Chapter XIX

Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven,
Hopes sapped, name blighted, life’s life lied away?
—Byron.

By the time Miss Ross arrived at Castle Adamant, Dr. Bruce had been there fully an hour.

“You are already aware,” said Mme. Adamanti, plunging at last into those terrible confidences which she had summoned him to hear,—“that the name by which I am known is a fictitious one. I adopted it in the hope that it might help me to become as hard as a fiendish desire for vengeance made me wish to be. I find we cannot readily transform ourselves into definitions of words. Indeed, I have designed more hard deeds than I have performed, though often the performance lay easily within my reach. I was named “Hope,” and a poor blighted hope I have proved myself indeed! What fatality there is in names....Our family name was Vincent. We had a small farm in Ohio southeast from Cleveland, and my father was deacon of the church in the village near by the farm. From my earliest recollection I was not happy or contented with my life there. As I grew older, the weary monotony of existence seemed to crush my spirit; I longed to see what the rest of the world was like, for I felt that if it were anything like the copy before me, it must be a sorry affair. The long sermons twice each Sunday, and at least two prayer meetings I was obliged to attend during the week, caused me to regard religion as the greatest curse on earth, and I early began to invent all sorts of excuses for staying away from them. My elder sister (we were the only children of our parents, and she was three years my senior) was perfectly satisfied with her lot, and the minister said she was the pattern for all the other young people to copy after. I began to dislike her and call her a hypocrite; and by pretending sickness, or purposely hurting myself, I would manage to stay at home, and while the others were away I would read all the books and papers I could find. Sometimes I could only get hold of some old almanac, a catalogue of patent medicines, a treatise in pamphlet form on hog cholera, or the price list of a lightning-rod factory (how vividly I recall them all now!) but I would read every word of them several times over. I seemed to have an insatiable craving for knowledge, and by the time I was thirteen I was thoroughly miserable.

“That same summer I formed a resolution. A daughter of the village doctor, who had been my playfellow, came home from Cleveland, where she had just finished her first year in a girl’s seminary, to pass the summer vacation. The account she gave me of her companions at school, the library of books, and the interesting studies seemed to set my brain on fire, and when she had gone I went to my father and asked him to let me go to the same school. But he said it would cost more than he could earn, and after scolding me for such foolishness, told me to go about my knitting. He was a rough, kind-hearted man, but never seemed to like me because of my waywardness. Unable to comprehend me he divined a latent force which unconsciously he feared. A few days afterwards I was talking to the doctor’s daughter and asked her if they would let me come to the school if I would work for them. I would scrub, wash dishes, or do anything they wished, if they would only let me come there. I had got the notion from something she had said about poor girls working for their education, and she said she thought they would take me. The resolution I formed was to go to Cleveland without saying a word to those at home, as I knew they would prevent me. It was my duty to drive the cow to pasture in the morning, after she was milked, and I had to take her along the very road which I had always known as the “Cleveland Road.”

“One morning instead of coming back from the pasture I kept straight on, and shunning everybody that came along, did not stop or turn aside until I reached the city at about four o’clock in the afternoon. I was amazed at the great crowded streets, as they seemed to me, and for some time I wandered about in a dreamy state, scarcely knowing where I was, or what I was there for; I was not tired, for I had always been used to taking long walks; nor hungry, because I had eaten some pieces of bread and cheese I stored in my pocket before starting for the pasture. But as it began to get dark I felt afraid and bethought myself of the school which I must try at once to find. I had never been more than a few miles from home before, and had no idea how I was to find the school. As I remembered the name, however, I soon enquired my way, and the mistress gave me supper and lodging with some reluctance, telling me that she would send word to my father in the morning and I must go directly home. The next day but one my father came with his wagon and took me back. When he got me home he flogged me with a raw-hide whip, and from that day it seems that my doom was sealed.

