The Masked Bridal Part 24

"She lives!"

"I tell you no! I--saw her dead."

"You? How could that be possible?" exclaimed Mr. G.o.ddard, in astonishment. "We were both in Florence at the time of that tragedy."

"Nevertheless, I saw her dead and in her coffin," persisted his companion, with positive emphasis.

"Now you talk as if you were losing your mind," he answered, with white lips.

"I am not. Do you not remember I told you one morning, I was going to spend a couple of days with a friend at Fiesole?"

"Yes."

"Well, I had read of that tragedy that very day, and then hid the paper, but I did not go to Fiesole at all. I took the first train for Rome."

"Anna!"

"I wanted to be sure," she cried, excitedly. "I was jealous of her, I--hated her; and I knew that if the report was true I should be at rest. I went to the place where they had taken her. Some one had cared for her very tenderly--she lay as if asleep, and looked like a beautiful piece of sculpture in her white robe; one could hardly believe that she was--dead. But they told me they were going to--to bury her that afternoon unless some one came to claim her. They asked me if I had known her--if she was a friend of mine. I told them no--she was nothing to me; I had simply come out of curiosity, having seen the story of her tragic end in a paper. Then I took the next train back to Florence."

"Why have you never told me this before, Anna?" Gerald G.o.ddard inquired, with lips that were perfectly colorless, while he laid his hand upon the back of a chair for support.

"Why?" she flashed out jealously at him. "Why should I talk of her to you? She was dead--she could never come between us, and I wished to put her entirely out of my mind, since I had satisfied myself of the fact."

"Did--did you hear anything of--of--"

"Of the child? No; all I ever knew was what you yourself read in the paper--that both mother and child had disappeared from their home and both were supposed to have suffered the same fate, although the body of the child was not found."

"Oh!" groaned Gerald G.o.ddard, wiping the clammy moisture from his brow. "I never realized the horror of it as I do at this moment, and I never have forgiven myself for not going to Rome to inst.i.tute a search for myself; but--"

"But I wouldn't let you, I suppose you were about to add," said madam, bitterly. "What was the use?" she went on, angrily. "Everything was all over before you knew anything about it--"

"I could at least have erected a tablet to mark her resting-place,"

the man interposed.

"Ha! ha! it strikes me it was rather late then to manifest much sentiment; that would have become you better before you broke her heart and killed her by your neglect and desertion," sneered madam, who was driven to the verge of despair by this late exhibition of regard for a woman whom she had hated.

"Don't, Anna!" he cried, sharply. Then suddenly straightening himself, he said, as if just awaking from some horrible nightmare: "But she did not die. I have not that on my conscience, after all."

"She did--I tell you she did!" hoa.r.s.ely retorted the excited woman.

"But I have seen and talked with her to-night, and she told me that she was--Isabel!" he persisted.

Anna G.o.ddard struck her palms together with a gesture bordering upon despair.

"I do not believe it--I will not believe it!" she panted.

"He began to pity her, for he also was beginning to realize that, if Isabel Stewart were really the woman whom he had wronged more than twenty years previous, her situation was indeed deplorable.

"Anna," he said, gravely, and speaking with more calmness and gentleness than at any time during the interview, "this is a stern fact, and--we must look it in the face."

His tone and manner carried conviction to her heart.

She sank crouching at his feet, bowing her face upon her hands.

"Gerald! Gerald! it must not be so!" she wailed. "It is only some cunning story invented to cheat us and avenge her. That woman shall never separate us--I will never yield to her. Oh, Heaven! why did I not destroy that paper when I had it? Gerald, give it to me now, if you have it; it is not too late to burn it even now, and no one can prove the truth--we can defy her to the last."

The man stooped to raise her from her humiliating position.

"Get up, Anna," he said, kindly. "Come, sit in this chair and let us talk the matter over calmly. It is a stern fact that Isabel is alive and well, and it is useless either to ignore it or deplore it."

With shivering sobs bursting from her with every breath, the wretched woman allowed herself to be helped to the chair, into which she sank with an air of abject despair.

Anna G.o.ddard's was not a nature likely to readily yield to humiliation or defeat, and after a few moments of silent battle with herself, she raised her head and turned her proud face and searching eyes upon her companion.

"You say that it is a 'stern fact' that Isabel lives," she remarked, with compressed lips.

"I am sure--there can be no mistake," the man replied. Then he told her of the interview which had occurred in the hall, where he had found the woman standing before the picture which he had painted in Rome so many years ago.

"She recognized it at once," he said; "she located the very spot from which I had painted the scene."

"Oh, I cannot make it seem possible, for I tell you I saw her lying dead in her casket," moaned madam, who, even in the face of all proofs, could not bring herself to believe that her old rival was living and had it in her power to ruin her life.

"She must have been in a trance--she must have been resuscitated by those people who found her. As sure as you and I both live, she is living also," Mr. G.o.ddard solemnly responded.

"Oh, how could such a thing be?"

"I do not know--she did not tell me; she was very cold and proud."

"What was she doing here? How dared she enter this house?" cried madam, her anger blazing up again.

"I cannot tell you. It was a question I was asking myself just as you came to the door," said Mr. G.o.ddard, with a sigh. "I have no doubt she had some deep-laid purpose, however."

"Do you imagine her purpose was to get possession of that doc.u.ment?"

questioned madam.

"I had thought of that--I have felt almost sure of it since you told me it had disappeared."

"But how could she have known that such a paper was in our possession?

You did not receive it until long after--"

"Yes, I know," interposed Mr. G.o.ddard, with a shiver; "nevertheless I am impressed that it is now in her possession, even though I did not suppose that any one, save you and I and Will Forsyth, ever knew of its existence."

There ensued an interval of silence, during which both appeared to be absorbed in deep thought.

"If she has it, what will she do with it?" madam suddenly questioned, lifting her heavy eyes to her companion.

"I am sure I cannot tell, Anna," he coldly returned.

His tone was like a match applied to powder.