Bad Hugh. Mary Jane Holmes
treachery.
Always conciliatory, however, she soon remarked:
"You are sole male heir to the Richards name. Mother's heart and pride are bound up in you. A poor, unknown girl would only add to our expenses, and not help you in the least. What was her name? I've never heard."
John hesitated, then answered: "I called her Lily, she was so fair and pure."
Anna was never in the least suspicious, but took all things for granted, so now she thought within herself, "Lilian, most likely." Then she said: "You were not engaged to her, were you?"
John started forward, and gazed into his sister's face with an expression as if he wished she would question him more closely, but Anna never dreamed of a secret, and seeing him hesitate, she said:
"You need not tell me unless you like. I only thought, maybe, you and Lily were not engaged."
"We were. Anna, I'm a wretch—a miserable wretch, and have scarcely known an hour's peace since I left her."
"Was there a scene?" Anna asked; and John replied:
"Worse than that. Worse for her. She did not know I was going till I was gone. I wrote to her from Paris, for I could not meet her face and tell her how mean I was. I've thought of her so much, and when I landed in New York I went at once to find her, or at least to inquire, hoping she'd forgotten me. The beldame who kept the place was not the same with whom I had left Lily, but she know about her, and told me she died with cholera last September. She and—oh, Lily, Lily—" and hiding his face in Anna's lap, John Richards, whom we have only seen as a traveled dandy, sobbed like a little child.
"John," she said at last, when the sobbing had ceased, "You say this Lily was good. Do you mean she was a Christian, like Charlie?"
"Yes, if there ever was one. Why, she used to make a villain like me kneel with her every night, and say the Lord's Prayer."
For an instant, a puzzling thought crossed Anna's brain as to the circumstances which could have brought her brother every night to Lily's side, but it passed away immediately as she rejoined:
"Then she is safe in heaven, and there are no tears there. We'll try to meet her some day. You could not help her dying. She might have died had she been your wife, so I'd try to think it happened for the best, and you'll soon get to believing it did. That's my experience. You are young yet, and life has much in store for you. You'll find some one to fill Lily's place; some one whom we shall all think worthy of you, andwe'llbe so happy together."
She did not speak of Alice Johnson, but she thought of her. John, too, thought of Alice Johnson, wondering how she would look to him who might have married the daughter of a count. He had not told Anna of this, and he was about preparing to leave her, when, changing the conversation, she said:
"Did we ever write to you—no, we didn't—about that mysterious stranger, that man who stopped for a day or two at the hotel, nearly two years ago, and made so many inquiries about us and our place, pretending he wanted to buy it in exchange for city property, and that some one had told him it was for sale?"
"What man? Who was he?" John asked; and Anna replied:
"He called himself Bronson."
"Describe him," John said, settling back so that his face was partly concealed in the shadow.
"Rather tall, firmly-knit figure, with what I imagine people mean when they say a bullet-head, that is, a round, hard head, with keen gray eyes, sandy mustache, and a scar or something on his right temple. Are you cold?" and she turned quickly to her brother, who had shuddered involuntarily at her description, for well he knew now who that man was.
But why had he come there? This John did not know, and as it was necessary to appear natural, he answered to Anna's inquiry, that he thought he had taken cold, as the cars were badly warmed.
"But, go on; tell me more of this Bronson. He heard our house was for sale. How, pray?"
"From some one in New York; and the landlord suggested it might have been you."
"It's false. I never told him so," and John spoke savagely.
"Then you did know him? What was he? We were half afraid of him, he behaved so strangely," Anna said, looking wonderingly at her brother, whose face alternately flushed and then grew pale.
Simple little Anna, how John blessed her in his heart for possessing so little insight into the genuine springs of his character, for when he answered:
"Of course I don't know him—I mean that I never told any one that Terrace Hill was for sale."
She believed what he said, and very innocently continued:
"Had there been a trifle more of fun in my nature, I should, have teased Eudora, by telling her he came here to see her or Asenath. He was very curious for a sight of all of us."
"Did he come here—into the house?" John asked; and Anna replied:
"Why, yes. He was rather coarse-looking, to be sure, with marks of dissipation, but very gentlemanly and even pleasing in his address."
Anna went on: "He was exceedingly polite—apologized for troubling me, and then stated his business. I told him he must have been misinformed, as we never dreamed of selling. He took his leave, looking back all the way through the park, and evidently examining minutely the house and grounds. Mother was so fidgety after it, declaring him a burglar, and keeping a watch for several nights after his departure."
"Undoubtedly he was," said John. "A burglar, I dare say, and you were fortunate, all of you, in not being stolen from your beds as you lay sleeping."
"Oh, we keep our doors locked," was Anna's demure reply.
"Midnight, as I live!" he exclaimed, and was glad of an excuse for retiring, as he wished now to be alone.
Anna had not asked him half what she had meant to ask concerning Charlie, but she would not keep him longer, and with a kiss upon his handsome brow she sent him away, herself holding the door a little ajar and listening to see what effect the new carpet would have upon him. It did not have any at first, so much was he absorbed in that man with the scar upon his temple. Why had he come there, and why had it not been told him before? His people were so stupid in their letters, never telling what was sure to interest him most. But what good could it have done had he known of the mysterious visit? None whatever—at least nothing particular had resulted from it, he was sure.
"It must have been just after one of his sprees, when he is always more than half befogged," he said to himself. "Possibly he was passing this way and the insane idea seized him to stop and pretend to buy Terrace Hill. The rascal!" and having thus satisfactorily settled it in his mind, the doctor did look at Anna's carpet, admiring its pattern, and having a kind of pleasant consciousness that everything was in keeping, from the handsome drapery which shaded the windows to the marble hearth on which a fire was blazing.
In Adah Hastings' dream that night there were visions of a little room far up in a fourth story, where her fair head was pillowed again upon the manly arm of one who listened while she chided him gently for his long delay, and then told him of their Willie boy so much like him, as the young mother thought.
In Dr. Richards' dreams, when at last he slept, there were visions of a lonely grave in a secluded part of Greenwood, and he heard again the startling words:
"Dead, both she and the child."
He did not know there was a child, and he staggered in his sleep, just as he staggered down the creaking stairs, repeating to himself:
"Lily's child—Lily's child. May Lily's God forgive me."
CHAPTER VI
ALICE