My Pretty Maid; or, Liane Lester

"Mind your own business, girl. I'll take as much as I choose! Ay, and pour some down your throat, too, if you don't look out!"

Liane drank her tea in silence, while the old woman went on angrily:

"I want that forty dollars you kept back from me, girl, and I mean to have it, too, or give you a beating!"

This was a frequent threat, so Liane did not pay much heed, she only gazed fixedly at the old hag, and said:

"Granny, suppose I were to go away and leave you forever, do you think you could be happy without me?"

"Humph! And why not, pray?"

Liane sighed, and answered:

"I was just thinking how I have been your slave, beaten and cuffed like a dog for eighteen years, and I was wondering if in all that time, when I have been so patient and you so cruel, if you had in your heart one spark of love for your miserable grandchild!"

"Eh?" cried granny, staring at her fixedly, while Liane continued:

"Ever since I could toddle I have labored at your bidding, fetching and carrying, with nothing, but scoldings and beatings in return, and not a gleam of sunshine in my poor life. You have not shown me either mercy or pity; you have made my whole life as wretched as possible, and I have sometimes wondered why Heaven has permitted my sufferings to continue so long. Now, I have a strange feeling, as if somehow it was all coming to an end, and I wonder if you will miss me, and regret your unnatural conduct, when I am gone out of your life forever?"

She spoke with such sweet, grave seriousness that the old woman regarded her earnestly, noting, as she had never closely done before, the beauty and sweetness of the young eyes turned upon her with such pathetic solemnity.

"Maybe you mean to run away with some rascal, like your mother!" she sneered at length.

"I was not thinking of any man, or of running away, granny; only, it seems to me, there's a change coming into my life, and I am going out of yours forever!"

"Do you mean you're going to die?"

"No, granny, I mean that I shall be happy, after all these wretched years; that my starved heart will be fed on love and kindness, and I want to tell you now that if Heaven grants me the blessings I look for, I shall leave you that forty dollars as a gift, for then I shall not need it," returned Liane solemnly.

"Better give it here, now; you might forget when your luck comes to you. And—and, you ain't never going to need it after to-night, anyway!" returned granny, with a ghastly grin.

"No, I prefer to wait till to-morrow!" the young girl answered, with a sudden start of fear, for the glare the old woman fixed on her was positively murderous.

She got up, thinking she would go down and see if Lizzie had returned from her work yet; but granny sprang from her chair and adroitly turned the key in the lock, standing with her back against the door.

Liane's eyes flashed with impatience.

"Let me out, granny!" she cried. "This is not fair!"

"Give me that money!" grumbled the hag, with the tone and look of a wild beast.

"I—I—Mrs. Brinkley put it in a savings bank for me!" faltered Liane, bracing herself for defense, for her startled eyes suddenly saw murder in the old woman's face.

She felt all at once as if she would have given worlds to be outside that locked door, away from the deadly peril that menaced her in the beastly eyes of half-drunken granny.

She was not a coward. Yesterday she had faced death bravely for Mrs. Clarke's sake, and would have given her life freely for another's; but this was different.

To be murdered by the old hag who had blasted all her young life, just as her hopes of happiness seemed about to be realized, oh, it was horrible! Unrelenting fate seemed to pursue her to the last.

She drew back with a gasping cry, for the old woman was upon her with the growl of a wild beast and the well-remembered spring of many a former combat, when the weak went down before the strong.

Liane, who had always been too gentle to strike back before, now realized that she must fight for her life. Granny intended to kill her this time, she felt instinctively, and silently prayed Heaven's aid.

She opened her lips to shriek and alarm the household, but granny's skinny claw closed over her mouth before she could utter a sound, and then a most unequal struggle ensued.

Liane was no match for the old tigress, who scratched, and bit, and tore with fury, finally snatching up a club that she had provided for the occasion, and striking the girl on her head, so that she went down like a log to the floor.

Granny Jenks snarled like a hyena, and stooped down over her mutilated victim.

She lay white and breathless on the floor, her pallid face marked with blood stains, not a breath stirring her young bosom, and the fiend growled viciously:

"Dead as a doornail, and out of my pretty Roma's way forever!"

Suddenly there came the loud shuffling of feet in the hall, and the pounding of eager fists on the locked door.

Granny Jenks started in wild alarm. She realized that the sounds of her struggle had been heard, and regretted her precipitate onslaught on Liane.

"I should have waited till they were all asleep; but that whisky fired my blood too soon!" she muttered, as, paying no heed to the outside clamor, she dragged the limp body of her lovely victim to the inner room, throwing it on the bed and drawing the covers over it, leaving a part of her face exposed in a natural way, as if she were asleep.

She was running a terrible risk of detection but nothing but bravado could save her now.

She dimmed the light, and returned to the other room, demanding:

"Who is there? What do you want?"

Several angry voices vociferated:

"Let us in! You are beating Liane!"

At that she snarled in rage and threw wide the door, confronting Mrs. Brinkley and her sister, with the two new boarders.

"You must be crazy!" she exclaimed. "I was pounding a nail into the wall to hang my petticoat on, and Liane is asleep in the bedroom. If you don't believe me, go and look!"

They did not believe her, so they tiptoed to the door and peeped inside, and there, indeed, lay the girl, seeming in the dim half light to be sleeping sweetly and naturally.

"You can wake her if you choose, but she said she was very tired, and hoped I would not disturb her to-night," said artful granny coolly, though in a terrible fright lest she be taken at her word.

They retreated in something like shamefaced confusion, leaving granny mistress of the situation.

"What made you so sure she was beating the girl?" asked Carlos Cisneros of Sophie Nutter, who had raised the alarm.

"I used to know them at Stonecliff, where they lived, and she beat her there, poor thing, so when I heard the noise I thought she was at her old tricks again!" replied Sophie, going back downstairs to the parlor, where she had been looking at Mrs. Brinkley's photographs.

The language teacher followed her, and as he was rather handsome, and knew how to be fascinating with women, he soon gained her confidence, and found out everything she knew about Stonecliff, even to the cause of her leaving Roma Clarke's service. His eyes gleamed with interest as she added earnestly:

"Although I have seen Mr. Devereaux alive since, and they tell me I was raving crazy that night, still I can never be persuaded that I did not see Miss Clarke push a man over the bluff to his death."

She was astounded when he answered coolly: