CHAPTER XVI.

A TRYING ORDEAL.

It was as still as death in the luxurious drawing-room--the sudden, awful silence of the grave itself, so intense that it was almost palpable. It was broken at last by Helen Raleigh’s cold, cutting, imperious voice:

“Grafton,” her hard eyes uplifted to her husband’s face, “you are master here. I desire you to put an end to this shameful, disgraceful scene. Your son--my son,” with a hysterical sob, “who dares stand there and insult his own mother--I demand that he be punished as he deserves. And as for you,” she glided swiftly over to where Lillian stood, pale as marble and trembling like a leaf, and brought one white, jeweled hand down with a grip of iron upon the girl’s shrinking shoulder, “leave my house this moment, you miserable little wretch--you beggar! Begone, I say, or I shall--”

“Mother--stop! Not another word!” Richard Raleigh’s face was pale as death and his eyes flashed ominously. “I command you to be silent. This lady is my promised wife, and as such I swear that she shall be respected! Father, are you never going to speak?”

Grafton Raleigh wheeled about and confronted his astonished wife.

“Helen,” his voice was low and stern, “cease this tirade at once. Richard is right, and--and”--in a whisper--“he has reasons--good reasons--for the step. The girl is placed in a position which she is not fitted to fill,” he went on, in a louder tone. “She is pure and lovely; and Richard--ahem!--loves her, and she--ahem!--loves Richard, and I have promised not to interfere. I do not see--I do not see why they should not marry.”

Mrs. Raleigh could only stand and stare blankly into her husband’s flushed face. Sinking at last upon a velvet sofa, she still sat in blank, wordless silence, too overwhelmed to speak--too crushed by the suddenness of the blow to find words to utter. At last:

“Great heavens! am I mad, or am I dreaming? Grafton Raleigh, are you in your senses? You, Grafton Raleigh, millionaire--you, who have just listened quietly to the proposal for the hand of your only daughter from a beggarly journalist,” Jack Lyndon bowed mockingly, “you, who have listened, I say,” went on the irate lady, “and have decided to give him a chance to win Rosamond, your only daughter--”

A pause during which Rosamond flashed a swift glance into the pale face of her prospective betrothed, but failed to see any ecstatic joy mirrored upon his countenance. Mrs. Raleigh continued:

“You now permit your son--your only son--to say such words to a servant-girl--a common servant-girl--your daughter’s waiting-maid! Your son, who might have had his choice of half a dozen wealthy and fashionable women! Grafton Raleigh, if I did not believe--ay, know that you had gone mad--I would promise you to be revenged for this. But you are out of your senses, and I must be patient as possible. But I can not be patient!” she sobbed, starting to her feet and beginning to pace up and down the great room with nervous tread. “I shall die! I--shall--die! Oh, somebody do something for me--quick! I am going to faint--to die--to--die!”

And then followed an attack of hysterics which prostrated the irate mother entirely, and made Jack Lyndon cast wistful glances toward the door, through which for the present he dared not attempt to escape. After a little Mrs. Raleigh’s maid appeared and the patient was carried up to her own room, and a physician telephoned for, after which silence settled down once more.

Pale and still, the group in the drawing-room below stood gazing into each other’s faces. Jack was the first to break the strange, oppressive silence. He walked straight up to Lillian and held out his hand.

“Allow me to congratulate you, Miss Leigh,” he said, in a cold, hard voice. “You have done the best thing possible--for yourself.”

Lillian’s eyes flashed, she bowed coldly, but she did not seem to notice his offered hand. She could not take it. She could not shake hands with the man whom Richard Raleigh had accused of her father’s murder. With a shudder she turned aside, then she forced herself to glance back into his face again.

“And you,” she returned, quietly, her face pale with righteous indignation, “may you be as happy as you deserve.”

He turned away, pale and trembling, and with a brief, comprehensive good-night to the others, left the room.

Rosamond followed him into the hall.

“Jack,” in a low tone, “I am not yet clear as to the result of your interview with papa. He said--”

“That he would make no objection for the present--would let affairs take their own course, etc., etc.; but he stipulates that there shall be no engagement, and that the matter be kept secret for a year. Only I may call as often as I please, and be looked upon as an honored guest, and all that sort of thing, while you are to be left untrammeled. If any other suitor appears with more money, more brains, more good looks than I possess--”

“Jack!” in a tone of protest, and with a girlish giggle Rosamond threw herself into his arms.

For just a moment he submitted to the embrace, shutting his teeth down fiercely into his under lip; then he removed her clinging arms and turned toward the door.

“I must go, Rosamond,” he said, firmly. “I am expected down at the office for a good six hours’ work.”

“Poor fellow!” in a tone of tender compassion; “that shall soon be a thing of the past. For, of course, we shall be married some time, Jack, and--and then you need never work again.” He shuddered. “And it is absurd in papa,” she went on, vehemently, “to impose such conditions upon us. As though I could ever care for any one else. And if a richer suitor should make his appearance”--“Heaven grant it!” was Jack’s mental ejaculation--“it would make no difference to me, Jack, I assure you. Ah, must you go? Good-night, then.”

And a pair of thin lips were held up suggestively, so what could Jack do but bend his handsome head and touch them lightly with his own?

The first kiss! But, alas! Jack Lyndon was thinking even then of the lips which he had kissed only the morning before--or was it a century ago?

Sick and faint and heart-weary, he closed the door of the Raleigh mansion behind him and went down the street, pale and wan, his eyes full of moody light. He looked like a desperate gambler who has staked his all upon one throw of the dice--and lost.

