CHAPTER XXXV.
ALAN "EVOLVES" A PLAN OF ACTION.
Kind hands brought Leslie back to life, and to a new sense of pain, foreven the hands that love us must sometimes hurt, when they hope to heal.
Every servant of the household loved its fair mistress. And while thosewho could, bustled to and fro, commanded by Winnie, each eager tominister to so kind a mistress, and those who were superfluous wentabout with anxious, sympathetic faces, Alan Warburton, the one unpityingsoul in all that household, paced his room restlessly, troubled andanxious--not because of Leslie's illness, but because of the revelationjust received from her lips.
"I cannot give life to the victim whose death lies atyour door."--page 251.]
Could this thing be true? Had his brother Archibald, a Warburton of theWarburton's--that family so old, so proud, so pure; that family whosemen had always been gentlemen whom the world had delighted to honor;whose women had been queens of society, stately, high-bred, abovereproach--_could_ Archibald Warburton have made a _mesalliance_? Andsuch a _mesalliance_! The daughter of a pair of street mendicants,social outlaws; an adventuress with no name, no lineage, no heritagesave that of shame.
"Of all the notable things of earth The queerest one is pride of birth."
For the moment it outweighed his grief for Archibald, his anxiety forDaisy, his very humanity. Later on, he might be Warburton the friend,and the truest of friends; Warburton the lover, and the tenderest, themost chivalrous of lovers; Warburton the champion, as on the night whenhe rescued Leslie; but now he is only Warburton the aristocrat; thearistocrat, insulted, defied, betrayed; brought into contact withmystery, _intrigue_, base blood, and in his own household. Could he everforgive Leslie Warburton? Would he, if he could?
He had accused her as the cause of his brother's death, as the source ofthe mystery which overhung the fate of little Daisy; and in his heart ofhearts he believed her guilty. And now, her daring, her cool effrontery,had made some hitherto mysterious movements plain. Her father andmother, those wretches who lived in a hovel, and smelled of the gutter!But she had betrayed herself. These people must be found at whateverhazard.
Thus meditating, he paced up and down, up and down. And before hefinally ceased his restless journeyings to and fro, he had evolved atheory and a plan of action. A very natural theory it was, and a verymagnanimous plan.
Having first catalogued Leslie as an adventuress, he endowed her, in histheory, with all the attributes of the adventuress of the orthodoxschool--cunning, crafty, avaricious, scheming for a fortune;unscrupulous, of course, and only differing from the average adventuressin that she was the cleverest and the most beautiful, as she had beenthe most successful of her kind.
"Granted that these two old wretches are her parents," he reasoned, "therest explains itself. They incite her to plot for their mutual welfare.She marries Archibald, and even I discern that she does not love him;but he is wealthy, and an invalid. Only one thing stands between her andan eventual fortune, and that is poor little Daisy. Possibly she mayhave still some tenderness of heart, and for a time Daisy is spared. Butafter a while, the mysterious goings and comings begin; the arrival ofnotes by strange messengers; and a new look dawns upon mysister-in-law's fair face. Then comes the masquerade. A man is here, inthis house, by appointment with her. He follows her to the abode of theFrancoises and so do I. Who is this man? A gentleman, she tells me. Herlover, doubtless, and all is explained. With Archibald removed, whatwould stand between her lover and herself? With Daisy removed, she wouldpossess both lover and fortune. And to remove Daisy was to removeArchibald. The shock would suffice. She planned all this deliberately;and on the night of the masquerade the Francoises aided her, and Daisywas stolen."
Thus reasoned Alan. And then he formed his plans. He would spare Leslieall public disgrace, but she must cease to call herself a Warburton ofthe Warburtons. She must give up the family name, and go away from thecity; far away, where no gossiping tongue could guess at her history, orconnect her with the Warburtons. For Daisy's sake, for his brother'ssake, for the honor of the name, she must go. She might take herfortune, left her by her deceived husband, but she _must_ go.
"I will institute a search for the Francoises," he muttered. "Everythingmust be done privately; there must be no scandal. If I requireassistance, I can trust Follingsbee. I will see Leslie again, in themorning. I will make terms with her, haughty as she is, and--first ofall she _shall_ tell me the truth concerning Daisy."
