CHAPTER XLVIII.

WATCHING HER RIVAL.

On the same night that Ruth had taken a desperate resolve to see her husband, Richard Storms was waiting in the lake house for the coming of Judith Hart, who had promised to meet him there. The presence of this girl in the neighborhood had at first been a great annoyance to him; but now he both feared and hated her, so, coward-like, cajoled and deceived her by forced professions of love, while, with the same false tongue, he could not refrain from such hints of another as drove the poor creature half mad with jealous rage.

Though her presence was hateful to him, he dared not offend her beyond a certain point, and had no power to drive her back into her former isolated life; or in revenge she might, as she had often threatened, find out Ruth Jessup, and give both her and the father a good reason for forbidding him the house forever. He knew well enough, that in her reckless daring, she would not hesitate to accuse herself of any offence so long as the odium reached him also.

Thus shackled in his desire to free himself from the girl altogether, it mattered not to him how roughly, Storms waited for her at the lake house that night, lying at full length on the bench which ran along one end of the crazy old building.

Judith came in, at length, full of turbulent excitement. She had been walking rapidly, and swept through the long grass like a rush of wind.

"Ah, you are here!" she said, seating herself on one end of the bench as Storms swung his feet to the floor; "I thought you would be waiting, but it isn't you that oftenest gets here first, but I have seen some one you'll like to hear about."

"Seen some one? Of course, one of the gamekeepers."

"No. I have seen that girl, Ruth Jessup."

"Ruth Jessup in the park at this time of night? You cannot make me believe that."

"In the park and at 'Norston's Rest,' down upon her knees by a window, with ivy all around it, looking in upon the sick heir like a hungry cat watching a canary."

"You saw this, Judith--saw it with your own eyes?" cried Storms, sitting upright on the bench.

"Saw it! I should think so. She was so busy trying to open the window, that I went close under the balcony and could see her face plain enough by the light that came through the glass."

"Trying to open the window--did you say that?"

"Yes, again and again. She grew desperate at last, and shook it, calling out, 'Walton! Walton!'"

"She called that name?"

"Yes, more than once. It didn't wake the young man inside though, but some one else must have heard, for the door opened and a man came into the chamber."

"What did she do then?"

"Do! Why she shrunk back and came down some stone steps that are hid away in the ivy, and was half across the flower garden before I dared to move."

"But you overtook her?"

"Of course I did; though my feet got tangled in with the ivy, and I almost fell down; but, once safe on the ground, I tracked her swift enough, for she seemed to scorn moving beyond a walk."

"But she did not see you?"

"No, I can move quietly enough when it suits me. So she knew nothing of me, though I longed to give her a sharp bit of my tongue."

"I'll be bound you did," said Storms, with a disagreeable laugh.

The girl took this as a compliment, and gave the hand, which was dropped listlessly into hers, a grateful pressure.

"'It was awful ungrateful of the young gentleman, though, to be so sound asleep,' I was longing to say. If it had been my Richard, now."

"Did you think to say that?" cried Storms, starting up in sudden wrath. "Would you have dared to say that to her?"

Judith started to her feet also. He had jerked his hand from hers, and stood frowning on her in the moonlight, while defiance kindled in her eyes.

"That's just what I would 'a' been glad to say; not that she would have cared a brass farthing, for my opinion is, that girl hates your very name, for all your talk that she's dying for you. But such words from her would have been red-hot coals to me."

"Do you think she would stoop to bandy words with such as you?" said Storms, softening his wrath into a malicious enjoyment of her jealous passion.

"Such as me, indeed! What is the difference, I should like to know? Only this. I come here because you ask me and urge me to it, while she hasn't the courage, but sits worshipping her sweetheart like a rabbit peeping into a garden it has not the spirit to enter."

"Worshipping! As if she cared for the man!" said Storms, with supreme disdain. "There is nothing in it. She only wants to make me jealous, thinking to bring me back again in that way."

"It seems to me as if you were jealous."

"Jealous!" repeated the young man, growing cautious on reflection. "As if I cared enough for Ruth Jessup for that!"

"I am not so sure," answered Judith, as if talking to herself; "but when I am, it will be a dark day for one of us."

Storms laughed.

"Always threatening some terrible thing," he said, "as if there were any need of that; but how came you, my own sweetheart, Judith Hart, to be wandering about 'The Rest?'"

