A Changed Heart Part 57

"I am not surprised," she said, coldly.

"I thought that at this hour I should be most certain of finding you at home and alone. Therefore, I have come, knowing that after what pa.s.sed last night, the sooner we come to an understanding the better."

"How have you found out my secret?" she abruptly demanded. "You never knew me in New York?"

"That is my secret, Miss Henderson--I presume you prefer being called by that name--that is my secret, and you will pardon me if I do not reveal it. I do know your secret, and it is that knowledge which has brought me to this place."

"And knowing it, what use do you intend to make of it?"

He smiled slightly.

"You are very straightforward, Miss Henderson. It is almost as easy getting on with you as if you were a man. I foresee that we shall settle this little matter pleasantly, after all."

Olive Henderson contracted her black brows, and reiterated her question.

"Knowing this secret, sir, what use do you intend making of it?"

"That depends upon yourself, madam."

"How?"

"I shall keep your secret, Miss Henderson," Paul Wyndham said, "I shall keep it inviolably; you shall still be Olive Henderson, heiress of Redmon, the lady paramount of Speckport, on one condition."

Her heart beat so fast and thick that she had to press her hands over it to still its tumultuous throbbing. Her hollow, burning black eyes never left his face, they were strained there in suspense too intense for words.

"You are aware, Miss Henderson," the cold, clear, yet melodious voice of Paul Wyndham went on, "of the position in which you stand. You have usurped the place of another--your stepsister--you have a.s.sumed a name which does not belong to you, and you have come here to dupe the people of this place, to pa.s.s yourself off for what you are not, and possess yourself of wealth to which you have no shadow of claim. In doing this, Miss Henderson, you must be aware you are guilty of a felony, punishable by law, punishable by trial, imprisonment, and life-long disgrace. All this you know, and knowing it, must be aware how entirely and irrevocably you are in my power!"

"Irrevocably and completely in my power," the pitiless voice went on, "you see it yourself as well as I. You know also much better than I do, the misery, the shame, the degradation exposure must bring. Your name published, your crime published far and wide, yourself the scoff and jeer of every boor in the town, the horrors of a jail, of a criminal cell, of a public trial before gaping thousands, of----"

Paul Wyndham stopped. It was not a cry she had uttered, but a gasping sob, telling more of the unutterable agony, the intense misery she was suffering, than any wild outbreak of womanly shrieks. She put out her hands with a pa.s.sionate cry.

Paul Wyndham looked at the disturbed, crouching form, convulsed with despairing agony, with Heaven only knows how much of pity in his face.

"Miss Henderson! Miss Henderson!" he cried, "I did not mean--I did not think what I said would affect you like this. I only told you what might be, but it never will be, for you will listen to what I have yet to say, and I never will reveal your secret to a living soul!"

She lifted her head, and looked at him as a hunted stag might, with the knife at its throat.

"Mr. Wyndham," she said, with that dignity which is born of extreme misery, "what have I ever done to you that you should come here and torment me like this?"

Paul Wyndham turned away from that reproachful face, with a dark shadow on his own.

"Heaven knows, Miss Henderson, I hate the necessity which compels me to cause you this pain, but it is a necessity, and I must do it; you never have wronged me--I have no wish to give you a moment's suffering, but a fatality against which I am powerless, urges me on. I hate myself for what I am doing--but what can I do--what can I do?"

He seemed to ask himself the question, as he sprang up and took, like herself, to walking excitedly up and down. His face was so darkly troubled that Olive Henderson looked at him with searching, wondering eyes.

"I do not understand you," she said, chilled with a new fear, "does any one but yourself know my secret?"

She was still sitting, and never ceasing to watch him. Paul Wyndham leaned against the mantel, as she had done a moment before, and looked down at her.

"Miss Henderson, I can tell you nothing but that your secret is safe with me if you will comply with the condition I have to name. You may trust me; I shall never reveal it!"

"And that condition is----"

There was a pause, during which Olive could have counted the raindrops on the window or the loud beating of her heart.

Paul Wyndham's large, clear, bright gray eyes steadily met her own.

"The condition is, that you become my wife."

She gave a cry, she was so utterly astonished, and sat staring at him, speechless.

