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

sort since?" he inquired, huskily, after a pause.

"None. No one in your household knows even where this Miriam resides. As for Mr. Ingelow, I called twice at the studio since, but each time to find it locked."

There was a tap at the door.

"Come in," said the lawyer.

And enter a waiter, with a card for Mr. Walraven. That gentleman took it with a start.

"Speak of the--Hugh Ingelow!" he muttered. "Sardonyx, I wish to see Ingelow in private. I'll drop into your office in the course of the day."

Mr. Sardonyx bowed and took his hat and his departure at once.

Mr. Ingelow and he crossed each other on the threshold.

The young artist entered, his handsome face set, and grave, and stern.

Mr. Walraven saw that cold, fixed face with a sinking heart.

"Good-morning, Ingelow," he said, trying to nod and speak indifferently. "Take a seat and tell me the news. I've been out of town, you know."

"I know," Mr. Ingelow said, availing himself of the proffered chair only to lean lightly against it. "Thanks. No, I prefer to stand. My business will detain you but a few minutes. I come from Miss Dane."

He spoke with cold sternness. He could not forget the horrible fact that the man before him was a profligate and a murderer.

"Ah!" Carl Walraven said, with ashen lips. "She is well, I trust?"

"She is well. She desired me to give you this."

He held out the note. The hands of the millionaire shook as he tried to open it.

"Where is she?" he asked.

"She is with friends. Read that note; it explains all."

"Have you read it?" Carl Walraven asked with sudden, fierce suspicion.

"I have," answered Mr. Ingelow, calmly; "by Miss Dane's express desire."

Mr. Walraven opened the note and read it slowly to the end. His face changed from ashen gray to the livid hue of death. He lifted his eyes to the face of the young artist, and they glowed like the burning eyes of a hunted beast.

"Well?"

It was all he said, and he sent the word hissing hot and fierce from between his set teeth.

"That is all my errand here, Mr. Walraven," the young man said, his cool brown eyes looking the discovered murderer through. "I know all, and I believe all. You have been duped from first to last. Miss Dane is no child of yours, thank God!"

He raised his hand as he uttered the solemn thanksgiving, with a gesture that thrilled the guilty man through.

"Your secret is safe with her and with me," pursued Hugh Ingelow, after a pause. "You may live to the end of your life unmolested of man, for us, but you must never look upon Mollie Dane's face more."

Carl Walraven sunk down into a chair and covered his face, with a groan. Hugh Ingelow turned to go.

"Stop!" Mr. Walraven said, hoarsely. "What is to become of her? Are you going to marry her, Hugh Ingelow?"

"I decline answering that question, Mr. Walraven," the artist said, haughtily. "Miss Dane will be cared for--believe that. I wish you good-morning."

Mr. Ingelow was very pale when he emerged into thronged Broadway, but there was no indecision in his movements. He hailed a hack passing, sprung in, and was driven rapidly to the east side--to the humble abode of Mrs. Slimmens.

Mollie came forth to meet him, worn and sad, and with traces of tears, but with a bright, glad light in her starry eyes at sight of him--the light of sweet young love.

"I have seen him, Mollie," he said. "I gave him your letter. You would hardly have known him, he looked so utterly aghast and confounded. He will not try to see you, I am certain. And now, my dear girl, for that other and better plan that I spoke of last evening. But first you must take a drive with me--a somewhat lengthy drive."

She looked at him wonderingly, but in no fear.

"A drive," she repeated. "Where?"

"Only to Harlem--not quite out of the world," with a smile. "The carriage is waiting. Go put on your bonnet, and come."

"It is very odd," thought Mollie.

But she obeyed implicitly, and in five minutes they were rattling along over the stony streets.

"Won't you tell me now?" the young lady asked.

"Not yet. Let the mystery develop itself as it does in a novel. Trust to me, and prepare for a great shock."

She gazed at him, utterly unable to comprehend. He was smiling, but he was strangely pale.

"It is no jest, surely," Mollie said. "It is something serious. You look as though it were."

"Heaven knows I never was more serious in my life. Don't ask any more questions now, Mollie; but if I have ever done you the slightest service, try to bear it in mind. You will need to remember it shortly, and I will stand sorely in want of all your magnanimity."

He said no more, and Mollie sat in a dazed state, but still happy, as she ever must be by his side. And on, and on, and on they rattled, and the city was left behind, and they were driving through the quiet of Harlem, green and pretty in its summery freshness.

The driver, obeying some directions of Mr. Ingelow, turned up a shady green lane ending in a high gate-way.

They entered the gate-way and drove up through a long avenue of waving trees to a square, fair mansion of gleaming white--a large wooden structure with intensely green blinds, all closely shut.

