In a moment her appearance underwent a great change. Under the continuous strain, the strands of grief and despair had at last snapped asunder and up rushed an exultation that instantly overwhelmed all opposition to a suddenly conceived and terrible purpose. She whispered with an earnestness intense as it was significant: "There is a way out." Then she suddenly burst into a frenzy of pathetic joy as she thought of the phial of laudanum in the medicine chest in her room.

"A pa.s.sage to my darling beyond!"

She did not see Virginia standing in the doorway, nor did she pause as some do to take a last farewell look at earth and sky. Her mind was set upon the swift accomplishment of an object.

Upon reaching her room, she took up the phial of laudanum and then, as she fell on her knees, locked her hands together, and her voice softened into tenderness--softened in inexpressibly sweet and plaintive tones, as she cried out in a whisper of her soul's anguish:

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me!"

She was standing in the shadow of the valley of death.

Strangely coincident, the inspiring notes of the "Star Spangled Banner" softly broke upon the air from a piano in the music room below. As the grand strains swelled upward, they were met with a break in the clouds through which the sun poured down a flood of dazzling glory.

At that moment Dorothy's pet canary began to sing. The delicate little feathered thing, that had nestled its bill under its wing in the raw cold of the morning, felt the warm influence of the sunshine that fell upon it, and looked up, twittered, lifted its voice in surprised gladness, and then in response to the soft strains that were pealing forth from the music room, broke into song.

Higher and higher it swelled, cleaving the air with its exultant melody.

Oh! the wild soaring flight of that joyous song!

Through the partly closed window it burst and flooded the room with its gladness and cheer. Death stayed his hand.

The little silken feathered throat of her darling's pet had turned aside the "Grim Sickle."

She heard it. Out over the entrancing beauty of Autumn-dyed vegetation, her sad eyes wandered--wandered wistfully over nature bathed in the splendor of the sun's radiance. She heeded the call, and then, appalled at her contemplated sin, she cowered--bowed down--lower, lower. In tones of resignation--tones tremulous with awe of the Omnipotent, she said: "Have pity upon me, Merciful Heaven!"

And then very softly Virginia knelt beside her, gently encircling her waist with her arm, and looked into her spiritual face with eyes overflowing with tears. In a broken voice, scarcely articulate through a great sob, she said: "Oh, Constance! Constance, dear, I am punished enough already!"

After Hazel had completed her attire for a visit to Mrs. Harris, she descended the stairs with the same feeling of gloom and depression upon her.

Slow and hesitating as was her action--as though undecided as to the propriety of leaving Constance, and while drawing on her gloves, she aimlessly wandered into the music room and listlessly sat on the piano stool. Then, with her head turned looking out of the window, she let her fingers ramble over the keys of the instrument. Then she saw Virginia pa.s.s up the walk and enter the house, but after the lapse of a few moments and her cousin not appearing, Hazel entered the drawing room to greet her--but too late. Through the open door she heard a step on the main stairs above. Hazel followed. On pa.s.sing the table the divorce bill caught her eye. For a moment she paused and picked it up; then laid it down, her breath coming in gasps, for she instantly realized a crisis of a very grave moment had appeared. She ran upstairs, surmising that Virginia was connected with the "divorce bill," for she had not seen Mr. Williams.

And then she heard Virginia's voice. Softly she stole to the door and looked in. There, kneeling on the floor, were Constance and Virginia, looking into each other's eyes, Constance drawn back in timid alarm, and Virginia blinded with tears, clasping the hand that held the laudanum phial, her free arm thrown lovingly around Constance's waist.

Hazel silently drew back, an overpowering emotion suffusing her eyes with tears. "Poor Constance! Her trouble thickens fast. What will the end be?"

CHAPTER IV.

Rutley had found time during the frantic appearance of Constance at the "fete," to threaten Virginia with public exposure if she failed to keep their secret. It was that threat that induced her to pause in a momentary conceived intention to demand an explanation from her brother. The pa.s.sionate earnestness--the uncontrollable fury she discovered in her brother--produced an awe, and aroused her to a sense of some terrible mistake, and of the far-reaching effect her conspiracy with Rutley was likely to have. Each moment, instead of exultation, increased her sorrow at the course she had pursued.

Between fear of publicity of the part she had played, coupled with her hatred of Corway, and consequent satisfaction in her triumph at his discomfiture--at the same time alarmed at her brother's imminent danger in a probably tragic affair--all contributed to indecision, and she realized to her dismay that she had placed herself in the power of a man who had proved himself a master "Iago."

Her intuition caused her to shrink from him. He comprehended and pressed closer. Despite her powerful will and keen perception, and possession of those womanly attributes of sympathy and kindness to suffering humanity, she felt herself incapable, just then, of defying him.

The cry of Constance that Dorothy was in the water scattered the quarreling party, which rushed to the river's edge.

Virginia and Mrs. Harris remained with Constance, but Rutley made it his business to keep his eyes on her and under pretense of searching the grounds, remained near by, in order to restrain her from approaching her brother.

