CHAPTER XVIII.

Faint and heart-sick, Ida May crept down the broad stone steps of the elegant mansion, and wended her way back to her humble lodgings. Just as she was about to touch the bell, a man ran hastily up the steps.

"Well, well, I declare!" he exclaimed, "I am at the wrong house. But in this confounded tenement row, one house is so like the other that one can not help making a mistake now and then."

With a gasp, Ida May reeled backward. At the very first word he had uttered, Ida May had recognized Royal Ainsley.

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It was Frank Garrick, the manager of the telegraph office.

The sentence had scarcely left his lips ere he recognized her.

"Aha!" he cried, a fierce imprecation accompanying the words. "So it's you, Ida May?" he added, catching her fiercely by the cloak. "So I have found you at last!"

She was too frightened to reply.

"So this is where you are stopping, is it? Come, walk as far as the end of the street with me. I want to talk to you."

"No!" cried Ida May, struggling to free herself from his grasp. "I have nothing to say to you, nor will I listen to you!"

"We shall see about that presently," he cried. "Frank Garrick is not a man to be balked in this way by a little girl. You shall listen to me!"

Ida May reached out her hand quickly to touch the bell, but he anticipated the movement, and caught her arm roughly.

She tried to cry out, but no sound issued from her lips.

She had already gone through more than her overstrained nerves could bear. Without a cry or a moan, she sunk in a dead faint at his feet.

Gathering her up in his arms, Frank Garrick sprung quickly down the steps. For a moment he stood there with his helpless burden in his arms.

"This is quite an unexpected go," he muttered, standing there undecided for a moment. "I must leave her here a moment, that is certain, while I run for a man's voice."

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He placed Ida on the the lower step, in a sitting position, and darted down the street in the direction of a cab-stand.

He did not see the open window of an adjoining house, because of the closed blind which protected it, nor the crouching form of the woman behind it, who had heard and witnessed all.

Like a flash she caught up her hat, which was lying on an adjacent table, and sprung out of the door.

"I knew he would come to see her at last!" she said, fairly hissing the words. "They have had a quarrel. That is why he has stayed away so long. He has gone after a cab to take her elsewhere. But I will block his little game!" cried Nannie Rogers—for it was she. "I shall take a terrible revenge upon him by striking him through her."

Taking a short cut to a nearer cab-stand, she hailed the first vehicle. The man sprung down from his box.

"Why, is that you, Nannie?" he cried, in unfeigned surprise.

"Yes, Joe," she answered, quickly. "I want your cab for a while."

In a few words she told him of a woman lying on the steps of the house next to her—a woman whom she wished to befriend.

"I want you to take her to a certain place. I will tell you about it when we start. Come quickly and help me to get her into your cab."

This was accomplished in less time than it takes to tell it.

"Where to, Nannie?" asked the driver, as he picked up the reins.

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"Why in the world are you taking her there?" he exclaimed in dismay.

"Make no comments," she replied, angrily: "but drive on as fast as you can. I wouldn't take her there unless it was all right."

"Oh, of course," returned the driver. "I am not saying but that you know what you're doing. But she seems mighty quiet for that kind of a person."

They had scarcely turned the first corner ere Frank Garrick drove up in a cab.

"By thunder! she has vanished!" he exclaimed, excitedly, looking in astonishment at the spot where he had left her a short time before. "She must have fled into the house," he muttered. "Well, cabby, here's your fee, anyhow. You may as well go back."

For some moments Frank Garrick stood quite still and looked up at the house.

"Of all places in the world, who would have expected to find her here—next door to Nannie. It's certain that Nannie does not know of it. She could not keep it if she did. Well, this is a pretty howdy-do—two rivals living next door to each other. Nannie is expecting me to call on her this evening. If it were not for that, I wouldn't show up at all, I'm so upset by that little beauty, Ida May."

Very slowly he walked up the steps of the adjoining house and pulled the bell. To his great surprise, he learned that Nannie was out.

"She will be sure to be back presently," added the girl who answered the bell. "Won't you come in and wait?"

"No," he answered, glad of the excuse. "I'll run in some evening during the week."

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With that he turned on his heel and walked rapidly away.

Meanwhile, the carriage bearing Nannie Rogers and the still unconscious Ida May rolled quickly onward, and stopped at length before a red-brick building on the outskirts of the city.

Ida May's swoon lasted so long that even Nannie grew frightened.

"Wait," she said to the driver, "I will have to step in first and see if they will receive her."

