The Senator's Favorite

At last Precious grew frightened at her own silence.

She felt so strangely, her cheeks burned, her heart beat heavily in the stillness, her lips seemed glued together.

Suddenly he spoke, but without turning his glance from the mountains:

"Pardon my silence. I must seem very dull to you. I was trying to hear the river say your word 'Regret.'"

And before she could answer he added:

"Do you know Miss Ingelow's poem 'Regret?'"

She answered in a low voice, with a deepening flush:

"Yes, I found it once in a book of mamma's, heavily underlined. It begins like this:

"'Oh, that word Regret!
There have been nights and morns when we have sighed,
Let us alone, Regret.'"

"Ugh! it gives me the dismals!" he groaned, and she paused diffidently.

That strange, throbbing silence fell again, and frightened her. It was like some mesmeric spell.

She cried out quickly:

"Let us go up to the house."

Her broad leghorn sun-hat lay on the grass and she stretched out her arm for it.

A terrible shriek followed.

In the soft green grass beneath the broad brim of the hat a deadly rattlesnake had lain coiled. At her disturbing touch it reared its evil head and struck its fangs into her arm.

Lord Chester saw it all, and with a loud cry sprang forward, setting his heel on the serpent's head ere it could strike the second blow. It writhed hideously for a moment, then lay still in death.

Precious had fallen back, deathly pale and half unconscious, against the tree. He fell on his knees beside her and cried out tenderly:

"Do not be frightened, my darling. I will suck the poison from the wound."

And he placed his lips on the tiny wound on her slender wrist and with desperate fervor drew forth the fatal venom, spitting it again and again on the ground.

When he felt that the danger was removed, he looked up at her and saw that her eyes wore closed in apparent unconsiousness. With uncontrollable love he clasped her in his arms and kissed the cold white lips, sobbing:

"My love! my darling!"

CHAPTER XVII.

"HAD I BUT MET YOU FIRST."

"But cruel fate that shapes our ends,
Dark doom that poet love attends,
The fate unhappy Petrarch sung
In fair Italia's burning tongue;
Such fate as reckless tears apart
The tendrils of the breaking heart,
From every prop where it would twine,
That cruel fate, alas, is mine,
For love of you!"

    —Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.

Lovers and poets rave of voices so dear and sweet that they can call one back almost from the borders of the grave.

Perhaps there is some little truth in those romantic ravings.

Precious Winans had been lying back as mute and still as some marble image of a dead maiden, but those frenzied caresses, those sobbing whispers, "My love! my darling!" sent the warm blood bounding sweetly through her veins once more and her eyes opened with a dazed expression.

She saw Lord Chester's face bent close to hers with actual tears in the splendid eyes, and her lips seemed to burn with his kisses. Wildly she struggled out of his arms.

"How dare you kiss me?" she half moaned, trying to be angry.

"Forgive me, Precious, I thought you were dead and it almost drove me mad. Do you not remember the dreadful rattler? I sucked the poison from the wound, but I must take you home at once and send for a physician, although I do not believe there can be any danger. Can you lean on me, dear child—little sister that is to be—and let me lead you to the house?"

His passion had changed to remorseful gentleness, and drawing her arm through his he conducted her to Earle and Norah, who were horrified at learning of the accident. Precious was taken to her room and a physician summoned.

But beyond the shock and fright Precious suffered no ill effects from the rattlesnake's venom. Lord Chester's measures had been quick and effectual, declared the village doctor.

But Precious kept her room all day, with Norah near at hand, and only came down at night when Earle begged her to sit awhile with Lord Chester while he went on an errand to the village.

Lord Chester was sitting on the long piazza, watching the beautiful moonlight as it silvered the landscape with its opal gleams.

He went to meet the girl, and placed her in a chair where the full flood of moonlight shone on her marvelous beauty. But he saw that she shrank and trembled at his nearness.

"You are angry with me," he said humbly, sorrowfully.

"I owe you my life for the second time. For that I must be grateful," she murmured faintly.

"Yet you despise me—because I dared—almost fearing you dead—to press one kiss on your lips."

"You had no right," she faltered, holding her golden head quite proudly; then, almost inaudibly: "You belong to Ethel."

There was ineffable sadness in the subdued voice—sadness and struggling pride. He whispered thrillingly:

"Yes, Precious, I am not forgetting your sister's claim. Before I saw you I loved her, but the moment I gazed on your face—ay, the mere sight of your portrait—turned my heart from her to you. No, let me speak, for I am not disloyal to Ethel. I mean to keep the troth I plighted her when I realized that my honor stood pledged to her. But to-day I was weak, wicked, if you will, for my heart o'er-leaped control when I met you again. In my love and grief I went mad over you. But will you forgive me? Will you let me keep that kiss as a precious memory in the long years when I shall see you no more? For, dear, I shall marry your sister and try to give her my heart. Our home will be far away, in another clime, and I shall pray Heaven that I never see your face again—the sweet face that lured me from queenly Ethel! But, oh, love, if I had met you first, ere the mournful river sang, 'Too late! too late!'" and turning quickly from her he went out into the shadows of the night.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A MADCAP'S PRANK