The Baronet's Bride Part 41

There was dead pause. Sybilla clasped her hands and looked imploringly up in his face.

"Don't be angry with us, Sir Everard; we could not help seeing them. I lost a locket, and Edwards came to help me look for it. It was by the merest chance we came upon them in the Beech Walk."

"I am not angry. Did they see you?"

"No, Sir Everard."

"Did you hear what they said?"

"No, Sir Everard; we would not have listened. They were talking; my lady seemed dreadfully agitated, appealing to him as it appeared, while he was cool and indifferent. Just before we came away we saw her give him all the money in her purse. Ah, here she is now! For pity's sake, do not betray us, Sir Everard!"

She flitted away like a swift, noiseless ghost, closely followed by the valet. And an instant later Lady Kingsland wild and pale, and shrouded in a long mantle turned to enter her dressing-room, and found herself face to face with her wronged husband.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE BREAKING OF THE STORM.

She looked at him and recoiled with a cry of dismay. He stood before her so ghastly, so awful, that with a blind, unthinking motion of intense terror she put out both hands as if to keep him off.

"You have reason to fear me!" he said, in a hoa.r.s.e, unnatural voice.

"Wives have been murdered for less than this!"

Sybilla and Edwards heard the ominous words, and looked blankly in each other's faces. They heard no more. The baronet caught his wife's wrist in a grasp of iron, drew her into the dressing-room, and closed the door. He stood with his back to it, gazing at her, his blue eyes filled with lurid rage.

"Where have you been?"

He asked the question in a voice more terrible from its menacing calm than any wild outburst of fury.

"In the Beech Walk," she answered, promptly.

"With whom?"

"With Mr. Parmalee."

Her glance never fell. She looked at him proudly, unquailingly, full in the face. The look in his flaming eyes, the tone of his ominous voice, were bitterly insulting, and with insult her imperious spirit rose.

"And you dare stand before me--you dare look me in the face," he said, "and tell me this?"

"I dare!" she said, proudly. "You have yet to learn what I dare do, Sir Everard Kingsland!"

She drew herself up in her beauty and her pride, erect and defiant.

Her long hair fell loose and unbound, her face was colorless as marble; but her dark eyes were flashing with anger and wounded pride, and at her brightest she had never looked more beautiful than she did now.

"So beautiful and so lost!" he said, bitterly. "So utterly deceitful and depraved! Surely what they tell of her mother must be true. The taint of dishonor is in the blood!"

The change was instantaneous. The pallor of her face turned to a burning red. She clasped her hands with a sudden spasm over her heart.

"My mother!" she gasped. "What do you say of her?"

"What they say of you--that she was a false and wicked wife. Deny it if you can."

"No," she said, with an imperial gesture of scorn, "I deny nothing. If my husband can believe such a vile slander of his wife of a month, let it be. I scorn to deny what he credits so easily."

"I am afraid it would tax even your invention, my lady, to deny these very plain facts. I leave you in your room, too ill to leave it, too ill by far to ride with me to my mother's, but not too ill to get up and meet your lover--shall I say it, madame?--clandestinely in the Beech Walk as soon as I am gone! You should be a little more careful, madame, and make sure before you hold those confidential _tete-a-tetes_, that the servants are not listening and looking on.

Lady Kingsland and Mr. Parmalee are the talk of the county already.

To-night's meeting will be a last _bonne bouche_ added to the spicy dish of scandal."

"Have you done?" she said, whiter than ashes. "Have you any more insults to offer?"

"Insults!" the baronet repeated, hoa.r.s.e with pa.s.sion. "You do well, madame, to talk of insults--lost, fallen creature that you are! You have dishonored an honorable name; betrayed a husband who loved and trusted you with all his heart; blighted and ruined his life; covered him with disgrace! And you stand there and talk of insult! I have loved you as man never loved woman before, but G.o.d help you, Harriet Kingsland, if I had a pistol now!"

She fell down on her knees before him.

"Kill me!" she cried. "I am here at your feet--have mercy and stab me to the heart, but do not drive me mad with your horrible reproaches!

May G.o.d forgive me if I have brought dishonor upon you, for I never meant it! Never--never--so help me Heaven!"

"Rise, madame! Kneel to Him who will judge you for your baseness; it is too late to kneel to me! Oh, great G.o.d! to think how I have loved this woman, and how bitterly she has deceived me!"

The unutterable agony of his tone to her dying day Harriet Kingsland might never forget.

"I loved her and I trusted her! I would have died to save her one hour of pain, and this is my reward! Dishonored--disgraced--my life blighted--my heart broken--deceived from first to last!"

"No, no, no!" she shrieked aloud. "I swear it to you, Everard! I am guiltless! By all my hopes of heaven, I am your true, your faithful, your loving wife!"

He turned and looked up at her in white amaze. Truth, that no living being could doubt, was stamped in agony on that upturned, beautiful face.

"Hear me, Everard!" she cried--"my own beloved husband! I met this man to-night because he holds a secret I am sworn to keep, and that places me in his power. But, by all that is high and holy, I have told you the simple truth about him! I never saw him in all my life until I saw him that day in the library. I have never set eyes on him since, except for an hour to-night. Oh, believe me, Everard or I shall die here at your feet!"

"And you never wrote to him?" he asked.

"Never--never!"

"Nor he to you?"

"Once--the scrawl you saw Sybilla Silver fetch me. I never wrote--I never sent him even a message."

"No? How, then, came you two to meet to-night?"

"He wished to see me--to extort money from me for the keeping of this secret--and he sent word by Sybilla Silver. My answer was, 'I will be in the Beech Walk at eight tonight. If he wishes to see me let him come to me there.'"

"Then you own to have deliberately deceived me? The pretended headache was--a lie?"

"No; it was true. It aches still, until I am almost blind with the pain. Oh, Everard, be merciful! Have a little pity for me, for I love you, and I am the most wretched creature alive!"

"You show your love in a singular way, my Lady Kingsland. It is not by keeping guilty secrets from your husband--by meeting other men by night and by stealth in the grounds--that you are to convince me of your love. Tell me what this mystery means. I command you, by your wifely obedience, tell me this secret at once!"