CHAPTER XXXVII.

A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.

Fortune had indeed seemed to favor Mrs. Ellsworth.

Nearly nine months had passed since her step-son's attempted murder; and

though his bodily health seemed good, no change for the better had taken

place in his mental condition.

Another very pleasing fact was that Dainty Chase had never turned up

again to annoy her with assertions of a secret marriage, to which she

could produce no proof but her simple word. She wondered in her secret

mind what had become of the girl, for her nieces were too prudent to

confess to her the crime by which they supposed their beautiful cousin

to have perished.

They suspected that while glad to have the girl out of the way, she

might feel squeamish over downright murder.

So they decided that it was just as well not to tell her that they had

tracked the hapless girl to the negro cabin, and having seen her fall

senseless on the floor, had fired the ramshackle old place in front of

both doors and fled.

As the cabin had burned completely to the ground, they supposed that

their victim had perished in the flames; but their guilty consciences

had never permitted them to venture near the _debris_ to see if her

charred bones remained a mute witness of their awful deed.

As the winter wore away and no more was heard of Dainty or her mother,

they confidently looked on the girl as dead; but if their consciences

reproached them for their sin, they allowed no sign of it to appear on

their careless faces as they plunged into every gayety offered by their

new position. The winter had been an epoch in their hitherto

poverty-stricken lives, and they made the most of it, Mrs. Ellsworth

giving them a lavish allowance, and permitting them to travel with

friends wherever they chose.

Thus they had had a trip to California in December, and on returning in

February had been given glimpses of the gay season in New York and

Washington before returning in March to silent, gloomy Ellsworth, where

the mistress had remained inflexibly on guard over her step-son, lest

the doctors, peradventure, should do something to restore his mind.

"That meddlesome old Doctor Platt keeps on hoping for something to

happen. The other physicians have given it up, and say that Love will be

an idiot for life. He is sure that if the bullet could be removed, he

would be restored; but I will not permit them to cut into the poor boy's

head, and perhaps destroy his life as well as his reason," she often

complained, until the old doctor gave up all hopes of gaining her

consent to the operation that he wished performed.

But he still came to visit Love in a friendly way, although the young

man continued in the same state of seeming hopeless idiocy, never

improving with the lapse of time, until, in desperation, the old man,

with Franklin's assistance, concocted a daring scheme.

He had read with contempt and abhorrence the mind of the woman, and knew

that she wished to keep her step-son in his present state, and that no

proposition looking to his cure would be entertained by the selfish

creature who wished to keep her grip on the young man's property. She

would rather see him dead than restored to his rich dower of brains and

wealth.

So when, late in March, she was first informed by Franklin, and

afterward by Doctor Platt himself, of a change for the worse in the

patient, she was more pleased than sorry.

Love's condition was changing, they said, from simple idiocy to active

insanity that would necessitate his removal from Ellsworth to a place of

close confinement.

"He may develop at any moment a homicidal mania, and prove terribly

dangerous to his attendants. Indeed, Franklin has grown nervous already

over some of his more violent moods, and threatens to resign his place,"

said Doctor Platt.

This was indeed most welcome news for Mrs. Ellsworth. Nothing except

Love's death could have pleased her better.

Though she had been fond of him once, his opposition to her will, and

his contempt of her two favorite nieces, had turned her lukewarm

fondness to active hate.

So it was hard for her to assume a look of concern when it was all she

could do to keep from openly rejoicing. She dropped her face in her

hands to keep the keen old doctor from openly reading its expression.

"It is a very delicate and peculiar case," continued Doctor Platt. "You

can not place him in an idiot asylum, because he is not now an

idiot--yet his lunacy is not developed enough to commit him for lunacy.

At the same time, he may become violent at any time and--do murder! It

is not right to keep him at Ellsworth with such terrible risks attached

to his staying. I have a plan, if you choose to consider it. If not,

you may consult other physicians."

"Let me hear your plan first," she answered, affably, in her secret joy.

"Let me take him to a private sanitarium in New York, well known to me

as the best place in the United States for a person in his condition. It

is a high-priced place, but you can afford it for the sake of the relief

of mind you would experience in removing this threatening danger from

Ellsworth, and in knowing that his hopelessly incurable insanity had the

kindest treatment."

Those two words caught her instant attention.

"You honestly believe him hopelessly insane?" she cried.

"Yes," he replied; saying, inwardly: "God forgive me for lying, but it

is in a righteous cause!"

In fact, he was quaking with fear lest she should suspect the motive

lying at the bottom of his anxiety to take his patient to New York.

If she had been a well-read woman, he would have been afraid to risk

such a plot; but he knew that she scarcely ever scanned the columns of a

newspaper.

Otherwise she would have been cognizant of the new scientific discovery,

one of the greatest of the nineteenth century triumphs, and most

important to the medical cult--the discovery of the wonderful X-ray of

light by the famous German savant, Professor Roentgen.

