"I was old, and small, and plain, but I could give her silk dresses and a house in town, a servant to wait upon her, and she was ready to marry me. I was then what I am now, Mr. Darcy's land steward, agent, confidential valet, all in one. Young Mr. Laurence came home from Harvard for his vacation; and full of admiration for this bright young beauty, proud and fond beyond all telling of her, I took him down with me to show him the charming little wife I was going to marry. No thought of distrusting either ever entered my mind, in my way I loved and admired both, with my whole heart. Miss Bourdon, you know this story before I tell it, one of the oldest stories the world has to tell.

"We remained a fortnight. Then I had to go back to New York. It was August, and we were to be married in October. He returned with me, stayed a week with his adopted uncle, then returned to Boston, so he said. One week later, while I was busily furnishing the pretty house I had hired for my little Lucy, came a letter from Lucy's mother. I see at this moment, Mrs. Laurence, the sunny, busy street at which I sat stupidly staring, for hours after I read that letter. I hear the shouts of the children at play, the hot, white quiver of the blazing August noon-day.

"Lucy had gone, run away from home with a young man, nobody knew who for certain, but everybody thought with the young gentleman I had brought there, Mr. Thorndyke. I had trusted her, Mrs. Laurence, as I tell you I had loved and trusted them both entirely. I sat there stupefied, I need not tell you what I suffered. Next day I went down to the village. Her mother was nearly crazed, the whole village was gossiping the shameful story. He--or some one like him, had been seen haunting the outskirts of the village, she had stolen, evening after evening, to some secret tryst.

"She had left a note--'she couldn't marry old Liston,' she said; 'she had gone away with somebody she liked ten thousand times better. They needn't look for her. If he made her a lady she would come back of herself, if not--but it was no use their looking for her. Tell Mr.

Liston she was sorry, and she hoped mother wouldn't make a fuss, and she was her affectionate daughter, Lucy.'

"I sat and read the curiously heartless words, and I knew just as well as if she had said so, that it was with young Laurence she had gone. I knew, too, for the first time, how altogether heartless, base, and worthless was this girl. But there was nothing to be said or done. I went back to New York, to my old life, in a stupid, plodding sort of way. I said nothing to Mr. Darcy. I sold off the pretty furniture. I waited for young Mr. Laurence to return; he did return at Christmas--handsome, high-spirited, and dashing as ever. But he rather shrank from me, and I saw it. I went up to him on the night of his arrival, and calmly asked him the question:

"'Mr. Laurence, what have you done with Lucy West?

"He turned red to his temples, he wasn't too old or too hardened to blush then, but he denied everything. Lying,--cold, barefaced lying, is one of Mr. Thorndyke's principal accomplishments.

"'He knew nothing of Lucy West--how dared I insinuate such a thing.'

Straightening himself up haughtily. 'If she had run away from me, with some younger, better looking fellow, it was only what I might have expected. But fools of forty will never be wise;' and then, with a sneering laugh, and his hands in his pockets, my young pasha strolls away, and we spoke of Lucy West no more.

"That was five years ago. One winter night, a year after, walking up Grand street about ten o'clock, three young women came laughing and talking loudly towards me. It needed no second look at their painted faces, their tawdry silks, and gaudy 'jewelry,' to tell what they were.

But one face--ah! I had seen it last fresh and innocent, down among the peaceful fields. Our eyes met; the loud laugh, the loud words, seemed to freeze on her lips--she grew white under all the paint she wore. She turned like a flash and tried to run--I followed and caught her in five seconds. I grasped her arm and held her fast, savagely, I suppose, for she trembled as she looked at me.

"'Let me go, Mr. Liston,' she said, in a shaking voice; 'you hurt me!'

"'No, by Heaven,' I said, 'not until you answer me half a dozen questions. The first is: 'Was it Laurence Thorndyke with whom you ran away?'

"Her eyes flashed fire, the color came back to her face, her hands clenched. She burst forth into such a torrent of words, choked with rage, interlarded with oaths, that my blood ran cold, that my passion cooled before it. She had been inveigled away by Thorndyke, there was no sham marriage here--no promise of marriage even; I will do him that justice, and in six months, friendless and penniless, she was adrift in the streets of New York. She was looking for him night and day, if ever she met him she would tear the very eyes out of his head!

"Would she go home? I asked her. I would pay her way--her mother would receive and pardon her.

"She laughed in my face. What! take _my_ money--of all men! go back to the village where once she had queened it over all the girls--like this!

She broke from me, and her shrill, mocking laugh came back as she ran and joined her companions. I have never seen her since.

