Читать книгу The Senator's Favorite - Alex. McVeigh Miller - Страница 5

When Senator Winans left Precious standing like a vision of beauty under a garlanded pillar to await his return, he did not dream that the vulture of danger hovered near his blue-eyed darling.

But burning eyes only a little distance away glared on the girl with wolfish eagerness, and minute by minute those small keen eyes grew fiercer with the fire of passion.

Precious, all unconscious of those burning eyes, stood quietly watching the strangers that surrounded her, coming and going in ceaseless ebb and flow like the waves of the sea.

Suddenly those eyes came nearer, nearer, and burned on the lovely face. Then a voice spoke in her ear:

"Good-evening, Miss Winans."

Precious started and looked at the speaker.

She recognized her drawing-master, Lindsey Warwick, a young man she secretly disliked because she had a vague suspicion that he was the writer of several mysterious love-letters she had lately received.

She gave him a haughty nod, but she did not speak, only stared in surprise at his elegant evening suit and the rose in his buttonhole, that transformed him from the poor drawing-master to the elegant man of fashion.

Lindsey Warwick was not at all abashed by her supercilious air. He seemed to be wildly agitated, his face pale, his firm chin trembling with emotion. Bending close to the girl's ear he whispered:

"Come! your father wishes me to take you to your mother."

Something about him, his awe-struck tone, his agitation frightened the girl. She gasped inquiringly:

"Mamma?"

And Lindsey Warwick answered unhesitatingly, though his voice was hoarse and strange:

"Yes, poor child, your mother has just dropped dead of heart-disease over yonder. Come," and he held out his arm.

If she had uttered a cry the little scene might have attracted attention from the vast crowd surging about, but had he thrust a sword to the very hilt in her heart Precious could not have fallen more silently or swiftly at his feet. She just dropped down unconscious without moan or cry—that was all.

No one had observed anything strange, only one or two looked around when he exclaimed, "My sister has fainted!"

His ruse had succeeded admirably. Precious lay like a dead girl at his feet, and there was no one to interfere.

The villain lifted the slender white form in his arms and pushed through the crowd, trying to gain the door. People made way when they saw his burden and heard him mutter his formula, "My sister has fainted." But no one displayed any special interest. Half a score of women had fainted that night.

So Lindsey Warwick gained the outer air with his burden, and soon finding a cab took her away.

It was a daring game that he had played, but he had won.

The project had flashed into his mind when he saw her alone and unguarded in the heedless crowd, and in the desperation of a mad and hopeless love he had carried it out. He knew that the chances were terribly against him, but he resolved to run the risk in hope of the prize.

The cab took him and his captive to the very suburbs of South Washington—to an old tumble-down red brick house of two stories that stood alone in a large neglected lot. There were but a few more houses in the square, and those strictly of the shanty order.

Cabby held out his hand, remarking grumpily:

"Five dollars, you know, is legal fare for Inauguration night."

"I'll make it ten for good luck, and you can go on a big spree to-morrow," laughed Lindsey Warwick, handing him a bill.

Cabby thanked the kind gentleman vociferously, but he did not wait till the next day, but went on his orgies at once, and wound up early next morning in the police court, where he was sent to jail for ten days in default of payment of his fine. He never saw the papers, never knew of the sensation that had followed the simple fact of his driving a young lady and gentleman home from the Inauguration Ball. He did not dream that he had been concerned in an abduction, or that Senator Winans would have made him rich for life if he had given to him the clew he possessed to his lost daughter.

Precious, the petted daughter of wealth and luxury all her life, recovered her consciousness in the smallest, shabbiest, most common-looking bedroom she had ever beheld.

A coarse woman of about fifty years was leaning over her. She looked and smelled like a laundress.

"Who are you, and where am I?" quavered Precious.

A man came forward then, and at sight of him everything came back to her memory. She lifted her head from the coarse pillow with a shriek.

"Mamma! oh, darling mamma!"

"Be quiet. Your mother is all right, my dear," said Warwick. "The story of her death was only a ruse to make you faint, so that I could get you into my power. I love you, so I brought you away to make you my prisoner until you would consent to be my bride."

Precious sprang to her feet, her blue eyes blazing with anger and scorn.

"You must be crazy! Why, my papa will kill you for this!" she panted indignantly.

Lindsey Warwick laughed mockingly.

"Oh, no, my dear; he will not get the chance. He will never know where you are until you marry me!"

She stamped her little foot with the pride of a queen.

"Senator Winans' daughter marry you—a drawing-master!" she cried, with increased indignation.

"Certainly, my dear. Pride can stoop sometimes. Your mother was only a governess when she became the senator's bride!"

She looked at him in amazement at his knowledge of their family history, and answered proudly:

"My mother belonged to one of the proudest families in the South. It was only the reverse of fortune that placed her for a short time in a dependent position."

With a laugh he answered:

"Granted, but she was only a governess, and the senator's daughter may stoop like her father to wed her tutor."

"I hate you! I would not marry you if you were the last man on earth! Release me at once, and let me go home!" she cried imperiously.

"I will not. I love you to madness, and I have sworn that I will make you my bride. I will keep you imprisoned here until you consent."

"I will kill myself first."

"I am not afraid of that."

She looked at the coarse, frowzy-haired woman whose greasy clothes smelled of soapsuds.

"Are you in this plot?" she asked disdainfully.

"He is my son, and has put you in my charge, and I have promised to keep you safe; that is all," was the careless answer.

"But my father will search everywhere for me, and he will punish you both when he finds me."

"He will not find you, for there will not be the slightest clew for him to follow. This house is an old ruin, and my mother lives here alone. I board in one of the best neighborhoods in Washington, and I will never come here to see you only late at night."

He made a motion to the old woman, and she immediately retired from the room.

Then the dark, sneering face of the young man softened with love and longing. He knelt at her feet, and cried passionately:

"Forgive me, for I love you wildly, and I knew I could never win you except by force. I have loved you madly for months. I sent you the tenderest love-letters man ever penned, but you did not reply to them. I looked at you often with my heart in my eyes, but you averted your face. Why were you so cold to me?"

"I despised you," answered Precious. "Only yesterday I resolved to tell mamma that you were presuming on your position to try to make love to me. I wish now that I had told her. Then she would have had some suspicion of the truth."

"She will think now that you have eloped with some low-born lover!" he sneered, rising to his feet, for she had drawn back from him in disdain. "But I will leave you to rest now, my beautiful love, and my mother will come and help you to retire. Fear nothing. You will be kindly treated here, but you will never be restored to your home until you consent to marry me—ay, until the knot is tied. So think well of my proposal, for I will make you a good husband. Good-night," and he bowed and withdrew.

If the thought of her captivity had not been so dreadful, Precious could have laughed at the man's presumption.

To think that she, the daughter of an illustrious statesman, should have such a lover as this—a drawing-master, the son of a laundress! Well, papa would come to find her very, very soon, and then he would punish the bold villain for his presumption.