CHAPTER XVI.

Felise was prepared to see her rival fall fainting at her feet.

She expected nothing less from the shock to the girl's already overwrought feelings, and in anticipation she already gloated over the sight of her sufferings.

But she was mistaken. Bonnibel neither screamed nor fainted. She sat like one dazed for a moment, her blue eyes riveted to the paper, and her face growing white as death, while the two women who hated her watched her with looks of triumph.

The next instant, with a bound like that of a wounded fawn seeking some leafy covert in which to die, she sprang from her seat and rushed from the room, clenching the fatal paper in her hand.

They could hear her light feet flying along the hall and up the stairs to her own especial apartments.

The two wicked women looked at each other blankly.

"I did not expect her to take it that way," said Mrs. Arnold.

"Nor I," returned Felise. "I looked for a fainting spell, or some kind of a tragic scene at least."

"Perhaps she does not care much after all," suggested Mrs. Arnold. "She is young, and the young are proverbially fickle. She may have ceased to love him."

"No, she has not. I am confident of that, mother. Her face looked dreadful when she went out. She is too proud to let us see how she is wounded—that is all. She turned as white as a dead woman while she was reading, and there was a hunted, desperate look in her eyes. Depend upon it she is terribly stricken."

"Do you think she will consent to marry Colonel Carlyle now, Felise?"

"I rather think she will after the awful alternative you placed before her."

"Did you hear our conversation, my dear?"

"Every word of it, mother. I must say you sustained your part splendidly. I feared you would not display sufficient firmness, but you came off with flying colors."

Mrs. Arnold smiled. She was well-pleased at her daughter's praise, for though her life was devoted to the service of Felise,[Pg 55] this scheming girl seldom gave her a word or smile of commendation. She answered quickly:

"I am glad you were pleased, my love. I tried to be as positive as you wished me to be. I fancied I heard you under the window once."

"I was there," said Felise, with a laugh.

"She was very much shocked when I threatened to turn her out of doors," said Mrs. Arnold. "She looked at me quite wildly."

"She will be more shocked when she finds you meant every word, for, mother, if she does not accept Colonel Carlyle, you shall certainly drive her away!" exclaimed Felise, and a wild and lurid gleam of hatred fired her eyes as she spoke, that boded evil to the fair and innocent girl upon whom she had sworn to take a terrible revenge.

Bonnibel flew up the stairs to her own room, still clenching the fatal paper tightly in her hand, and locking her door, threw herself downward upon the carpet and lay there like one dead.

She had not fainted. Every nerve was keenly alive and quivering with pain. Her heart was beating in great, suffocating throbs, her throat felt stiff and choked as if compressed by an iron hand, and her head ached terribly as if someone had hurled a heavy stone upon it.

Her whole being seemed to be but one great pulse of intense agony, yet she lay still and moveless, save that now and then a convulsive clutch of the small hand pressed to her throat showed that life still inhabited that beautiful frame.

Life! The thought came to her suddenly and painfully. She raised herself slowly and heavily, as if the weight of her sorrow crushed her down to earth, and the full realization of the terrible change broke over her. Leslie Dane was dead. That graceful form, that handsome face was hidden beneath the damp earth mould. The dark eyes of her artist husband would never shine down upon her again with the love-light beaming in them, those lips whose smiles she had loved so well would never press hers again as they had done that night when he had blessed her and called her his wife. But she—she was a living, agonized creature, the plaything of fate—oh, God! she thought, clasping her hands together wildly, oh, God! that she were dead and lying in the grave with the loved one she would never see again. She felt in all its passionate intensity the force of another's heart-wrung utterance.
"Dead, dead!" she moaned. "Oh, God! since he could die, The world's a grave, and hope lies buried there."

Ah! Bonnibel, sweet Bonnibel! It is a dark world indeed on which your tearful gaze looks forth! It has been the grave of hope to many, yet destiny pushes us forward blindly, and we cannot stay her juggernaut wheels as they roll over our hearts.

"I am eighteen years old, and I am a widow," she moans at last, and staggers blindly to her feet, pushing back the fair locks from her brow with shaking hands. "I am a widow!"

[Pg 56]

Oh! the pathos of the words! As she speaks them she draws the blinds, drops the curtains, and the room is shrouded in darkness. She has shut out the world from the sight of suffering. You and I, my reader, will turn aside, too, from the contemplation of that cruelly tried young heart as it fights the battle in the gloom and silence.
"Who breathes must suffer; and who thinks must mourn; And he alone is blessed who ne'er was born."

