CHAPTER XII.

THE BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WIDOW.

As Italy crouched there, weeping in wild abandon, she heard a door open, lower down the hall, then footsteps coming along, accompanied by the crying of an infant.

The footsteps stopped at her door, there was a light rap, then a woman’s voice said deprecatingly:

“I beg pardon, Miss Vale, but I heard you up. May I speak to you?”

“One moment,” answered Italy. She hurriedly lighted her gas, threw on her dressing-gown, and opened the door to Mrs. Mays, her landlady, who entered with the crying infant in her arms.

“My dear, I beg a hundred pardons, but my daughter is taken suddenly very ill with convulsions, and there is not another lady in the house that I can appeal to for help. The nurse left to-day, and the baby cannot stay in bed with its sick mother. It is crying from loneliness and cold. Will you, my dear, let it lie in bed with you to-night while I attend to my daughter?”

“Certainly,” Italy answered, taking the screaming bundle of flannel and lace rather gingerly into her arms, “but, dear me, Mrs. Mays, how can I stop its crying?”

“It will stop itself as soon as you get into bed, and let it snuggle up close on your arm and get warm. You see, it has been used to sleeping with its mother and in the dark, but her restless tossings and the light in her room keep it awake and sick. Do the best you can with it, my dear, and God bless you!” cried Mrs. Mays, hurrying from the room, while Italy locked the door, lowered the light, and crept into bed with her wee charge that, sure enough, as soon as it became conscious of the warmth and the darkness, cuddled close within her warm arm and fell asleep.

“Poor little girlie,” murmured Italy, with that rush of tenderness every womanly heart feels for helpless infancy.

But the chances are that had Italy guessed whose child lay on her arm she would have recoiled from it with something near akin to loathing.

Italy had been an inmate of this pleasant boarding-house almost two months, but she had never seen Mrs. Mays’ widowed daughter nor heard her name, although she knew that she was very young, and had been suddenly widowed in barely a year after marriage.

For two months she had been ill, and since the birth of her child, six weeks before, her life had been almost despaired of. But in the last few days she had shown signs of rapid improvement, and the sick-nurse, having another engagement, had left the invalid to her mother’s care.

It was most sad to think of the hapless young mother widowed so suddenly before her child was born, and Italy’s heart swelled with grief and pity for the fatherless babe.

In the pretty parlor down-stairs was a lovely crayon of a young girl with dark hair and eyes, and a wilful, pouting mouth, and Mrs. Mays had told her one day that it was her daughter Isabel.

“Taken when she was at boarding-school just a few weeks before she ran off to marry a dissipated scamp. Yes, he was a scamp, Miss Vale, or he would have asked my consent, and not carried her off in that fashion, almost breaking my heart, for Isabel was my only daughter, and I loved her better than life. But perhaps he knew I would refuse, for though he was handsome and had a little money, he had a bad reputation as a fast man, and I would not have let my child marry him for wealth untold. But she married him without my consent, and I never forgave her till after his death, when she came home to me broken-hearted.”

The little babe slept sweetly, the storm muttered on outside, and Italy, too much disturbed to sleep, lay among the pillows thinking, thinking, till her brain seemed to burn.

She was glad that she could at last believe Francis Murray innocent of the sin of which she suspected him. Her heart had rejected the belief all the while, and now reason came to her aid. It could not be true. She had been mad to cling to that ignoble suspicion, after she had seen and known him in all the quiet nobility of his daily life.

“I wronged that grand soul, and may Heaven forgive me!” she sobbed.

A new plan had been forming in her mind for days, and she suddenly resolved to carry it out.

Lawyer Gardner had been back in Boston some time, but as she was comfortably situated with Mrs. Mays, she had never opened communication with him, fearing his disapproval of the object that had brought her to America. But now rendered desperate by failure and hopelessness, Italy resolved to seek his sympathy and advice.

“I will go to him this day,” she resolved firmly.

A little after daylight Mrs. Mays came for the child.

“Isabel is better, much better,” she said. “To tell you the truth, Miss Vale, it was partly hysteria that ailed her. She got to weeping over her dead husband, and then there was no controlling her nerves until the violence of her grief wore out her strength. She is calmer now, and begging for the baby. Thank you for keeping it so long for me.”

She went away with the sleeping babe, and then Italy fell into a long sleep that lasted until she was aroused by the breakfast-bell.

She rose and made a careful street toilet.

“The sun is shining after the storm--a happy omen,” she said; “I will go to Mr. Gardner after breakfast.”

