She was of medium height, with a full, voluptuous form, a complexion of pale olive, with brilliantly scarlet lips, and eyes like "black diamonds," and hair that had almost a purple tinge in its ebon ma.s.ses; her features, though far from being regular, were piquant, and when she was speaking lighted into fascinating animation with every pa.s.sing emotion.

"I shall be free!" Edith murmured again with a long-drawn sigh of relief, "for of course you will a.s.sert your claim upon him, and"--with a glance at the child--"he will not dare to deny it."

"You are so anxious to be free? You would bless me for helping you to be free?" repeated her companion, studying the girl's face earnestly, questioningly.

"Ah, yes; I was almost in despair when you came in," Edith replied, shivering, and with starting tears; "now I begin to hope that my life has not been utterly ruined."

Her visitor flushed crimson, and her great black eyes flashed with sudden anger.

"My curse be upon him for all the evil he has done!" she cried, pa.s.sionately. "Oh! how gladly would I break the bond that binds you to him, but--I have not the power; I have no claim upon him."

Edith regarded her with astonishment.

"No claim upon him?" she repeated, with another glance at the little one who was gazing from one to another with wondering eyes.

The mother's glance followed hers, and an expression of despair swept over her face.

"Oh, Holy Virgin, pity me!" she moaned, a blush of shame mantling her cheeks.

Then lifting her heavy eyes once more to Edith, she continued, falteringly:

"The boy is his and--mine; but--I have no legal claim upon him--I am no wife."

For a moment after this humiliating confession there was an unbroken silence in that elegant room.

Then a hot wave of sympathetic color flashed up to Edith's brow, while a look of tender, almost divine, compa.s.sion gleamed in her lovely eyes.

For the time she forgot her own wretchedness in her sympathy for her erring and more unfortunate sister--for the woman and the mother who had been outraged beyond compare.

At length she raised her hand and laid it half-timidly, but with exceeding kindness, upon her shoulder.

"I understand you now," she said, gently, "and I am very sorry."

The words were very simple and commonplace; but the tone, the look, and the gesture that accompanied them spoke more than volumes, and completely won the heart of the pa.s.sionate and despairing creature before her for all time.

They also proved too much for her self-possession, and, with a moan of anguish, throwing herself upon her knees beside her child, she clasped him convulsively in her arms and burst into a flood of weeping.

"Oh! my poor, innocent baby! to think that this curse must rest upon you all your life--it breaks my heart!" she moaned, while she pa.s.sionately covered his head and face with kisses. "They tell me there is a G.o.d," she went on, hoa.r.s.ely, as she again struggled to her feet, "but I do not believe it--no G.o.d of love would ever create monsters like Emil Correlli, and allow them to deceive and ruin innocent girls, blackening their pure souls and turning them to fiends incarnate! Yes, I mean it," she panted, excitedly, as she caught Edith's look of horror at her irreverent and reckless expressions.

"Listen!" she continued, eagerly. "Only three years ago I was a pure and happy girl, living with my parents in my native land--fair, beautiful, sunny Italy--"

"Italy?" breathlessly interposed Edith, as she suddenly remembered that she also had been born in that far Southern clime. Then she grew suddenly pale as she caught the eyes of the little one gazing curiously into her face, and also remembered that "the curse" which his mother had but a moment before so deplored, rested upon her as well.

Involuntarily, she took his little hand, and lifting it to her lips, imprinted a soft caress upon it, at which the child smiled, showing his pretty white teeth, and murmured some fond musical term in Italian.

"You are an angel not to hate us both," said his mother, a sudden warmth in her tones, a gleam of grat.i.tude in her dusky eyes. "But were you ever in Italy?" she added, curiously.

"Yes, when I was a little child; but I do not remember anything about it," said Edith, with a sigh. "Do not stand with the child in your arms," she added, thoughtfully. "Come, sit here, and then you can go on with what you were going to tell me."

