Chapter 29

MORE BITTER THAN DEATH.

"No--there's nothing left us now But to mourn the past; Vain was every ardent vow-- Never yet did Heaven allow Love so warm, so wild to last. Not even hope could now deceive me, Life itself looks dark and cold; Oh, thou never more canst give me One dear smile like those of old!"

Dainty dragged her trembling limbs as fast as her strength would permit toward the great house, lifting her large blue eyes eagerly up to the windows in search of some familiar face, though hope was very weak in her trembling heart.

It was two long, weary months since the first day of August, and what might not have happened in that time?

If Sheila Kelly had told her the truth, her young husband must be dead and buried long ago, and the only friend left to her in the wide, cruel world would be her mother, if indeed that dear mother lived, for what more likely than that she had died of heart-break at her daughter's mysterious disappearance?

Dainty, who knew so well her mother's devotion, feared that such a calamity was but too possible.

But she realized that even if her mother lived she was very unlikely to be found at Ellsworth now. Her bitter enemies would have driven her away long ago.

Still a subtle yearning drew her to the home of her beloved, though, as she drew near to the scene of her hopes or fears, her keen emotion almost overwhelmed her, driving the faint color back from her wan cheeks to her weak heart, and making her tremble so that she could scarcely advance one foot beyond the other.

How changed and lonely everything seemed since she had gone away? She did not even meet one of the servants as she hurried on, wrapping closely about her shivering form a thin cashmere scarf that kind Sairy Ann Peters had pressed on her to protect her, in her light summer dress, from the cold autumn winds. Thus panting, trembling, starting, and alternately hoping and despairing, she came close enough at last to gaze at the upper windows of the handsome suite of apartments that belonged to Lovelace Ellsworth.

She paused with a suppressed sob of excitement, and swept her glance rapidly from window to window.

Suddenly, with a cry of ecstatic joy, the girl sank to her knees with clasped, upraised hands.

"God in Heaven, I thank Thee!"

On her pallid, hopeless face had come such a light of joy and gratitude and boundless surprise as can only shine after long grief and pain when the grave seems to give up its dead and our beloved live again.

Her wistful, yearning eyes had been granted the most joyful sight that Heaven could have given--the sight of Lovelace Ellsworth sitting at the open window of his room, gazing with a strange, intent look at the setting sun as it sank below the mountain-tops and left the world in shadow.

"God in Heaven, I thank Thee! He lives; my beloved one, we shall be restored to each other!" repeated the girl in an ecstacy of gladness; and her dark-blue eyes clung rapturously to the handsome face, wondering at its pallor and strange, intent look.

"Dear Love, how pale and thin and sad he looks! He has been ill, perhaps, or it is grief for me that has changed him so! It is strange that he never found me when I was such a short distance away; but there are many mysteries to be unraveled yet," she murmured, rising to her feet, and going in haste to a side entrance, where she could easily gain the upper portion of the house without being detected.

As she mounted the stairs, she was thinking so gladly of the joyful reunion with Love, that she did not observe, until they were face to face, a lady coming out of his room. It was Mrs. Ellsworth; and as she met the pale, trembling girl gliding like a shadow in the semi-darkness of the corridor, a long, loud, wailing cry burst from her startled lips, and making an effort to fly from what she took for a veritable ghost, she tripped, and fell prostrate to the floor.

Dainty saw her cruel aunt distinctly, heard the startled cry and the fall; but she never looked back, but ran eagerly to her darling's room.

She tore open the door, and rushed over the threshold, across the room, with outstretched arms.

"Oh, my love, my darling!"

Her young husband was sitting at the window in an easy-chair, with a velvet dressing-gown wrapped about him, and at the sound of her entrance, he turned his face around, and looked at the intruder blankly.

Blankly!--that was the only word that described it.

If Dainty had been the greatest stranger in the world, her young husband could not have turned upon her lovely, agitated face a more calm, unrecognizing stare.

For a moment she stopped, and regarded him pitifully, sobbing:

"Oh, Love! am I so changed you do not know your own little Dainty, your wife? Oh, look at me closely! I have been ill, and lost my beauty for a little while. They had to cut my hair, but, dearest, it will soon grow again as pretty as ever!"

She moved closer, and timidly clasped her arms about his neck.

"Oh, my darling! do not look at me as if I were a stranger! Oh, do not! That cold, stony stare almost breaks my heart! Oh, Love! it is your own little Dainty! I was stolen away from you, and oh! I have passed through such a terrible experience! You have been ill, too, have you not, my dearest one? Oh, how thin and pale you are, but just as handsome as ever!" and she clasped him close in a warm embrace, and showered fond, wifely kisses on his cold, unresponsive lips.

The door opened suddenly, and an intelligent-looking mulatto man came in very softly, as if into a sick room.

Dainty knew him at once as Love's valued personal attendant Franklin.

Her arms dropped from Love's neck, and she blushed as he exclaimed:

"So it's really you, Miss Chase?"

"Why, Franklin, you knew me at once, but your master looks on me as a stranger!" she answered, in surprise that grew boundless as the man returned, sadly:

"Alas! Miss Chase, you and all the world must ever remain strangers to my poor master now!"

The mulatto was a clever, well-educated person, and his words, strange as they sounded, carried the ring of truth.

"What can you mean?" she faltered.

"Miss Chase, where have you been? Have you heard nothing of Mr. Ellsworth's sad condition?" he asked, respectfully.

Still keeping her arm around Love's neck, the young girl answered, gently:

"I was kidnapped the night before my wedding, Franklin, and the next day I was told Mr. Ellsworth had been shot and was dying. Then I was taken very ill, and knew nothing more till I returned here to-day, when I was overjoyed to learn that he was still alive!"

The man looked at her with genuine sadness.

"Ah, Miss Chase! I do not know whether you should be glad or not. Is not this more cruel than death?"

"I do not understand," she faltered, uncomprehendingly; and he answered, with intense sympathy:

"You have spoken to him, and he does not know you--you, the dearest creature on earth to him, Miss Chase! Neither does he recognize any one else, nor remember anything. There is a bullet in his head that the doctors can not extricate, and it has destroyed his mental faculties completely. His health is good, but he has forgotten the past, and lost even the power of speech. He will never be anything, they say, but a harmless idiot."

She cried out with a terrible anger that it was not true, that she could not believe it; he was trying to deceive her and break her heart.

He was usually a quiet, stolid man, but the tears came to his eyes as she knelt on the floor and wound her arms about Love in passionate embraces, and, with tears that might have moved a heart made of stone, called on him to pity her and speak to her, his love, his Dainty, his true wife, whose heart was breaking for one tender word from his dear lips!