An expression of annoyance swept over the girl's fair, ingenuous face as Mrs. Vance bent airily over her and touched her feverish brow with her delicately rouged lips.

"You should not kiss me," said she, pettishly, "this fever may be infectious."

"The doctor said it was not infectious, my dear," murmured the lady sweetly. "I asked him myself this morning."

"Oh! you did, eh? I suppose wild horses could not have dragged you in here to see me if it had been," said Ada, sarcastically.

"Is there anything I can do for you, my love?" asked Mrs. Vance, gracefully ignoring the spoiled girl's incivility.

"Nothing--only do not talk to me--talking hurts my head," replied the invalid, turning her face away.

"Ah, then, if I only disturb you I will take my leave," said the handsome widow, tripping out of the room.

"You were rather rude, my dear," said the nurse, surprised at her gentle patient's sudden petulance.

"I don't care," said Ada vehemently, "I hate that woman! I cannot tell why it is, but I have hated her ever since she came here to live, nearly two years ago. She knows I do not like her, but she affects unconsciousness of it. Keep the door locked, nurse, and do not let her come in here again--tell her I am too ill to see anyone. When she kissed me just now I felt as if a great slimy snake had crawled over me--ugh!"

she said, shuddering at the recollection.

CHAPTER VIII.

The great agitation of poor imprisoned Lily Lawrence culminated in a severe fit of illness, and Doctor Pratt found need for all his skill before convalescence set in again. Mr. Colville prudently kept himself in the background now, so she was not troubled by the sight of the villain's face for several weeks. Haidee proved herself a careful and efficient nurse, and in three weeks' time poor Lily rose from her sick-bed pale, weak and weary, her girlish heart filled with heaviness and despair. She had again and again entreated old Haidee to go to her father, but in vain. The old woman stubbornly turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties. The old crone's husband Lily had not yet seen, though she frequently heard his gruff and brutal tones in the next room to hers, which appeared to be his sleeping-apartment.

She was sitting up one day in the great arm-chair puzzling her brain over some plan of escape. She looked very lovely still, though wasted by illness and sorrow. Haidee had provided her with a neat blue wrapper, and her fairness was almost dazzling by contrast with its becoming hue.

Her rich golden hair was gathered in a loose coil at the back of her graceful little head, showing the whiteness of her neck, and the rosy tinting of her small, sh.e.l.l-like ears. A fancy seized her to look out of the window which was always covered with thick curtains. It was warm and sultry and she longed for a breath of the sweet and balmy air outside her gloomy-looking room.

Rising with feeble steps she went to the window, and pulled aside the curtain.

Horrors! the window was barred with great, heavy iron bars!

Some vague, indefinite plan of escape through that window had been forming in her mind. She almost screamed in her despair as she saw the futility of her plan.

"Hateful prison-bars!" said she, angrily, and clenching one in her small hand she shook it with angry violence. To her surprise the rotten wood-work yielded, and the bar fell from its place and remained in her hand. Very cautiously she looked through the aperture just formed.

She saw that she was in an old and weather-beaten house set in the midst of a large garden whose overgrown shrubs and bushes had grown wild and tangled, and over-run the paths. There was not another house within half a mile of this one. She was far out on the suburbs, she comprehended at once.

A noise below startled her from her reconnoissance. Hastily fitting the heavy bar back to its place, she dropped the curtains and tottered back to her seat, a.s.suming an air of indifference and weariness.

The door opened and Harold Colville entered.

"Good-evening, Miss Lawrence," said he, coolly; "I trust you find yourself improving."

Lily vouchsafed him no answer save a look of scorn and contempt.

"Come--come, fair lady," said he, seating himself near her, "have you no kinder greeting for your devoted admirer?"

"Leave the room, if you please," said she, while the indignant crimson suffused her cheeks. "I have nothing to say to you, sir!"

"Nothing? surely it were wiser, Lily, to try to make terms with me than to bandy angry words. Remember you are in my power. I love you, and I want your love in return. But, proud girl, beware how you change my love into hate."

"Mr. Colville," said she, "it is cruel, it is unmanly thus to persecute a defenseless girl. I beseech you, restore me to my home and my father.

Think of my poor father, my suffering sister. There are other women who will love you, women who have not given away their hearts as I have done."

