The Coquette's Victim Part 13

"You do not like that man, Lady Lisle?" said Basil, as he looked at her fair, flushed face. Before she had time to answer, they were joined by some ladies of his acquaintance, and were not able to exchange another word on the subject. As he was leaving, Lady Lisle looked out of the carriage.

"Mr. Carruthers!" she said. He was by her side in a moment. She was pale and agitated, not quite herself.

"You are my sworn knight," she said, laying her hand on his.

"Until death!" he replied.

"You promised to help me at any risk, in any difficulty, and now I am going to ask your aid."

"It is yours. My whole life is yours," he cried. She smiled, sadly.

"There are some things more valuable than life. Perhaps what I ask from you will cost you dear."

"I do not care in the least what it costs," he said.

"You are coming to dine with us; we do not dine this evening until eight. Come soon after six. I have a story to tell you."

"I will not fail," he replied. "Do not be anxious, Lady Lisle, you look distressed. Trust in me; far as human aid can go, mine is yours."

His clear blue eyes lingered on her perfect face, and again, for the second time in her life, the queen of coquettes felt something like pity for the man she was luring to his doom. She leaned back in the carriage after he was gone, with a most triumphant smile on her lips.

"What wonders a pretty face can work," she thought. "I feel quite safe, now that my troubles are to rest on his broad shoulders. How I should like to see that Jules trampled upon and crushed. My knight will save me."

She never remembered that he was the only son of his mother--a widow.

She cared little that he was the head of a grand old race. She thought still less of his talents, his honest enthusiasm, his simplicity, except so far as it answered her purpose.

CHAPTER XIII.

Ladie Amelia's Story.

A few hours later, and Lady Lisle was seated in her boudoir, exquisitely attired. She, who knew so well the effect of every fold in her dress, of every flower she wore or carried; she, who had studied the art of looking beautiful more completely than any other woman, had not neglected her most potent charm. She wore a dinner dress of white silk, with crimson flowers, that suited her dark, glowing beauty to perfection. An elegant toilet! No jewels, but a ma.s.sive golden bracelet on one arm, and a golden chain of exquisite workmanship round her neck.

"I knew you would come," she said, looking up with a smile as Basil was shown into her boudoir; "I knew you would not fail me. We shall have time for a long conversation. Lord Lisle never reaches home until a quarter of an hour before dinner, and then he has to hurry. Our guests will not arrive until nearly eight, so we shall not be interrupted."

He looked round that little fairy nook, wondering at its elegance, wondering at the soft, rosy light, at the fragrance of the white daphnes, but more than all at the queenly loveliness of the beautiful woman before him.

She sat in the very heart of the crimson glow, her glistening silken dress sweeping in rich waves, and quite sure that her att.i.tude, like everything else about her, was perfect. She held out her hand to him, with a smile that would have bewildered any man older and wiser than he.

"Sit down here," she said, pointing to a velvet fauteuil; "I am going to make you my judge. Ah, Basil, for this one night I may call you Basil; perhaps after you have heard what I have to say, you will never be my knight again; it may change you."

"I shall belong to you, and ask no greater happiness than to serve you until I die," he replied,

A fan lay on the table by her side, with jeweled handle, and made of white, soft feathers. She opened it and quietly stirred the warm, perfumed air.

"I could only tell my trouble to you," she began, in her soft, caressing voice. "You will understand me, because you know what it is to have wishes, hopes and aspirations that are never realized. You know what it is to be unworldly and unlike others.

"I was but a girl when I was married, Basil--an innocent, unsuspecting girl, just seventeen. I might plead, in excuse of what followed, that I was married without my own inclination being consulted--unwillingly sacrificed to money that never has done me any good, and never will. I might plead my youth, my unhappiness, the utter want of congeniality with the man I married; but I will not. You shall judge me without excuses. I must, however, tell you that at first, for the first two years of my married life, I was in despair. There seemed to me no hope, no respite--nothing but despair. Now I have grown accustomed to my misery, and can wear it with a smile; then it was otherwise. At that time I was first introduced to Count Jules Ste. Croix. I hate myself,"

she continued, pa.s.sionately, "when I remember how that man duped me. I did not think him handsome, although other ladies raved of his beaux yeux and his cla.s.sical face.

"But I liked him, Basil, because he had the art of expressing silent sympathy for me. He said nothing--if he had done so, my pride would have taken fire and I should have been saved--but all that other men say in pa.s.sionate words, he conveyed to me in pa.s.sionate looks. He was very kind to me; he used to visit us a great deal, and on several occasions he stood between me and Lord Lisle's fierce anger.

"He knew all my distress, my troubles, my misery, as well as I know them myself. Let me tell you briefly, Basil, that at this unhappy time I wrote to him three letters--only three. I was so miserable, so wretched, that, unless I had opened my heart to some one, I must have died. Now listen, Basil, and do not wonder if I have ceased to believe in men. He answered them, and then, after a time, presumed upon my having written to him. Oh, Basil, if I could but spare myself the shame of telling you!

He made a compact of friendship with me that nothing was ever to break.

I was but a frightened child, and I made it. He asked me to lend him money. Oh, Basil, I was but a frightened, terrified girl, and I lent it!

Then he tried to make love to me--he flattered me; he followed me like my shadow. But there I was firm; he could, not frighten me into anything I thought wrong."

"Why, the man is a villain!" cried Basil; "an unprincipled, cowardly villain!"

"Wait," she said, laying her hand on his arm. "Wait; you have not heard all. He uses the three letters as a means of extorting money from me.

Now he threatens that if I do not lend it to him, he will show them to my husband."

Basil sprang from his seat, with a hot flush on his handsome young face.

"I will shoot him!" he said. "Such a man is not fit to breathe the air of heaven."

"Hush!" she said again. "You cannot help me unless you are calm. My husband does not love me, Basil. The least whisper of this, and, innocent as I am, I should be separated from him and disgraced. It is from this I want you to save me. If I were married to a n.o.ble, generous man, I should go to him at once, and tell him the truth. If Lord Lisle knew it, he would use it as a pretext for separating himself from me.

Basil, you are my knight--you must save me; you must get those letters."

"I will," he replied, "at any cost."

"I tremble to think how much money, I, in my cowardly fear, have lent him. He will want more and more, until he has drained a fortune, and I shall be no safer in the end. I will lend him no more money, Basil; but you, my only friend, shall get the letters."

"I will. How shall I do it! Oh, Lady Lisle, let me fight him--let me punish him as he deserves!"

"No," she said; "he is too cunning. If you were to offer to fight with him, he would know it was for my sake, and he would so place the letters as to fall into my husband's hands if anything happened to him."

But the hot flush did not fade from Basil's face.

"I must thrash him," he cried.

"No; for my sake, and because you would do me true service, you must not," she said.

"I will give him all my fortune for the letters," he said.

"That would not do--he would take your money first, then, holding the letters, would still want more. I will tell you the only plan by which you can help me. Go boldly into the room and bring the letters away."

"But that looks so much like stealing them," he said. "Let me fight him and take them because I win."

"No," she said, sadly. "If you will not help me, as I wish, I must forego all aid, and suffer on."

"You have but to command," he cried, "and I will obey."

"This is the count's address," she said. "Go into his rooms; you will find there an ivory casket; he keeps the letters there; he told me so."

"I will do it," he said, quietly.