Nina's peril

The sleepy clerk on night duty at the drug store looked up with a start. He had not heard any one enter, but here stood a young girl by the counter, looking at him with large, s...

A cloudy gray sky, a chill gray sea, a stretch of sandy beach against a back-ground of rugged hills covered with trees, through whose leafless branches the March wind was eerily...

She was an heiress, this dark-eyed girl sobbing there as forlornly as if she had not a friend on earth. She had houses and land and gold, but all her vast possessions had not ke...

That was all five years ago now, but as Talbot Strangemore walked slowly over the sand toward Selwyn Heights, memory recalled the past time freshly to his thoughts--memory mixed...

Miss Drusilla Strangemore, Talbot’s aunt, was a tall angular lady in the fifties--a lady who detested men and whose opinion of the sex in general had not been improved by what s...

Nina was half mad for the time over the terrible experience that had come to her. She had sorrowed long over her husband’s absence and silence, but the worst fear that had come...

Miss Drusilla’s wonder grew and grew when, after dinner, they all returned to the parlor, Nina treated her husband more distantly than she would have done an ordinary stranger....

“Do you think so?” she asked, “but you see that was impossible. She was engaged to be married all those years, and she left me to become a companion to a husband who worshiped h...

“Talbot, where can I see you alone a moment? I am so anxious to speak to you privately. I hurried with my dressing purposely, so that I might have you to myself before the other...

The gentlemen were lingering over their cigars, and the ladies had gone back to the parlor. Virgie, a pretty and very voluble young lady, started the after-dinner conversation w...

“Oh, Talbot, Talbot,” she cried, lifting her humid blue eyes to his face, appealingly, “Your wife has insulted me cruelly! She has been saying the most dreadful things to me. Sh...

“Now go back to your charming widow! It will only make Nina worse to come to and find you here. I dare say she hates you now as much as she has loved you these five years. And n...

Miss Drusilla had already retired, but Kitty lingered by the fire, where Nina, wrapped in a pink cashmere dressing-gown, lay back in a great white-draped easy-chair, and stared...

Sibyl St. Alban gained her room, turned the key hurriedly in the door lock, and looked at the letter she had brought from Nina’s room. It was addressed in a firm strong hand tha...

That awful, blood-curdling cry of agony and despair rang through and through the silent house, hushed in the repose of slumber. The echoes caught it up and prolonged it in awful...

“A thrilling tragedy. A jealous wife murders her beautiful rival and makes a successful flight from justice. A fine old family disgraced by the crime of its last remaining desce...

Something like a blind horror filled Talbot Strangemore’s heart as Mrs. St. Alban’s blighting accusation of his wife fell upon his ears. He staggered back from her side with a c...

In her excitement she had not observed that Marmaduke Cameron’s yacht, the Sea Bird, lay at anchor near the spot where she had sprung into the water. But it was there, and throu...

“No, she is not dead, Minnie, but I shall have to reserve all explanations until we have resuscitated her,” he said. “She is in a deep swoon now, and before we try to revive her...

“I will tell you all I know about it,” said her husband. “I went on Mr. Cameron’s yacht as I promised, to look after the health of my willful patient Mr. Mason who accompanied h...

The short, wintry day passed away. Mrs. Fielding, intent on the household tasks which she accomplished without the aid of a servant, was obliged to leave her patient alone many...

The world of fashiondom that had been so shocked and astonished at the news from Selwyn Heights of the attempted murder of Mrs. St. Alban had another sensation a few days later...

And so Talbot Strangemore’s home-coming, long-deferred, had ended in a tragedy. The two women who had loved him were both dead. Both had died wretched and tragical deaths, and h...

“My little Nina, my sweet pupil, a murderess! No, no, never! I cannot believe it. That woman spoke falsely,” Mrs. Fielding cried, turning her white, horror-struck face upon her...

After those exciting days and nights Nina fell into a low, nervous fever. In the meantime Sibyl St. Alban had died and Talbot Strangemore had gone back to Europe. The tender-hea...

Doctor Fielding had forgotten that the door of the room where he sat with his wife was ajar, and that it opened into the pretty little chamber where Nina was lying back listless...

The great house on Selwyn Heights where that dreadful tragedy had so lately been enacted loomed up dark and stern and stately in the soft spring moonlight. The salty breath of t...

