My Pretty Maid; or, Liane Lester

"I would beat her; yes, I would kill her, before she should steal your grand lover from you darling!"

Roma could understand now the old hag's devotion to herself. It was the tie of their kinship asserting itself. She shuddered with disgust as she recalled the old woman's fulsome admiration and adoration, and how she had been willing to sell her very soul for one kiss from those fresh, rosy lips.

How eagerly she had said:

"I will scold Liane, and whip her, too. I will do anything to please you, beautiful lady!"

No wonder!

Roma was bitterly sorry now that she had not let granny kill Liane when she had been so anxious to do it. She felt that she had made a great mistake, for her position at Cliffdene would never be assured until Liane was dead.

Edmund Clarke was certain now that Liane was his own child, and he swore to Doctor Jay that he would find her soon, if it took the last dollar of his fortune.

The old doctor replied:

"I do not blame you, my friend, for it does, indeed, appear plausible that this Liane Lester must be your own lost child, and I can conceive how galling it must be to your pride to call Nurse Jenks' grandchild your daughter, while, as for your noble wife, it is cruel to think of the imposition practiced on her motherly love all these years. But it is certain that she must have died but for the terrible deception we had to practice."

Edmund Clarke knew that it was true. He remembered how she had been drifting from him out on the waves of the shoreless sea, and how the piping cry of the little infant had called her back to life and hope.

"Yes, it was a terrible necessity," he groaned, adding:

"And only think, dear doctor, how sad it is that Roma, with a devilish cunning, that must be a keen instinct, has always hated sweet Liane, and has succeeded in poisoning my wife's mind against her, arousing a mean jealousy in my uncomprehended interest in the girl! Think of such a sweet mother being set against her own sweet daughter!"

"It is horrible," assented Doctor Jay, and he continued:

"But this excitement is telling on your nerves, dear friend, weakened by your recent severe illness. Let me persuade you to retire to bed, with a sedative now, and to-morrow we will further discuss your plan of employing a detective to trace Liane and the fiendish Nurse Jenks."

"I believe I will take your advice," Roma heard Edmund Clarke respond wearily, and Doctor Jay insisted on preparing a sedative, which he said should be mixed in a glass of water, half the dose to be taken on retiring, and the remainder in two hours, if the patient proved wakeful.

"I wish it was a dose of poison," Roma thought vindictively, as she hurried from the room and gained her own unperceived, where she found her maid waiting most impatiently to assist her in her bath.

"Never mind, Dolly, you can go to bed now. I went to mamma's room for a little chat, and we talked longer than I expected, so I will wait on myself this once," she said, with unwonted kindness in her eagerness to be alone; so Dolly curtsied and retired, though she said to herself:

"She is lying. She was not in her mother's room at all, for I went there to see, and Mrs. Clarke had retired. She must have been up to some mischief and don't want to be found out. She had a guilty look."

Meanwhile Roma flung herself into the easy-chair before the glowing fire, stretched out her slippered feet on the thick fur rug, and gave herself up to the bitterest reflections.

"There are four people who are terribly in my way, and whom I would like to see dead! They are Liane Lester, Granny Jenks, old Doctor Jay, and Edmund Clarke, the man I have heretofore regarded as my father," she muttered vindictively.

She knew that the two last named would know neither rest nor peace till they found Liane and reinstated her in her place at Cliffdene as daughter and heiress, ousting without remorse the usurper.

"Ah, if I only knew where to find her, granny would soon put her out of my way forever!" she thought, regretting bitterly now that she had not made the old hag keep her informed of her whereabouts.

The spirit of murder was rife in Roma's heart, and she longed to end the lives of all those who stood in her way.

"I wish that Edmund Clarke would die to-night! How easy it would be if some arsenic were dropped into his sedative—some of that solution I was taking a while ago to improve my complexion," she thought darkly, resolving to wait until all was quiet and herself attempt the hellish deed.

One death already lay on her conscience, and the form of the man she had remorselessly thrust over the bluff stalked grimly through her dreams. To her soul, already black with crime, what did the commission of other deeds of darkness matter?

The death of Edmund Clarke so quickly decreed, she began to plan that of the old doctor.

This was not so easy. He did not have a convenient glass of sedative ready by his bedside. But she had noticed at supper that he was fond of a glass of wine.

"I must poison a draught for him before he leaves Cliffdene," she thought, regretting that she could not accomplish it to-night.

But Edmund Clarke's speedy death would delay the search for Liane a while, even if it did not postpone it forever.

For the old physician was not likely to prosecute it after the death of his patron. He could have no interest in doing so, though she would make sure he did not by putting him out of the way if she could.

Her mind a chaos of evil thoughts, Roma rested in her chair, waiting till she thought every one must be asleep before she stole from the room to poison the draught for the man she had regarded until this hour as her own father, and to whose wealth she owed her luxurious life of eighteen years.

Neither pity nor gratitude warmed her cold heart. She had never loved him in her life, and she hated him now.

In her rage and despair she had forgotten Jesse Devereaux's letter to her father until, in a restless movement, she heard the rustle of paper in her corsage.

An evil gleam lightened in her eyes, and she drew the letter forth, muttering:

"Ah, this will beguile my weary waiting!"

In five minutes she was mistress of the contents.

It was the letter Devereaux had written to acquaint Edmund Clarke with Liane's address—the fateful letter that was to betray the girl into the hands of her bitterest foe.

Ah, the hellish gleam of wicked joy in the cruel red-brown eyes; the stormy heaving of Roma's breast as she realized her great good fortune; all her enemies in her power, at her mercy! The mercy the ravenous wolf shows to the helpless lamb!

She laughed low and long in her glee, and that laughter was an awful thing to hear.

"Oh, how can I wait till to-morrow?" she muttered. "Yet I cannot go to Boston to-night, nor to-morrow, if Edmund Clarke dies to-night. Shall I spare his life till I go to Boston, and have his daughter put out of the way?"

CHAPTER XXIII.

A MURDEROUS FURY

Hours slipped away while the beautiful fiend, so young in years, so old in the conception of crime, crouched in her seat, waiting, musing, pondering on the best schemes for ridding herself of those who stood in her way.

She was eager as a wild beast to strike quickly and finish the awful work she had set herself to do.

It seemed to her that she might never have another such opportunity for ending Edmund Clarke's life as was offered to her by the conditions of the present moment.

It was most important to get rid of him, she knew, and the sooner the better for the safety of her position as heiress of the Clarke millions. Let him die first, and she could attend to the others afterward.

At the dark, gloomy hour of midnight, while the icy winds wailed around the house like a banshee, Roma went groping through the pitch-black corridors toward the room where Mr. Clarke lay sleeping with his gentle, loving wife by his side.

Like a sleek, beautiful panther the girl crept into the unlocked door, knowing the room so well that she could find her way to the bedside in the darkness, and put out her stealthy, murderous hand, with the bottle of poison in it, seeking for the glass that held the sleeping potion Doctor Jay had prescribed.

Her heart beat with evil exultation, for it seemed to her that her errand could scarcely fail of success. Edmund Clarke was sound asleep, she knew by his deep breathing, and she decided that, after pouring the poison into the glass, she would make enough noise in escaping from the room to arouse him fully, so that he would be sure to swallow the second dose ere sleeping again.

It was a clever plan, cleverly conceived, and in another moment it would be executed, and no earthly power could save the victim from untimely death.