Six days later Colonel Carlyle was ushered into Mrs. Arnold's drawing-room and sent up his card to Miss Vere.

After a slight delay she came gliding in, pale and pure as a snow-drop, and demure as a little nun. Colonel Carlyle both felt and saw that some subtle and indefinable change had come over her as he bowed over the cold, white hand she placed in his.

It was a very warm day, even for May; but she was clothed from head to foot in heavy mourning draped with crape. Her golden hair was brushed straight back from her temples and gathered into a simple coil fastened with a comb of jet. From that somber setting her fair face and bright hair shone like a star.

"You are pale, Bonnibel; I trust you have not been ill," exclaimed the ancient suitor anxiously.

"I am as well as usual," she answered, with a slight, cold smile.

They sat down, and the ardent lover at once plunged into the subject nearest his heart.

"Bonnibel, I have come for my answer, you know," he said. "I hope and trust it may be a favorable one."

The girl's sweeping lashes lifted a moment from her pale cheeks, and her blue eyes regarded him sadly; but she did not speak. He bent down and lifted her white, listless hand in his and held it fondly.

"My dear, shall it be yes?" he inquired. "Will you give me this precious little treasure?"

Bonnibel looked down at the hand that lay in the colonel's—it was the one which wore the opal ring—that beautiful, changeful gem. Its colors were dim and pale to-day. She shivered slightly, as if with cold.

"Colonel Carlyle, I told you when we spoke of this before that I did not love you," she said, faintly.

The colonel did not appear to be disheartened by this plaintive plea.

"At least you do not hate me, Bonnibel," he said, half questioningly.

"Oh, no," she answered quickly; "I like you very much, Colonel Carlyle. You have been so very kind to me, you know—but it is only the liking one has for a friend—it is in no way akin to love."

"I will try to be contented with just your friendly liking, my dear one, if you will give yourself to me," he answered, eagerly.

[Pg 57]

"I believe I could give you a daughter's affection, but never that of a wife," she murmured.

He did not in the least understand the swift, appealing look of the eyes that were raised a moment to his own. A swift thought had rushed over her and she had given it words:

"Oh, that he would adopt me for his daughter and save me from either of those two alternatives that lie before me," she thought, wildly. "He might do so for papa's sake, and I would make him a very devoted daughter!"

But the sighing lover did not want a daughter—he was after a wife.

"I will take you even on those terms," he replied. "Let me give you the shelter of my name, and we will see if I cannot soon win a warmer place in your heart."

She shook her head and a heavy sigh drifted across her lips.

"Do not deceive yourself, Colonel Carlyle," she said. "My heart is dead. I shall never love any one."

"I will risk all that," he answered. "Only say yes, most peerless of women, and so that I call you mine I will risk all else!"

"Do you mean it?" she asked, earnestly. "The hand without the heart—would that content you?"

"Yes," he answered, bent on attaining his end, and foolishly believing that he could teach her to love him. "Yes; am I to have it, Bonnibel?"

"It shall be as you wish," she answered, quietly, and leaning slightly forward she laid in his the hand she had withdrawn a while ago.

Colonel Carlyle was beside himself with rapture.

"A thousand thanks, my beautiful darling," he exclaimed, pressing passionate kisses on the small hand. "Nay, do not take it away so soon, my love. Let me first place on it the pledge of our betrothal."

Still and white as marble sat Bonnibel while the enraptured colonel slipped over her taper forefinger a magnificent diamond ring, costly enough for a queen to wear. Its brilliant stone flashed fire, and the opal on her third finger seemed to grow dull and cold.

So Bonnibel had made her choice.

Her nature was tender, refined, luxurious. She was afraid of poverty and cold, and darkness; yet if Leslie Dane had lived she would have faced them all rather than have chosen Mrs. Arnold's alternative.

But Leslie Dane was dead. Life was over and done for her. There was nothing to do but to die or forget. Death would have come soon enough in the streets, perhaps, but she was so afraid of such a death. So she took "the goods the gods provided," and blindly threw herself forward into the whirling vortex of fate.

It was not to be expected that Colonel Carlyle would be willing to defer his happiness. He was well-stricken in years, and[Pg 58] had no time to spare in idle waiting. He therefore pressed Bonnibel to name an early day for the wedding.

She had no choice in the matter, and allowed him to name the day himself.

Armed with her permission, he consulted Mrs. Arnold in regard to the earliest possible date for his happiness.

Mrs. Arnold, tutored by Felise, was all smiling graciousness, and fully appreciated his eagerness. She thought it quite possible that a suitable and elegant trousseau might be provided for a wedding on the twenty-fifth of June.