Leon Vinton opened the gate and pa.s.sed inside. Farmer Thorn, having replaced his hat, walked in behind him.

The next moment Leon Vinton felt a grasp of steel upon his arm.

He was whirled violently around face to face with the enraged man whom he had wronged, and felt the muzzle of a pistol pressed against his breast.

"Accursed villain!" shouted the farmer, in a voice of thunder, "thus do I avenge a daughter's wrongs!"

Queenie heard the terrible words, followed by a loud report, saw a wreath of blue smoke curling upward, and Leon Vinton fell like a log on the snowy path. With a terrible shudder she saw his life-blood spurting out, dyeing the pure snow with a terrible scarlet stain.

Farmer Thorn looked down at his victim, spurned him with his foot, and replacing the pistol in his breast, walked rapidly away. At the same moment the front door opened hurriedly, and Mrs. Bowers ran out, followed by a servant. Both of them ran screaming down the path to the side of their master.

CHAPTER XIX.

Weakened and shocked by the terrible scene she had witnessed, Queenie hid her face in her hands and fell back on her sofa. She lay there trembling and agitated, and musing on the sudden end of the wicked Leon Vinton.

Presently the door was pushed open and Mrs. Bowers entered in such high excitement that she forgot to lock the door behind her.

"Oh!" she cried out, "did you hear the pistol shot? Leon Vinton is dead!"

A sudden impulse decided Queenie to conceal her knowledge of the fact.

She sprang up in apparent wild excitement.

"Is it possible?" she cried. "I heard a pistol-shot a moment ago. Who killed him?"

"I cannot tell you," said Mrs. Bowers. "I heard a shot, and ran to the window just in time to see a man going out of the gate. He had a wide hat on, and I couldn't make out his features."

"You shall never learn his name from me," thought Queenie to herself, for her whole sympathies were with the wronged father of the poor, betrayed Jennie.

"But there laid poor Mr. Vinton, stone dead, in the path," continued Mrs. Bowers, excitedly. "Look out of the window there, and you can see it all for yourself."

Queenie glanced out of the window and drew back with a shudder.

"Oh! it is horrible," she said. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to send for the coroner," said Mrs. Bowers. "That's the proper thing to do. I must go right away and do it. Dear, dear, who was that murderous man, I'd like to know? I'd have followed after him, and, mayhap, caught him, only I was so fl.u.s.trated I didn't know what to do first. The mean, murderous villain!"

She bustled out so full of excitement that she forgot to lock her prisoner's door.

Queenie started up full of joyful emotion.

"Now is my chance!" she exclaimed, "Leon Vinton is dead, and Mrs. Bowers has no right to detain me. I will leave this dreadful place at once."

She opened the wardrobe and took out a long waterproof cloak and hood, putting them on with trembling hands.

Then she exchanged her thin shoes for thick walking boots, and doubled a dark-brown barege veil over her face.

Thus equipped she opened the door and ran down the steps to the hall with her heart beating almost to suffocation.

In the doorway she paused. Mrs. Bowers was standing in the path by the side of the dead man, and Queenie was afraid she would attempt to detain her.

"I must make a run for it," she thought, and suiting the action to the word, she flitted down the steps and ran at break-neck speed down the path, past her living and dead persecutors, and sprang through the gate and out into the road.

Mrs. Bowers heard the patter of her feet and the rustle of her garments as she rushed past her, and looking up she recognized the girl, and recollected instantly that she had forgotten to lock the door after her.

"Come back, you jade!" she screamed, "come back this instant!"

But the fugitive hurried on without looking back, and Mrs. Bowers in a rage set out in a headlong pace after her.

But the good lady was not as young as she had once been, and she found herself rather heavy on her feet. But panting and blowing she raced on in the useless pursuit, until suddenly both her feet slipped from under her, and she measured her length on the icy ground.

Muttering some words rather spirited in their meaning, and not often heard on feminine lips, the wicked woman rose from the cold earth, and shaking her fist after the fast retreating figure of her whilom prisoner, began to retrace her steps to the house, rubbing sundry bruises on her person as she went.

"The keen-witted little wretch!" she thought, "how quick she was to take advantage of my momentary forgetfulness. But after all, Vinton is dead, and what do I want to keep her for? I shall have to leave here, anyway.

Mayhap, it's better as it is."

Thus consoling herself, she returned to her watch over the dead man who lay in a crimson pool of his life-blood across the snowy path, his eyes glaring gla.s.sily, his handsome face set in the expression of fear and horror that had settled on it when Mr. Thorn's terrible denunciation had been thundered in his ears.

Meanwhile Queenie ran on in her headlong flight until her limbs began to tremble beneath her. Throwing a glance over her shoulder, she saw that she had outrun her pursuer so far that she was no longer visible. She slackened her pace then, and began to walk at a slower and more reasonable gait.

"I may take my time now," she thought. "Mrs. Bowers is too old and slow to overtake me. Besides she can have no interest in keeping me a prisoner since Leon Vinton is dead. She will have enough to do to take care of herself."

She pushed back her veil, showing a face so bright with hope and happiness, that it was hardly recognizable for the pale and dejected countenance that had looked from the window of the river cottage an hour ago. Joy had fairly transfigured it.

She walked along unconscious of the keen, cold, wintery air in the rush of happy thoughts that crowded over her.

She would go home to her father first. She would tell him everything--he should break the news of her return to her husband.

"I cannot tell Lawrence the _whole_ truth," she said, shuddering. "I would rather die than that he should know the terrible secret! He is so proud and he told me once he would not marry a woman with the faintest shadow of disgrace upon her name. I have deceived him, and I must never let him know now, for I love him, and it would kill me to have him put me away! I will tell him something plausible, though I will not tell a direct lie if I can help."

Poor little Queenie!--once so innocent and transparent that her very thoughts could be read in her eyes--her terrible misfortunes had taught her strange subterfuges and deceit.

"I wonder if there will be any trouble about proving my ident.i.ty," she thought; "I have heard of such things, and it _will_ appear very strange to them at first. Papa will take me for a ghost, as he did the night I went and looked at him through the window when he thought I was traveling in Europe. Poor Uncle Rob! I wonder if he was sorry much when he heard I was dead."

She pa.s.sed the farm-house where the Thorns lived, but the doors and windows were both closed, and the only sign of life was a faint blue smoke curling up from the chimney.

"I should like to stop and see what has become of that poor, willful girl," she said to herself, "but I am so impatient I cannot spare the time."

She walked on faster as she neared the great city. Her impatience redoubled by the thought that every step brought her nearer to her loved ones.

"I wonder if they will be glad to see me," she thought wistfully; "I know papa _will_! Poor old darling, I could never doubt _him_! I do not know about Georgie and mamma. _They_, perhaps, were relieved that I and my terrible secret were buried together--they may be sorry to see me resurrected. But of one thing I am certain. Sydney was glad when she thought I was dead. She will hate me more than ever when I go back. But I shall not trouble any of them, I shall have my husband--he is all I want. He shall take me away from here to some other place where I can forget all the terrible past in my new happiness."

All the while she was thinking she was walking quickly on, buoyed up by the joyous antic.i.p.ations. At last, foot-sore and weary, she entered the great city and walked on until she stood in front of her father's handsome residence.

Trembling with pa.s.sionate joy, and with her heart beating so that she could hear it in her ears, she went up the steps and rang the bell.