The Senator's Favorite

And through the long night hours the mother watched by the bedside of the nervous girl, who tossed restlessly upon her pillow, starting in alarm at every sound, and begging piteously to be taken away from Rosemont.

"We will go to-morrow, dear," Mrs. Winans promised tenderly.

Hetty Wilkins wept and protested when she was told the story of the man who claimed to be her lover.

"There is some mistake," she cried. "My young man's name is Watson Hunter. And he wasn't here to-night at all."

But Mrs. Winans insisted on dismissing Hetty next day, with a month's wages in lieu of a warning. This plan seemed best to them all.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A WAITING-MAID'S ROMANCE

"The music of thy voice I heard
Nor wish while it enslaved me;
I saw thine eyes, but nothing feared,
Till fears no more had saved me.
The unwary sailor thus aghast,
The wheeling torrent viewing,
'Mid circling horrors sinks at last,
In overwhelming ruin!"—Burns.

Hetty Wilkins was bitterly grieved at her dismissal from the service of Mrs. Winans, and her vanity was wounded by the suggestion that Lindsey Warwick had been courting her simply to keep up with the movements of the Winans family and further his own designs.

"Oh, no, madam, he cannot be the same man, I'm sure," she declared stubbornly.

"But, Hetty, there can be no mistake. My daughter recognized him, and he declared to my son that he was your lover. Now, my good girl, there is a reward of ten thousand dollars offered by Senator Winans for Lindsey Warwick's apprehension. Suppose you earn it by delivering this wretch up to justice," suggested Mrs. Winans, very much in earnest over the matter.

So Hetty departed, angry at her dismissal, and firm in the belief that her lover was innocent of the charges brought against him.

But when Watson Hunter came no more, and her letters to him elicited no reply, her loving confidence grew faint, and suspicion awakened in her mind.

"I will find him if I have to employ a detective," she vowed spitefully.

But for Hetty's strong faith in fortune-tellers, it is likely that her absconding lover might have eluded her forever, but when a month had passed in futile efforts she suddenly bethought herself of invoking the aid of a clairvoyant in her search for the truant.

She had returned to Washington several weeks before, and it was now the middle of August. On consulting the papers she selected from the advertisements one in a very obscure locality, and made her way thither without delay. The mind-reader and clairvoyant, as she called herself, was located on a dirty little street in a villainous-looking tobacco shop. When Hetty entered, the slovenly-looking old woman was serving a customer with cigars, and the maid was startled to find in her the same woman to whom she had once advised Ethel to apply.

"I want my fortune told," she said in an undertone to the woman.

"Come into the back room, then, and I'll send my son to wait on the shop."

With her pretty nose in the air, at the vile odors of the place, the smart maid followed into the back room, where a slovenly man with long hair and full whiskers was making some drawings at a little table.

"You must wait on the shop while I tell the young lady's fortune," the woman said to him, and he rose with a muttered word of impatience.

Hetty was not the least interested in the gruff man, and she scarcely knew why she cast a searching glance upon him.

But when she looked at him she met a glance of startled recognition that made her foolish heart leap with wild excitement. The next moment she clutched his arm, crying sobbingly:

"Oh, Watson, Watson, so I've found you at last!"

"The devil!" cried Lindsey Warwick, trying to shake her off, for his first impulse was to snatch his hat and run.

But Hetty clasped his neck with both arms, and clung to him like a wild-cat, despite his struggles.

"Let me go! let me go! I don't know you! I'm a stranger to you—that isn't my name!" he vociferated wildly. "Mother, take her off and hold her, won't you?"

Thus adjured, the old woman come to his relief, and soon had the pretty maid a prisoner in her own strong arms.

"What's the matter with you, you little crazy wild-cat?" she demanded roughly, but Hetty was gazing malignantly at Warwick, who regarded her with an injured air.

"Young woman, you've made a mistake. I don't know you!" he was saying.

"Oh, don't I, Mr. Lindsey Warwick?" cried Hetty, taking revenge for her slighted love. "Maybe that ain't your name, neither! Maybe I don't intend to scream for the police, and give you up to them, and claim the reward, you villain!"

She was opening her mouth for a prolonged shriek, when a hand was clapped over it, and Lindsey Warwick cried out laughingly:

"You silly darling, can't you take a joke? Of course my name isn't Warwick, but Watson Hunter, and I was only teasing you a little to pay you back for running off from Rosemont and leaving me in the lurch."

Hetty gasped in his clutch and he loosened it gently, seeing that his falsehoods had begun to bewilder and soften her angry mood.

"Why didn't you write to me when you left Rosemont?" continued the arch deceiver. "I was down there a day or two after the family packed up to leave, and I thought you had gone away with them and given me the jilt. But you won't get away from me again, for we'll go to the preacher this very day, won't we, dearie?"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SHADOW OF ORPHANAGE AND SORROW

"Thou didst set thy foot on the ship, and sail
To the ice-fields and the snow;
Thou wert sad, for thy love did naught avail,
And the end we could not know....
Oh, I spoke once and I grieved thee sore;
I remember all that I said—
And now thou wilt hear me no more, no more
Till the sea gives up its dead."—Jean Ingelow.

The golden summer days fled fast, and the Winans family remained at Rosemont until they were to go to their Washington home to make ready for Ethel's marriage early in December.

Lord Chester had not yet returned to America, as the lawsuit was not decided yet, but the date of the marriage remained unaltered, for Ethel had indignantly disclaimed any desire to break her engagement because of the altered prospects of her betrothed.

So while they rested at Rosemont they had much to look forward to in the near future, only they talked of it but little, for each had secret sorrows that weighed heavily on their hearts. Precious had one in the inability to tear from her mind the thought of the man so soon to become her sister's husband, and Earle had one of the same character in his stifled love for willful Ladybird, who had used him so cruelly. Senator Winans was pained because he was so soon to lose his elder daughter, and his wife, while she shared this sorrow, had another grief very near her gentle heart.

In the forty years of life that had passed over her golden head in mingled sunshine and shadow the senator's lovely, graceful wife had never been known to turn traitor to a friendship, or to shirk a duty, however hard. In her noble nature all the elements of constancy and self-sacrifice were exquisitely blended to form a model woman, whether in prosperity or adversity.

So it was not strange that her peculiar interest in Ladybird Conway had drawn her maternal instincts strongly toward the capricious but adorable little beauty.

Her interest in the young girl dated back to her parents.