“I grew more miserable and dissatisfied as I grew older and my distasteful surroundings became more loathsome to me every day. I had some wild birds in cages and I let them all go because I thought they must feel as I did. I will not attempt to describe the anguish I suffered during the next three years. We seemed to get poorer all the time, and all I heard was long prayers morning and evening, and long blessings at each scanty meal, and fault-finding and grumbling the rest of the day. My father called me a “lazy burden,” my mother said resignedly that her cross was a very heavy one and I was a sharp thorn in her side; and my sister told me religiously that there was no doubt I was possessed of a devil, and that I might at any time be turned into a cat or a pig if I did not give up my foolish ways and try and listen to the Gospel. I tried several times to tell both father and mother of the longing which enthralled my heart and brain, a longing which I could not then, in my ignorance and innocence, define, but which I know now was wholly and solely for knowledge, advancement. Even then I used to think, and enraged my sister by telling her, that less time spent at prayer- meetings and love feasts, as they called some of their inane gatherings, and more in gaining useful knowledge, and making useful effort, might improve our situation. But thinking this a reference to my father’s shiftlessness, as I admit it was, she merely said that he was a good and religious man, and everything was secondary to that. I often thought when this remark recurred to me, that it was a pity I was not constituted to share their holy satisfaction and self-sufficiency, and that in the very midst of so much “saving grace” a phrase forever on their tongues, I was slowly but inevitably to be damned!”

“My father made such threats that I was afraid to run away again, and I eked out my existence in constant misery as if I had been an outcast without parents, friends, or wits. As I would not go to the religious meetings, I could have no clothes, and when I was sixteen I had but one shabby calico dress I could wear outside the house; no beggar could have been in a worse plight. Books were denied me, partly because of my stubbornness, and partly because my father was of opinion that they all contained something against religion. Even if by any stratagem I procured one to read, it was sent back to the owner with an insulting message, if the owner’s name happened to be in it, or if not it was thrown into the fire. So that very soon the few friends I had were the best possible allies of my father, and I could not get a book on any pretext. The only newspaper I ever had a chance to see was a stupid weekly periodical called “Church Chimes,” I think, the sentiments of which were exactly in keeping with the readers it found in our house. It was a mere pander to the most brutal ignorance and superstition, which, instead of seeking to deliver its readers from their moral and intellectual obscurity, invented the most cunning devices, as I now remember, to perpetuate their conceited stolidity. There may be such publications still in circulation in Christendom, but the only journal I have seen since then which is an exact counterpart in spirit, of that pestilential sheet, is the official organ of the Mormon Church at Salt Lake City—”

“You have been there, then?” asked Doctor Bruce, with surprise. “You have been to Utah?”

“Oh, yes; I have been there: I was among the first to go. But I shall come to that presently. Can you bear with me a little longer, Doctor? I want you to know all, that you may see I came not willingly to what I am: that you may know a more awful phase of the “Greater Bondage,” than you touched upon in your lecture. For if sin in its common shape is a bondage worse than slavery, and far worse than death, what shall be said of a system which forces this bondage upon its votaries as a religion, and grinds their hearts to powder in the attempt to reconcile them to its filthy and unnatural demand!” She spoke with such vehemence that the Doctor rose from his chair and entreated her to be more calm.

“I was speaking of the paper,” she resumed, “but I have yet to tell you that it was the direct cause of my attempting to take my own life, a few days after my sixteenth birthday. In all my sufferings, such means of escape had never occurred to me until I read in our “religious” paper the most sentimental account of the suicide of a young girl who had drowned herself, as they said, in a fit of temporary insanity. But she was a church-going girl, and the account went on to say that her mind had been shattered by sickness, and closed with a conjecture that she might even have fallen into the river by accident. Both my mother and sister had told me so often that I was out of my mind, I sometimes thought it might be true; and now on reading this account the thought of destroying myself took a sudden hold on me and preyed upon my brain like a fever. I disputed with myself the advisability of the step for several days, but each day the determination grew stronger till at last the thought of vanishing entirely from the misery which I thought had shattered my mind, made me merry, and the chilly indifference of those about me became even more marked at the change in my demeanor. On the Sunday morning after my birthday (which was only remembered by the family circle with regret), I drove the cow to the pasture as usual, and came back to the house and put on my best clothes. As the others were starting for church I came into the room, I was so much amused at the solemn, church-going expression on their faces, that I laughed, and then asked them, with half comic audacity, to kiss me good-bye before they went. My father and mother had been quarreling for an hour, and were not in the best of humor, so that this unheard of demand from me caused the former to hastily cram his testament into his coat pocket and go outside, and provoked the latter to raise her best parasol as if to strike me. As they went away, I heard my father say to mother, that if she had not always been a religious woman, he would feel inclined to doubt that “Hoe” (as they always called me) was any relation to him. To which she replied that I was a dreadful trial for them both—but that I was not quite so bad as the burden of their poor pastor who had a son twenty-five years old, a helpless idiot, not even able to eat his food, or help himself in any way. This was said as they were getting into the wagon, and as I turned away from the window where I had heard it all, I wept bitterly, and decided at once that they should never see me alive again. Soon after my father’s wagon was out of sight, I went across the fields to another road leading into the village which crossed a deep and rapid stream about half a mile from our farm, and hurried along towards the bridge with the resolute intention of drowning myself. When I reached the stream I could see nobody coming from either direction, and felt my brain reeling as I staggered to the middle of the bridge and threw myself headlong from its side near the center of the current. I was almost unconscious when I fell, but as I struck the cold river, I felt a sharp pain in my right side. The cold shock restored my senses so that in an instant I fully realized my situation, and wondered why I was not dead—why I was still there close to the bridge suffering dreadfully, but only swung about by the seething current and not carried away to the doom I had sought. I instantly discovered that my clothes were caught on something below the surface of the water, and that I had scratched and bruised myself on the same obstacle when I fell. I uttered no cry though my head was kept above water by the snag or timber which held me. I only thought of breaking away, but I tried in vain. Of a sudden there was a dull roaring noise above me which startled me so that I screamed wildly two or three times, and struggled madly to break away. I heard voices. A wagon or carriage had stopped on the bridge, and a horseman rode to the middle, just above me and dismounted. A moment later I saw people looking down at me, and a young man climbing down the timbers towards me.