Her opportunity to undo all, which under a more prompt determination would have succeeded--was lost, simply because it had taken her some time to care for Constance, and also to arrive at a fixed conclusion, irrespective of the threats or cajoling of Rutley--and then John Thorpe disappeared. Two days she diligently searched for him, surmising that he was searching for Dorothy, but all her efforts to locate him were fruitless. She had just returned from a stubborn search of the hotels, when she heard the frenzied cry of, "A pa.s.sage to my darling beyond."

She recognized the voice and stole through the doorway, just in time to see Constance pa.s.s upstairs.

As Virginia entered the room, she pa.s.sed the table on which lay the divorce paper. The printed word attracted her attention, and at once arrested her onward course. She picked it up. "John Thorpe, from his wife, Constance." Horror and dismay swept across her face with lightning rapidity. Here, then, was the key to Rutley's horrible revenge. Now she knew that Constance was made to stand for Hazel.

The doc.u.ment dropped from her nerveless hand, and with wildly beating heart she flew up the stairs after Constance. Noiselessly she opened the door. Before her--on her knees, with bowed head, the phial of laudanum between her clasped hands, was the woman who had received the terrible blow intended for Corway.

Virginia's heart seemed to still its beating. Her blood seemed to be congealing to ice as she stood incapable of motion, and listened to the piteous appeal from that pure, broken heart.

In a moment she understood it all--the intent--the arresting hand of fate--the startled submission of a meek and contrite spirit to the Divine will, and below--the divorce paper.

Satisfied that Constance would not again attempt an act of self-destruction, and unequal, in her present frame of mind, to the task of ministering comfort to the woman whose grief must be partially laid to her door--for it must be remembered that Virginia had not in any manner contributed to the abduction of Dorothy, and was as much at a loss to account for the child's disappearance as her mother--she withdrew, her mission unfilled--her atonement inconceivably harder to accomplish. She seemed overcome with a suffocating sensation. She must have air. Out of the house she mechanically pa.s.sed. Down the steps and around the grounds--under the silent falling vine and russet and golden-colored leaves she hurried, neither looking to the right nor to the left.

Born on her father's Willamette Valley farm, yet this city home, of her childhood and of her womanhood, now so enchantingly beautiful in its Autumn glory, its fragrant coying whisper had no charm to impede her onward flight, no power to lift her bowed head.

She was thinking of the one within. "And it is all my fault. I feel sure of that, for it would have been impossible for Rutley to have angered John so much with any other name. I must have been mad ever to have confided in him that it was Constance's ring.

"Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do? G.o.d forgive me!" she moaned, as she sought solace under a maple. But there was no rest for her. She returned to the house. Mechanically she opened the door and with one longing heartsore purpose--to seek the seclusion of her apartment--to throw herself on the couch and bury her face in her hands in a vain hope to get relief in tears. But there, just inside the door, on the hall table, she saw through moist-swollen eyes, something white.

She picked it up. It was a letter addressed to her, in a coa.r.s.e scrawl. She fled to her room, there she sat on a chair near the window and opened the letter. The characters were bold, but slovenly written, and almost illegible, and then somehow the light did not appear strong or bright as it should be. She bent over close to the window--no better, save that she could make out the word "Virginia."

Becoming more interested, she turned on the electric light, and even then her eyes seemed weak, and the letters so run together as to appear blurred. She took up a magnifying gla.s.s that lay on the table, and by its aid was at last able to decipher the note.

Virginia, ther party as sends er this kin tell yer somethink about er party yer wud lie ter knows, perwiden yer meets me nere the top of the long steps at or eleven ternight--alone, mind yer--alone in ther city park. Yerl be safe if alone.

She was at once convinced that the note had a deep significance. She turned it over and over and read and re-read it again and again.

It was clearly meant for a clandestine meeting--with whom? Ha!

The handwriting was evidently disguised, for it was quite different from that on the envelop, and the illiteracy plainly intended to deceive. Nevertheless the information might be of inestimable value--perhaps John, maybe of Dorothy.

Her mind was almost in a state of frenzy at her impotent efforts to undo the mischief she had wrought, and even this "straw" gave a certain measure of relief, by offering work for solution.

"I will go!" she said aloud. Having made up her mind to take the risk, her spirits lightened perceptibly.

As the envelop bore no postmark, she at once plied the housemaid with questions. Who delivered the letter? How had it come on the hall table? The questions were put in a quiet, indifferent manner, so as not to excite curiosity.

At the usual time the maid had taken it from the private mail box, which was of iron and old-fashioned, and fastened to the porch b.u.t.tress, and she guessed that the mail carrier had brought it with the other mail. Virginia spoke kindly to the girl, and after casually commenting on the beautiful sunshine, returned to her room and prepared for the adventure. She utterly disregarded in her mind that the mail carrier had brought the letter. Since it was not postmarked, it could not have pa.s.sed through the postoffice.

Some one had sneaked in some time during the night or early in the morning and placed it in the box. That was her decision.