“Never!” exclaimed her husband. “They are as dead to you as if the grave had swallowed them. I have taken care of that.”
“But the shame! you have not taken care of that. That exists and must, and while it does I remain where I can meet it alone. I love you; God’s sun is not dearer to my eyes; but I will never cross your threshold as your wife till the opprobrium can be cut loose from my skirts, and the shadow uplifted from my brow. A queen with high thoughts in her eyes and brave hopes in her heart were not too good to enter that door with you. Shall a girl who has lived three weeks in an atmosphere of such crime and despair, that these rooms have often seemed to me the gateway to hell, carry there, even in secrecy, the effects of that atmosphere? I will cherish your goodness in my heart but do not ask me to bury that heart in any more exalted spot, than some humble country home, where my life may be spent in good deeds and my love in prayers for the man I hold dear, and because I hold dear, leave to his own high path among the straight and unshadowed courses of the world.”
And with a gesture that inexorably shut him off while it expressed the most touching appeal, she glided by him and took her way to the room where her father and brother awaited her presence.
CHAPTER XIX
EXPLANATIONS
“I cannot endure this,” came in one burst of feeling from the lips of Mr. Blake. “She don’t know, she don’t realize—Sir,” cried he, suddenly becoming conscious of my presence in the room, “will you be good enough to see that this note,” he hastily scribbled one, “is carried across the way to my house and given to Mrs. Daniels.”
I bowed assent, routed up one of the men in the next room and despatched it at once.
“Perhaps she will listen to the voice of one of her own sex if not to me,” said he; and began pacing the floor of the narrow room in which we were, with a wildness of impatience that showed to what depths had sunk the hope of gaining this lovely woman for his own.
Feeling myself no longer necessary in that spot, I followed where my wishes led and entered the room where Luttra was bidding good-bye to her father.
“I shall never forget,” I heard her say as I crossed the floor to where Mr. Gryce stood looking out of the window, “that your blood runs in my veins together with that of my gentle-hearted, never-to-be-forgotten mother. Whatever my fate may be or wherever I may hide the head you have bowed to the dust, be sure I shall always lift up my hands in prayer for your repentance and return to an honest life. God grant that my prayers may be heard and that I may yet receive at your hands, a father’s kindly blessing.”
The only answer to this was a heavily muttered growl that gave but little promise of any such peaceful termination to a deeply vicious life. Hearing it, Mr. Gryce hastened to procure his men and remove the hardened wretches from the spot. All through the preparations for their departure, she stood and watched their sullen faces with a wild yearning in her eye that could scarcely be denied, but when the door finally closed upon them, and she was left standing there with no one in the room but myself she steadied herself up as one who is conscious that all the storms of heaven are about to break upon her; and turning slowly to the door waited with arms crossed and a still determination upon her brow, the coming of the feet of him whose resolve she felt must have, as yet been only strengthened by her resistance.
She had not long to wait. Almost with the closing of the street door upon the detectives and their prisoners, Mr. Blake followed by Mrs. Daniels and another lady whose thick veil and long cloak but illy concealed the patrician features and stately form of the Countess De Mirac, entered the room.
The surprise had its effect; Luttra was evidently for the moment thrown off her guard.
“Mrs. Daniels!” she breathed, holding out her hands with a longing gesture.
“My dear mistress!” returned that good woman, taking those hands in hers but in a respectful way that proved the constraint imposed upon her by Mr. Blake’s presence. “Do I see you again and safe?”
“You must have thought I cared little for the anxiety you would be sure to feel,” said that fair young mistress, gazing with earnestness into the glad but tearful eyes of the housekeeper. But indeed, I have been in no position to communicate with you, nor could I do so without risking that to protect which I so outraged my feelings as to leave the house at all. I mean the life and welfare of its master, Mrs. Daniels.”
“Ha, what is that?” quoth Mr. Blake. “It was to save me, you consented to follow them?”
“Yes; what else would have led me to such an action? They might have killed me, I would not have cared, but when they began to utter threats against you—”
“Mrs. Blake,” exclaimed Mrs. Daniels, catching hold of her mistress’s uplifted hand, and pointing to a scar that slightly disfigured her white arm a little above the wrist, “Mrs. Blake, what’s that?”
A pink flush, the first I had seen on her usually pale countenance, rose for an instant to her cheeks, and she seemed to hesitate.
“It was not there when I last saw you, Mrs. Blake.”
“No,” was the slow reply, “I found myself forced that night to inflict upon myself a little wound. It is nothing, let it go.”
“No, Luttra I cannot let it go,” said her husband, advancing towards her with something like gentle command. “I must hear not only about this but all the other occurrences of that night. How came they to find you in the refuge you had attained?”
“I think,” said she in a low tone the underlying suffering of which it would be hard to describe, “that it was not to seek me they first invaded your house. They had heard you were a rich man, and the sight of that ladder running up the side of the new extension was too much for them. Indeed I know that it was for purposes of robbery they came, for they had hired this room opposite you some days previous to making the attempt. You see they were almost destitute of money and though they had some buried in the cellar of the old house in Vermont, they dared not leave the city to procure it. My brother was obliged to do so later, however. It was a surprise to them seeing me in your house. They had reached the roof of the extension and were just lifting up the corner of the shade I had dropped across the open window—I always open my window a few minutes before preparing to retire—when I rose from the chair in which I had been brooding, and turned up the gas. I was combing my hair at the time and so of course they recognized me. Instantly they gave a secret signal I, alas, remembered only too well, and crouching back, bade me put out the light that they might enter with safety. I was at first too much startled to realize the consequences of my action, and with some vague idea that they had discovered my retreat and come for purposes of advice or assistance, I did what they bid. Immediately they threw back the shade and came in, their huge figures looming frightfully in the faint light made by a distant gas lamp in the street below. ‘What do you want?’ were my first words uttered in a voice I scarcely recognized for my own; ‘why do you steal on me like this in the night and
