CHAPTER XLIV.

"HOW CAN I REPAY THEIR BOUNTY WITH SUCH TREACHERY?"

"Last night I was weeping, dear mother, Last night I was weeping alone; The world was so dark and so dreary My heart it grew heavy as stone; I thought of the lonely and loveless-- All lonely and loveless was I; I scarce could tell how it was, mother, But, oh, I was wishing to die."

While Geraldine and Cissy were exchanging confidences, Miss Erroll, the governess, was keeping an unhappy vigil in her own room.

In her hand she held the letter that Geraldine had brought to her the day before, and as often as she read it she groaned in anguish.

The letter was from Clifford Standish, the actor. It ran, curtly:

"You have begged me not to betray you, to let you keep the position you hold in Mrs. Fitzgerald's family unmolested. Of course, you expect to pay a price for my charitable silence.

"Very well. Here are my conditions:

"I love Geraldine Harding, and her scorn has made me reckless, desperate.

"I am determined to get her into my power, and humble her towering pride.

"You must help me to carry out my designs.

"In brief, I am determined to kidnap her and conceal her in a safe place, where she cannot escape my attentions. She came very near to loving me once, and I think if I am given a good opportunity, I may win her heart again.

"I am arranging a place for her, and by to-morrow I shall have everything ready for my pretty bird.

"Some plan must be perfected then by which to get possession of the girl.

"As you are in the same house with her, and know all her comings and goings, your woman's wit ought to be able to suggest some plan of procedure without drawing suspicion on yourself.

"Set your wits to work, and write to me to-morrow what you can do to help me.

"And remember that the penalty of refusal will be exposure of your past to the girl's mother, and expulsion in disgrace from your comfortable situation. C. S."

"The man is a fiend!" groaned Miss Erroll, rising from her seat, and pacing up and down the luxurious apartment, her crimson dressing-gown trailing far behind her on the soundless velvet carpet.

She loved luxury, this woman, and she had sinned to attain it, but everything seemed to go wrong in her life. Punishment for her sins seemed to follow on her footsteps.

So she had put the past behind her, and tried to reform her life.

But ghosts from the dead past would rise up and haunt her, troubling her repose.

"The man is a fiend!" she groaned again. "Why cannot he leave that beautiful, innocent girl in peace? I have done wrong in my life, I know, but nothing so bad as what he asks of me, to lend myself to a vile plot against the peace of a girl who has never harmed me, a girl who has won my liking by her high-bred courtesy, as freely given to me as if I were her equal, instead of a paid dependent. How kind and good they all are to me, and how can I repay their bounty by such treachery?"

All the good in her nature rose to the surface, and did battle against the wrong she was asked to do.

And yet she dared not refuse; dared not risk what her tempter threatened.

Cruel had been her battle with poverty before she obtained this situation.

And if she lost it the dire struggle would begin again.

She might not be able to get honest work; she might be tossed into the terrible maelstrom of women who had to sin for bread.

Yet how could she, who was trying to redeem her own life from a hideous stain, how could she vilely plan to wreck another's life?

It was a terrible struggle that was going on in her breast as she kept her lonely vigil there.

She had not answered the letter yet, although he had commanded her to send a reply to-day. She waited in terror, silent, yet hoping that something would interpose to save her--praying that ere the morrow dawned her persecutor would fall down dead.

"It is no harm, no sin, to wish him dead, that fiend who only lives to plan ruin for the innocent," she cried, in anguish, crumpling the fatal letter in her writhing hands.

Then she gave a violent start, and looked toward the door, her hair seeming to rise on her head with terror.

Did she really hear a low rat-tat upon her door there in the dead waste and middle of the night?

She stood motionless, with her handsome head turned toward the door in an attitude of startled expectancy.

The low knocking came again, and then a low, sweet voice called, softly:

"Are you asleep? It's only me! Please let me in, dear?"

The voice sounded like that of Claire, her sweet little girl pupil.

With a sigh of relief she moved to the door and cautiously opened it.

The next moment she started back with a shuddering cry of fear that was echoed by the figure on the threshold.

The intruder was Cissy Carroll, with her long, dark hair flying loose over her white dressing gown.

With startled outcries, they gazed at each other, and then Miss Carroll demanded, shrilly:

"Do my eyes deceive me? What are you doing here, Azuba Aylesford?"

The woman in the scarlet robe darted forward, and dragged the white-clad girl into the room, whispering, in terrified tones:

"Hush-h! for sweet pity's sake! Do not breathe that name beneath this roof!"

She closed the door softly, and they stood looking at each other in wonder and dismay, while Cissy, recovering her wits, retorted, sharply:

"By what name shall I call you, then, since your divorce from Mr. Clemens?"

"Call me Miss Erroll. Azuba Aylesford and Mrs. Clemens are both dead. From her ashes rises Kate Erroll, governess."

"Ah-h!" and Cissy remembered what Geraldine had told her about the governess with a history in her face. She understood it now.

