Marion Arleigh's Penance by Charlotte Mary Brame (freenovel24 .TXT) 📖

servants made sure all was right. No one in the wide world knew the true story of Lady Atherton's flight except her husband.

"I will find her," he said to himself; "but before I even begin to look for her I will settle my account with the sneaking villain known as Allan Lyster."


CHAPTER XIV.


In his luxurious drawing-room Allan Lyster sat alone. He was engaged to dine with a party of guardsmen at Richmond, but he hardly felt in spirits to go. This was Thursday; never dreaming that Lady Atherton would fail him, he had faithfully promised to pay his bet on Friday. It was now Thursday evening, and he had heard nothing from her. He had not the least intention of really betraying her to her husband--he knew the character of an English gentleman too well for that. He knew that if Lord Atherton had but the least suspicion of the vilely treacherous way in which he had preyed upon his innocent wife, he would, in all probability, thrash him within an inch of his life.

He was far from being comfortable, and wished that he had taken Adelaide's advice and had gone less rashly to work--had been content with less. After all, he felt compelled to own that he had been rather hard upon her.

"Let her send this time," he said to himself, "and I will not trouble her again just yet."

He was seated in a luxurious lounging chair, on the table by his side was a bottle of finest Cognac, and he was enjoying the flavor of a very fine cigar. Notwithstanding all these comforts, Allan Lyster was not happy.

"I cannot think," he said to himself, "why she does not send."

At that moment he heard a sharp ring at the door bell.

"That is the messenger," he said to himself, triumphantly, "and it is quite time, too."

But it was a man's heavy footstep that mounted the stairs, and when Allan Lyster looked anxiously at the door, he was astonished to see Lord Atherton enter, carrying a thick riding whip in his hand.

He sprang obsequiously from his chair.

"I am delighted to see you, my lord," he began, but one look at that white, stern face froze the words on his lips. Lord Atherton waved his hand.

"I want those letters, sir!" he cried, in a voice of thunder--"those letters that you have, holding as a sword over the head of my wife!"

"What if I refuse to give them?" replied Allan.

"Then I shall take them from you. I have read this precious epistle, in which you threaten to show them to me. Now bring them here."

"I am not accustomed, my lord, to this treatment."

Lord Atherton's face flushed, his eyes seemed to flame fire.

"Not a word; bring them to me! You have traded for the last time upon a woman's weakness and fears. I will read the letters, then I will tell you what I think of you."

"Better tell your wife," sneered the other, "what you think of her."

"My wife is a lady," was the quiet reply--"a lady for whom I have the greatest honor, respect and esteem. Your lips simply sully her name, and I refuse to hear it from you."

"She did not always think so," was the sullen reply. "If you had not stepped in and robbed me, she would have been my wife now."

The white anger of that face, and the convulsive movement of the hand that held the heavy whip, might have warned him.

"I want those letters," repeated Lord Atherton; "bring them to me at once. Remember, they are useless to you; you will never force one mere farthing from Lady Atherton--your keeping them will be useless."

"It will be more to my interest to keep them," sneered Allan Lyster; "they are interesting documents, and I can show them to those who will not judge the matter in so onesided a manner as your lordship."

"You may publish them, if you please," said Lord Atherton, "but I will take care that every line in them brands you with red hot shame. You shall publish them, and I will make all England ring with the story of your infamy. I will make every honest man loathe you."

"You cannot," said Allan Lyster.

"I can. Englishmen like fair play. I will tell all England how you took advantage of a girl's youth and inexperience, above all, of the fact of her being an orphan, to beguile her into making you a promise of marriage, and how since you have traded, you coward, on her weakness, on her love for her husband, on the best part of her nature; and I will tell my story so honestly, so well, that every honest man shall hate you. You may have frightened my poor wife with shadows, you cannot so frighten me. I tell you, and I am speaking truthfully, that I do not care if you print her letters and every man, woman and child read them; they shall read my vindication of her and my denunciation of you."

"You see, Lord Atherton, she did promise to marry me, and I did reckon upon her fortune. What will you give me for the letters?"

"Nothing. If, after reading them, I find you really received, from the pure and noble lady who is now my wife, a promise of marriage, I will give you some compensation. I will give you two thousand pounds, although I know that promise to have been drawn from her by fraud, treachery and cunning."