She would have known that by the operation of this X-ray the formerly

dense human body could be made transparent enough to be seen through,

revealing not only the skeleton with all its delicate mechanism, but the

presence of every foreign element, so that already bullets had been

located and removed from the bodies of patients who had suffered

tortures from them for years. These wonderful facts filled the columns

of newspapers and the pages of magazines. The whole world was wild with

enthusiasm. It was the greatest and most beneficial discovery of the

nineteenth century, they said, and Professor Roentgen's thoughtful brow

was laureled with a fame that made him greater than a king.

Mrs. Ellsworth had never read a line about the X-ray. If you had asked

her she would not have understood what you meant.

But every fiber of the intelligent old doctor's body vibrated with joy

of the new discovery, and the hope that through its means his patient

might be restored to health.

The dream that he dreamed night and day was to carry Lovelace Ellsworth

to New York and have the bullet in his head located by means of the

wonderful X-ray.

"Once located it might in all probability be removed, and your master

restored to himself," he said confidentially to the clever Franklin, who

rejoiced exceedingly at this little ray of hope in the darkness of his

master's fate.

But realizing the deep interest Mrs. Ellsworth had in preventing Love's

restoration to reason, they knew it was useless to tell her of the new

discovery with any hope of her consent to having any experiment tried on

her step-son.

Nothing remained to them but strategy, and they resorted to its use with

flattering success.

Mrs. Ellsworth had had so many triumphs, that she regarded this one as

only her due--a reward of her clever plotting, as it were.

The removal of Love to a sanitarium would be a great relief to her mind;

and she jumped at the proposition with alacrity, even twitting the old

doctor with her superior judgment.

"I told you all along that you were foolish ever to expect his recovery,

and you see I was right."

"The women are always right," he replied, gallantly, in his joy at

having gained his point.

So armed with a liberal check from her hand, the old doctor and Franklin

journeyed to New York with the patient, in the hope of restoring his

wrecked mind and of righting a great wrong.

For, removed from the influence of Mrs. Ellsworth's threat, the faithful

servant decided that he would keep silence no longer. He confided to

Doctor Platt the pathetic story of Dainty's return to Ellsworth, her

claim to be Love's wife, her banishment by her wicked aunt, the wrong

that Olive and Ela had attempted, and lastly, how, at the peril of his

own life, he had rescued the poor girl from the burning cabin, and sent

her away secretly to Richmond.

Doctor Platt listened aghast to these startling disclosures, and said,

angrily:

"You should not have been intimidated by that wicked woman's threats,

for such crimes as hers and her nieces' should be proclaimed from the

house-tops, and punished as they deserve. I would give anything I own if

you had brought that worse than widowed bride to me and given me the

task of righting her cruel wrongs."

"She is no doubt safe with her mother, and your help now will be as

welcome as it would have been last fall," replied Franklin, consolingly.

So they postponed the search for the girl, who was presumably safe in

Richmond, until after they had taken Lovelace to the New York doctors

for treatment.

By the middle of April they met with a reward of their labors and the

realization of their hopes in the complete success of the X-ray

experiment on Love.

The murderer's bullet had not entered the victim's brain. It was

imbedded in the thick part of the skull, and its pressure on the brain

had benumbed the intellectual faculties, producing all the phenomena of

idiocy.

A very delicate surgical operation removed the cause of trouble, and

Lovelace Ellsworth took up life instantly again where he had left it off

at the moment when the fatal bullet had pierced his head.

"My friends, I am here to tell you that a foul crime has been

perpetrated; but the design of the guilty party will not succeed, thanks

to precautions that I took two weeks ago in the fear of this treachery.

My precious Dainty has been stolen away in the hope of preventing our

marriage this morning, and a false story has been circulated that she

has eloped with another. But Mrs. Ellsworth has overreached herself in

her eagerness to forward the interests of Miss Peyton and Miss Craye.

She will realize this fact when she hears that I was married secretly to

Dainty Chase two weeks ago, and--" Here he rolled his large dark eyes

around the room, and gave a start of surprise, faltering, "Where are

they all--my wedding guests?"

The moment had come when he must learn all the cruel truth.

But they broke it to him as gently and favorably as they could, leaving

out all of the worst, to be told when he was strong and well again.

The result was a terrible agitation, coupled with a passionate yearning

to go at once in search of his missing bride.

But that was impossible, said the doctors. He must remain quietly at the

hospital until the incision they had made in his head healed.

He took counsel with his noble friend, Doctor Platt, and the result was

that two personals were sent to the leading newspapers of Virginia and

West Virginia. One personal asked for news of the whereabouts of Miss

Dainty Chase; the other for information regarding a marriage license

issued in July to Lovelace Ellsworth and Dainty Chase. In both cases

large rewards were offered, and the address was given fictitiously as

"Fidelio, New York City."