Light was also dawning on the other, and she asked:

"Is it possible that you, Miss Carroll, are the guest who arrived to-day from New York?"

"Yes, but I did not dream of finding you here, Miss--Erroll. When I knocked at the door, I supposed this was Miss Harding's room. My head ached, and I wished to ask for some camphor."

"You were mistaken. Her room is on one side of yours, mine on the other, hence the mistake."

"I am sorry I disturbed you. I will withdraw now," said Cissy, in her coldest tone, moving toward the door.

But suddenly she was prevented from going by Miss Erroll falling madly at her feet.

"You shall not go yet--not till--not till--you promise not to betray me to your friends, not to tell them of my wicked past!" she exclaimed.

Cissy Carroll drew back her robe from contact with the kneeling suppliant. Her face was very pale, and her eyes flashed with scorn.

"Why should I spare you, woman? You did not spare me--nor him!" she answered, bitterly.

"That is true--oh, how true! But I have been bitterly punished for my sins--so bitterly that even those I have wronged might pity me. I sinned, but I have suffered!" moaned the kneeling woman, lifting despairing eyes to her accuser.

"The way of the transgressor is hard," answered Cissy, with the harshness of woman to woman.

"Do I not know it! Alas! alas!" moaned Kate Erroll, and she continued: "Now that I have repented my sins, and am trying to be good, my past rises up to menace me on every hand with danger!"

Cissy Carroll did not answer, and she could not pity, for had not this woman robbed her life of happiness?

Suddenly Kate Erroll asked, eagerly:

"Have you never forgiven Cameron Clemens yet?"

"He has never asked me," Cissy returned, evasively.

"He would not dare after the scorn with which you dismissed him when I put in my claim to him. Ah, Miss Carroll, you did wrong, and you made my victory an easy one. If you had clung to him he would never have turned to me."

Cissy did not answer, save by the curl of a disdainful lip.

"Oh, I wronged you both most bitterly," Kate Erroll added, with keen, though late remorse. "Listen: I never loved Cameron Clemens--never; I only angled for him because he was a good catch, and I, a poor actress, loved luxury, and wanted to make a good marriage. He was not in love with me, but I pushed the flirtation so far that he could not avoid the proposal. I am sure he scarcely regarded our flirtation seriously. Before it was a week old he went away for his summer outing. He met you, and fell in love in earnest. He wrote to me, and asked release. I was furious, and would not reply. I waited--waited until just before the marriage. Then I swooped down on you, enraged you with hints that he was after your grandfather's money. You dismissed him with furious scorn--just what I wanted; and I--oh, shame to my womanhood, for I did not love him!--I pursued him till he made me his wife!"

"You did not love him? Oh, Heaven! yet you wrecked both our lives for selfish gain!" groaned Cissy, appalled at the woman's confession.

"It was cruel, oh, I know it now, but I did not then, for I had never loved, and could not realize the anguish of your loss. But I have been punished for my sins, I tell you. Of course, we led a wretched life, hating each other after a short time most bitterly. Then the tempter came in the person of a handsome young actor who taught me the meaning of love. He begged me to elope with him, promising to marry me as soon as my husband secured a divorce. Well, I fled with him, and Mr. Clemens lost no time in applying to the courts for a dissolution of his marriage bonds. Soon I was free; but did my betrayer keep his promise to me? Ah, no; he laughed me to scorn, and told me he already had a wife. All my love turned to hate, and I fled from him as from the presence of a leper. All my life since has been a struggle for honest bread. I could not return to the stage, for I could not live down the awful notoriety of my sin. Fortunately, I had a good education, and after months of wretchedness, during which I buried a nameless child, I secured this situation with these noble people. Will you let me keep it, or will you take your just revenge?"

Her tremulous voice wavered and broke; then silence fell.

She remained kneeling in a suppliant position at the feet of the woman she had wronged so bitterly, her large blue eyes upraised in passionate appeal.

Cissy Carroll stood like a statue in front of the kneeling woman, her face death-white, her eyes sombre, with painful thought.

It was her hour of triumph.

Her enemy was delivered into her hand.

Her vengeance was assured, if she chose to take it.

Why should she not? she thought, in the first bitterness of the meeting with the woman who had wronged her so deeply.

Then something else came to her mind.

"'Vengeance is mine; I will repay,' saith the Lord."

Looking at the humble suppliant there, she felt that punishment had already been meted out to her in fullest measure.

She could almost pity now instead of spurning the wretched creature who, having dashed love's brimming cup from the thirsty lips of another, had been forced to drink its bitter lees herself.

She moved back a pace, and said, quietly:

"Rise. You are safe from vengeance of mine."

"You will forgive me?" faltered the governess, gratefully.

Cissy answered, coldly:

"I did not say I would forgive you, for I do not think I ever can. But I will not betray your secret. To-morrow we may meet as strangers, who have no interest in each other."

She moved toward the door, followed by protestations of undying gratitude to which she made no reply.

It seemed to her that she could not breathe freely in the presence of this woman, to whom she owed all her misery. She fled to her own room to weep in solitude.