The Senator's Favorite

"Thank you kindly, Miss Ethel, and of course it's not my business to find out that Kay is missing. So now it's time to dress for dinner, if you please. What dress will you wear, Miss Ethel? That new gold-colored silk with the black lace draperies, or something plainer? There's no one to dinner but the two gentlemen of the family. Your mamma is not well enough to dine."

"Poor mamma! But, Hetty, I am too tired to dress and dine to-night. I think I will send down excuses and retire. My head is throbbing with pain. I believe I should like a sedative."

Hetty brought the sedative and helped her to bed, saying as she tucked in the silken coverlet:

"Miss Miller called for you this afternoon, and I told her you had gone to keep an engagement with her. She said there must be some mistake; she hadn't seen you. I thought to myself that maybe you changed your mind and went to the old clairvoyant after all."

"I didn't have time to go anywhere after I lost Kay and had that long chase after him, so I hurried home," Ethel answered evasively. Then she nestled her head in the pillow and closed her eyes.

"Now, Hetty, I don't need you any longer. You can go and tell mamma I was so weary from my long walk that I retired."

Hetty dimmed the light and went out, but she thought sagely:

"Miss Ethel fibbed when she said she hadn't been anywhere. I'll bet a dime she's been to the old fortune-teller, and she told her something she didn't like and she's gone to bed to cry over it."

Ah, Hetty, your young mistress had more to grieve over than you guessed, and the pillow of down might have been full of thorns for all the rest she found that night.

For, shut her eyes as she might, there was one vision always before them—a wan little face like a snowdrop, luminous blue eyes, golden hair like an aureole of light; then it would fade and fall away into a cloud of smoke and flame, only to reappear again, until Ethel writhed in anguish and sobbed:

"It was not my fault. I could have saved her if she had not fainted. But no one must ever know I was there. They would blame me for her awful death."

She sat up in bed staring with gloomy eyes and writhing hands, trying to put from her the horror of her sister's death and to think what life would be like now when there was no pretty, willful Precious any more to envy for her fatal power of winning hearts.

"They must learn to love me now, papa, mamma, Earle and—Lord Chester, for his heart will turn back to me when there is no witching Precious to distract his thoughts. They loved her too well and fate has punished them by taking their idol away. It is my turn now," she thought with a bitter triumph.

Ah, Ethel, could the straining gaze of those somber eyes have pierced the shadows of the gloomy twilight they would have beheld a sight to blast them with its surprise.

Down the ladder came Lord Chester bearing the unconscious form of golden-haired Precious, whom Ethel had forsaken, and who never would have been saved but for the devotion of the faithful mastiff, noble Kay.

The shouts that rose from the crowd, as Lord Chester came down with the girl in his arms and the brave mastiff leaped from the window might almost have reached Ethel's ears, they were so loud and ringing.

Lord Chester was so blind and dizzy from the heat and smoke that as soon as his burden was drawn from his arms he sank exhausted to the ground.

The next instant the roof of the building fell in, leaving only the outer walls standing. Lord Chester had saved a life that but for his bravery must have perished in the raging flames.

Earle Winans pressed forward to his friend's assistance with a pang of keen remorse as he remembered how he had tried to restrain his friend from that perilous undertaking.

"How little I dreamed that a human being was in deadly peril within the house," he thought as he gazed curiously at the girl his friend had rescued from such an awful fate.

His dark eyes noted the golden hair all tossed and tangled in a curly mass, the closed eyes, the waxen fair face in its pallid beauty. Then a loud cry burst from his lips:

"Oh, Heaven! it is my missing sister—little Precious!"

And he reeled and would have fallen but for the restraining arm of a stranger.

Water was poured on his face and he quickly revived from his momentary faintness.

He knelt by the silent form of the unconscious girl, crying in anguish:

"It is Precious! my little sister! Oh, do not tell me she is dead."

A physician pushed through the crowd and made a hasty examination. His face was very grave.

"She is not dead, but her unconsciousness is very deep," he said. "If it is a simple swoon she may revive, but if asphyxiated by the smoke and heat, as I greatly fear, she will very likely soon expire."

Lord Chester, recovering from his momentary exhaustion, heard their words and looked with a bitter heart-pang at the face of Precious. Never before had he gazed at that face, yet there came a swift despair at thought of her death—a swift despair that blotted out all memory of Ethel's sparkling beauty that such a little while ago had charmed him so.

"We must have a carriage and take her home," cried Earle huskily, then wrung his friend's hand and thanked him for the rescue of his sister.

"From this hour you are dear to me as a brother," he cried with deep emotion.

So it happened that while Ethel sat up in bed staring with wild eyes into a possible future that held no lovely sister for a rival, a carriage was pausing at the door that held Earle Winans, his unconscious sister, and a physician, and presently there came ringing to Ethel's ear the long cry of anguish wrung from a mother's heart while bending over her dead.

Ethel started and listened in terror. What did it mean, that long, low cry of grief in her mother's voice?

Then Hetty Wilkins rushed in, pale and tearful, crying out:

"Oh, Miss Ethel, such dreadful news! They have bought Miss Precious home dead."

But from behind her came Earle Winans, and he exclaimed angrily:

"Hetty, you are a cruel girl to frighten Ethel so. You had no business to come to her with such news. My mother sent me to break it to her gently. Ethel, dear, do not sob so bitterly. We have brought Precious home, but a little life lingers still and we hope she may not die."

Ethel had dropped her face in her hands. When her brother lifted it he was startled at its expression, the ghastly face, the eyes wide and dark with horror.

He scolded Hetty roundly for her rashness in blurting out the news to his sister, and the girl stood aside sulkily at his reproof.

"Never mind Hetty; she meant no harm, Earle; but tell me all about it. Where did you find Precious?" gasped Ethel, clinging to him in wild excitement.

And holding her head against his arm and smoothing the dark waves of her hair with a loving hand Earle told the story as far as he knew it—the story of his young sister's rescue by Arthur, Lord Chester.

Kay, the splendid mastiff, came in for a share of praise too, and Hetty, the maid, listened intently to it all and nodded excitedly when Earle said:

"The greatest wonder of all is how Kay came to be there; but of course if Precious revives she can explain all that."

He felt Ethel shuddering against his arm, and Hetty saw how she trembled, and said to herself:

"I think Miss Ethel could explain it too, if she would, and if she don't speak I shall begin to think she has some strange secret worth more than the gift of a bracelet."

"I must go back to my mother now, for our father is too wretched himself to comfort her. Ethel, try to come down if you can," he said, as he left the room.

Ethel dragged herself out of bed, moaning:

"You must dress me, Hetty, and let me go to my poor sister."

Hetty brought her slippers and a pretty wrapper, and while she was putting them on she exclaimed:

"What a brave young man Lord Chester must be!"