My Pretty Maid; or, Liane Lester

"Roma, I do not like to hear you express yourself so heartlessly. You would like to be pretty even if you were poor."

"I cannot even imagine myself poor like the common herd!" she retorted, tossing her beautiful head with queenly pride.

If she had been looking at the man before her, she must have seen that a strange look came upon his face as his secret thoughts ran sarcastically:

"Ignorance indeed is bliss, in this case."

But he knew he could never tell her the truth, much as he sometimes longed to do it, in a sudden anger at her ignoble nature. He could not love the girl who had been taken from a foundling asylum, and placed in the stead of his own lost darling. Ah, no, it was impossible! It seemed to him that there was nothing lovable about Roma, although his wife clung to her with devotion.

He looked at her as she faced him in the moonlight, so proud and confident of her position; her jewels gleaming, her silks rustling as she moved, and thought that, but for the chance that had brought her into his home, she, too, might now be dressed like a servant as she had so contemptuously said of poor Liane Lester.

He felt as if he should like to cast it into her face, the willful, insolent beauty, but he clinched his teeth over the bitter words.

"Heaven help me to bear my cross for Elinor's sake!" he thought.

Roma suddenly came closer to him, and placed her hand on his arm, saying coaxingly:

"Please don't be angry, papa, dear! I didn't mean to seem heartless!"

"I'm glad of that, Roma, for your heart should be full of sympathy, instead of contempt, for that poor, pretty, little sewing girl."

"Yes, papa," gently answered Roma, for she intended to ask him for some new jewels to-morrow, and did not wish to vex him.

"Tell me," he continued eagerly, "all that you know about this pretty Miss Lester."

"I know nothing, papa. I never saw her before this evening, when she brought home my work, and said she was one of Miss Bray's sewing girls. Why, what an interest you take in her, papa! Did you stop and speak to the poor girl?"

"She was running to get home in a hurry, and tripped and fell down; I assisted her to rise. We introduced ourselves, and then she went on; that was all," he explained. "Well, I will leave you to watch for Jesse, while I go and talk to your mamma."

Beautiful Roma looked after Mr. Clarke with angry eyes, muttering:

"The idea of scolding me, his daughter and heiress, about that insignificant little sewing girl! And he thought her very beautiful. I wonder if mamma would be jealous if she heard of his open admiration! I think I will give her a hint, and see!" and she laughed wickedly, while she again turned her eyes toward the gate, watching for her laggard lover.

"Why doesn't he come?" she murmured impatiently, for Roma was so spoiled by overindulgence of a willful nature that she could not bear to wait for anything. She was imperious as a queen.

As the minutes slipped past without bringing the lover, for whom she waited so eagerly, her angry temper began to flame in her great, red-brown eyes like sparks of fire, and she paced back and forth between the arbor and the gate like a caged lioness, her bosom heaving with emotion.

Jesse Devereaux, who had known her only as a bright, vivacious girl, would not have known his sweetheart now, in her fury of rage at his nonappearance.

Angry tears sparkled in her eyes, as she cried:

"If he could not keep his word, he should have sent an excuse. He must know I shall be bitterly disappointed!"

All the beauty of the night mattered nothing to her now. The moonlight, the flowers, the murmur of the sea, were maddening to the girl waiting there alone for her recreant lover. Love and hate struggled for mastery in her capricious breast.

Jesse Devereaux had been hard to win, but she prized him all the more for that, and she could not bear the least apparent slight from him.

"He did not care to come; he has let some trivial excuse keep him away! I will have to teach him that he cannot trifle with my love!" she vowed darkly, flying into the house in a passion.

Seating herself angrily at her desk, she wrote:

Mr. Devereaux: Your failure to keep your engagement with me this evening, without any apparent excuse, seems to me a sufficient excuse for breaking our engagement.

    Roma.

She tore a sparkling diamond from her finger, wrapped it in a bit of tissue paper, and inclosed it in the letter, hurrying downstairs again and sending it off to Stonecliff by a messenger, with special directions to deliver it personally to Jesse Devereaux at his hotel.

Her feelings somewhat relieved by this explosion of resentment, Roma laughed harshly, murmuring to herself:

"He will be here the first thing in the morning to beg me to take him back, promising never to slight me so cruelly again. Of course, I will forgive him, after pouting a while, and making him very uneasy, but from this day forward he will have learned a lesson that I must be first with him in everything. I will never tolerate neglect, and he must learn that fact at once."

She was so agitated she could not go into the house just yet. She wandered about the grounds, trying to overcome her angry excitement before she went in, for she knew that her mother was sure to come to her room for a little chat before retiring, and she could not bear her questioning.

"Dear mamma, I know she idolizes me, but at times I find her very tiresome," she soliloquized. "How tired I get of her lecturing on the beauty of goodness, as if I were the wickedest girl in the world! I know I am not goody-goody, as she is, and I don't want to be! Good people don't have much fun in this world; they let the wicked ones get the advantage and run over them always. However, I shall be as sweet as sugar to her to-night, for I want her to help me tease papa to-morrow for that set of rubies I want!"

She leaned upon the gate, letting the cool wind caress her heated brow, waiting for her cheeks to cool, and her heart to thump less fiercely with anger before she went in to encounter her mother's searching gaze; but it would have been a thousand times better for her if she had gone to sob her grief out on that mother's gentle breast, than waited here for the fate that was swiftly approaching.

The dark, sinister-looking stranger who had insulted Liane Lester on the beach had rowed back to shore as soon as Devereaux was out of sight.

He was interested in Roma Clarke, as his questions to Liane had plainly shown.

He came slowly, cautiously, up to the gate, his heart leaping with hope as he saw a beautiful head leaning over it that he hoped and believed must be Roma's herself.

"What luck for me, and what a shock for her!" he muttered grimly, as he advanced.

At the same moment Mrs. Clarke was sending Roma's maid out with a message that it was so chilly she ought to come in, or she might take cold.

She would not listen to her husband's remonstrance that Roma was with her lover, and might not wish to be interrupted.

"Jesse can come in, too; I am sure he would not wish Roma to get sick out in the night air with nothing on her head!" cried the anxious mother.

"How you love that girl!" he cried testily, and she laughed sweetly.

"Are you getting jealous of my love for our daughter, dear? You need not, for the first place in my heart is yours, but remember how devoted I have always been to Roma, ever since she was born."

"I know, but has she ever seemed to show the right appreciation of your devotion?" he exclaimed abruptly.

A deep and bitter sigh quivered over the wife's lips, but she parried the question with a complaint:

"You are always insinuating some fault against my darling. Your heart is cold to her, Edmund."

He put his arms around her, and kissed the still lovely face with the passion of a lover.

"At least it is not cold to you, my darling!" he cried; and pleased at his love-making, she momentarily forgot Roma, and nestled confidingly against his breast.

He was glad that she could not know his secret thoughts, for they ran stubbornly:

"She is right. My heart is indeed cold to Roma. I shall be glad when Devereaux marries her and takes her away, and I do not believe it will break my wife's heart, either; for she seemed to bear it well enough when her daughter was away at boarding school those three years."