Kidnapped at the Altar Part 20

he thought; adding impatiently: "This will never do; we shall be late for the train, sure. I will have to take the man off her hands."

At that instant, Gerelda, panting with excitement sprung across the threshold of the conservatory.

From his leafy seat Varrick could hear and see all that took place, while no one could see him.

He had risen, and was just about to step forward, when he caught sight of Gerelda's face. The color of it held him spell-bound. It was as pale as death, and her eyes flashed fire. She was fairly frothing at the mouth, and the look of venomous rage that distorted her features appalled him.

"You!" cried Gerelda. "Have you risen from the grave to confront me?"

"I am Captain Frazier--at your service, madame," returned her companion, with a low bow. "As for my returning from the unknown sh.o.r.e, why, you flatter me in imagining that I have so much power, though I have been known to do some miraculous things before now. I am sorry that so many of my friends believe the ridiculous story that was set afloat regarding my supposed death. I am--"

"Why are you here? What do you want?" cried Gerelda.

"You are inclined to be brusque, my dear," he replied, tauntingly. "If you had asked me that question half an hour ago, I should have answered, 'I am here to stop your marriage with Hubert Varrick at whatever cost. I have traveled by night and by day, foot-sore and hungry, to get here in time to prevent it.' I-- I thought you had perished in the fire on the island, until I read the article in the paper announcing your marriage."

"If this is all you have to say to me, permit me to say good-morning,"

she returned icily, turning to leave the place.

"You shall listen to me!" he cried. "I vowed in days gone by that you should never be happy with Hubert Varrick. You promised that you would marry me, and those words changed my whole life."

"Well, now that I am another's bride, what can you do about it?" sneered Gerelda.

"I mean to see Varrick and have a little talk with him," he answered. "I will tell him how, on the very night before the marriage was to have taken place at the Crossmon Hotel, at Alexandria Bay, I threw myself on my knees at your feet, and cried out to you to spare me; that you had played with my heart too long, and urged you to fly with me, and that you said, while I knelt before you, that if you decided to fly with me you would let me know by sunrise the following morning, but that you must have all night to think it over.

"Do you dare face me and deny that?" continued Captain Frazier, seizing her white wrist and holding it in an iron grip.

"No, I do not deny it," she answered. "But what of it? What do you expect to make of it?"

"This!" he cried, furiously. "I intend to be even with you. I will have a glorious revenge! I will see Hubert Varrick before he leaves this house, and say to him: 'I hope you may be happy with your bride,' and I will laugh in his face, crying out: 'She eloped with me not so very long ago, and we went to my island home, where we kept in hiding until the sensation should blow over. We remained there, as I can prove by all my servants, and I was a very slave to her sweet caprices.'"

"You would not say that!" cried Gerelda. "I would tell him my side of the story--that you kidnapped me, and held me by force on the island."

"Varrick is a man of the world," he returned, tauntingly. "Your side of the story is too flimsy for him or any one else to believe."

"Stop! You must not--you shall not!" cried Gerelda, wildly. "I-- I will make terms with you. I see you are shabbily dressed and in want of money. I will give you a check, here and now, for a thousand dollars, if you will go away, never again to return, and have nothing to say--nothing. Your story would ruin me, false though it is."

The captain arched his eyebrows.

"I think I could bring satisfactory proof as to where you pa.s.sed your time."

Hubert Varrick, standing behind the foliage, was fairly stricken dumb by what he heard and saw.

He did not love his bride, but he believed in her implicitly. All the old doubt which had filled his heart and killed his love for Gerelda came surging back like a raging torrent, sweeping over his very soul.

In that instant the thought of Jessie Bain came to him--sweet little Jessie, whose love for him he had read in her every glance, and to whom he had given all his heart with a deeper, stronger love than he had ever given to Gerelda, even in those old days. How he longed to break from the terrible nightmare which seemed to fetter him!

"Your offer of a thousand dollars is a very fair one; but it will take double that sum to purchase my silence. You are quite right in your surmise. I am in need of money. With one fell swoop I have lost every dollar of my fortune, and now that all romance and sentiment are over between us, I have no compunction in showing you the mercenary side of my nature. Make it two thousand, and I will consent to hold my peace, seeing that I can not mend matters by undoing the marriage."

"Come with me. We will settle this now and forever. I have but five minutes to devote to you. Step this way," said Gerelda.

The next instant they had disappeared, and Hubert Varrick was left standing there alone.

How long he stood there he never knew. His valet came in search of him.

He found him at the end of the conservatory, standing motionless as a statue among the shrubbery.

"Master," he said, "your bride bids me say to you that you have barely time to get into your traveling clothes."

He was shocked at the horrible laugh that broke from Varrick's lips.

Had his master gone mad? he wondered.

He followed the man without a word, and five minutes later, with a firm step, he was walking down the corridor toward his bride's apartments.

But ere he could knock upon the door, it was opened by Gerelda. He offered his arm to Gerelda, and walked slowly by her side through the throng of friends to the carriage in waiting; and, amid showers of rice, peals of joyous laughter, and a world of good wishes, they were whirled away.

During the entire ride Varrick spoke no word. Gerelda watched him narrowly out of the corner of her eye, wondering why he looked so unusually angry.

They were barely in time to catch the train, and it was not until they were seated in their own compartment that Varrick ventured a remark to the beautiful girl he had just made his wife, and who was looking up into his face with such puzzled wonder in her great dark eyes.

"I should like your attention for a few moments, Mrs. Varrick," he said, turning to her with a haughty sternness that was new to him.

"You are my wife," he went on; "the ceremony is barely over which made you that, yet I would recall it if I could."

"What do you mean, Hubert?" she cried, piteously.

"We will not have any theatricals, if you please," he said, waving her back. "A guilty conscience should need no accuser. It is best to speak plainly to you, and to the point. Suffice it to say I was in the conservatory at the time you entered. I heard all that pa.s.sed between Captain Frazier and yourself. Now, here is what I propose to do: We were to take a wedding-trip to Montreal. We will go there, but when we reach our destination, you and I will part forever. I shall inst.i.tute proceedings for a divorce at once, and I shall never know another happy moment until the divorce is granted. You shall be wife of mine but in name until we reach Montreal; then we part forever."

"Oh, Hubert, Hubert, you will not do this!" she sobbed, wildly. "It would ruin my life--kill me!"

"You did not stop to think that marriage with you would ruin my life,"

he interposed, bitterly. "What have you to say for yourself? Was Captain Frazier's story false or true? Remember, I heard him say that he could furnish proof of all he charged."

"It is useless to hide the truth from you," she whispered, hoa.r.s.ely. "I see that you know all. Give me a chance to think--only to think of some way out of it. It would kill me, Hubert, to part from you. Better death than that. You are my world, the suns.h.i.+ne of my life. I would pine away and die without you. Oh, Hubert, you must not leave me!"

"The words are easily said," he replied, "but they do not sound sincere.

I may as well make a clean breast of the whole matter," he went on, "and tell you the truth, Gerelda. I do not love you. I-- I--love another, though that love has never been confessed to the one I love. I-- I--married you because I felt in honor bound to do so, and in doing so I crushed all the love that was budding in my heart. But was it worth the sacrifice of two lives? You can not answer me. I shall not intrude upon you again until we reach Montreal. You can send for your mother; it would be best for me to leave you in her charge. Telegraph back to her from the next station we arrive at. The moment we reach Montreal we part forever!"

But at that instant a strange event happened.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE COLLISION--THE PILOT AT THE WHEEL.

Gerelda had been looking intently out of the window. Suddenly she sprang back with a wild cry that fairly froze the blood in Varrick's veins.