The Masked Bridal Part 23

She stood looking down into the box for a minute, then, as if impelled by some irresistible impulse, she laid the priceless stones all in a heap upon the table, when, taking hold of a loop, which had escaped the housekeeper's notice, she lifted the cus.h.i.+on from its place, thus revealing the papers which had been concealed beneath it.

She seized the uppermost one with an eager hand.

"I believe I will destroy it," she mused, "I am afraid there is something more in his desire to possess it than he is willing to admit, for he is so determined to get possession of it."

She half unfolded the doc.u.ment as if to examine it, when a sudden shock went quivering through her frame and a look of amazement overspread her face.

"What can this mean?" she exclaimed, in a tone of alarm, as she dashed it upon the floor and seized another.

This also proved disappointing.

"It was here the last time I looked! I am sure I left it on top of the others!" she muttered, with white lips, as, with trembling hands and heaving bosom, she overturned everything in search of the missing doc.u.ment.

But the most rigid examination failed to reveal it, and, with a cry of mingled agony and anger, she sank weak and trembling upon the nearest chair.

"It is gone!" she whispered, hoa.r.s.ely; "some one has stolen it!"

She sat there looking utterly helpless and wretched for a few moments.

Then her eyes began to blaze and her lips to twitch spasmodically.

"He has done this!" she cried, starting to her feet once more. "That was why he was absent so long from the ball-room to-night."

Seizing the papers she had removed from the box, she hastily replaced them, also the cus.h.i.+on, restoring the jewels to their places, after which she shut and locked the casket, taking care to remove the key from its lock.

This done, she hurried from the room, looking more like a beautiful fiend than a woman.

CHAPTER XVII.

"WOULD YOU DARE BE FALSE TO ME, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS?"

With her exquisite robe trailing unheeded after her, Anna G.o.ddard swept swiftly down the hall and rapped imperatively upon the door of her husband's room.

There was no answer from within.

She tried the handle. The door would not yield--it was locked on the inside.

"Gerald, are you in bed?" his wife inquired, putting her lips to the crack and speaking low.

"What do you wish, Anna?" the man questioned.

"I wish to see you--I must speak with you, even if you have retired,"

she returned, imperatively.

There was a slight movement within the room, then the door was thrown open, and Gerald G.o.ddard stood before her.

But she shrank back almost immediately, a low exclamation of surprise escaping her as she saw his face, so white, so pain-drawn, and haggard.

"Gerald! what is the matter?" she demanded, forgetting, for the moment, her own anger and even her errand there, in the anxiety which she experienced for him.

"I am feeling quite well, Anna," he responded, in a mechanical tone.

"What is it you wish to say to me?"

Sweeping into the room, she closed the door after her, then confronted him with accusing mien.

"What do I wish to say to you?" she repeated, her voice quivering with pa.s.sion, her eyes blazing with a fierce expression. "I want that paper which you have stolen from me."

"I--I do not understand you, Anna," the man began, in a pre-occupied manner. "What paper--what--"

"I will bear no trifling," she pa.s.sionately cried, interrupting him.

"You know very well what paper I refer to--I never had but one doc.u.ment in my possession in which you had any interest; the one you have so beset me about during the last few weeks."

"That?" exclaimed the man, at last aroused from the apathy which had hitherto seemed to possess him.

"That!" retorted his companion, mockingly imitating his tone, "as if you did not very well know it was 'that,' and no other. Gerald G.o.ddard, I have come to demand it of you," she went on shrilly. "You have no right to enter my rooms, like a thief, and steal my treasures!

I--"

"Anna, be still!" commanded her husband, sternly. "You are losing control of yourself, and some of our guests may overhear you. I know nothing of the doc.u.ment."

"You lie!" hissed the woman, almost beside herself with mingled rage and fear. "Who, but you, could have any interest in the thing? who, save you, even knew of its existence, or that it had ever been in my possession? Give it back to me! I will have it! It's my only safeguard. You knew it, and you have stolen it, to make yourself independent of me."

"Anna, you shall not demean either yourself or me by giving expression to such unjust suspicions," Gerald G.o.ddard returned with cold dignity.

"I swear to you that I do not know anything about the paper. I have not even once laid my eyes upon it since you stole it from me. If it has been taken from the place where you have kept it concealed," he went on, "then other hands than mine have been guilty of the theft."

There was the ring of truth in his words, and she was forced to believe him; yet there was a mystery about the affair which was beyond her fathoming.

"Then who could have taken it," she gasped, growing ghastly white at the thought of there being a third party to their secret--"who on earth has done this thing?"

Gerald G.o.ddard was silent. He had his suspicions, suspicions that made him quake inwardly, as he thought of what might be the outcome of them if they should prove to be true.

"Gerald, why do you not answer me?" his companion impatiently demanded. "Can you think of any one who would be likely to rob us in this way?"

"Have you no suspicion, Anna?" the man asked, and looking gravely into her eyes. "Was there no one among your guests to-night, who--"

"Who--what--!" she cried, as he faltered and stopped.

"Was there no one present who made you think of--of some one whom you--have known in the--the past?"

"Ha! do you refer to Mrs. Stewart?" said madam. "Did you also notice the--resemblance?"

"Could any one help it?--could any one ever mistake those eyes?

Anna--she was Isabel herself!"

"No--no!" she panted wildly, "she may be some relative. Are you losing your mind? Isabel is--dead."