CHAPTER XXXII.

Alas for that one triumphant night of Felise Herbert. It was succeeded by a day of disappointment.

It was scarcely noon before she heard that Colonel Carlyle had caused the arrest of Leslie Dane upon the charge of murdering Mr. Arnold, and that he had been committed to prison to await a requisition from the governor of New Jersey, in which State the deed had been committed. Mrs. Arnold entering her room in a tremor of nervous agitation, found her pacing the floor, wildly gesticulating, and muttering to herself, in terms of the fiercest denunciation, anathemas against Colonel Carlyle.

"The miserable old dotard!" she exclaimed, furiously. "To think that his madness should have carried him to such lengths! Just when I felt so sure of my revenge he has balked me of my satisfaction and imperiled my safety by his jealous madness!"

"Felise, you have heard all, then?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, anxiously.

Felise turned her blazing dark eyes toward her mother, and Mrs. Arnold shuddered.

"All, all!" she echoed passionately; "ill news flies apace!"

"Felise, I feared this!" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold. "You were over-confident last night. Who could tell what form that old man's madness would take?"

"Who, indeed!" cried her daughter passionately. "And yet my theory seemed so plausible—who could have dreamed of its failure? But for him all would have gone as I planned it! But you cannot dream, mother, what that besotted old villain had the audacity to do!"

"It is not possible he suspected your complicity in the affair, Felise—he has taken no steps against us?" wildly questioned the mother as she sank into a chair half-fainting with terror.

"No, no, he has not done that, mother—his deviltry took another form."

"What, then, my dear? Oh! Felise, do sit down and calm yourself, and let us talk this matter over quietly," implored Mrs. Arnold anxiously.

"Calm myself—ha, ha, ha, when the blood in my veins has turned to molten fire, and is burning me to ashes! You are an iceberg, mother, with your cold words and calm looks, but you cannot put out the fire that is raging within me! Surely I must be wholly my father's child! There is nothing of you about me—nothing!"

"Yes, she is like her father—the more pity! For there was madness in his blood," Mrs. Arnold muttered inaudibly; "and I, oh! God—all my life I have fostered her evil passions, in my greed of gold, until now, when her reason totters on the brink of insanity. Oh! that I might undo my part in this fearful tragedy, and save her from the gulf that yawns beneath her feet!"

Overcome by her late remorse and terrible forebodings, she hid her face in her hands while a nervous trembling seized upon her from head to foot. Felise paused in her frenzied walk and eyed her curiously.

[Pg 108]

"Mother, are you turning coward in the face of danger?" she asked, with a ring of contempt in her voice.

There was no reply. The bowed face still rested on the trembling hands, the form still shook with nervous terror. Something in the weakness and forlornness of that drooping attitude in the mother who had subordinated everything else to her daughter's welfare, struck like a chill upon Felise, and partially tamed the devil raging within her. She spoke in a gentler tone:

"Rouse yourself, mother. See! I have quite sobered down, and am ready to discuss the matter as calmly and dispassionately as you could wish. Ask what you please, and I will answer."

Mrs. Arnold looked up, taking new heart as she saw that Felise still retained the power to subdue her fiery passions.

"Then tell me, dear, what else Colonel Carlyle has done besides causing Leslie Dane's arrest," said her mother.

Felise grasped the arms of her chair and held herself within it by a frenzied effort of will. Her voice was low and intense as she answered:

"Mother—he found out that Bonnibel was about to fly from him last night—just as I told you she would, you remember—and he—he actually locked her into her rooms, turned Lucy Moore, her maid, into the street—and is keeping his wife a prisoner to prevent her escape."

Mrs. Arnold was too astonished to speak for a minute or two. At length she found voice to utter:

"How know you that, Felise?"

"I have a spy in the chateau, mother—nothing that transpires there remains long unknown to me," returned the daughter, calmly.

Again there was momentary silence and surprise. Mrs. Arnold's weaker nature was sometimes confounded by a new discovery of her daughter's powerful capabilities for evil.

"What must Bonnibel's feelings be under the circumstances?" she exclaimed at last.

"I cannot imagine," was the dry response.

"Will she confess the truth to him, do you think?"

"I cannot tell; I hope she will not," said Felise with strong emphasis.

"I thought you wished him to know the truth. Was not that a part of your cherished scheme of revenge?"

"Yes, it was, but 'there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,' you know. And now that he has prevented her escape with Leslie Dane, and caused the artist's arrest, the only chance of safety for you and me lies in his keeping her a close prisoner until the trial is over."

"What can that avail us, Felise?"

"Can you not see?" exclaimed Felise impatiently. "Leslie Dane must be sacrificed to save us. He must be convicted by circumstantial evidence, and punished. Bonnibel is the only person who could prove his innocence. Let her keep out of the way and all will go well with us. Should she appear at the trial then discovery and ruin stare us in the face."

"But you forget, my dear, that Leslie Dane can prove his own[Pg 109] alibi by the minister who married him that night, even though we could procure Bonnibel's silence."

Felise laughed heartlessly.

"Yes, he could, certainly, but the question is, would he? I am quite sure he would not."

"But why should he be silent when his life would most probably pay the forfeit?" exclaimed Mrs. Arnold, with a slight shudder.

"Mother, there are men who would die for an over-strained point of honor. From all that I can gather from his intercepted letters, Leslie Dane is precisely that sort of a man. He is a Southerner, you know—a Floridian. You have been in the South, and you know that its natives are proud, chivalrous, honorable to the highest degree! Well, he can have no means of knowing that Bonnibel is imprisoned by her husband—of course the proud old colonel will keep that fact a dead secret, and invent some plausible excuse for her retirement from society. The artist can therefore attribute her absence from the trial to but one thing."

"And that?" queried Mrs. Arnold.

"He will think that Bonnibel is silent because she would sooner sacrifice him than lose her prestige in society, and her brilliant position as the wife of Colonel Carlyle. He will scorn to betray her secret, and will go to his death with the self-sacrifice of a martyr."

"But suppose Colonel Carlyle should let Bonnibel go free? What then?"

Felise laughed softly.

"He will not do so, mother. I have sent him an anonymous letter to-day that will fairly madden him with jealousy. He will never unlock her prison-door until the grass is growing over the handsome face of Leslie Dane."