“I must have fainted, for I remember nothing that happened until the same night I awoke from my stupor and found myself in my own bed with mother and sister sitting beside me. They told me I had been saved by young Mr. Langley. I knew of him and his family merely as the very poor know of the very rich. It seems that one of their servants recognized me, and Mrs. Langley, having just returned from church in her carriage, sent me directly home without waiting to see whether I was alive or dead.

“Next morning the doctor, having heard of my rescue from the river, and knowing that my father would probably not call a doctor until too late, came in to inquire about me. He found me with a broken arm and rib, and in a consuming fever. As he was engaged in setting the bones, my father entered and told him in a surly manner that if he did anything for me he need n’t send a bill, for he had scarcely enough to live on, and anyway would not spend a cent on a hussy that tried to take her own life. The doctor merely replied, ‘I shall send you no bill, Mr. Vincent,’ and went on with his work, saying what he could to soothe and encourage me. I lay ill for some time, and was a great burden to my mother and sister, but the doctor took good care of me, and the young man who rescued me from the river called every day, to inquire how I was.

“When I was convalescent I was sitting one afternoon in a rocking chair under a large apple tree in front of the house. Young Langley rode up to the gate, and seeing me there, dismounted and came in. We were alone for some time, and he gave me to understand that he had taken a great fancy to me. Before he left he asked me to go for a drive with him next day, which I was refusing to do as I did not like his manner, when my mother came up and told him, ‘yes, I should certainly go.’ She and sister made me a new dress of some light material so that I looked neat, and was secretly proud of my sudden distinction though far from being comfortable in the enjoyment of it. That drive proved but the beginning of a series in which I was drawn deeper and deeper into the toils by his adroit flattery and dissimulation. He knew that I was at his mercy: my ignorance, commonly called innocence, fashioned me for his purpose, and the blind and criminal neglect of my people left me to my fate. The tragedy of the foolish maiden fascinated and betrayed, was at length enacted when he had led me to think that we were to be married in a few days. He kept up the deception for a time, and then told me flatly that he had never intended to marry me. He tore a ring from my finger which he had placed there as a part of his trick, and left me, as he hoped, no doubt, forever.

“It was soon after reported that he had been converted to Mormonism by some missionaries who had been quietly working in the neighborhood, and that he had gone to their City of Nauvoo on the Mississippi. Who shall tell the forlorn agony of spirit which then beset me! I should have made another attempt to destroy myself, had I not been held back by the existence of my child, which I could no longer conceal.