"There is but one woman on earth to me, Lily, and I have sworn to make her my own. You cannot move me by all you say--as well try to topple a mountain from its base as to move me from my firm will. Better, far better were it for you, Lily Lawrence, to waive all this useless pleading, make yourself as charming as you well know how to do, and become my wife. If you still persist in refusing there may be worse things in store for you."

She could not misunderstand the insulting meaning of his angry speech.

The hot blood flushed into her face, then receded and left her pale as death. In bitter shame at his rudeness she bowed her face in her hands.

"You understand me," said he with a low, malignant laugh; "so much the better! Now listen to reason, Lily. I love you, and you are in my power!

you are dead to the world, dead to the father who reared you, the sister who loved you, the man you would have wedded. Consent to marry me, and within an hour after I call you my wife you shall see your friends again, and tell them the romantic story of my love, and how it saved your life; you can tell them that such devotion won you to reward my fidelity with your hand. All this I offer you in good faith and honor, and give you time for decision. But refuse--and--well, you know you are still in my power!"

She rose and stood confronting him in all the pride and dignity of outraged and insulted purity. She was rarely, peerlessly beautiful with that scarlet tide staining her cheeks, that lightning flash in the violet eyes.

"Villain, coward, dog!" she cried, in the white heat of pa.s.sionate resentment, "how dare you threaten me thus? Know that I defy you! I spurn you! I will never be your wife! I will die first, do you hear me?

I will die by my own hand rather than be so disgraced."

"Rave on, my beauty," he answered, laughing tauntingly. "Flap your pretty wings against your prison bars, my little bird, you will only ruffle your feathers in vain. By Jove, you only make me more determined!

I never saw you so beautiful, so utterly fascinating! I did not think you had so queenly a spirit, my fair one! you would make your fortune on the tragic stage!"

"Oh! go, go," she gasped, lifting her hand with a wild gesture toward the door, "go, leave me, unless you wish to see me dying!"

He paused irresolute an instant; then her flashing eye and dauntless air cowed his craven spirit into submission. With a slight bow he turned and went out of the door.

Face downward on the bed, Lily wept and sobbed unrestrainedly. She was determined, if release did not come ere long, to die by her own hand.

"Better than dishonor," thought she with another burst of anguished tears.

She looked about her for some instrument to secrete in case she should be driven to the last stronghold of honor. There was nothing to secure.

Old Haidee had made sure of that. "Well," she thought, "if there is nothing else I can strangle myself with my handkerchief."

The hours wore on to twilight. Old Haidee brought her supper, grumbled because she did not eat it, and scowlingly withdrew. Lily was left alone with her sad thoughts for companions. She went to the window, pulled aside the curtain, and looked out. The twilight had faded, a few pale stars glimmered in the cloudy sky, a crescent moon gave forth a weak and watery light. A wild thought darted into her mind. "Oh! if I could escape through these broken bars. Ah! why not?"

She stood still and listened. Familiar sounds from the adjoining room informed her that the Leverets were retiring. She crouched down and waited perhaps half an hour. Then a dual chorus of snores announced that her lynx-eyed guardians slept.

Breathlessly she stole to the window and removed the iron bar. It left an aperture large enough to admit her slight form. She tried the other bars, but they seemed more firmly fixed than the first one she had tried. They resisted her strongest efforts.

"If I only had a strong rope," she thought to herself, "I could secure it to these bars and slide down it to the ground."

She leaned her head through the aperture and looked down to see how far she would have to descend. The distance appeared to be about thirty feet.

"If I only had a rope," she thought again, "I could certainly gain my freedom--freedom! that means home again, papa, Ada, Lancelot!"

She sat down, her heart beating wildly at the thought. They believed her dead. She pictured their wild, incredulous joy at first when she burst in among them, their own living darling. What a story she would have to tell, and how swiftly the vengeance of papa and Lancelot would descend on Mrs. Vance and Harold Colville. Her breath came quick and fast, her courage mounted high within her.

"I must escape," she murmured with pa.s.sionate vehemence; "surely there must be some way out of this horrible prison."

She thought of all the stories she had heard and read of the escape of prisoners--she remembered that she had read of one man who had torn his bed-clothes into strips and made a rope of them by which he descended from the window. Why could not she do the same?