CHAPTER XLVII.

From the moment that Ida had learned through Miss Fernly's letter how Hildegarde Cramer had mourned for her lover, the young wife's life had become very unhappy.

She knew well that she stood between Hildegarde[197] Cramer and her happiness. She had done her best to die, but Heaven had not so willed it.

The pity of it was that her love for Eugene Mallard had increased a hundred fold. It was driving her to madness.

"Oh, if it were all ended!" she cried aloud. "Better anything than this awful despair!"

No one heard her. There was no one near to hear what she moaned out to the brook that kept so many secrets.

She heard a crash in the branches near by—a slight crash, but she started. It was only a bird that had fallen from its nest in the tree overhead, she told herself.

But even after she had said it she felt a sense of uncontrollable terror that she could not account for; felt the weight of some strange presence.

That voice!

When Ida cried aloud in her despair, the words fell like an electric shock upon the ears of a man who listened behind the alder branches.

"By all that is wonderful!" he cried, under his breath. "Either my ears have deceived me, or that is the voice of Ida May! Well, well! Will surprises never cease?"

He stepped quickly forward, and the next moment he was by her side. How strange it was that at that instant the moon came out from behind a cloud and rendered every object as bright as if in the noonday sun.

At the sound of the step, Ida started back in affright.

One glance into the face looking down into her own and she started back with a cry that was scarcely human.

"You!" she gasped.

Then her lips grew cold and stiff. She could not utter another word.

"The surprise is mutual!" he answered. "What in the name of all that is wonderful are you doing in this house? Come, my dear, let us sit down on this log while you explain matters."

Ida drew back in loathing.

"Stand back!" she cried. "Do not attempt to touch me, or I shall cry out for help!"

[198]

A fierce imprecation broke from the man's lips.

"What do you mean by all this high and mighty nonsense?" he cried. "Speak at once. You are my wife! Why shouldn't I lay hands on you?"

"No!" she cried. "Though you have so cruelly deceived me, I thank God that I am not your wife."

He threw back his fair, handsome head, and a laugh that was not pleasant to hear fell from his lips.

"Don't make any mistake about that!" he cried. "I remember what I wrote you—that there was some illegality in the ceremony which made our marriage invalid. But I learned afterward, when I met the chap who performed the ceremony, that it was entirely legal. If you doubt that what I say is true, I can easily convince you of the truth of my assertion."

Ida drew back with a cry so awful that he looked at her.

"Well, well, who can understand the ways of women?" he remarked, ironically. "I thought that you would rejoice over the fact that our marriage was legal, but I find that you are sorry."

Still she was looking at him with wide-open eyes.

"I can not, I will not believe anything so horrible!" she gasped. "It would drive me mad!"

"I assure you it is true," he declared. "Like yourself, I believed that the marriage was not binding. But I found it was, and that saved me from wedding another girl."

A cry that seemed to rend her heart in twain broke from her white lips.

"But tell me, what are you doing here?" he asked, wonderingly.

Then it was that something like an inkling of the truth came to him.

"Great God!" he cried, "it can not be possible that you are in any way connected with my cousin—that you are the bride he brought home? Speak! Why are you trembling so? Has my guess come anywhere near the mark?"

[199]

Ida looked up at him with wild, frightened eyes like those of a hunted deer.

"Speak!" he cried again, fiercely grasping her arm, "or I will wring the truth from you!"

"I—I am Eugene Mallard's wife," she whispered in a voice that would have touched any other man's heart than the one who was bending over her with rage depicted on his face.

He laughed aloud, and that laugh was horrible to hear.

She did not spare herself. She told him all the bitter truth—how, being thrown in contact with Eugene Mallard day after day, she had learned to love him with all the strength of her nature; how, seeing how good, kind and true he was—a king among men—she fell face downward in the dew-wet grass and cried out to Heaven that her life would cease the moment she went out of Eugene Mallard's life.

"This is, indeed, a fine state of affairs!" he cried out.

"What would you have me do?" cried the unhappy young girl in the voice of one dying.

He did not answer her at once; but, taking a cigar from his pocket, he coolly lighted it.

"When you are through with your hysterics, we will talk the matter over," he assented, frowningly.

She struggled to her feet.

"Sit down!" he commanded, pointing to the trunk of a tree.

Feeling more dead than alive, she sat down in the place which he had indicated. She expected that her life would end at any moment, the tension on her nerves was so great.

He did not speak; but the short, harsh laugh that broke from his lips, as he puffed away at his cigar, was more cruel than the harshest words.

"This is what one might call a melodrama in real life," he said, at length. "It savors of comedy, too, and illustrates fully the old saying: 'Truth is often stranger than fiction!' But, to get down to business. Turn around and face me, while I tell you the injunction I lay upon you, and which you dare not refuse to obey!"