After fully five minutes had elapsed, the door opened and a tall man looked out.

"It is I, doctor," said Nannie Rogers. "May I step inside? I want to speak to you. I have a patient waiting outside the gate."

"Dear me! is it really you? You come at rather a late hour. Still, you know you are a priviliged person here."

"I ought to be, since I have learned so many secrets about the place and yourself," she said, "when I was nurse here."

"Didn't I give you five hundred dollars to insure secrecy when you left here?"

"Well, I kept my promise. I never told anything, did I?"

"Let me understand what you want," he said, abruptly. "Did I understand you to say that there was a patient outside?"

The girl nodded.

"It does not matter who or what she is," she said, tersely. "It is the desire of her friends that she be kept here for a few months. I suppose you are anxious to know about the pay?"

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"Of course. That's where my interest comes in," he said.

"Well, I will be responsible for it," she said.

"You?" he said, amazedly.

"Yes; why not?" she returned.

He looked at her with something like doubt.

"You dare not refuse to accept her!" she declared.

"Do you mean that for a threat?" he exclaimed, fiercely.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I can not be held accountable for the way in which you take my assertion," she declared.

The frown deepened on the man's face.

"For convenience's sake, we will say that the girl is an opium-eater, and that is why you are keeping her under such strict surveillance."

The man muttered some strange, unintelligible remark.

"I suppose the cabman will help me in with the girl?" he said, harshly.

"Of course," replied Nannie Rogers, impatiently.

The girl's figure was so light that "the doctor," as he termed himself, found little difficulty in bringing her into the house without aid.

Nannie Rogers stood in the hall-way, and followed him into the reception room, where he laid the girl down upon a rude couch. She watched him as he threw back her long dark veil, and cried out in wonder at the marvelous beauty of the still white face—the face so like chiseled marble.

"How young and how very lovely!" he remarked; and as he spoke, he unfolded the long dark cloak that enveloped her.

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A sharp exclamation broke from his lips, and he turned around suddenly.

"Nannie Rogers!" he said.

But the look of astonishment that he saw on her face was as great as his own bore. Nannie Rogers' look of astonishment quickly gave way to one of the most intense hatred; ay, a very demon of rage seemed to have taken possession of her.

"I wonder that you brought her here," said the doctor.

But Nannie Rogers was speechless. She was gazing like one turned to stone upon the face of the girl whom she believed to be her rival.

"I have a double reason for hating her now," she said, under her breath, clinching her hands so tightly that her nails cut deep into her palms. But she did not even feel the pain.

"I say, I wonder that you brought her here," repeated the doctor.

"I knew of no better place," she replied, turning her eyes uneasily away from him. "You must not refuse to receive her."

"Who is she?" he asked.

"I refuse to answer your question," she replied, grimly. "You know only this about her: She is a confirmed opium-eater. One who is very much interested in her brought her here to be treated by you. She is to be kept here, under strict watch, to prevent her getting away. If she writes any letters they are to be forwarded to me."

And thus it happened that when Ida May opened her troubled eyes, after the doctor and an attendant had worked over her for upward of an hour, she found[86] herself in a strange room, with strange faces bending over her. She looked blankly up at them.

"The waves are very high," she moaned. "Come back on the beach, girls," she murmured.

"She is out of her head," exclaimed the doctor, turning nervously to his attendant. "I ought not to have taken this girl in," he continued, in alarm. "I fear we shall have no end of trouble with her. This looks like a long and lingering illness."

"She is so young, and as fair as a flower," murmured the attendant, bending over her. "I feel very sorry for her. If a fever should happen to set in, do you think it would prove fatal to her?" she asked, eagerly.

"In nine cases out of ten—yes," he replied, brusquely.

At the very hour that this conversation was taking place, Royal Ainsley, the scape-grace, was ascending the brown-stone steps of the St. John mansion.

"I will take beautiful Florence and her stately mamma to the ball to-night," he mused, under his breath. "Before we return, I will have proposed to the haughty beauty. Trust me for that. They think I am the heir of my uncle, wealthy old Royal Ainsley, who died recently, and—curse him!—left all his wealth to my gentlemanly cousin, even making him change his name to that of Eugene Mallard, that the outside world might not confound it with mine. Yes, I will marry beautiful Florence St. John, and live a life of luxury!"

In that moment there rose before his mental vision the sweet sad face of beautiful Ida May, the fair young girl whom he had wronged so cruelly and then deserted so heartlessly.