“When my father became aware of my situation he drove me out of the house and warned me never to show myself there again. But this seemed to me only a just punishment, though of all that then concerned me I only fully realized that I had been betrayed. My poor mother begged him to have pity on me, and my sister added her entreaties, but he would not listen, and I wandered slowly away scarce knowing what I was about. The instinct of self-preservation seemed at last to arouse me, and I made my way to Cleveland where I found employment as a domestic servant. The woman with whom I lived was very kind to me in my desolation. She was bearing the cross of a faithless husband and entered into my sorrow. I told her my story, and after my child came she advised me to write to its father. He was then at Nauvoo, and in reply to my letter said I might come to him if I came alone. My employer helped me to devise a plan for the temporary abandonment of my baby, leading me to hope that I might recover it whenever I was ready. At last I adopted her plan as the only escape from my miseries short of suicide. What bitter anguish it caused me to leave my child! But I mustered up my resolution, and the tragedy of my life went on. Early one morning I left the little dainty creature near the house of a good old minister,—the same Dr. Taine who died recently at Cleveland from a shock caused by the flight of his daughter with the rebel spy, Lamont.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“That was my daughter—the foundling, Hagar!”

For a time she could not speak.

“All these years,” she continued, at length, “I had supposed her dead, and now she is here, under this roof, brought and delivered to me by my friend, her betrayer!”

Her form quivered with emotion, and for a time it seemed that she would not be able to continue. But by a desperate effort she controled her emotion, and went on.

“Hoping to secure kind treatment for the child, I left a note with her intimating that I had drowned myself in a pond near by; and after I had seen a workman pick up my baby and carry her to the house, I went back to the city and joined a party of Mormon emigrants who were starting that day for Nauvoo. I took my place in one of their wagons. They were all heavily laden with house-furniture, agricultural implements and provisions. By seven o’clock we were moving slowly out of the city to begin that gloomy pilgrimage. By what seemed to me a fatality, we traveled the same road I had already been that morning, and were soon passing the very house where I was leaving my soul. It was only by the most determined effort that I could restrain myself from leaping from the wagon and going to claim my deserted baby. The workmen, the minister, and some women and children were about the pond searching for the poor desperate wretch who had deceived them so shamefully, and when I thought of what I was doing my face burned with remorse till I almost relented. My companions thought I wept for the friends I was leaving behind, and paid very little attention to me; and as we rumbled along the hard roads, the scene was constantly shifting, so that by an effort I at last became more cheerful.

“We were on the road almost a month, and on our arrival at Nauvoo, Langley gave me a very luke-warm reception, and instead of taking me to his own house, placed me in the prophet Smith’s family where my position was that of a servant. The prophet himself undertook my conversion to the new faith, and I was soon satisfied with the whole Mormon pretense, the golden-plates, the revelations, the miracles, and all else they taught me.

“I had learned with great facility, because the prophet had said that I could not become Brother Langley’s wife for time and eternity under the ‘new and everlasting covenant,’ until I entered heartily into the religion that had saved him. I was willing to do anything to attain the end that brought me to the edge of the wilderness, and acquiesced in it all without half understanding what was meant. They appealed to my sympathies also with great effect, telling me of the dreadful persecutions they had suffered in Ohio and Missouri, and I only heard at Nauvoo what the gentiles did against the saints, and never a word about the aggression and misconduct of the latter. The prophet’s wife and one or two of his concubines coached me sedulously for some secret and mysterious ceremony that I must pass through in the Temple to become the celestial wife of Brother Langley, as they said; and by that time I had imbibed so much of their prejudice against the world in general that I regarded them almost at their own estimation.

“I had been in Nauvoo a year when I was finally told I was to be married to Bishop Langley. In the interval I had received letters regularly from Mrs. Benjamin my employer in Cleveland until the last two months, during which I had three or four brief notes dictated by her and written by another hand. These informed me that Mrs. Benjamin was prostrated by a severe illness. My letters were always brought to me opened by Langley, who took my replies to the post-office. I was never allowed money enough even to pay postage on a letter. The last one I ever received was apparently in the same hand as the others, and stated that the baby I had abandoned had died of croup, and that Mrs. Benjamin was not expected to live more than a few days. That letter was a forgery which Langley had procured to deceive me. The information he had received was to the effect that Mrs. Benjamin had died suddenly, and he believed that all clue to the child perished with her. In the crushing grief which seized me at the news of my baby’s death, Langley made some weak efforts to cheer me, and so desolate was my life that I tried to fancy, though painfully conscious of his lack of proper feeling, that his attentions were all that my heart craved. The ‘celestial’ ceremony was deferred for a short time in consequence of my sorrow, which they called ‘sickness.’ At length the fatal day arrived, and I was made a ‘celestial’ wife to Langley, given a name by which I was to be known to the saints in heaven, and overcome by the avalanche of mystery and mummery which the new priesthood had at its command; the borrowed rubbish of all systems supplemented by inventions of its own.