And, with a little sense of malicious triumph, Edith pulled forward the beautiful rocker of carved ivory, and saw the woman sink wearily into it with a feeling of keen satisfaction. It seemed to her like the irony of fate that it should be thus occupied for the first time.

She would have been only too glad to heap all the beautiful clothes, jewels, and laces upon the woman also, but she felt that they did not belong to her, and she had no right to do so. Taking her little one on her knee, the young woman laid his head upon her breast, and swaying gently back and forth, began her story.

"My father was an olive grower, and owned a large vineyard besides, in the suburbs of Rome. He was a man of ample means, and took no little pride in the pretty home which he was enabled to provide for his family. My mother was a beautiful woman, somewhat above him socially, although I never knew her to refer to the fact, and I was their only child.

"Like many other fond parents who have but one upon whom to expend their love and money, they thought I must be carefully reared and educated--nothing was considered too good for me, and I had every advantage which they could bestow. I was happy--I led an ideal life until I was seventeen years of age. When carnival time came around, we all went in to Rome to join in the festivities, and there I met my fate, in the form of Emil Correlli."

"Ah! but I thought that he was a Frenchman!" interposed Edith, in surprise.

"His father was a Frenchman, but his mother was born and reared in Italy, where, in Rome, he studied under the great sculptor, Powers,"

her guest explained. Then she resumed: "We met just as we were both entering the church of St. Peter's. He accidently jostled me; then, as he turned to apologize, our eyes met, and from that moment my fate was sealed. I cannot tell you all that followed, dear lady, it would take too long; but, during the next three months it seemed to me as if I were living in Paradise. Before half that time had pa.s.sed, Emil had confessed his love for me, and made an excuse to see me almost every day. But my parents did not approve; they objected to his attentions; his mother, they learned by some means, belonged to a n.o.ble family, and 'lords and counts should not mate with peasants,' they said."

"Then I made the fatal mistake of disobeying them and meeting my lover in secret. Ah, lady," she here interposed with a bitter sigh, "the rest is but the old story of man's deception and a maiden's blind confidence in him; and when, all too late, I discovered my error, there seemed but one thing for me to do, and that was to flee with him to America, whither he was coming to pursue his profession in a great city."

"And--did he not offer to--to marry you before you came?" queried Edith, aghast.

"No; he pretended that he dared not--he was so well-known in Rome that the secret would be sure to be discovered, he said, and then my father would separate us forever; but he promised that when we arrived in New York, he would make everything all right; therefore, I, still blindly trusting him, let him lead me whither he would.

"I was very ill during the pa.s.sage, and for weeks following our arrival, and so the time slipped rapidly by without the consummation of my hopes, and though he gave me a pleasant home and everything that I wished for in the house where we lived, even allowing it to appear that I was his wife, we had not been here long before I saw that he was beginning to tire of me. I did everything I could to keep his love, I studied tirelessly to master the language of the country, and kept myself posted upon art and subjects which interested him most, in order to make myself companionable to him. Time after time I entreated him to fight the wrong he was doing me and another, who would soon come either into the shelter of his fatherhood or to inherit the stigma of a dishonored mother; but he always had some excuse with which to put me off. At last this little one came"--she said, folding the child more closely in her arms--"and I had something pure and sweet to love, even though I was heart-broken over knowing that a blight must always rest upon his life, and something to occupy the weary hours which, at times, hung so heavily upon my hands. After that Emil seemed to become more and more indifferent to me--there would be weeks at a time that I would not see him at all; I used sometimes to think that the boy was a reproach to him, and he could not bear the stings of his own conscience in his presence."

"Ah," interposed Edith, with a scornful curl of her red lips, "such men have no conscience; they live only to gratify their selfish impulses."

"Perhaps; while those they wrong live on and on, with a never-dying worm gnawing at their vitals," returned her companion, repressing a sob.