"I saw her as I was coming this way. She was standing in the cottage porch, giving frightened looks around. The moon was not up yet, though it is climbing into the sky now, but a light streamed through the passage, and I saw her plain enough. Then she stole out, as if in search of some one. I thought she was going into the wilderness."

"Ah, ha! Who was jealous then?"

"Who denies it? That minute I could have killed her. She turned toward 'The Rest.' I followed, thinking--"

"Thinking that I might come that way."

"Well, yes. I did think just that; and followed her softly as one of your own hounds would have crept. When I saw where she was going, the fire all went out of my heart. I could have cried for joy that--that it was no worse."

"Still you hated her!"

"Because she dared to love where I did."

"Do you indeed love me so, Judith?"

"Do I love myself, so common and worthless, compared to you? Do I love the air I breathe? Do I love sleep, after a hard day's work? Oh, oh, Richard, why ask such silly questions?"

"Why? Oh, because one is never certain. Girls are so fickle now-a-days."

"As if any girl who ever loved you could be fickle."

Storms looked into the girl's face as she nestled close to him, and a strange, fond glow came into his eyes. He was thinking how much she looked like Ruth Jessup, with that warm love-light in her face--how beautiful she really was in the lustre of that rising moon. Tenderness with him at the moment was not all a pretence. But Storms was a man to bring the worst as well as the best passions of a heart down to his own interests, and never, for a moment, since he had seen old Jessup's letter in Judith's hand, had he ceased to devise some means of gaining possession of it.

"Words are so easily spoken," he said; "but I like deeds. I want the girl I love to trust me."

"And don't I trust you? What other girl would be here at this time of the night, risking her character, when she has nothing else in the world, just because you want things to be kept secret, while I can't for the life of me see the reason of it?"

"That is what I complain of. True love asks no questions."

"How can you say that when you have done nothing but ask questions ever since I came here? All about her too," retorted the quick-witted girl.

"That is because I am interested in everything you do," was the prompt answer. "How could I watch here half an hour, and at last see you rush in so wildly, half out of breath and panting, to tell all that you had seen, without feeling some curiosity?"

"Yes, indeed, I can understand that."

"Then there is another thing."

"Well," said Judith, more quietly; for she guessed what was coming. "What is it?"

"That paper. It is of no use to you, and might help me a good deal."

"How?"

The girl spoke seriously, and he could tell by her voice that her lips closed with a firm pressure when she ceased.

"It might help me about the lease."

Judith seemed to reflect a moment, then she looked up quietly, and said:

"When we are married, Richard."

"Why, child, it is only a scrap of paper that no one but Sir Noel will ever care for."

"I know that, and sometimes wonder you are so sharp after it. My arm is all sorts of colors yet where you grasped it after that race down the banks of the lake. If the game-keeper had not come in sight, I don't know what might have chanced. Oh, Richard, your face was awful that day. It frightened me!"

"Too much, I fear, and that makes you so obstinate. I dare say that you never keep the bit of paper about you?" questioned Storms, with a dull, sinister look, which was so perceptible in the moonlight that the girl shrunk from him unconsciously.

"No," she answered. "I never keep it about me, and never shall till we are wed."

"And then?"

"I will give it to you, as you crave it so much, and in its stead take the marriage lines. If it were worth a thousand pounds, I would rather have the lines."

"A thousand pounds! Why, lass, what are you thinking of? Who ever heard of giving money for a scrap of writing like that?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Only you wanted it so much, and if you were to play me false, as people say you have done with many a sweetheart before me, it might be put to a bad use."

"But they slander me. I never yet betrayed a sweetheart," said Storms, eagerly.

"Then it is true that Ruth Jessup was the first to give you up. No, no, do not say it. No woman on earth could do that. I would rather think you false to her than not. The other I never could believe--never."

"Well, believe what you like; but do not come here again without that bit of paper. I did not fairly read it."

The suppressed eagerness in his voice aroused all the innate craft in the girl's nature. He had outdone his part, and thus enhanced the advantage that she held over him to a degree that made her determined to keep the paper. In her soul she had no trust in the man; but was willing to win him by any means that promised to be most effectual. Still she was capable of meeting craft with deception, and did it now.

"Well, if I think of it."

Storms read the insincerity of her evasion, and seemed to cast the subject from his mind. But he felt the thraldom of this girl's power with a keenness that might have terrified her, had she comprehended it. Besides, the news she had brought to him that evening was of a kind to make him hate the bearer and intensify his thirst for vengeance on young Hurst.