“I had not quite understood the covert reference I had heard made in the prophet’s family as to the meaning of ‘celestial’ marriage, and was horrified on my arrival at Langley’s house to be introduced to another woman as his wife, whom I was commanded to honor and obey as himself. The sophistries of that woman, who was related to the prophet and had been a pupil of his visionary and ignorant mother, gradually caused me to accept the situation, though my nature continually revolted against what I felt to be an ignominious and contemptible relation. In spite of the ‘celestial’ poems of one of the prophet’s concubines; the most polygamous passages from Scripture; the prophet’s undoubted inspiration from on high, and the quiet but insinuating canvass of the doctrine that was then being made, I could not help thinking myself wronged; could not silence the still, small voice that nature had established in my soul, and that cried out against this sanctified outrage.

“But a crisis was approaching, and in the midst of alarms more or less real; I gradually became so indifferent that I could not tell myself from the fanatics about me. In the winter of 1845, Langley was among the most influential of those who stood by Brigham Young, and favored the project of moving in a body to the far West, there to establish an empire of their own. Their prophet and his brother had been killed some time before, by a mob in Carthage Jail, where they were confined on charges the Mormons considered to be false, and the people were now obliged to fly before the dangers that threatened, unless they were willing to live like other citizens according to the customary laws of order and decency.”

Very thrilling was her narrative of the journey of the pioneer Mormon train, of which she was a member, in the spring and summer of 1847, from the Missouri River to the Great Salt Lake. The region had only been explored a short time before by General Fremont, and that entire country extending two thousand miles from East to West and over a thousand from North to South was a trackless wilderness. The memory of the fatigues and dangers of that dreadful pilgrimage came back like a nightmare to the poor invalid, and she hastened on to the later scenes.

“As the colony at Salt Lake grew in numbers, and agriculture was the only productive industry then possible, mere necessaries of life were produced in quantities far exceeding the needs of the community; and Edwin Langley was the first, having some good teams and wagons at his disposal, to turn a cargo of such commodities into gold, among the rich placers that had riveted the attention of the world on California. The first adventure of the kind having succeeded far beyond his hopes, he repeated it again and again with such results that he was recognized as the richest and most enterprising saint in Zion. He gave his support to all schemes set on foot by Brigham Young for the general welfare of the ‘Saints,’ and was soon only second to the new prophet himself, in his wealth of lands, flocks and herds, and wives and children.

“After several years of untold humiliation, during which I had struggled in vain against my unquenchable aversion to the system, I resolved if possible to escape to California. The fact that I bore no children was made a subject of ugly comment about me, both by my saintly lord and his more fortunate concubines, two of whom were vulgar factory hands from Coventry, who found the saintly life entirely satisfactory and laughed at me for my crazy notions. At length my opportunity arrived. A handsome young man with whom Langley had become acquainted in California, stopped at Salt Lake on his way to the States, and was invited by Langley to visit at his house, which was one of the few good ones in the Mormon Capital. I often met him, and he sought me constantly, uttering words of sympathy, and finally obtaining not only a complete confession of my miserable lot, but an influence over me which was irresistible. We were aware of the danger of our secret conferences, and as the stranger had already overstayed his time, were conscious that something desperate must be done, and that parting from each other was not to be one of the alternatives. He was a cool and deliberate man. He successfully planned our flight, and we went together to New Orleans, arriving in the gay season of the Carnival.

“I had noticed on the steamboat that my husband, as I called him, sat up late every night to gamble, and that he inevitably won. My life became a kind of delirium, the dazzle and whirl of which increased immensely after our arrival at the Crescent City, where we were surrounded by sporting men and the beauties of the town who were old and familiar friends of my lover. I soon became intoxicated by the life of this gay society, so strangely in contrast with the rest of my experience, and went on and on in the maddening round of pleasure until it became as indispensable to me as to the rest.

“We had only been in New Orleans a few months when my lover was shot dead at a gambling table. I was again left to battle with life. All the world outside the constellation where Fate had cast me was closed against me forever, but I did not realize this fact until I had proved it by bitter experience. It then became clear to me that I must remain where I was and make the best or the worst of my lot. Possessed of a certain shrewdness and tact I sold the costly lace and diamonds my lover had given me, and with the proceeds, added to some timely loans from his friends, opened a sumptuous palace, which soon eclipsed in splendor and patronage everything of the kind that had been known in the Paris of the Southern States, I speculated on the Exchange, and in the slave market, was lucky, and found I was rapidly amassing a fortune. Finally, about four years ago I came to Cincinnati with several ambitious designs; but my chief object was health: I could not longer endure the climate of New Orleans.

