The Unseen Bridgegroom by May Agnes Fleming (books to read for self improvement TXT) 📕

held me spell-bound with its interest from beginning to end. Once I was nearly caught--I sneezed. I vanished behind a big cabinet, and just saved myself, for they opened the door. Mollie set it down to the wind, or the rats, closed the door again, and my curiosity overcoming my fear of detection, I crept back and heard every word."

"Well?" again said the doctor.

"Well, Mollie made a clean breast of it. On her wedding-night she was enticed from the house by a letter purporting to come from this Miriam. The letter told her that Miriam was dying, and that she wished to make a revelation of her parentage to Mollie, before she departed for a worse land. It seems she knows Miss Dane's antecedents, and Miss Dane doesn't. Mollie went at once, as the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh did, and, like him, was blindfolded and bound, borne away to some unknown house, nobody knows where, waited on by the girl who carried the letter, and held a fast prisoner by a man in a black mask. That man's face Mollie never saw, nor has she the least idea of whom it may be. She is inclined to suspect you."

"Me!"

The doctor's stare of astonishment was a sight to behold.

"It is you, or Sardonyx, or Ingelow--one of you three, Mollie is certain. The particular one she can't decide. She dreads it may be either the lawyer or the doctor, and hopes, with all her heart, it may be the artist."

Dr. Oleander's swarthy brows knit with a midnight scowl.

"She is in love with this puppy, Ingelow. I have thought as much for some time."

"Hopelessly in love with him, and perfectly willing to be his wife, if he proves to be her husband. Should it chance to be you, she will administer a dose of strychnine the first available opportunity."

"She said that, did she?"

"That, and much more. She hates, detests, and abhors you, and loves the handsome artist with all her heart."

"The little jade! And how about her elderly admirer?"

"Sir Roger? Oh! he is to get the go-by. 'Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' He will stand the blow. 'All for love, and the world well lost,' is to be her motto for the future. She is in love with Hugh, and Hugh she must have. The spoiled baby is tired of all its old toys, and wants a new one."

"And she married this masked man, and never saw him? That is odd."

"The whole affair is excessively odd. You know how impatient she naturally is. She grew desperate in her confinement in a few days, and was ready to sell her birthright for a mess of pottage--ready to sacrifice her freedom in one way for her freedom in another. She had the man's promise that he would return her to her friends a week after she became his wife. She married him, and he kept his promise."

"And he never let her see his face?"

"Never! and she can not even suspect who it is. He wore a long, disguising cloak that concealed his figure, false beard and hair, and spoke only French. But she hopes it may be Hugh Ingelow. What do you think?"

"That is not Hugh Ingelow. The fellow hasn't energy enough to entrap a fly."

"Sardonyx, then?"

"Sardonyx is too cautious. He knows too much of the law to run his head into the lion's jaws. Besides, it is too absurdly romantic for so practical a man. No, it is not Sardonyx."

"Yourself, then?"

The doctor laughed.

"Nonsense, Blanche! Mollie is out of her reckoning about us three. By the bye, I see now through those queer advertisements that have appeared in the 'Herald' of late. Black Mask--White Mask."

"Yes; Mollie wants to find out whom she has espoused. By Miriam's advice, she inserted that first advertisement to Black Mask. He, as you perceive, replies in to-day's edition."

"And she is to meet him to-morrow night."

"Exactly; and will, unless you forestall him."

"How?"

"Don't be stupid, pray. What is to hinder you from being at the place of rendezvous first and playing Black Mask?"

"I beg your pardon; I am stupid still. Black Mask will be there himself."

"Look here: ten is the hour. Toward evening I will advance every time-piece in the house, Mollie's watch included, half an hour. She will be at the place of tryst at half past nine. Be you there, likewise--cloaked, bearded, bewigged. Have a carriage in waiting. Make her think you are Hugh Ingelow, and she will enter it without hesitation. Speak French. She will not recognize your voice. Once in the carriage, carry her off."

"Where?" asked the doctor, astonished at the rapidity of all this.

"To Long Island--to the farm. She will be as safe there as in Sing Sing. Make her think you are her unknown husband. It will be easily done, for she half thinks it now. Only--look out for the strychnine!"

The doctor rose to his feet, his sallow face flushed, his small black eyes sparkling.

"By Jove! Blanche, what a plotter you are! I'll do it, as sure as my name's Guy. I love the little witch to madness, and I owe her one for the way she jilted me. I'll do it, by thunder!"

"Very well," said Mrs. Walraven, quietly. "Don't get excited, and don't make a noise. I knew you would."

"But what will the old lady say?"

