"Is it true--they buried me--and--you--you--rescued me?" she asked, in a terrified whisper, catching at the old man's hands and clutching them in a grasp from which he could not draw them away, her teeth chattering, her violet eyes almost bulging from their sockets.

"Since you have heard all, I might as well confess that it is quite true," he answered. "And G.o.d forgive that brute of a husband you just married. He ought to swing for the crime as sure as there is a heaven above us. There will be no end of the good minister's wrath when he hears the story, my poor girl."

Again the beautiful young stranger caught at his hands.

"He must never know!" she cried, incoherently. "Promise me, by all you hold dear, that both you and your wife will keep my secret--will never reveal one word of what has happened this night."

"It is not right that we should keep silent upon such an amazing procedure. That would be letting escape the man who should be punished, if there is any law in the land to reach him for committing such a heinous crime."

"I plead with you--I, who know best and am the one wronged, and most vitally interested, to utter no word that would cause the story to become blazoned all over the world. Let me make my words a prayer to you both--to keep my pitiful secret."

It was beyond human power to look into those beautiful violet eyes, drowned in the most agonized tears, and the white, terrified, anxious face, without yielding to her prayer.

"I do not know what good reason you may have for binding us to secrecy,"

he said, slowly and reluctantly, "but we cannot choose but to give you the promise--nay, the pledge--you plead for. I can answer for my Mary as well as myself--the story of to-night's happenings shall never pa.s.s our lips until you give us leave to speak."

"Thank you! Oh, I thank you a thousand times!" sobbed the girl. "You have lifted a terrible load from my heart. If the time ever comes when I can repay you, rest a.s.sured it shall surely be done."

She tried to rise from her couch, but the good wife held her back upon her pillow with a detaining hand, exclaiming:

"What are you about to do, my dear child?"

"Go away from here," sobbed the girl, again attempting to arise from the couch, but falling back upon the pillow from sheer weakness.

She did not leave that couch for many a day. What she had undergone had been too much for her shattered nerves.

Brain fever threatened the hapless girl, but was warded off by the faithful nursing of old Adam's faithful wife.

And during those weeks the good woman could learn nothing of the history of the beautiful young stranger, who persistently refused to divulge one word concerning herself. She would turn her face to the wall and weep so violently when any allusion was made to her past that the grave digger's wife gave up questioning her.

One morning the bed was empty. It had not been slept in. The girl had fled in the night.

Who she was, or where she had gone, was to them the darkest, deepest mystery. Would it ever be revealed? They could not discuss it with the old minister or any of the neighbors, for their lips were sealed in eternal silence concerning the matter.

"I feel sure the end of this matter is not yet," said old Adam, prophetically. "When the girl comes face to face with the dastardly villain she wedded that night, it will end in a tragedy."

"G.o.d forbid!" murmured his wife with a shudder; but down in her own heart she felt that her husband had spoken the truth; the tragic end of this affair had not yet come.

CHAPTER XI.

"YOU ARE DISINHERITED--EVERYTHING IN THIS HOUSE IS MINE."

Faynie had indeed departed from that humble home as she had entered it, in the dark, dim silence of the bitter-cold night.

She made her way as best she could to the station which, fortunately enough, was not far distant. The station master was old and anxious to get home, and therefore paid little heed to the little dark-robed figure who bought a ticket to New York, and soon after crept silently aboard of the train which steamed into the little depot of the hamlet, almost buried in the snowdrifts across the hills.

Weak and faint from her recent illness, Faynie, the beautiful, petted little heiress of a short time before, huddled into a corner of the seat by the door, and drawing her veil carefully over her face, wept silently and unheeded as the midnight express bore her along to her destination.

She was going home to Beechwood; going back to the home she had left in such high spirits to join the lover who was to be all in all to her forever more; the lover who was to shield her henceforth and forever from the world's storms, and was to be all devotion to her and love her fondly until death did them part. And this had been the end of it. Her high hopes lay in ruins around her. Her idol had been formed of commonest clay, and lay crumbled in a thousand fragments at her feet.

Surely, no young girl's love dream ever had such a sad awakening, and was so cruelly dispelled.

She would go home to her haughty old father, tell him all, then lie down at his feet and die. That would end it all. Even in that moment lines she had once read came back to her with renewed meaning:

"And this is all! The end has come at last!

The bitter end of all that pleasant dream, That cast a hallow o'er the happy past, Like golden sunshine on a summer stream.

"Sweet were the days that marked life's sunny slope, When we together drew our hearts atune, And through the vision of a future hope, We did not dream that they would pa.s.s so soon.

"In happy mood fair castles we upreared, And thought that life was one long summer day; We had no dread of future pain, nor feared That shadows e'er should fall athwart our way.

"But sunken rocks lie hid in every stream, And ships are wrecked when just in sight of land; So we to-day wake from our pleasant dream To find our hopes were builded on the sand.

"I do not blame you that you do not keep The troth you plighted e'er your heart you knew; Better the parting now than wake to weep, When time has robbed life's roses of their dew.

"Another face will help you to forget, The idle dream that had its birth in trust, And other lips will kiss away regret, For broken faith and idols turned to dust,

"Ah, well, you chose, perhaps, the better way; Another love may in your heart be shrined; And I--I shall go down my darkened way, Seeking forever what I ne'er shall find."

It was two o'clock by the church belfry when she reached Beechwood, and a quarter of an hour later when she reached the great mansion that stood on the brow of the hill.

She remembered that one of the rear doors, seldom used, was never fastened, and toward this she bent her faltering footsteps. It yielded to her touch, and like a ghost she glided through it and up the wide, familiar corridors, her tears falling like rain at every step.

She knew it was her father's custom to spend long hours in his library, sometimes far into the gray dawn. He found this preferable to the presence of his sharp-tongued second wife, who was always nagging him for more money, or to put his property into her name as proof positive of his unbounded, undying affection for her.

In his library, among his books, there was no nagging. Here he found peace, silence and quiet.

Therefore, toward the library, late as the hour was, Faynie made her way, stealing along quietly as a shadow.

The door stood slightly ajar, and a ray of light, a narrow, thread-like strip, fell athwart the dim corridor.

When Faynie reached the door she paused, trembling with apprehension, a feeling of intense dread, like a presentiment of coming evil, stealing over her like the shadow of doom.

She was prepared for his bitter anger, for the whirlwind of wrath that would be sure to follow, but she would cast herself on her knees at his feet, and with head bowed, oh, so lowly, so piteously, wait for the hurricane of his rage to exhaust itself. Then she would bend over her head still lower, her pride crushed, her pitiful humiliation complete, and sue on her bended knees, with her hands clasped for his pardon and his love again.

She would plead for it for the sake of the fair, hapless young mother whom she had loved and lost in his early youth. Surely, for her sake he would find mercy, perhaps pardon, for the child she had left behind her, the fair, petted, hapless daughter, who had been so lonely, and whose heart yearned so for love ever since he had brought in a second wife to rule over his household.

Ay, from that hour he and his daughter had seemed to drift apart.

Nerving herself for the ordeal, the girl crept to the door and timidly swung it back.

There was a figure bending over the writing desk; not the tall form of her father, but her stepmother.

Faynie drew back with a startled cry.