The Masked Bridal Part 18

"From treachery and desertion."

"Anna!"

A bitter sneer curled the beautiful woman's lips.

"You know how to do it very well, Gerald," she tauntingly returned.

"That air of injured innocence is vastly becoming to you, and would be very effective, if I did not know you so well; but it has disarmed me for the last time. Pray never a.s.sume it again, for you will never blind me by it in the future."

"Explain yourself, Anna. I fail to understand you."

"Very well; I will do so in a very few words; I was a witness of your interview with the girl just after dinner to-night."

"You?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the man, flushing hotly, and looking considerably crestfallen. "Well, what of it?" he added, defiantly, the next moment.

"What of it, indeed? Do you imagine a wife is going to stand quietly by and see her husband make love to her companion?"

"What nonsense you are talking, Anna! I went in search of one of the housemaids to b.u.t.ton my gloves for me, met Miss Allen instead, and she was kind enough to oblige me."

"Bah! Gerald, I was too near you at the time to swallow such a very lame vindication," vulgarly sneered his wife. "You were making love to her, I tell you--you were telling her something which you had no business to reveal, and I swore then that her fate should be sealed this very night."

Gerald G.o.ddard realized that there was no use arguing with his wife in that mood, while he also felt that his case was rather weak, and so he shifted his ground.

"But you must have plotted this thing long ago, for your play was written, and your characters chosen before we left the city," he remarked.

"Well?"

"But you said you had two reasons; what was the other?"

"Emil's love for the girl. He became infatuated with her from the moment of his coming to us, as you must have noticed."

"Yes."

"Well, he tried to win her--he even asked her to marry him, but she refused him. Think of it--that little n.o.body rejecting a man like Emil, with his wealth and position!"

"Well, if she did not love him, she had a right to refuse, him."

"Oh, of course," sneered madam, irritably. "But you know what he is when he once gets his heart set upon anything, and her obstinacy only made him the more determined to carry his point. He appealed to me to help him; and, as I have never refused him anything he wanted, if I could possibly give it to him--"

"But this was such a wicked--such a heartless, cowardly thing to do!"

interposed Mr. G.o.ddard, with a gesture of horror.

"I know it," madam retorted, with a defiant toss of her head; "but you may thank yourself for it, after all; for, almost at the last moment, I repented--I was on the point of giving the whole thing up and letting the play go on without any change of characters, when your faithlessness turned me into a demon, and doomed the girl."

"I believe you are a 'demon'--your jealousy has been the bane of your whole life and mine; and now you have ruined the future of as beautiful and pure a girl as ever walked the earth," said Gerald G.o.ddard, with a threatening brow, and in a tone so deadly cold that the woman beside him shivered.

"Pshaw! don't be so tragic," she said, after a moment, and a.s.suming an air of lightness, "the affair will end all right--when Edith comes fully to herself and realizes the situation, I am sure she will make up her mind to submit gracefully to the inevitable."

"She shall not--I will help her to break the tie that binds her to him."

"Will you?" mockingly questioned his wife. "How pray?"

"By claiming that she was tricked into the marriage."

"How will you prove that, Gerald?" was the smiling query.

The man was dumb. He knew he could not prove it.

"Did she not go willingly enough to the altar?" pursued madam. "Did she not repeat the responses freely and unhesitatingly? Was she not married by a regularly ordained minister? and was she not introduced afterward to hundreds of people as the wife of my brother, and did she not respond as such to the name of Mrs. Correlli? I hardly think you could make out a case, Gerald."

"But the fact that the Kerbys were called away by telegram, and that some one was needed to supply their places, would prove that Edith had no knowledge of the affair--at least until the last moment," said Mr.

G.o.ddard, eagerly seizing upon that point.

But madam broke into a musical little laugh as he ceased.

"Do you imagine that I would leave such a ragged end as that in my plot?" she mockingly questioned. "The Kerbys were not called away by telegram, and no one can prove that either was ever told they were.

The Kerbys are still here, dancing away as heartily as any one below, and they have known, from the first, that they would not appear in the last act--they and they only, were let into the secret that the play was to end with a real marriage."

"It is the most devilish plot I ever heard of," said her companion, pa.s.sionately, through his tightly-locked teeth. "Your insane jealousy and suspicion, during the years we have lived together, have shriveled whatever affection I hitherto possessed for you!"

"Gerald!"

The name came hoa.r.s.ely from the woman's white lips.

It was as if some one had stabbed her, and her heart had died with the utterance of that loved name.

He left her abruptly, and descended the stairs, never once looking back, while she watched him with an expression in her eyes that had something of the fire of madness in it, as well as that of a breaking heart.

When he reached the lower hall, she dashed down to the second floor, and into her own room, locking herself in.

Fifteen minutes later she came out again, but in place of the usual glow of health upon her cheeks, she had applied rouge to conceal the ghastliness she could not otherwise overcome, while there was a look of recklessness and defiance in her dark eyes that bespoke a nature driven to the verge of despair.

Making her way back to the ball-room, she was soon mingling with the merry dancers, and with a forced gayety that deceived every one save her husband.

To all inquiries for the bride, she replied that she had recovered consciousness, but it was doubtful if she would be able to make her appearance again that night.

Then as her glance fell upon a tall, magnificently-formed woman, who was standing near, and the center of an admiring group, she inquired, in a tone of surprise:

"Why! who is that lady in garnet velvet and point lace?"

"That is a Mrs. Stewart, a very wealthy woman, who resides at the Copley Square Hotel," was the reply.

"Oh, is that Mrs. Stewart?" said madam, with eager interest.

"Yes; but are you not acquainted with her?" questioned her guest, with a look of well-bred astonishment.

"No; and no wonder you think it strange that she should be here by invitation, and I have no personal acquaintance with her," the hostess remarked, with a smile; "but such is the case, nevertheless; a card was sent to her at the request of my brother, who has met her several times, and who admires her very much. What magnificent diamonds she wears!"

"Yes; she is said to be worth a great deal of money."