The Bride of the Tomb, and Queenie's Terrible Secret. Alex. McVeigh Miller
audibly. He turned to Colville with a triumphant smile.
"What about my theory now?" said he.
Colville was trembling with excitement. He came forward, and looked at the face sleeping calmly on the pillow, its rigid lines softening into natural repose.
"Surely, Pratt, you are in league with the devil," said he, half-fearfully. "An hour ago I could have sworn that it was grim death we looked upon, but now–"
"But now," said Doctor Pratt, "she is doing well—she will soon recover. And then you can set about your wooing."
"Ah!" said Colville, doubtfully. "I wish that your potent art could insure me her love as skillfully as you insured me her life!"
The patient's deep slumber lasted till the rosy dawn of the summer morn began to break over the earth. Then the blue eyes opened with a look of bewilderment in their beautiful depths.
"Where am I?" she languidly interrogated, sweeping her small white hand across her brow.
Colville had gone, but the unwearied physician sitting by the bedside answered, calmly:
"You are in good hands, Miss Lawrence. I am your physician. You have been very ill, and must not agitate yourself by asking questions yet."
CHAPTER V
"You say I have been very ill?" said Lily, looking up into the dark face bending over her.
"Yes, you have been near to death's door; but indeed you must not talk; you will exhaust yourself."
"But I must talk," said the patient, willfully. "Why am I here? This is not my home," glancing round the poor, ill-furnished room. "Where are my father, my sister, my maid? Oh, God!" and a piercing shriek burst from her lips. "I remember everything—the murderous dagger-thrust, the horrid spell that bound me hand and foot and tongue. I could not speak, I could not move; but I heard them weeping round me; I heard–"
"For Heaven's sake, cease! You will kill yourself indeed, Miss Lawrence!" cried the physician in alarm.
But she waved him off, and sitting upright in bed continued wildly:
"I heard your voice telling them that I was dead. I heard the horrid inquest held over me. I heard the funeral service while I lay in the open coffin, unable to stir, unable to comfort my weeping loved ones. They bore me away. They locked me—me, a living, agonized human creature—into the dreadful vault with the horrible dead for companions. Ah! then, indeed, I became unconscious. I knew no more. Oh! oh! what torture, what agonies I have endured!" cried the girl, waving her white hands over her head and screaming aloud in her terrified recollection of the dreadful agonies she had borne while in her cataleptic state.
"She will kill herself indeed," muttered Pratt, hastily forcing a composing draught between her writhing lips.
She continued to rave wildly until the potent drug took effect on her overwrought system and produced a deep, unnatural slumber.
He went away and left her to the care of the witchlike old woman. She awoke toward evening and found the old woman knitting away by her bedside. The beautiful girl looked at her in wonder and fright.
"Are you a vision from another world or only a fevered phantom of my brain?" she inquired in a weak voice.
The creature only scowled at her in reply, but she rose and brought a bowl of fresh arrowroot and fed the patient, who found it very refreshing after her protracted fasting.
Old Haidee, as she was called, left the room with the empty bowl, and Lily lay still, looking about her with a vague dread creeping into her heart. Had she indeed died in that horrible vault, and was she now in another world inhabited by such hideous beings as the one who had just left her? She shuddered and closed her eyes. The sound of a footstep aroused her. A man was entering the room. It was Harold Colville. He came and stood by the bed-side, looking down at her pale face with passionate tenderness shining in his eyes.
Her white cheeks turned crimson.
"Mr. Colville!" she cried, angrily, "what means this unwarrantable intrusion?"
"Oh, Lily! this from you!" he cried in sorrowful reproach. "Lily, I have saved your life, my darling, and this is my reward; when all others deserted you and left you in your coffin my love could not rest without one more look at your dear face. Yes, the love you spurned in happier days clung to you then and sought you amid the horrors of the dreadful charnel-house. I entered the vault; I opened the coffin; I kissed the lips that were dearer to me dead than those of any living woman. And then I discovered faint signs of life! In my rapture at the discovery I bore you away in my carriage and placed you under the care of a splendid physician. You revived; you lived—yes, dead to all the world beside, you live alone for me, my fair, my peerless Lily!"
He smiled triumphantly, while a look of horror dawned in her eyes.
"You—you will restore me to my friends?" she gasped in breathless agitation.
"Lily, can you ask it? Can I bear to give you up, long and truly as I have loved you? When death, in compassion for my sorrow, has given you up from the very tomb itself to my loving arms could I give you back to your less devoted lover and live my life without you, my peerless darling? Lily, do not ask me for such a sacrifice."
"I am never to see father, sister, friends, again?" asked she, with whitening lips.
"Yes, yes, Lily. Only consent to reward my fidelity with your dear hand, and you shall see them all again."
"I cannot," she moaned, faintly; "I am betrothed to another."
"Death has broken the bond," said he; "your lover has torn you from his heart ere this in angry resentment at your supposed suicide. He believes that you loved another and chose death in preference to a loveless marriage with him. Give yourself to me, Lily, and that will confirm his belief."
"Oh, never, never! I do not love you," she cried, vehemently.
"Love would come in time, darling. Gratitude to the savior of your life would create love. I could make you happy, Lily; I have wealth, position, influence—all the things that woman values most."
"I can never love anyone but Lancelot Darling," she said, while a blush tinged her cheek at the sweet confession.
His brow grew dark as night.
"Speak not the name of my hated rival," he cried, angrily. "I saved your life, not he! Yet this is your gratitude!"
"Oh, indeed I am grateful if indeed you saved my life," she cried. "But ask me for some other reward. Take my eternal gratitude, my undying friendship, take the last penny of my fortune, but spare me my happiness!"
"You rave, Lily," he answered, coldly. "Nothing you have offered me has any value in my eyes except yourself. I will never, never resign you. You are in my power here. To all the world you are dead. You shall remain so until you marry me!"
"I will never, never marry you!" she cried, with passionate defiance.
"We shall see," he answered, angrily; but his words fell on deaf ears. She had fallen back in a deep swoon. He went out and sent Haidee to assist her while he hurriedly left the house.
The swoon was a deep one. Lily lay quite exhausted after she revived, and was still and speechless for some hours. Doctor Pratt came that night and gave her another sleeping potion. She took it quietly without remark, and slept heavily all night. The sun was high in the heavens next day when old Haidee, sitting by her pillow, started to find those large blue eyes fixed thoughtfully upon her. She ran and brought a nourishing breakfast up-stairs to her patient.
"You are better," said she, in her cracked voice, seeing that Lily ate with an appetite.
"I am stronger," said she, as Haidee removed the tray.
She was quiet a while after the old crone had taken her seat and resumed her knitting. Presently she asked, abruptly:
"What is your name?"
"They call me Haidee," said the old woman, shortly.
"Do you live here alone, Haidee?"
"My old man lives with me," said she.
"You