"I am never to know, then, if seems, and I am to go on through life a cheat and a lie. It is very hard. People have found out already I am not what I seem."

"How?" sharply.

"Why, the night I was deluded from home, it was by a letter signed 'Miriam' purporting to come from you, saying you were dying, and that you wanted to tell me all. I went, and walked straight into the cunningest trap that ever was set for a poor little girl."

"You have no idea from whom that letter came?"

"Not the slightest. I am pretty sure, though, it came from my husband."

"Your--what?"

"My husband, Miriam! You didn't know Miss Dane was a respectable married woman, did you? It's true, however. I've been married over a month."

There was no doubting the face with which it was said. Miriam sat staring, utterly confounded.

"Good heavens! Married! You never mean it, Mollie?"

"I do mean it. It's an accomplished fact, Mrs. Miriam Dane, and there's my wedding-ring."

She held up her left hand. Among the opals, and pearls, and pale emeralds flashing there, gleamed a little circlet of plain gold--badge of woman's servitude.

"Married!" Miriam gasped, in indescribable consternation. "I thought you were to marry Sir Roger Trajenna?"

"So I was--so I would have, if I had been let alone. But that letter from you came--that forgery, you know--and I was carried off and married, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, to somebody else. Who that somebody else is, I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Haven't the slightest idea! I've a good mind to tell you the story. I haven't told any one yet, and the weight of a secret a month old is getting a little too much for me. It would be a relief to get some one else to keep it for me, and I fancy you could keep a secret as well as any one else I know."

"I can keep your secret, Mollie. Go on."

So Mollie began and related the romantic story of that fortnight she had pa.s.sed away from home.

"And you consented to marry him," Miriam exclaimed, when she had got that far--"you consented to marry a man totally unknown to you, whose face you had not even seen, whose name you did not even know, for the sake of freedom? Mollie, you're nothing but a miserable little coward, after all!"

"Perhaps so," said Mollie, defiantly. "But I would do it again, and twice as much, for freedom. Think of being cooped up in four stifling walls, shut in from the blessed sunshine and fresh air of heaven. I tell you that man would have kept me there until now, and should have gone stark, staring mad in half the time. Oh, dear!" cried Mollie, impatiently, "I wish I was a gypsy, free and happy, to wander about all day long, singing in the sunshine, to sleep at night under the waving trees, to tell fortunes, and wear a pretty scarlet cloak, and never know, when I got up in the morning, where I would lie down at night.

It's nothing but a nuisance, and a trouble, and a bother, being rich, and dressing for dinner, and going to the opera and two or three parties of a night, and being obliged to talk and walk and eat and sleep by line and plummet. I hate it all!"

"You're tired of it, then?" Miriam asked, with a curious smile.

"Yes; just now I am. The fit will pa.s.s away, I suppose, as other similar fits have pa.s.sed."

"I wonder you never take it into your head to go back upon the stage.

You liked that life?"

"Liked it? Yes: and I will, too," said Mollie, recklessly, "some day, when I'm more than usually aggravated. It strikes me, however, I should like to find out my husband first."

"Finish your story. You married this masked man?"

"Yes; that very night, about midnight, we were married. Sarah came to me early in the evening, and told me to be ready, that the clergyman would be there, and that I was to be wedded under my Christian name, Mary, alone. I still wore the wedding-robes in which I was to have been made Lady Trajenna. To these a white silk mask, completely hiding my face, was added, and I was led forth by my masked bridegroom into another apartment, and stood face to face with a portly, reverend gentleman of most clerical aspect and most alarmed face. I thought he had a familiar look, but in the confusion of such a moment I could not place him. I know him now, though--it was the Reverend Raymond Rashleigh, of St.

Pancras'. I've heard him preach dozens of times."

"How came he to lend himself to such an irregular proceeding?"

"By force, as I did. He was carried off in much the same fashion, and scared pretty nearly out of his wits--married us to get free--like me again. At the conclusion of the ceremony, I returned with Sarah to the inner room, and the Reverend Mr. Rashleigh was safely taken home."

There was a pause. Mollie sat looking with knitted brows into the fire.

"Well?" questioned Miriam, sharply.

"I stayed there a week," went on Mollie, hurriedly. "It was part of the compact, and if he was to keep his, and liberate me, I was to remain quietly as long as I had promised. But it was not so long in pa.s.sing. I had the range of two or three rooms--all with carefully closed blinds, however--and I had a piano and plenty of books, and as much of Miss Sarah Grant's society as I chose. There was nothing to be got out of her, however, and I tried hard enough, goodness knows. You might as well wring a dry sponge."

"And the man you married?"

"Oh, he was there, too--off and on everyday; but he kept me as much in the dark as Sarah. He always persisted in speaking French to me--that I might fail to recognize his voice, I dare say; and he spoke it as fluently as a Frenchman. But he was really an agreeable companion, could talk about everything I liked to talk about, could play the piano to a charm, and I should have liked him immensely if he had not been my husband, and if he had not worn that odious mask. Do you know, Miriam,"

flashing a sudden look up, "if he had taken off that mask, and showed me the handsome face of one of my rejected suitors I did not absolutely abhor, I think I should have consented to stay with him always. He was so nice to talk to, and I liked his bold stroke for a wife--so much in the 'Dare-Devil d.i.c.k' style. But I would have been torn to pieces before I'd have dropped a hint to that effect."

"If it had been Doctor Oleander, would you have consented to stay with him as his wife?"

"Doctor Oleander? No. Didn't I say if it were some one I did not absolutely abhor? I absolutely and utterly and altogether abhor and detest Doctor Oleander!"

"What is that? Some one is listening."

Miriam had started in alarm to her feet; Mollie rose up also, and stood hearkening. There had been a suppressed sound, like a convulsive sneeze, outside the door. Mollie flung it wide in an instant. The hall lamp poured down its subdued light all along the stately corridor, on pictures and statues and cabinets, but no living thing was visible.

"There is no one," said Mollie. "It was cats or rats, or the rising wind.

Every one in the house is asleep."

She closed the door and went back to the fire. As she did so, a face peeped out from behind a great, carved Indian cabinet, not far from the door--a face lighted with a diabolical smile of triumph.

CHAPTER XII.

"BLACK MASK"--"WHITE MASK."

"Finish your story!" exclaimed Miriam, impatiently. "Morning is coming, and like owls and bats and other noxious creatures, I hide from the daylight. How did you escape?"

"I didn't escape," said Mollie. "I couldn't. The week expired--my masked husband kept his word and sent me home."

"Sent you! Did he not fetch you?"

"No; the man who drove the carriage--who, with the girl Sarah, witnessed the marriage--brought me. Sarah bound me, although there was no occasion, and the man led me down and put me in. Sarah accompanied me, and I was driven to the very corner here. They let me out, and, before I had time to catch my breath, were off and away."

"And that is all?" said Miriam, wonderingly.

"All! I should think it was enough. It sounds more like a chapter out of the 'Castle of Otranto,' or the 'Mysteries of Udolpho,' than an incident in the life of a modern New York belle. For, of course, you know, Madame Miriam," concluded the pretty coquette, tossing back airily all her bright curls, "I am a belle--a reigning belle--the beauty of the season!"