"Your--wife!" she slowly said, when her returned senses enabled her to speak.

"Yes, Miss Henderson, my wife! I am no more insensible to the power of wealth than you are. You have risked everything for the future; you can only hold it now, on condition of becoming my wife!"

Olive Henderson rose up, white and defiant, "I never will!" she said, "I never will! I will lose every shilling of it, I will die before I consent!"

"Oh, no!" Mr. Wyndham said, quietly, "I do not think you will, when you come to reflect, it is not pleasant to die when one is young and handsome and prosperous, particularly if one has not been very good, and not at all sure of going to Heaven. You will not die, Miss Henderson; you will keep the fortune and marry me."

"I never will!" she vehemently cried; "what if I told you my stepsister, the real Olive Henderson, were alive, that I have seen her lately, and that she has made over everything to me. What if I told you this?"

He smiled incredulously.

"You do not believe me, but I swear to you I state the truth. Olive Henderson lives, though I thought her dead; and I have seen her, I tell you, and she has consented to my keeping all."

"Well," said Mr. Wyndham quietly, "supposing, for argument's sake, what you say to be true, it does not alter your position in the least. Should I go to a lawyer and tell him your story, the arrest, the exposure, the disgrace all follow as inevitably as ever. The rightful heiress may, as you say, be alive, and willing you should usurp her birthright, though it does not sound very likely; but even if so, Harriet Wade is too proud a woman to incur life-long disgrace and humiliation, when she can avert it so easily."

She turned away from him, dropped into her seat, and laid her hand on a table near. The action, the att.i.tude, told far more than words, of the cold, dark despair thickening around her.

She never lifted her head. She was suffering, as other women have suffered, dumbly.

"In asking you to be my wife, Miss Henderson," Mr. Wyndham still continued, "I make no pretense of being in love with you myself. I am not--I may as well tell you plainly--and I shall never ask love from you. In becoming my wife, you will go through a legal ceremony that will mean nothing. I shall never intrude upon you one single moment out of all the twenty-four hours, unless you desire it, or when the presence of others makes our being together unavoidable. We may dwell under the same roof, and yet live as far apart as if hemispheres divided us. Believe me, I shall not force myself upon you against your will; but for your own sake, Miss Henderson, and to still the whispers of busy tongues, it would be as well to keep your sentiments regarding me to yourself, as well we should be apparently on cordial terms. Are you listening, Miss Henderson?"

He really thought she was not. She was lying so still, so rigid, with her poor white face on the table, and the thick coils of her dead-black hair unloosing themselves, and trailing and twining about her like black snakes. She was not hysterical now; she was lying there in a sort of dumb anguish, that none but very proud and sensitive hearts, crashed to the very dust in shame and humiliation, can ever feel.

"Miss Henderson," Mr. Wyndham repeated, looking at the drooping, girlish figure, its very att.i.tude speaking so much of supreme misery, "I am waiting for my answer."

She lifted her head and looked at him, with something the look of a deer at bay.

"Have you no pity?" she said. "Will you not spare me? I am only a girl, alone in the world, and you might pity me and be merciful. I have done wrong, I know, but Heaven alone knows what I have suffered from poverty, and the degradation it inevitably entails. I was tempted, and I yielded; but I think I never was so miserable in the worst days of my suffering as I have been at times since I came here. I am not good, I know, but I am not used to wickedness and plotting like this, and I think I am the most miserable creature on the face of this wide earth. But I never wronged you, sir; and you might pity me and spare me."

Her head dropped down again with a sort of sob, and the pitiful pleading was touching to hear from those proud lips. If Paul Wyndham had possessed the hardest heart that ever beat in a man's breast since the days of Nero, I think it must have been touched by the sight of that haughty spirit so bowed and crushed before him. His face showed no sign of whatever he might feel, but his clear voice shook a little as he replied.

"It is of little use, Miss Henderson, for me to say how deeply I do pity you--how sorely against my will I wage this unequal warfare, since the battle must go on all the same. It would only sound like mockery were I to say how grieved I am to give you this pain, since I should still remain inexorable."

"Will nothing bribe you?" she asked. "Half the wealth I possess shall be yours if----"

She had lifted her face again in eager hopefulness, but he interrupted with a gesture.