory over the

broken-hearted girl.

"Very well. You have made a wise decision. You would only come to bitter

grief by opposing me," she asserted, loftily; and added: "Now you must

go. Here is ten dollars; take it, and go back on the first train to your

mother in Richmond."

The girl clung to her husband, sobbing:

"Oh, let me stay and be his slave! I love him so I can not leave him!"

Franklin dared not open his lips, but his blood boiled at the cruel

scene that followed, when Mrs. Ellsworth tore the weeping wife from her

husband with resolute hands and harsh, cruel words, thrusting her

outside the door as she cried:

"Go, now--leave the house at once, or I will send him instantly to an

idiot asylum! What! you will not take my money? High airs for a pauper

upon my word!"

She slammed the door, shutting the wretched young wife out into the

hall, and turned fiercely upon Franklin.

"As you have been a witness to this scene," she cried, "I must also

command your silence. Will money purchase it?"

"No, madame," he replied, with secret indignation.

"Then love for your master must be the motive," she cried, with a fierce

stamp of the foot. "Do you want me to send him to an idiot asylum, where

he can no longer have your faithful care?"

"No, madame, no!" the middle-aged servant replied, trembling with

emotion.

"Then you will hold your tongue upon what has just occurred in this

room? Do you promise?" she cried, harshly.

"I promise," replied Franklin, sadly.

"Very well. See that you do not violate it on pain of serious results to

your master. I am tired of the charge of him anyhow; for who knows how

soon his simple idiocy may turn to dangerous insanity? So the least

provocation from you would cause me to send him to a pauper asylum for

idiots!" she cried, warningly, as she hurried from the room to make sure

that none of the officious servants should dare to harbor her persecuted

victim.

Dainty had already dragged herself out of the house, passing an open

door where Olive and Ela looked out with derisive laughter at her

blighted appearance, with the golden curls all shorn away, and the pale

face stained with tears, while her faded summer gown and the

old-fashioned scarf drawn about her shivering form did not conduce to

the elegance of her appearance.

"Ha! ha! she looks like a beggar!" sneered Olive, adding: "Let us

follow, and see where she goes for shelter. Of course, she will have

shocking tales to tell on us if she can get any one to listen. I should

like to prevent her if I could."

"Nothing will shut her mouth but death!" returned Ela, significantly,

as, unnoticed by any one, they stole out to track the despairing girl on

her wretched exile.

The deep gloom of twilight had now fallen, and Dainty stood irresolute

where to go, clinging forlornly to the gate, her wistful, white face

turned back to Love's window, her tender heart wrung by the torture of

leaving him forever.

"Oh! who could have dreamed of such a strange and cruel fate for my

darling? It is indeed worse than death!" she sighed, miserably, thinking

how cruel Mrs. Ellsworth had been to drive her away so heartlessly, when

she had prayed to her humbly on her knees to let her remain as an humble

servant and nurse him.

It seemed like the cruelest irony of fate that she, Love Ellsworth's

wife, the real mistress of Ellsworth, should be driven in scorn from its

gates, penniless, hopeless, and without a friend, her lips sealed to the

truth of her wifehood, lest by speaking she should consign her beloved

husband to a more cruel doom than he was already enduring.

Mrs. Ellsworth had carried things with a high hand; but she had been

reasonably sure of her position, having investigated Love's story of a

secret marriage, and satisfied herself that it would be well-nigh

impossible to prove it.

Owing to Love's desire for secrecy, there was no record of the license

on the books of the clerk of county court who had issued it. The clerk

himself, a feeble, aged man, had died suddenly two months ago--the day

previous to Lovelace Ellsworth's birthday.

The minister of the little church where the ceremony had been performed

had also died a month previous of a malignant fever contracted in

visiting a squalid settlement of shiftless sand diggers.

A terrible fatality seemed to attend poor Dainty; for in all probability

these two dead men were the only persons who held the secret of her

marriage, and dead men tell no tales.

As the worse than widowed bride clung to the gate, taking that farewell

look at her husband's window, she suddenly remembered that she had one

true though humble friend in the neighborhood--poor old black mammy.

"I will go to her cabin and stay to-night, and to-morrow I must try to

go home to mamma," she sighed, turning toward the dark patch of woods

where the lonely negro cabin stood, and followed by relentless fate in

the shape of her pitiless rivals, Olive and Ela.

"She is going to old Virginia's cabin, but she does not know that the

negroes have all moved away to the station, and that she will find it

deserted," whispered Ela. "However, she can shelter herself there for

the night, though it will be very cold without a fire."

"Some one ought to build one to keep her warm," Olive returned, with a

significance that was not lost on her keen-witted cousin.