“Now, Dr. Bruce, you have heard my story. My money and my poor child are here—can you undertake my commission?” She spoke with strong emotion, and for the first time during the narration, wept bitterly.

“Yes, madam,” said the Doctor “if I can serve you and the young girl of whom you speak, I will do so. What do you require from me?”

“To become executor and administrator of my estate, to which she is the only heir. I should prefer that you sell all real-estate and turn it into ready money. Nothing that I shall leave for her is the fruit of my vicious life; I made it all on the Stock Exchange by a series of lucky speculations. Whatever I realized otherwise I shall leave to those like myself who are now in possession, and as a fund to help young women who are in peril because of their poverty and ignorance.”

An ominous tremor shook her frame and for some time she remained silent. Then she said feebly:

“Would it be possible, Doctor Bruce, to have the papers made out now this evening? I feel that I must not delay.”

“Yes, it could be done to-night but, perhaps, if you were patient until to-morrow——?”

“There will be no to-morrow for me, Doctor. I beg you do it now.”

She raised herself quickly to a sitting posture and, glancing about with a wild apprehensive gaze, brushed the back of her hand across her eyes as if to wipe away a mist that suddenly came before her.

“Quick! Doctor, quick! Don’t let me die till this is done!”

The Doctor was holding her hand and supporting her.

“Feel no alarm;—it shall be done at once. Lie down and be patient. I have a legal friend who lives near by. I can bring him in a moment, and everything shall be done as you wish.”

His words calmed her, and she sank back upon the pillow with a faint smile and a pathetic look of gratitude.

As the Doctor passed through the hall he said to Miss Ross and Ida who came to him for news of the patient:

“Keep her very quiet until I return. One of you should stay by her and give the medicine as her doctor directed. It is a powerful stimulant and she will require it.”

He had just gone out the front door when Mme. Adamanti’s bell was heard and Miss Ross hastened to her.

A kindly smile lit up her grief-marked face when Belle approached and asked in a voice of genuine feeling how she was.

“I am better now, and will soon be well.”

Her voice sounded strange, and made Belle feel uneasy. She continued:—

“I wanted to see you, Belle, to tell you that I am going to make my will. My promise to you, Ida, and the others is not forgotten. But the rest of my estate I shall leave to this girl, ‘Kitty,’ who is my own and only child. I want you to tell her, at once, that a gentleman has been here who has her fortune in trust, and that he is coming back presently to show her the papers. At a signal from me you will bring her here, and after I have embraced her she will go with Dr. Bruce,—ignorant of what or who I am.”

Miss Ross kept her counsel about the girl’s flight, hoping there still might be a turn to her own advantage. As Mme. Adamanti continued to talk about her child with a strange, embittered curiosity, Doctor Bruce came in with the lawyer, and Belle retired.

The will was soon prepared, but Mme. Adamanti experienced great difficulty in signing her name. When all was ready she summoned Miss Ross to bring ‘Kitty.’

“She must know you as her benefactor, Dr. Bruce, without a hint that the bounty comes from me.—Well where is Kitty?” she demanded when Miss Ross entered alone.

Bell was half abashed, half defiant.

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply that the girl is not in the house. She has run away.”

Again Lady Clare raised herself to a sitting posture and glared wildly about, wringing her hands.

“Gone? Gone! You have fooled me, then? Begone yourself and never let me see your face again. But you will find her, Dr. Bruce? Go now and look for her—go at once;—find her if you hope for mercy! Oh, devils! vipers! to betray the innocent. Find her or the curse of God shall pursue——”

She gasped and sank back. At that moment her doctor entered. Surprised by the unwonted scene he hurried to the bedside and involuntarily seized the wrist of his patient. A gesture from Doctor Bruce reassured him and the silence was only broken by the death-moan of the sufferer.

Suddenly the watchers were startled by a ring at the front door bell. Jerry knew that his mistress was dying and opened the door noiselessly.

“I have a warrant to search this house for one Hagar Taine, and to arrest the keeper, Clare Adamanti.”

It was a Captain of the Military police who spoke, and a squad of armed men were with him.

“Hush!” said Jerry softly and bursting into tears. “She is dying.”

“And the girl?”

“Has fled.”