My Pretty Maid; or, Liane Lester

Devereaux tore open the letter, and read the single line it contained:

"I cannot live without your love! I have taken poison!"

He and Mrs. Carrington almost flew upstairs after hurriedly telephoning for a physician.

They knelt by her couch, reproaching her for her rashness, declaring that they had sent for a physician to save her life.

"It is useless. I will not take an antidote. I am determined to die!" she replied stubbornly, and looked at Devereaux reproachfully, while Lyde caught her hands, exclaiming:

"Oh, Jesse, why couldn't you love her and make up with her, so that she needn't have been driven to this?"

Encouraged by this outburst of sympathy, Roma whispered audibly in her ear:

"If he would only make me his wife, I could die happy!"

"Do you hear?" nodded Lyde to her brother.

"Yes."

"I have dreamed of it so long. I have loved him so well, I cannot be happy even beyond the grave unless I can call him my husband once before I die!" sobbed Roma piteously, and by her labored breathing and spasms of pain it seemed as if each moment must be her last.

"Give her her dying wish lest she haunt you!" whispered the nervous, frightened Lyde.

Roma's sufferings grew so extreme that his reluctance yielded to pity. He bowed assent, and hurried from the room to summon a minister.

The physician entered in haste, but Roma repulsed him.

"Stand back! I will not take an antidote! I am already dying!" she screamed.

He caught the vial from her fingers.

"How much have you taken?"

"The bottle was full—and you see what is left!"

"Then God have mercy on your soul. I am powerless to save you from your own rash act, poor girl, even if you permitted me to try. Why have you done this dreadful thing?"

"A quarrel with my lover!"

"Yes, it is true," sobbed Lyde. "She and Jesse quarreled, and she rashly swallowed the poison."

She added chokingly:

"They—they—are going to be married presently. Please stay to the ceremony."

Jesse Devereaux entered at that moment with a minister.

Roma was moaning in pain, her eyes half closed.

"Can you do nothing, doctor?"

"Alas, no! She must be dead in a few minutes!"

He bent down and took her hand.

"Are you ready, Roma?"

"Oh, yes, yes! Heaven bless you, dear!"

The ceremony began in its simplest form, the minister standing close by the couch to catch the faint responses of the dying girl. They were uttered clearly and audibly, with a faint ring of joy in the accents, very different from Devereaux's low, reluctant tones:

Then the minister said solemnly:

"I pronounce you man and wife!"

CHAPTER XXX.

BEFORE THE DAWN

None could envy Edmund Clarke's feelings as he hastened on his way to find out the fate of the fair girl he believed to be his daughter!

He could not credit the story of her elopement.

Harrowing suspicion pointed to the probability that Roma, having found out the truth about herself, had hurried to Boston to have the real heiress put out of the way.

What more likely than that the wicked girl had intercepted Jesse's letter containing Liane's address and made capital of it to further her own evil ends?

The man shuddered as he realized what a fiend he had cherished as his daughter. He realized that it was the old fable of warming a viper in the bosom that stings and wounds the succoring hand.

Roma could never come under his roof again. Her vile attempt on his life and Doctor Jay's precluded such a possibility.

But he groaned aloud as he thought of having to break all the truth to his frail, delicate wife—unless he should be able to first find Liane and get the proofs of her real parentage.

With a trembling hand he rang Mrs. Brinkley's bell, starting back in surprise when it was answered by no less a person than Sophie Nutter.

"Mr. Clarke!" she faltered, in blended surprise and pleasure.

"Sophie!" he exclaimed, following her into the little parlor, as she said:

"Come in, sir. All the folks are out but me, and I must say I am as much surprised to see you here to-day as I was to see Miss Roma yesterday."

Artful Sophie, she distrusted Roma, and took this method to find out if he knew of his proud daughter's goings-on.

"Roma here yesterday!" he exclaimed, in a voice of agony, feeling all his suspicions confirmed.

"Yes, sir, she was here to see old Mistress Jenks yesterday, and spent an hour with her!" returned Sophie quickly, scenting some sort of a sensation in the air.

She saw him grow pale as death, and he almost groaned: