Читать книгу The Senator's Favorite - Alex. McVeigh Miller - Страница 4

In the gray dawn of the wild March morning Senator Winans came home alone, looking ten years older, the stamp of despair on his dark, handsome face.

He went at once to his wife, and found her lying awake in a fever of suspense and anxiety.

When she saw him enter alone she started up with a cry of keen despair:

"Precious! Oh, where is Precious?"

Her husband knelt by her side, clasped the feverish little hands, and kissed the woeful white face, all wet with tears, like a rain-drenched lily.

"Be brave, be patient, my dearest, for you must bear this cruel suspense yet a little longer," he sighed.

"Oh, Paul, you have not found her yet? Then she must be dead, our little darling!"

He had decided to tell her the truth. It would be better than the anguish of wretched uncertainty, so he broke it to her gently, the story of the golden-haired girl who had been carried out of the ballroom unconscious.

"It must have been our golden-haired darling. I believe she has been kidnaped for the sake of a ransom; so cheer up, my darling, for the wretches will not harm our pet; they will keep her safe and well to earn the reward they will expect to be offered in the morning papers. And I have attended to that already, Grace, for my advisers think it will be best to give great publicity to the affair, as in that case it may come to the knowledge of some persons who may be able to give us an unexpected clew. Oh, my wife; do not sob so bitterly. Our darling shall soon be found, I swear it," and for the sake of the anguish she saw in his eyes the poor mother fought with her sorrow, and tried to find a glimmer of light in the Cimmerian darkness.

But it was cruel, cruel, for the horror of the present was only augmented by the memory of the past. Her eldest born, her precious boy, had been stolen in his babyhood, and four years elapsed before he was recovered. It had taken all the strength of youth and hope to endure that cross. Now she was older, frailer, and she knew she could not bear another such agony and live.

But her husband's seeming hopefulness put a gleam of sunshine in her heart, and for his sake, because she loved him very dearly, she would not add to his remorseful grief by one reproachful word.

The morning papers in glaring black headlines chronicled the abduction of the senator's favorite daughter and the princely ransom he had offered for her restoration. Excitement ran high over the terrible sensation, and stories of the girl's wonderful grace and beauty passed from lip to lip. The studio of a famous artist who had but just completed the portrait of Precious for her father was thronged with gazers. He could not deny them, for it was hoped that familiarity with her looks might in some way help the search for the missing girl.

Among the first of the curious visitors to the studio was handsome Lord Chester.

The senator's earnest praises of his favorite child rang continuously in the young man's head.

His eager curiosity drove him to the studio of the famous artist, and when he stood at last before the full-length portrait he could not turn his eyes away; they lingered in rapture on the pictured loveliness of Precious Winans.

To the day of his death Arthur, Lord Chester, carried this picture in his memory and his heart—this picture of a girl standing by a magnificent large mastiff with one tiny white hand holding his silver collar. Beneath her fairy feet was daisied grass, and her simple white gown and the broad straw hat she carried on her arm seemed to fit the spring-time that was imaged in the golden lengths of rippling hair. So she stood—"a sight to make an old man young"—Ethel's younger sister, the senator's favorite.

The words of a poet of his own fair land leaped to his lips:

Later in the day he called at the Winans mansion, and Ethel received him alone. Her mamma was too ill and nervous to see any one.

Never had the queenly Ethel looked more charming. No shade of anxiety dimmed the dark radiance of her eyes. She had slept long and late, and when she awoke and heard that Precious was not yet found she laughed and said that she was sure that her sister had eloped with some handsome young man, and would be coming home in a few days from her bridal tour, with her husband, to ask papa's forgiveness.

And she repeated this to Lord Chester when he expressed solicitude over her sister's fate.

"I am not at all uneasy, my lord," she cried lightly; "I think it very likely that Precious has eloped with one of her tutors. Papa had several young men coming here to teach my sister music, and drawing, and dancing. Of course her French governess was always present. But she scarcely understood a word of English, so it was easy enough for one of them to make love to her if he wished, and Precious was just the kind of pretty, willful simpleton to fall in love with a nobody and marry him."

A keen, inexplicable pain tore the young man's heart at those words, and it seemed to him that Ethel's levity amounted to heartlessness. He looked gravely at her with his dark-gray eyes, and it seemed to him that there was something lacking in her beauty that he had not missed last night, but he did not realize as yet that the change was in himself.

He would have denied it if any one had taxed him with being in love with a girl whom he knew only by her portrait.

Only last night he had adored charming Ethel Winans. It was only her mother's interruption that had prevented him from laying his heart and title at her feet. The words had trembled on his lips while he looked at her with his heart in his eyes.

Why did he not speak to-day?

The opportunity was very favorable, for it was but seldom he could find the brilliant belle alone.

And Ethel's languid air, just touched with the softness of love, was very inviting. It was just the gentle mood in which a girl is likely to accept a proposal.

But he did not propose, although he said to himself that really he ought to, and he was afraid she expected it, after last night. But really it might not be quite correct to speak just now when the family was crushed with grief over the kidnaping of a beloved daughter. He would postpone the declaration.

In truth last night's zest was lacking. Last night Ethel had seemed to him a peerless goddess. To-day she was only an ordinary mortal—beautiful, but—not as divine as her younger sister.

If he had dreamed of the mad passion of jealousy surging under her calm exterior he would never have uttered his next words:

"I saw your sister's portrait at Valentine's studio to-day. Her beauty merits all her father's praise."

She bit her scarlet lip and tore to pieces a rose in her fingers.

"The portrait is flattered. Precious is not half so beautiful," she answered coldly, and a sudden constraint came between them. Lord Chester, blind to the smoldering fury under the long black lashes, thought her weary of him, and soon took leave.

Ethel, left alone in the splendid room, with the scattered rose petals at her feet, flung out her arms with a gesture of rebellious despair, and moaned bitterly:

"She has won my lover's heart with that fatal, luring, childish beauty! How can I help but hate her now?"

The evening's post brought a mysterious type-written letter to Senator Winans. It ran thus:

"You have made a mistake. I did not steal Precious for a ransom, but for love of her fair face. Do not be uneasy. I shall not harm your beautiful daughter. She is safe in the care of a kind, motherly woman, but she is also my prisoner, and will remain so until she consents to become my bride. After she is married to me you shall see her again, but never before; so you must be patient, for she is a little obdurate now, but in the end I shall win her consent."

The letter had no date or signature, but it was postmarked Washington.

"Didn't I say it was an elopement?" cried Ethel, in scornful triumph, but her father turned on her a lightning glance of reproof, and cried sternly:

"Never dare, Ethel, to repeat that false word elopement of your innocent sister again. You have just read in this letter that it was an abduction, not an elopement. So do not make another such mistake."