“I hope to Heaven some wealthy suitor will come along and win her from me,” muttered this strange lover hoarsely, as he strode on down the broad, aristocratic avenue, back to the office of the “Thunderer.” “What a sham--what a miserable sham I am!” he burst forth, impetuously, “to ask a man for his daughter in marriage, hoping all the time that he will refuse me. And I actually believed that Grafton Raleigh almost suspected it, or he would hardly have listened so graciously to a proposal for Rosamond’s hand from a poor devil of a writer. Ah, me! I can only leave it to time and fate. How beautiful she was to-night!” he went on, suddenly breaking the silence which had fallen over him; “the woman who has blighted my faith in all womankind, and has caused me to make shipwreck of my whole life! She loved me only a few hours ago!” he added, bitterly. “Yesterday she told me with tears in her eyes and kisses upon my lips that she loved me. To-night she is betrothed to a millionaire’s son. Good God! I would give my life to know the truth, and why she has changed so! Bah! what a fool I am! As though it were anything but the glittering bait which Richard Raleigh holds out to her! Yesterday morning she did not know that he meant marriage, so the poor newspaper scribbler was in favor. To-night there is the prospect of life in a fine house, with servants and jewels and costly dresses--bah! all that goes to make up a woman’s heaven--and for these she turns her back upon love and me, and accepts the glittering future. But one thing puzzles me.”

He came to a halt upon the deserted streets, and stood staring blankly through the semi-darkness.

“Why should Richard Raleigh wish to marry a poor girl like Lillian Leigh?” he went on, slowly. “And he really means honorable marriage, or he would never have taken the bold step of presenting her to his family as his betrothed wife. And why--why is Grafton Raleigh, the purse-proud millionaire, so resigned? Nay, more--I firmly believe that he is willing--is even pleased; for I surprised a look of intense satisfaction and relief upon his face while he listened to Richard’s words. Ah, well, it is a mystery to me,” he went on, as he plunged into the gloom of the nearest street corner and hastened on down-town--“a mystery which I may never unravel. But, for my own part, I am the most miserable man alive, and the sooner the Gordian knot of life is cut the better for me!”

In the meantime, a terrible scene was taking place at the Raleigh mansion. Mrs. Raleigh, recovered from the hysterics, was still able to enact the rôle of the injured mother, the insulted and outraged lady, and she spared no words to impress upon her hearers the full enormity of the crime from which she was suffering.

“A common servant-girl!” she panted, angrily, pacing madly up and down her handsome chamber, whither her husband and Rosamond had followed her. “A working-girl--daughter of one of my husband’s employees! A low-born creature like that to be the wife of my son--my handsome Richard--who might have his choice among the ladies of the land! Grafton, I can not endure it!” she shrieked, madly. “Drive that girl from the house--I command you! She shall not remain here! I hate her--hate her! I hate her pretty baby face and silly ways, her cat-like deceit, her snaky way of winding herself about everybody’s heart but mine! Ah, no! not mine--nor Rosamond’s! We are women, and we know a bad, designing woman--a base adventuress--when we see one. It takes a woman to know a woman’s real nature, I tell you, Grafton Raleigh.”

“On the principle that it takes a thief to catch a thief, I presume,” intervened that gentleman, dryly. “Now, Mrs. Raleigh, are you done? Have you finished your tirade? If so, then perhaps--possibly you may listen to me. For I have something to say to you and also to my daughter--a revelation to make. Richard and I have been hiding something--an important discovery--from you both, for our own private reasons. Mrs. Raleigh--Rosamond--listen both of you. How would you like--how would you both like--to be poor? Poor! Not simply deprived of extravagances--a few extra jewels, an unnecessary servant, a useless superfluity of some sort; but poor--plainly, horribly, uncompromisingly poor? How would you like to live on a back street in a six-room cottage, and be your own servants, and exist without jewels, walk instead of drive in your carriage with liveried footman, forego Newport, Saratoga, and all that? How would you like to give up Jack Lyndon, Rosamond? For, of course, without money that marriage is off. Answer me, both of you, how would you like to be poverty-stricken paupers?”

Mrs. Raleigh’s eyes were riveted upon Grafton Raleigh’s pale, earnest face.

“You are mad!” she was beginning.

He bowed.

“So you have remarked before, madame!” he interrupted, coldly. “I repeat my question, how would you like to be poor? Now listen. The great house of Raleigh & Raleigh stands upon the verge of ruin, and although it may sound absurd and incredible to you, there are reasons--real, tangible reasons--why a marriage with this girl will obviate all this; will save us from ruin--utter ruin and black disgrace--a disgrace which will tempt you to end your lives to escape its obloquy; a disgrace which would turn Jack Lyndon from you, Rosamond, and would make our best friend pass us by. I can explain no further now; you must take my simple word for it. But if Richard Raleigh does not make that girl Lillian Leigh his wife, and soon, we will all be beggars, and I--I shall die in prison, the death of a felon!”

He paused to mop the cold perspiration from his clammy forehead with his handkerchief. He was as pale as death, and trembled visibly.

“Now, Helen Raleigh,” he continued, glancing into his wife’s white, startled face with fierce, eager eyes, “will you keep on with your senseless ravings, or will you make the best of the situation and consent to the marriage without asking me unpleasant and troublesome questions? will you relieve us from the scandal of a marriage without your consent? in short, will you save us from ruin, disgrace, and me from a felon’s death?”