An Old Man's Darling

"Thanks dearest. I only asked the promise because I knew it was for the best. Darling, I shall think of you always while I am absent, and I will write to you very often. Will you write to me sometimes, and let me know that you are well and happy?"

"I will write to you often and let you know that I am well; but I can never be happy while I am separated from you, Leslie," she said, sadly.

"Bonnibel, how beautiful you look in that white dress," he said, changing the conversation abruptly, seeing that it pained her. "You were the finest bride I ever saw."

"It is a pretty dress," she said, looking down at the soft mass of muslin and lace; "but I little thought when I put it on for dinner this evening that it would be my bridal dress. I shall always love this dress, Leslie. I will keep it always in memory of to-night."

Both were silent after a little while, till Leslie said, abruptly:

"Bonnibel, I wish I knew of what you are thinking so intently."

"I was hardly thinking at all," she said, quickly. "Some verses were running through my mind that I read this evening in Jean Ingelow's pretty poems. I hardly understood them then, but they seem to suit my feelings now."

"Let me hear them," said Leslie.

"I cannot recall them, except the last verse. The poem was called 'Divided,' and the last verse, which is all that I clearly recollect, ran thus:

"'And yet I know, past all doubting truly—
A knowledge greater than grief can dim—
I know as he loved he will love me duly,
Yea, better, e'en better than I love him.
And as I walk by the vast, calm river,
The awful river so dread to see.
I say, thy breadth and thy depth forever
Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me.'"

"Beautiful," said Leslie, as the full voice, tremulous with newly awakened feeling died away. "You must always recall those lines when you think of me, my little one."

The keel grated on the shore. Leslie looked at his watch in the moonlight.

"It is later than I thought," he said, hurriedly, as he helped Bonnibel out upon the shore. "I have but fifteen minutes to reach the station. Darling, I must go to-night, though it nearly kills me to leave you."

She turned quivering and weeping, to throw herself upon his breast.

"Darling, you are not afraid to go to the house alone?" he whispered. "My time is so short!"

"No, no," she said. "But, Leslie, how can I let you go?"

"'Tis but a little while," he answered, soothingly. "Be brave, my precious darling!"

He drew her to his heart with a long, despairing embrace, and kissed her passionately.

"My little love, my own sweet wife, good-bye!" he faltered, and was gone.

Bonnibel threw out her yearning arms as if she would draw him back, then turned and staggered homeward.

"I will be brave," she murmured. "I will try to bear it, but, oh, this pain at my heart."

She opened the gate and went softly up the walk. It was almost midnight, and she began to wonder if the doors would be locked.

"If they are I shall have to get in through the window," she said to herself.

But as she stepped on the piazza she saw the front door open and her uncle sitting motionless in his easy chair.

"Poor dear," she thought, with a thrill of regretful tenderness, and forgetting herself entirely. "He has fallen asleep in his chair and they have all forgotten him. I will wake him with a kiss."

He lay with his head thrown back, apparently fast asleep. Gliding softly along, she threw her arm about his neck and, bending over, pressed her sweet lips to his brow.

She started back with a shiver and looked at him. The brow she had kissed was cold as ice. Her hand fell down upon his breast and came in contact with something wet and cold. She lifted her hand and saw upon it in the moonlight a dark stain.

"Uncle!" she screamed, "oh, God, uncle, wake up!"

That wild scream of agony roused the house. The servants came rushing out, but before they reached her Bonnibel had fallen fainting at her uncle's feet. The beautiful white dress she had promised to keep in memory of that night was all dabbled and stained in a pool of his life-blood that had dripped down upon the floor.

CHAPTER VI

Francis Arnold was dead. The soul of the proud millionaire, the disappointed husband, the loving uncle, had been hurried prematurely before the bar of Eternal Justice. In the stillness of the summer night while he rested in fancied security beneath his own roof-tree, the angel of sleep pressing down his weary eye-lids, the deadly destroyer had crept to his side, and red-handed murder had struck the cowardly blow that spilled his life blood.

They came hurrying out—the servants first, the wife next, the step-daughter last—all roused by that piercing shriek of agony—and found him sitting there dead, with Bonnibel lying lifeless at his feet, her white robes dabbled and stained in the blood upon the floor.

They brought lights and looked at him. Yes, he was cold and dead. There was a great scarlet stain on his white vest where the deadly weapon had entered his heart. The blood had dripped down in a great pool upon the floor and was fast stiffening on his garments.

Mrs. Arnold shrieked aloud and went into horrible hysterics, laughing wildly and maniacally, and tearing her hair from its fastenings; but Felise Herbert stood still as a statue of horror, looking at the dismal scene. Her pale face was paler than ever, and her large, black eyes looked wildly about her. She made no effort to arrest her mother's frenzied cries, but stood still as if frozen into ice, while the maids lifted up the still form of poor Bonnibel and carried her through the drawing-room window, laying her down gently, and applying restoratives.

Life came swiftly back to her under their influence. She lifted her head, and opened her eyes upon the faces around her just as a shrill and piercing whistle announced the departure of the train which was bearing her young husband away from her for years—perhaps forever.

Bonnibel sprang up and went out on the piazza again. As she stepped to the side of that lifeless form, Felise Herbert, just waking from her apparent trance of horror, waved her hands in the air, and cried out solemnly and sepulchrally:

"Oh, Heaven! It is Leslie Dane who has done this dreadful deed. That was what he meant by his dark threats this evening!"

"Leslie Dane has killed him!" echoed her mother, wildly.

"It is false, woman! How dare you accuse him of such a deed?" Bonnibel cried out fiercely, wild with grief and horror; then suddenly she looked at the half-dazed men-servants standing around their master helplessly.

"Idiots!" she cried, "why do you stand here idle? Why does not some one bring a doctor? Perhaps he is not dead yet—he may be revived."

They brought a physician at her bidding, but when he came his services were needed for her, not for the pale corpse down stairs that would nevermore want the physician's potent art. They had taken her by force to her room, where she was wildly walking the floor, wringing her hands and raving over her loss.

"You are dead, Uncle Francis," she cried, passionately; "you will never speak to me again. And I had left you in anger. We never quarreled before—never! And without a good-bye kiss, without a forgiving word, you are gone from me into the darkness of death! They have killed you, my dear one!—who could have been so cruel?—and you will never know how I loved you, and that I forgave you for your cruelty so soon, or that I wished to be reconciled. Oh, God! Oh, God!"

She told her story frankly to the good old doctor when he came and questioned her. She and her uncle had quarreled because he had denied her a darling wish. She had rushed out of the house in a fit of anger, and moped about the seashore until late into the night. Then she had returned, and seeing him sitting there on the piazza she had felt her anger melting into tenderness, and stolen up to give him the kiss of reconciliation, but found him cold and dead.

She told the same story when the inquest was held next day, blushing crimson when they asked her what she and her uncle had quarreled over.

"It was a purely personal matter," she answered, hesitatingly. "Is it necessary to reveal it?"

They told her it was necessary.

"He refused to sanction my engagement to my lover, and drove him away from the house with cruel, insulting words," she answered briefly through her tears and blushes.