A Perilous Secret Part 40

The Colonel instantly halted, and marched down with Julia on his arm, like a game-c.o.c.k when another rooster crows defiance.

"And what can you have to say to me, sir?" was his haughty inquiry.

"To take you down a peg. You rode the high horse pretty hard to-day. The spotless honor of the Cliffords, eh?"

Then it was fixed bayonets and no quarter.

"Have the Cliffords ever dabbled in trade or trickery? Coal merchants, coal heavers, and coal whippers may defile our fields with coal dust and smoke, but they can not defile our honor."

"The men are brave as lions, and the women as chaste as snow?"

sneered Bartley.

"I don't know about lions and snow. I have often seen a lion turn tail, and the snow is black slush wherever you are. But the Cliffords, being gentlemen, are brave, and being ladies, are chaste."

"Oh, indeed!" hissed Bartley. "Then how comes it that your niece there--whose name is _Miss_ Clifford, I believe--spent what this good man calls a honey-moon, with a young gentleman, at this good man's inn?"

Here the good man in question made a faint endeavor to interpose, but the gentlefolks by their impetuosity completely suppressed him.

"It's a falsehood!" cried Julia, haughtily.

"You scurrilous cad!" roared the Colonel, and shook his staff at him, and seemed on the point of charging him.

But Bartley was not to be put down this time. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the bracelet from the man, and held it up in triumph.

"And left this bracelet there to prove it was no falsehood."

Then Julia got frightened at the evidence and the terrible nature of the accusation. "Oh!" cried she, in great distress, "can any one here believe that I am a creature so lost? I have not seen the bracelet these two months. I lent it--to--ah, here she is! Mary, save me from shame; you know I am innocent."

Mary, who was standing at the window in Hope's study, came slowly forward, pale as death with her own trouble, to do an act of womanly justice. "Miss Clifford," said she, languidly, as one to whom all human events were comparatively indifferent--"Miss Clifford lent the bracelet to me, and I left it at that man's inn." This she said right in the middle of them all.

The hotel-keeper took the bracelet from the unresisting hand of Bartley, touched his hat, and gave it to her.

"There, mistress," said he. "I could have told them you was the lady, but they would not let a poor fellow get a word in edgeways." He retired with an obeisance.

Mary handed the bracelet to Julia, and then remained pa.s.sive.

A dead silence fell upon them all, and a sort of horror crept over Mary Bartley at what must follow; but come what might, no power should induce her to say the word that should send Walter Clifford to jail for seven years.

Bartley came to her; she trembled, and her hands worked.

"What are you saying, you fool?" he whispered. "The lady that left the bracelet was there with a gentleman."

Mary winced.

Then Bartley said, sternly, "Who was your companion?"

"I must not say."

"You will say one thing," said Bartley, "or I shall have no mercy on you.

Are you secretly married?"

Then a single word flashed across Mary's almost distracted mind--SELF-SACRIFICE. She held her tongue.

"Can't you speak? Are you a wife?" He now began to speak so loud in his anger that everybody heard it.

Mary crouched a little and worked her hands convulsively under the torture, but she answered with such a doggedness that evidently she would have let herself be cut to pieces sooner than said more.

"I--don't--know."

"You don't know?" roared Bartley.

Mary paused, and then, with iron doggedness, "I--don't--know."

This apparent insult to his common-sense drove Bartley almost mad. "You have given these cursed Cliffords a triumph over me," he cried; "you have brought shame to my door; but it shall never pa.s.s the threshold." Here the Colonel uttered a contemptuous snort. This drove Bartley wild altogether; he rushed at the Colonel, and shook his fist in his face.

"You stand there sneering at my humiliation; now see the example I can make." Then he was down upon Mary in a moment, and literally yelled at her in his fury. "Go to your paramour, girl; go where you will. You never enter my door again." And he turned his back furiously upon her.

This terrible denunciation overpowered poor Mary's resolution; she clung to him in terror. "Oh, mercy, mercy, papa! I'll explain to _you_, have pity on your child!"

Bartley flung her so roughly from him that she nearly fell, "You are my child no more."

But at that moment in strode William Hope, looking seven feet high, and his eyes blazing. "Liar and hypocrite," he roared, "_she never was your child_!" Then, changing to a tone of exquisite love, and stretching out both his hands to Mary, "SHE IS MINE!"

Mary, being now between the two men, turned swiftly first to one, then to the other, and with woman's infallible eye knew her own flesh and blood in that half-moment. She uttered a cry of love and rapture that went through every heart that heard it; and she flung herself in a moment upon her father's bosom.

He whirled her round like a feather on to his right arm, then faced both her enemies, Clifford and Bartley, with haughty defiance, head thrown back, and eyes that flashed black lightning in defense of his child.

CHAPTER XVII.

LOVERS' QUARRELS.

It was a living picture. The father protecting his child like an eagle; Bartley cooled in a moment, and hanging his head apart, gloomy and alarmed at the mad blunder rage had betrayed him into; Colonel Clifford amazed and puzzled, and beginning to see the consequences of all this; Julia clasping her hands in rapture and thrilling interest at so romantic an incident; Fitzroy beaming with delight at his sweetheart being cleared; and, to complete the picture, the villainous face of Leonard Monckton, disguised as an old man, showed itself for a moment sinister and gloomy; for now all hope of pecuniary advantage to him was gone, and nothing but revenge was on the cards, and he could not see his way clear to that.

But Hope was no posture-maker; he turned the next moment and said a word or two to all present.

"Yes, this is Grace Hope, my daughter. We were very poor, and her life was in danger; I saw nothing else but that; my love was stronger than my conscience; I gave her to that man upon a condition which he has now broken. He saved her life and was kind to her. I thanked him; I thank him still, and I did my best to repay him. But now he has trusted to appearances, and not to her; he has belied and outraged her publicly. But I am as proud of her as ever, and don't believe appearances against her character and her angel face and--"

"No more do I," cried Julia Clifford, eagerly. "I know her. She's purity itself, and a better woman than I shall ever be."

"Thank you, Miss Clifford," said Hope, in a broken voice; "G.o.d bless you.

Come, Grace, and share my humble home. At all events, it will shelter you from insult."

And so the pair went lovingly away, Grace clinging to her father, comforted for the moment, but unable to speak, and entered Hope's little cottage. It was but a stone's-throw from where they stood.

This broke up the party.