"That is my story, Miss Bourdon. Two years have passed since that night--my dull life goes on--I serve Mr. Darcy--I watch Mr. Thorndyke. I have come to his aid more than once, I have screened his evil deeds from his uncle as I have screened this. He is to be married the first week of December to Miss Helen Holmes, a beautiful girl and an heiress. The last duty I am to perform for him is to hush up this story of yours, to restore you to your friends like a bale of damaged goods. But I think his time has come; I think it should be our turn now. It is for you and me to say whether he shall inherit his uncle's fortune--whether he shall marry Helen Holmes or not."

CHAPTER XIV.

A DARK COMPACT.

The twilight had deepened almost into darkness. Mr. Liston unconsciously, in the excitement of the tragedy of his life, told now for the first time, had risen, and was walking up and down the room. His quiet voice, never rising above its usual monotonous level, was yet full of suppressed feeling and passion. Now, as he ceased, he looked toward the still figure sitting so motionless before the smouldering fire. She had not stirred once, the fixed whiteness of her face had not altered.

The large, luminous eyes looked into the dying redness in the grate, the lips were set in one tense tight line. Until last night she had been but a child, the veriest child in the tragic drama of life, the sin and shame, the utter misery of the world to her a sealed book. All at once the black, bitter page had opened, she was one of the lost herself, love, truth, honor--there were none on earth. A loathing of herself, of him, of life, filled her--an unspeakable bitterness weighed her down body and soul.

"You do not speak, Miss Bourdon," Mr. Liston said, uneasily. "You--you have not fallen asleep?"

"Asleep!" she laughed a little, strangely sounding laugh. "Not likely, Mr. Liston; I have been listening to your story--not a pleasant story to listen to or to tell. I am sorry for you, I am sorry for her. Our stories are strangely alike--we have both thrown over good and loyal men to become a villain's victim. We have no one to thank but ourselves.

More or less, we both richly deserve our fate."

There was a hard, reckless bitterness in the words, in the tone. She had not shed a tear since the blow had fallen.

Mr. Liston paused in his walk and strove to read her face.

"Both?" he said. "No, Miss Bourdon. She, perhaps, but you do not. You believed yourself his wife, in all honor and truth; to you no stain of guilt attaches. But all the blacker is his dastardly betrayal of you.

Without even the excuse of loving you, he forced you from home, only to gratify his brutal malice against Richard Gilbert. He told me so himself; out of his own mouth he stands condemned."

She shivered suddenly, she shrank as though he had struck her. From first to last she had been fooled; that was, perhaps, the cruelest, sharpest blow of all, to know that Laurence Thorndyke had never for one poor instant loved her, that hatred, not love, had been at the bottom of it all.

"Don't let us speak of it," she said, hoarsely. "I--I can't bear it. O Heaven! what have I done?"

She covered her face with her hands, a dry, shuddering sob shaking her from head to foot.

"If I could only die," she thought, with a pang of horrible agony and fear; "If I dared only die!"

"Listen to me, Mrs. Laurence," Mr. Liston said, steadily, and as if he read her thoughts. "Don't despair; you have something to live for yet."

"Something to live for?" she repeated, in the same stifled tones.

"What?"

"Revenge."

"What?"

"Revenge upon Laurence Thorndyke. It is your right and your duty. His evil deeds have been hidden from the light long enough. Let his day of retribution come--from your hand let his doom fall."

She looked up. In the deepening dusk the man's face was set stern as stone.

"From my hand? How?"

"By simply telling the truth. Come with me to New York; come with me before Hugh Darcy and Helen Holmes, and tell your story as it stands. My word for it, there will be neither wedding nor fortune in store for Laurence Thorndyke after that."

Her black eyes lit and flashed for a moment with some of his own vengeful fire. She drew her breath hard.

"You think this?" she said.

"I know this. Stern, rigorous justice to all men is Hugh Darcy's motto.

And Miss Holmes is as proud, and pure, and womanly as she is rich and beautiful. She would cast him off, though they stood at the altar."

Her lips set themselves tighter in that tense line. She sat staring steadfastly into the fire, her breast rising and falling with the tumult within.

The little clock on the mantel ticked fast and loud; the ceaseless patter, patter of the autumnal rain tapped like ghostly fingers on the pane. Down on the shore below the long, sullen breakers boomed. The man's heart beat as he waited. He had looked forward to some such hour as this, for five long years, to plot and plan his enemy's ruin. And in this girl's hands it lay to-night.

At last.

"She loves him, does she not?" She asked the question huskily.

"Do you mean Miss Holmes? Only too well, I fear, Mrs. Laurence. As I have said, it comes easily to all of you to lose your hearts to Mr.

Thorndyke."