In the thick darkness that wrapped them around, Nina made a convulsive effort to tear herself away, but she was like a baby, indeed, in the clasp of Kitty’s strong arms, and the...

Miss Drusilla, the maid-servants, the boy-of-all-work, all in various disheveled stages of attire that but for the warmth of the night might have been productive of colds and ca...

Lucy sobbed and protested that she had not wished to hurt her darling Miss Nina, but Miss Strangemore sent her out with the others, and followed them a minute after with a grave...

“Nina, you are certainly a most unmitigated little simpleton! I really have no patience with you,” she remarked. “It was ridiculous for you to think of blotting yourself out lik...

All unconscious of the portentous events happening at home, Talbot Strangemore pursued his wanderings from city to city, from clime to clime, in restless search after that fable...

Not that he had not dreamed of her before in his dreary, remorseful exile, for there were few nights when her image did not brood above his pillow. But his visions of his poor w...

Innocently and ignorantly Nina had walked into a terrible trap on the night when she re-entered her home at Selwyn Heights. Before the day dawned information of her return was l...

Doctor Fielding secured one of the ablest lawyers in the country as Nina’s counsel. He carefully collected all the evidence for and against her. He weighed it carefully, and the...

The slow days waned and faded, and Nina seemed fading with them, so pallid and hollow grew her cheek, so large and dark her sweet, sad eyes. It was summer now, but little of its...

With bitter tears they kissed the fair young face whose expression of hopeless woe almost broke their hearts. They implored her to forgive them because they had been brought to...

They laid Kitty May down in the fresh air and bathed her face and hands in cold water. Under this vigorous treatment she soon gasped and opened her eyes. Miss Drusilla who had b...

“Oh, Aunt Drusilla, you must find my husband for me now. I cannot die without seeing him again. He loves me, and only think how he would feel if he came back again after long mo...

It was no wonder that Miss Strangemore’s and the lawyer’s efforts to find Talbot Strangemore had so persistently failed, for, following the bent of Oswald Ferris, he had penetra...

Ferris was moody and boisterously gay by fits and starts. He was “everything by turns and nothing long.” The travelers decided among themselves that these two brilliant and acco...

“If your friend does not come soon, gentlemen, I shall have to cut the country, even at the risk of losing your society. The Khamsin is getting to be more than I can bear,” Oswa...

When John Armstrong had satisfied the curiosity of his friends over his long delay, and given them letters and news from home he claimed the right to ask some questions himself....

That moment was one destined to be a fadeless memory in the life of Talbot Strangemore. In his after years there was no moment in which he could not by simply shutting his eyes,...

Talbot Strangemore thought that he had suffered before, but no such terrible moment as this had ever come to him until now when John Armstrong’s words rang in his ears like the...

“I deny that I was prevented from doing so by any superior strength on your part. I simply desisted myself because I suddenly realized to what enormities my frenzy was driving m...

“You know now, my friends, why the asp was placed in my bed to-night. Oswald Ferris knew that I suspected him and that I would follow him from one end of the earth to the other...

“We will make him confess the truth before we hang him!” they exclaimed, and Ferris who had been listening in silent hopefulness to the colloquy, uttered a howl of rage and fear...

In spite of his anxiety to be gone Talbot Strangemore decided not to leave until he learned the fate of Ferris. Bad and cruel as the man had shown himself his heart revolted fro...

In spite of Ferris’s objection they carried him back to camp carefully on a litter. Ralph St. Alban and a few others who had stayed behind were amazed when they bore that burden...

It was the morning of the 25th of July and already the merciless hands of time were pointing to the seventh hour. She stood trembling among the little group of beloved friends w...

Several men went to Kitty May’s assistance, and helped her to secure the handsome young dude. Having lost his hat in the _mélee_ with the maid it was discovered that a quantity...

Talbot Strangemore felt that he could never be grateful enough to Doctor Fielding, who had twice rescued Nina from the sin of self-sought death, and so nobly cared for her in he...

When Nina went back to the hotel where she was staying after her successful mission of love and generosity she found her husband entertaining some callers who were anxiously awa...

Nina and her husband were right. They were best alone for a time, and in reality they needed no companionship but their own. They were all in all to each other.