"Who cares for the old lady?" retorted Mme. Blanche, contemptuously. "Not you, I hope. Tell her it's an insane patient you have brought to her for quiet and sea air. Judy is a regular dragon, and the old woman is as keen as a ferret and as sly as a female fox. Mollie won't escape from them. She may yield, if she really is convinced you are her husband. Tell her you love her to distraction--can't live without her, and so on. She may yield. Who knows? These girls are bundles of inconsistencies, and Mollie Dane the most inconsistent of the tribe. Have the ceremony performed over again before witnesses, and bring her back here in a month--Mrs. Guy Oleander! Even if she won't consent from pity for your state, she may to escape from that dreary Long Island farm. She did once before, you know, and may again. That is all I have to suggest, Guy. The rest is with yourself. In the vocabulary of great men, there is no such word as fail."

She rose up. Dr. Oleander grasped her hand in an outburst of enthusiastic gratitude.

"Blanche, you're a brick--a trump--a jewel beyond price! I don't know how to thank you. You're a woman of genius--a wife for a Talleyrand!"

"Thanks. Let me be able to return the compliment. I ask no more. Let me see how cleverly you will carry off pretty Mollie. I never want to see her under this roof again."


CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

The April day had been very long, and very, very dull in the handsome Walraven Fifth Avenue palace. Long and lamentable, as the warning cry of the banshee, wailed the dreary blast. Ceaselessly, dismally beat the rain against the glass. The icy breath of the frozen North was in the wind, curdling your blood and turning your skin to goose-flesh; and the sky was of lead, and the streets were slippery and sloppy, and the New York pavements altogether a delusion and a snare.

All through this bad, black April day, Mollie Dane had wandered through the house, upstairs and down-stairs, like an uneasy ghost.

Some evil spirit of unrest surely possessed her. She could settle nowhere. She threw herself on a sofa in her pretty bedroom, and tried to beguile the forlorn hours with the latest novel, in vain. She yawned horribly over the pages and flung it from her in disgust.

She wandered down to the drawing-room and tried the grand piano, whose tones were as the music of the spheres. Still in vain. The listless fingers fell aimlessly on the ivory keys.

She strove to sleep, but the nervous restlessness that possessed her only drove her to the verge of feverish madness in the effort. The girl was possessed of a waking nightmare not to be shaken off.

"What is it?" cried Mollie, impatiently, to herself. "What the mischief's the matter with me? I never felt like this before. It can't be remorse for some unacted crime, I never committed murder that I know of. It can't be dyspepsia, for I've got the digestive powers of an anaconda. It can't be the weather, for I've struggled through one or two other rainy days in my life-time; and it can't be anxiety for to-night to come, for I'm not apt to get into a gale about trifles. Perhaps it's a presentiment of evil to come. I've heard of such things. It's either that or a fit of the blue-devils!"

The long, wet, windy day wore on. Mr. Walraven slept through it comfortably in his study. Mrs. Walraven had a _tête-à-tête_ luncheon with her cousin, the doctor, and dawdled the slow hours away over her tricot and fashion magazines.

Old Mme. Walraven rarely left her own apartments of late days. Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law detested each other with an intensity not common even in that relationship. How she ever killed time was a mystery unknown. Mollie good-naturedly devoted a couple of her precious daily hours to her. The house was as still as a tomb. Downstairs, Messrs. Johnson and Wilson, Mr. Coachman, Mme. Cook and Mlle. Chambermaid may have enjoyed themselves in one another's society, but above the kitchen cabinet all was forlorn and forsaken.

"Awfully slow, all this!" said Miss Dane to herself, with a fearful yawn. "I'll die of stagnation if this sort of thing keeps on. Mariana, howling in the Moated Grange, must have felt a good deal as I do just at present--a trifle worse, maybe, for I don't wish I were dead altogether. The Tombs is gay and festive compared to Fifth Avenue on a rainy day. I wish I were back playing Fanchon the Cricket, free and happy once more, wearing spangles as Ophelia of Denmark, and a gilt paper crown as Cleopatra of Egypt, I wasn't married then; and I didn't go moping about, like an old hen with the distemper, every time it was wet and nasty. If it keeps on like this I shall have a pretty time of it getting to Fourteenth Street, at ten o'clock to-night. And I'll surely go, if it were to rain cats, dogs, and pitchforks!"

She stood drearily at the drawing-room window, looking forlornly out at the empty street.

The eerie twilight was falling, rain and wind rising and falling with it, the street lamps twinkling ghostily through the murky gloaming, the pavement black and shining. Belated pedestrians hurried along with bowed heads and uplifted umbrellas, the stages rattled past in a ceaseless stream, full to overflowing. The rainy night was settling down, the storm increasing as the darkness came on. Mollie surveyed all this disconsolately enough.

"I don't mind a ducking," she murmured, plaintively, "and I never take cold; but I don't want that man to see me looking like a drowned rat. Oh, if it should turn out to be Hugh--dear, dear Hugh!" Her face lighted rapturously at the thought. "I never knew how much I loved him until I lost him. If it isn't Hugh, and Hugh asks me to run away with him to-morrow, I'll do it--I declare I