CHAPTER VIII.
LOVED AND HATED.
“Time put his sickles in among the days,” and the weeks slipped away and brought winter weather.
But long before the first snow, Charley Bonair had gone away from New Market, ostensibly for a yachting trip with some of his bachelor friends, leaving Rosalind piqued and angry.
For when she had asked him point-blank how long he wanted to wait before the wedding, he had answered debonairly, that she might take all the time she wanted. He guessed that both were young enough to wait a while. Anyhow, he wanted to have this bachelor trip with the boys before he thrust his neck into the matrimonial noose!
Rosalind, secretly furious at his indifference, was on the point of telling him to go and stay forever, but she bit the tip of her rosy tongue, keeping back the sharp retort, and half sobbed instead:
“Oh, Charley, I shall miss you so!”
“I should hate to think that you were lonely, dear, but I don’t believe you will be, for Lucile and Marie intend to have you with them in California for the winter months, after Christmas. Will you go?”
“Gladly, if you will promise to join us there when you come back.”
“It’s a bargain,” he answered, laughing, but none of her entreaties could prevail on him to fix the date of his return.
He did not really know, he said. It would depend on the other fellows. Meanwhile she was to enjoy herself in her own way; he would not find fault nor get jealous!
When he had gone away, she loved and hated him by turns, and she was more than ever sure that Berry Vining had stolen his heart.
“Oh, if I could find her, and were quite, quite sure of her guilt, I would wreak a bitter vengeance,” she murmured angrily, to the silent walls of her luxurious chamber.
She would have given anything to know the whereabouts of the girl she believed to be her rival.
It nearly maddened her to think that Charley might be seeing her daily, basking in her smiles, laughing with her, perhaps, over the deferred wedding. Her hatred of the young girl grew each day, until it became a passion for revenge.
“My day will come! Let her look to herself, that day!” she vowed bitterly.
She went one day to the cottage on pretense of getting a cloth suit pressed, and with pretended sympathy, asked Mrs. Vining if she had ever had any news of the missing girl.
Mrs. Vining wept as she declared that she had never heard any news of her daughter.
“She may be dead and buried for aught I know to the contrary, Miss Montague.”
“Perhaps she has eloped with a lover,” cried Rosalind, but the old woman frowned, and answered quickly:
“My girl was as pure and high-minded as the richest young lady in the land, miss, and she would never stoop to disgrace.”
“I hope it may prove so, indeed!” exclaimed Rosalind, from the depths of her jealous heart, and she went away, promising to send her maid with the tailor gown to be pressed.
The little cottage with the morning-glory vines all dead, looked dreary and deserted, and poverty-stricken; but poor as it was, the good widow could barely pay the rent. Rosalind could not help but think, as she walked away, that it was a poor setting for the lovely girl who had fled away from it rather than exchange it for the gilded misery of a loveless marriage, such as her mother had proposed.
One thing she had told Mrs. Vining earnestly:
“If you hear from your daughter, be sure and let me know, and I will make it worth your while. I take a deep interest in little Berry, you know.”
Aye, the interest of the hawk in the dove, proud beauty! The mother curtsied in gratitude, and thanked her for her kindness.
And just before Christmas she was startled to receive a note from the tailoress, saying she had heard from her little girl at last. She had run away to be an actress, because life in New Jersey was too dull and lonely. She had sent her mother a little money and a pretty picture of herself, and begged her not to be angry, but she was touring in California now, and it would be a long time before she came home again.
“In California—Charley’s own State. It looks suspicious,” muttered Rosalind, and she went over to the cottage to visit Mrs. Vining again.
But she did not find out anything more, for the letter had been mailed on a train, and Berry failed, perhaps by design, to tell her destination, adding in a postscript:
“I don’t ask you to write me, because I am always ‘on the go,’ but I have means you do not guess, of sometimes hearing of your welfare.”
“It is through him,” Rosalind thought bitterly, but she concealed her agitation, and congratulated the widow, prettily, on having heard from her daughter. Then promising to send her a handsome Christmas gift, she took leave.
Charley Bonair would have given thousands of dollars to know even what Rosalind had heard about Berry; for he had begun to mourn her as dead, and remorse stung like a serpent in his heart.
Always remembering that the man from the inn, who had robbed and tried to murder him, belonged to those people, he had decided they must all be cut-throats and robbers, and that Berry had most likely met her death at their hands.
With a heavy heart he landed from the yacht at San Francisco, deciding he would join his family there, and little dreaming the surprise awaiting him.