Mollie sat and looked in speechless expectation. Mr. Ingelow, volunteering no explanation, assisted her out, desired cabby to wait, opened the door with a latch-key, and ushered Mollie in.

The entrance-hall was very much like any other entrance-hall; so, likewise, was the broad stair-way; so, also, the upper landing.

It was only when Mr. Ingelow, pausing before one of the doors in the second hall, spoke, that Mollie received her first shock.

"You will enter here, Mollie, and wait. Prepare yourself for a great surprise--a terrible surprise, perhaps."

He bowed and left her, passing into another room, and closing the door.

All in an agitated flutter, Mollie opened her door and entered. But on the threshold she paused, with a shrill cry of wonder, terror, and doubt; for the padded walls and floor, the blind windows, the lighted lamp, the bed, the furniture, were all recognized in a moment.

It was the room where she had been first imprisoned--where she had consented to marry the masked man.

A quiet figure rose from a chair under the lamp and faced her with a courtesy. It was the girl who had lured her from her home--Sarah Grant.

"Come in, miss," said this young person, as though they had just parted an hour ago. "Master told me to expect you. Sit down; he'll be here in a minute. You look fit to drop."

She felt "fit to drop." She sunk into the proffered seat, trembling through every limb in her body, overwhelmed with a stunning consciousness that the supreme moment of her life had come.

Sarah Grant left the room, and Mollie was alone. Her eyes turned to the door, and fixed themselves there as if fascinated. Her head was awhirl--her mind a blank. Something tremendous was about to happen--what, she could not think.

The door opened slowly--the man in the black mask strode in and stood, silent and awful, before her.

Without a word or cry, but white as death, she rose up and confronted him with wild, dilated eyes.

"You know me, Mollie," the masked man said, addressing her, as before, in French--"I am your husband."

"Yes," Mollie answered, her white lips scarce able to form the words. "For God's sake, take off that mask and show me your face!"

Without a word, he unclasped the cloak and let it slip on the floor; he removed the flowing hair and beard, and with it the mask. And uttering a low, wailing cry, Mollie staggered back--for there before her, pale as herself, stood the man she loved--Hugh Ingelow!


CHAPTER XXIX.

WHICH WINDS UP THE BUSINESS.

He stood before her, pale and stern, his eyes fixed upon her, as a culprit before his judge waiting sentence of death.

But Mollie never looked. After that one brief, irrepressible cry, she had fallen back, her face bowed and hidden in her hands.

"You shrink from me, Mollie," Hugh Ingelow said; "you will not even look at me. I knew it would be so. I know I deserve it; but if I were never to see you again, I must tell you the truth all the same. Yes, Mollie, recoil from me, hate me, spurn me, for the base, unmanly part I have acted. It is not Doctor Oleander who is the dastard, the villain, the abductor of weak women--it is I!"

She did not speak, she did not move, she made no sign that she even heard him.

"It will avail me little, I know," he continued, "to tell you I have repented the dastardly deed in bitterness of spirit since. It will avail nothing to tell you how I have hated myself for that cruel and cowardly act that made me your husband. I think you maddened me, Mollie, with your heartless, your insulting rejection, and I did love you passionately. I swore, in my heart of hearts, I would be avenged, and, Mollie, you know how I kept my vow."

Still no reply, still no movement on Mollie's part. She stood half bowed, her head averted, her face covered by her hands.

"It drove me into a sort of frenzy, the thought of your becoming Sir Roger Trajenna's wife. If he had been a young man, and you had loved him, I would have bowed my head, as before a shrine, and gone my way and tried to forgive you and wish you happiness. But I knew better. I knew you were selling yourself for an old man's rank, for an old man's gold, and I tried to despise and hate you. I tried to think that no base act I could commit would be baser than the marriage you were ready to make. A plan--mad, impracticable as my own mad love, flashed across my brain, and, like many other things impossible in theory, I did it! It seemed an impossiblity to tear you from the very altar, and make you my wife, all unknown, but I did it. I had this house here, uninhabited, furnished. I had a friend ready to help me to the death. I disguised myself like a hero of romance, I decoyed you here, forced you to consent, I married you!"

Still mute, still dropping, still averted, still motionless. There was a tremor in Hugh Ingelow's steady voice when he went on.

"How hard it was for me, what a cruel, cold-blooded monster I felt myself, how my very heart of hearts was touched by your suffering here, I can not tell. Besides, it would seem like mockery, since all my compassion did not make me spare you. But from the moment you set foot here I considered it too late; and then, besides, Mollie, I was mad with love of you. I could not let you go. You yielded--you consented to barter yourself for freedom, as once before you consented for gold. I brought the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh here--he married me under my