She went down and had her morning meal with Ralph Allen and the only other boarder, a grim professor of Greek, who hurried out as soon as he had bolted his meal.

Ralph lingered for a few moments’ chat with her before he strolled off to his studio. He was a rising young artist.

“I saw Alexie yesterday, and promised her for you that all three of us would go to the theater this evening. Was I impertinent?” he queried brightly.

“Not at all. I shall be very glad,” she replied smilingly; for Ralph seemed like a brother to her, he was so genial and kind. She was going up-stairs for her hat and jacket when she met Mrs. Mays coming down.

“Miss Vale, you have been so kind. Will you do me another favor?” she inquired deprecatingly, and as Italy gazed at her inquiringly she added:

“Will you come in and see Isabel a few moments. She is so grateful for your kindness last night, and wants to thank you herself.”

“It was nothing----” Italy began, but she followed Mrs. Mays along the hall to her daughter’s room.

The invalid was lying in bed propped up in pillows, with the dimpled little baby held to her breast with one arm. A warm shawl of rose-colored cashmere was draped about her shoulders, and above it shone a face of wondrous beauty, dark in the eyes and hair, arch in the features, but ghastly pale and wasted now, with big eyes, too solemn and somber for her age, that could not have exceeded nineteen at the most.

Mrs. Mays led Italy to the side of the bed.

“My dear, I’ve brought her, the sweet girl that took care of baby last night, so that you could thank her for her goodness to us. Miss Vale, my daughter, Mrs. Severn.”

Italy bowed, muttered some almost inaudible words, then sank helplessly into a chair by the bedside, her brain whirling.

Severn! Severn! That name had struck her like a blow! She recalled what she had read in the papers about the beautiful young wife of Craig Severn who was nearly crazed by his tragic end! Could this be Craig Severn’s widow?

“Miss Vale, are you ill? You have grown very pale,” cried Mrs. Mays.

“No, no, it is nothing serious--just a dizziness! I am all right now,” gasped Italy, lifting her head quickly, then she looked at Mrs. Severn.

“I am glad that you are better. I hope you will soon be well,” she said.

“I don’t want to get well--I want to die!” was the answer, in a voice of passionate despair.

“Isabel!” cried her mother remonstratingly, but the unhappy creature looked at Italy, exclaiming:

“You don’t blame me, do you? Oh, Miss Vale, you know my sad story, of course. I had the dearest husband in the world, and he was murdered--foully murdered--before we had been married a year. What is there left for me to live for now?”

“The baby,” Italy said falteringly.

“Yes, yes, my little treasure!” cried the poor young mother, pressing the infant to her breast. Then her dark eyes gleamed. “Yes, I must live, live to hunt down Craig’s murderer and bring him to justice!”

Italy’s eyes had been wandering helplessly around the room. Suddenly they stopped at a portrait on an easel. Her frame seemed to grow rigid.

“It is the face of that monster--and I have lived two months under the same roof with his widow--the woman he was false to--yet who mourns him so truly,” she thought shudderingly.

Again Mrs. Mays interposed anxiously:

“Isabel, dear, do not talk so wildly! You frighten Miss Vale with your talk of bringing murderers to justice.”

“Mama, go away and leave us, please, I want to ask Miss Vale to help me name baby. You know she has never had a name yet,” the sick girl answered more calmly, and with a wan smile.

Mrs. Mays, mindful of pressing household duties, retired, and then Mrs. Severn resumed eagerly:

“Mama does not care anything about poor Craig because she hates him and believed slanders about him; but they were not true, Miss Vale, indeed they were not true. He loved me devotedly, and I worshiped him. Yes, and I have sworn to bring the murderer to justice.”

A faint film seemed to pass before Italy’s eyes. The room seemed to fade, and in its place gleamed a window-pane shattered by a bullet. Behind it shone the white face and lifted, writhing hands of the murderess! She was back in fancy with that fatal night, struggling with the villain who had lured her to that house where he met his sudden death.

“Miss Vale,” began Mrs. Severn, and Italy came back to the present with a dreadful start, and looked into the big, solemn black eyes opposite. Their owner was saying:

“I have the greatest faith that I shall succeed, for already I have one important clue. You see, my husband was never seen alive after he left Mr. Gardner’s law-office on the evening of the eighteenth of August. But there was a woman mixed up in the mystery, somehow. Mr. Gardner’s office-boy has told me that a beautiful young girl went into the office just before closing-time, and that my husband took her away afterward in a cab. The boy says that he would know the girl’s beautiful face again anywhere. He is watching for that face and will let me know when he sees it again.”