"No, by George! I don't," he answered quickly.

"You don't," she exclaimed. "Then how can I go home? They would--they would think I had disgraced myself. Father would turn me out of doors!"

"I'm very sorry for you, then," he answered, coolly. "I see no other resource for you."

"Leon, I don't know what you mean!" exclaimed Jennie, in surprise and pain at his careless words and utterly indifferent manner; "you are not one bit like yourself. What makes you talk so strange to your own wife?"

She looked up at the handsome man with the tears of wounded feeling starting into her eyes, but all unconscious of the terrible blow that was to fall upon her defenseless head.

"You are not my wife!" he replied, with a dark and threatening frown.

"_Not your wife!_" she cried, turning as white as death. "Oh, Leon, you surely are going mad! What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say," he answered, curtly. "It's time you knew the truth, Jennie. You are not my wife--never have been! The marriage ceremony was read over us, to be sure, but it was only a mock-marriage to quiet your scruples. The pretended preacher was a friend of mine--the wickedest blade in town--with a soul as black as the devil!"

She sat still and looked at him, her eyes wild and frightened, her face as white as the snow which whirled past the window. At last she spoke, but her voice was low and thick, and did not seem like her own.

"You're joking with me, Leon--you _can't_ mean it?"

"I _do_ mean it--it's the truth," he replied, coolly; "come, now, Jennie, don't take it hard. We've had a pleasant time--have we not? And now you can go home to your mother. I am tired of you, I confess it; and I'm going away myself--to Europe, I think. So of course you can't stay here. My sister would turn you out of doors as soon as she found you out. Go home to the farm, and there's a hundred dollars to help you through your trouble."

He tossed a roll of bank-notes into her lap with a complacent air as if his munificent generosity condoned everything.

The girl had been sitting quite still, looking at him with a terrible pain frozen on her pretty young face, but at his concluding words she sprang up and tossed the roll of notes into the fire as if it had been a serpent. Her dark eyes blazed with pa.s.sion and her voice shook with rage as she wildly confronted her base betrayer.

"Oh, you devil!" she cried, "I would not touch one cent of that money to save your soul from the torments of h.e.l.l! My curses be upon your head!

May the Lord _never_ forgive you for this cruel sin! May you die by the hangman's rope!"

The handsome villain laughed mockingly, and turning on his heel walked out of the room.

As he pa.s.sed through the hallway he heard the sound of a heavy fall.

Glancing over his shoulder he saw that his victim had fallen senseless upon the floor.

He walked on and entered the room of Mrs. Bowers, his housekeeper, and not his sister, as he had pretended.

"I have told her," he said, "and she has fainted--as they mostly do. I am going away now, and I shall be absent a week. You must try and get her away from here before I come back!"

"Oh! you wicked man," said Mrs. Bowers, laughing, and shaking a finger at him. "Where shall I send her?"

"To the devil for aught I care!" said the gentleman, smarting with the recollection of Jennie's curse and the burning of his hundred dollars.

"I care not where she goes so that I am rid of her. But take good care of the other one. Do not suffer her to escape."

He tossed a roll of bills into her lap and walked away humming a tune.

In a few minutes after she heard him riding off down the road to the city. She locked her money carefully away in a drawer, then went up to the parlor where poor Jennie lay insensible upon the floor, and sitting down in an easy-chair, carelessly regarded the poor girl whom she had pitilessly helped to ruin.

It was a long time before the unhappy girl revived from her deep swoon, but the housekeeper made no effort to restore her to life though the thought crossed her mind more than once as she sat there that she might die without a.s.sistance.

"And no matter if she does," said the heartless woman to herself. "It would be all the better for her and for all parties concerned."

But it was not to be as Mrs. Bowers thought and almost wished. Life came back to the poor girl with a long, fluttering sigh, and the first thing she saw when she looked up was the angry face of the woman glaring down upon her.

"So you're alive, are you?" she said fiercely. "Why didn't you die and hide your shame and disgrace in the grave?"

"Ma'am?" faltered poor Jane, blankly.

"I say why didn't you die and hide your shame and disgrace in the grave?" repeated the housekeeper, angrily. "Ah! I've found you out, Jennie Thorn! I took you in my house for an honest girl, but you've ruined yourself and disgraced your poor old parents; I'll not keep such trash in my respectable home. Out of my house you go before night!"

The poor girl rose and looked out of the window. The cold winter twilight was already falling and the great, white flakes of snow still filled the air.

"Oh! Mrs. Bowers," she said, piteously, "it is night already, and where could I go?"

"You should have thought of that sooner," said the pitiless woman. "It's too late now. Go get your cloak and hat and put them on."

Almost stunned by her sorrow Jennie mechanically obeyed her imperious command.

"Now, leave here!" said the housekeeper.

"Oh! Mrs. Bowers," cried the wretched girl, "let me stay at least until morning! Indeed I am not what you think me! I was deceived by a mock-marriage, and I thought myself an honest wife until Mr. Vinton told me just now how cruelly he had betrayed me. Oh! for G.o.d's sake have pity on me, and don't turn me out to-night in the cold and the darkness!"

For all answer Mrs. Bowers caught her by the arm and rudely dragged her along the hall to the front door.

"You can't deceive me with your trumped up lies, you shameless thing!"

she said. "Go now, and never let me see your face here again."

She opened the door and pushing the poor, weeping, betrayed and deserted girl out into the blinding storm, slammed and locked the door.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Over the broad, dark river, and the snow-covered earth the cold winter moonlight lay in great, silvery bars of light.

The terrible snowstorm of two days before was over. The sky was clear and starry, and no trace remained of the storm save the deep, white carpeting of the beautiful snow.

Midnight was tolling from the great bell in the city, but Queenie Ernscliffe sat at her window staring out at the night with wide, sleepless eyes.

On a couch at the opposite side of the room lay Mrs. Bowers snoring audibly. She had slept in Queenie's room ever since the night she had effected her escape and her constant vigilance had entirely frustrated any other attempt of the kind.

While Jennie Thorn had been dwelling in her Fool's Paradise, our heroine had been suffering all the horrors of imprisonment and despair.

She had heard very little of the farmer's pretty daughter since the day she came to live there, but she knew she had remained with them, for she had seen her a few times walking in the garden beneath her window, prettily, even richly dressed, and she knew too well what that meant.

She felt very sorry for the poor girl who had been so deaf to her words of friendly warning.

Queenie was sadly altered for the worse since these long months of imprisonment and wretchedness. Her garments hung loosely about her attenuated form, her cheeks were thin and hollow, and her once bright eyes were dim with weeping, and looked too wild and large for her small, pathetic, white face. Her days and nights were pa.s.sed in sleepless wretchedness, much to the annoyance of the housekeeper, who declared that she could not rest well while her refractory charge kept the light burning as she did the long nights through, for she could not bear to have darkness add its additional gloom to the horror of her thoughts.

While she sat and stared wearily out at the midnight scene, the housekeeper snored herself awake and began to complain.