He was not unmindful of his own peril, not regardless for his ownsafety, but he was determined to know the truth concerning thedisappearance of Daisy Warburton, and if need be, to face the attendantrisk.
"I will write to the Chief of Police again," he mused. "I must haveadditional help. But first, before writing, I will see _her_ once more."
And then he ceased his promenade for a moment, to strike his handstogether and stare contemptuously at his image reflected from the mirrordirectly before him.
"Fool!" he muttered half aloud; "that letter, that scrawl which I gaveback to her so stupidly! It contained their address. It would tell mewhere to find them, if I had it; and I will have it."
In the anger and astonishment of the moment, he had returned thethreatening note to Leslie, mechanically and without once glancing atthe directions scrawled at the foot of the sheet.
While Alan paced and pondered, Leslie, having recovered from her swoon,went weakly and wearily to her own room, tenderly escorted by Winnie andthe good-hearted, blundering Millie.
When she was comfortably established upon a couch, and the toosolicitous Millie had been dismissed, Winnie's indignation burst out inlanguage exceedingly forcible, and by no means complimentary to AlanWarburton.
But Leslie stopped the flow of her eloquence by a nervous appealinggesture.
"Let us not discuss these things now, dear; I think I have beenovertasked. I cannot talk; I must have quiet; I must rest."
And then Winnie--denouncing herself for a selfish, careless creaturewith the same unsparing bitterness that, a moment before, she hadlavished upon Alan,--assured herself that the curtains produced theproper degree of restful shadow, that the pillows were comfortablyadjusted, that all Leslie could require was close at her hand, kissedher softly on either cheek, and tripped from the room.
Left alone, Leslie lay for many moments moveless and silent, but notsleeping. The softly-shaded stillness of the room acted upon herover-wrought nerves like a soothing spell. She had passed the boundariesof uncertainty. She had writhed, and wept, and shuddered under thetorturing hands of Doubt and Fear, Terror, and Surprise. She had boweddown before Despair. But all that was past; and now she was calm andtearless, a brave soul that, having abandoned Hope, stands face to facewith its Fate.
After a time she moved languidly, and then lifted herself slowly fromamong the pillows.
"Not to-night," she murmured, lifting her hand to her head with a sighof weariness. "I must have rest first."
But she did not return to her pillows. Instead, she arose slowly,crossed the room, and drawing back the curtains let in, in a glowingflood, the last brightness of the afternoon sunshine. Then seatingherself at a dainty writing-desk, she penned three notes, with a handthat moved slowly but with no unsteadiness.
The first was addressed to Mr. Follingsbee; the second to Mrs. French,the mother of Winnie; and the third to Winnie herself.
When the notes were done, she still sat before the desk, watching thefading-out of the golden sunlight with a far away look in her eyes. Shesat thus until the last ray had died in the West, and the twilight camecreeping on grey and shadowy.
Some one was knocking at the drawing-room door. She arose slowly toadmit the visitor. It was Alan's valet, with a twisted note in his hand.
Leslie took the note, and bidding the servant wait, she returned to theinner room.
MADAM:
As you manifested no hesitation in exhibiting to me the note received by you this morning, you will, I trust, not ob
ject to my giving it a second perusal. Please send it me by bearer of this. I will return it promptly.
ALAN WARBURTON.
This is what Leslie read, and when she had finished, she took from herpocket the crumpled note of the Francoises. Over this she bent her headfor a moment, murmured something half aloud, as if to impress it on hermemory, and went back to the dressing-room with the two papers in herhand.
Going slowly toward the grate, she stirred the smouldering fire until itsent up a bright blaze, and with another glance at the crumpled note,she dropped it upon the glowing coals, and watched it crumble to ashes.Then she turned toward the valet, folding and twisting his master's noteback into its original shape as she advanced.
"Return this to your master," she said, "and tell him that the paper heasks for has been destroyed."
As the valet turned away, she closed the door and went back to thegrate.
"Alan Warburton has canceled my debt to him with an insult," shemurmured, with a cold smile upon her lips. "From this moment he has nopart in my existence."