"At last," she resumed, "I began to grow jealous of him, and to spy upon his movements. I discovered that he went a great deal to one of the up-town hotels, and I sometimes saw him go out with a handsome woman, whom I afterward learned was his sister--the Mrs. G.o.ddard, who lives here, and who visits New York several times every year. I did not mind so much when I discovered the relationship between them, although I suffered many a bitter pang to see how fond they were of each other, while I was starving for some expression of his love.

"This went on for nearly two years; then about two months ago, Emil disappeared from New York, without saying anything to me of his intentions, although he left plenty of money deposited to my account.

He was always generous in that way, and insisted that Ino must have everything he wished or needed--I am sure he is fond of the child, in spite of everything. By perseverance and ceaseless inquiry, I finally learned that he had come to Boston, and I immediately followed him. I am suspicious and jealous by nature, like all my people, and that day, when I saw him walking with you, and looking at you just as he used to look at me in those old delicious days in Italy, all the pa.s.sion of my nature was aroused to arms. Braving everything, I rushed over to him and denounced him for his treachery to me, also accusing him of making love to you."

"And did it seem to you that I was receiving his attentions with pleasure?" questioned Edith, with a repugnant shrug of her shoulders.

"I a.s.sure you he had forced his company upon me, and I only endured it to save making a scene in the street."

"I did not stop to reason about your appearance," said the woman; "at least not further than to realize that you were very lovely, and just the style of beauty to attract Emil; but he swore to me that you were only the companion of his sister, and he had only met you on the street by accident--that you were nothing to him. He asked me to tell him where he could find me, and promised that he would come to me later. He kept his word, and has visited me every few days ever since, treating me more kindly than for a long time, but insisting that I must keep entirely out of the way of his sister. And so it came upon me like a deadly blow when I read that account of his marriage in yesterday's paper. I was wrought up to a perfect frenzy, especially when I came to the statement that Monsieur and Madam Correlli would return immediately to Boston, but leave soon after for a trip South and West, and ultimately sail for Europe. That was more than outraged nature could bear, and I vowed that I would wreak a swift and sure revenge upon you both, and so, for two days, I have haunted this house, seeking for an opportunity to gain an entrance un.o.bserved. I saw you sitting at the window--I recognized you instantly. I believed, of course, that you were a willing bride, and imagined that if I could get in I should find you both in this room. While I watched my chance, one of the servants came to the area door to let in the gas-man, and carelessly left it ajar, while she went back with him into one of the rooms. In a moment I was in the lower hall, looking for a back stairway; if any one had found me I was going to beg a drink of water for my child. There was a door there, but it was locked; but desperation makes one keen, and I was not long in finding a key hanging up on a nail beneath a window-sill. The next instant the door was unlocked, and I on my way upstairs--"

"And the key! oh! what did you do with the key?" breathlessly interposed Edith, grasping at this unexpected chance to escape.

"I have it here, lady," said her companion, as she produced it. "I thought it might be convenient for me to go out the same way, so took possession of it."

"Ah, then the door to the back stairway is still unlocked?" breathed Edith, with trembling lips.

"Yes; I did not stop to lock it after me; I hurried straight up here, but--expecting to have a very different interview from what I have had," responded the woman, with a heavy sigh. "Now, lady, you have my story," she continued, after a moment of silence, "you can see that I have been deeply wronged, and though from a moral standpoint, I have every claim upon Emil Correlli, yet legally, I have none whatever; and, unless you can prove some flaw in that ceremony of night before last--prove that he fraudulently tricked you into a marriage with him, you are irrevocably bound to him."

Edith shivered with pain and abhorrence at these last words, but she did not respond to them in any way.

"I came here with hatred in my heart toward you," the other went on, "but I shall go away blessing you for your kindness to me; for, instead of shrinking from me, as one defiled and too depraved to be tolerated, you have held out the hand of sympathy to me and listened patiently and pityingly to the story of my wrongs."

As she concluded, she dropped her face upon the head of her child with a weary, disheartened air that touched Edith deeply.