Allan Lyster began to see, in his own phrase, that the game was up. He unlocked the door of a little cabinet, and took from it a bundle of papers. He gave them to Lord Atherton, who, still standing, read them word for word.

"It is as I thought," he said, when he came to the last. "It is the worst case of fraud, deception and cowardice I have ever met. Nothing could be more mean, more dishonorable, more revolting. Still, as the promise is true, I will give you a check for two thousand pounds when you have destroyed them."

Very slowly and deliberately Allan Lyster tore the letters into the smallest shreds, until they all were destroyed, then Lord Atherton, taking a check book from his pocket, wrote him out a check for two thousand pounds.

Allan took it sullenly enough.

"If I had my rights," he said, "I should have more than that every quarter."

"That is as it may be," said Lord Atherton, quietly. "You may have deceived a very young and inexperienced girl; but you would not, perhaps, have been so successful when that same girl was able to compare you with others. Now I have paid you; remember, I do not seek to purchase your silence. I leave it entirely to your own option whether you tell your story or not. I know that you cannot brand yourself with deeper disgrace and shame than by making public your share in this transaction."

Allan Lyster murmured some insolent words which his lordship did not choose to hear. He straightened the lash of his whip.

"Now," he continued, blandly, "I am going to give you a lesson. I am going to teach you several things. The first is to respect the trusts that parents and governesses place in you when they confide young girls to you for lessons; the second, is to respect women, and not, like a vile, mean coward, to trade upon their secrets; and the third lesson I wish to give you is to make you an honest man, to teach you to live on your own earnings, and not on the price of a woman's tears. This is how I would enforce my lesson."

He raised that strong right arm of his and rained down heavy blows on the cowardly traitor who had taken a woman's money as the price of his honor and manhood. His face never for one moment lost its calm; but the strong arm did its work, until the coward whined for pity. Then Lord Atherton broke his whip in two and flung it on the floor.

"I should not like to touch even a dog with it," he said, "after it has touched you."

He stood still for some moments to see if the coward would make any effort to rise and revenge himself; but the man who had been content to live on a woman's misery thought the safest plan was to lie still on the floor.

"I shall be happy to repeat my lesson," said his lordship, calmly, "if you require it again."

Allan Lyster made no reply, and Lord Atherton walked away. When he was quite gone, and the last sound of his footsteps died away, he rose--he shook his fist in impotent wrath:

"Curse him!" he cried. "It shall go hard with me but I will be equal with him yet!"

He had played his last card and lost; henceforward there was nothing for him but hard work and dishonor. He knew that what Lord Atherton had said was true; if any one knew what he had done, nothing but hatred and disgust would be his portion.

Lord Atherton went at once to Scotland Yard and asked for a detective. He showed him the portrait of his wife, told him she had left home under a false impression, and that he would give him fifty pounds if he could trace her.

For a week all effort was in vain, they could hear nothing of her; then one morning Lord Atherton saw an advertisement in the "Times," and he said to himself that the lost was found.


CHAPTER XV.


ADVERTISEMENT.--On Thursday evening last a lady arrived at the little village of Redcliffe, and took lodgings there. The same evening she fell ill of brain fever, and now is in danger of death. She is a stranger to all in the village, and no clue as to her name or friends can be found. Any one who has a missing relative or friend is requested to attend to this advertisement.

Then followed a description of the lady and of the dress she wore. Lord Atherton felt sure that it was his lost wife.

Without saying one word, he went at once to Redcliffe; he went to the address given and was referred to Mrs. Hirste's.

He went there, and said he had every reason to believe the lady mentioned in the advertisement was his wife. "She left home," he said, "unknown to us, delirious, without doubt, at the time, and quite unable to account for her own action."

They took him into the room where she lay; he looked at the flushed face and shining eyes.

"It is my wife," he said, quietly. "Thank God, I have found her."

But Marion did not know him; her hot lips murmured continually of Allan, who was persecuting her, and of her husband whom she loved so dearly, but who would never be willing to see her again.

"How she must have suffered!" he said to himself. Then he telegraphed to London for a physician and a nurse. They were not long in coming; by that time the whole village was in a state of excitement and consternation.

"She will recover, I have every reason to believe," said the doctor, "but she has evidently suffered long and terribly. Some domestic trouble, my lord, I suppose, that has preyed upon her?"

"Yes," replied Lord Atherton, "a domestic trouble that she has been