Miss Montague’s headache lasted till the afternoon of the next day, and she denied herself to every one but her maid, keeping quiet, as she said, to overcome the attack, but in reality plotting schemes for revenge on her successful rival.
Her seclusion ended, she appeared at luncheon, exquisitely gowned, and with a becoming pallor that witnessed her recent sufferings.
But all the ladies at the table were pale, for that matter, and they had pink eyelids, as if from recent weeping, while in their demeanor to Rosalind was mingled overweening pity and sympathetic tenderness for her illness.
So she condescended graciously:
“Don’t let’s talk of it any more. I’m better now.”
But it seemed to her, presently, that there was something else in the air, and, glancing at a vacant chair, she exclaimed:
“Why doesn’t Charley come to luncheon? Is he sick? Is that why all of you look so tearful?”
With that one of the girls choked back a sob and answered bitterly:
“He isn’t sick, oh, no; much worse! He has gone crazy!”
“Hush, dearie!” admonished Madam Fortescue, glancing significantly at the servant in waiting, while she added, to Rosalind, kindly and with dignity:
“The news of Charley’s escapade will keep till we have finished luncheon.”
After that no one had much appetite, and the four soon adjourned to a private room where Rosalind said brusquely:
“If there’s anything to tell, let me hear it quickly—I never could bear suspense.”
As they hesitated, with great eyes of sorrow and sympathy, she continued:
“Why do you all look at me so strangely and pityingly? Has Charley done something very bad indeed?”
“He has gone crazy!” again answered Marie angrily, mopping her wet eyes with her lace handkerchief.
“It will break your heart!” sobbed Lucile, adding:
“Dear Rosalind, please do not be angry with us when you hear it. We are not to blame, and we will love you all the more for the grief he has caused you.”
“My dear girls, you will drive poor Rosalind wild. Let me tell her the cruel truth at once,” exclaimed Madam Fortescue, and taking the girl’s hand, tenderly, in hers, she said tearfully:
“I grieve to tell you that my nephew, Charley Bonair, has to-day capped the climax of his follies by making a clandestine marriage with the sick actress whom he saved from the bear pit the night of the ball.”
“Oh, heavens!” gasped Rosalind, in very genuine horror and indignation, for she had not expected the climax so soon.
She sat gazing at the speaker with a pale, stricken face, while she went on bitterly:
“It seems Charley had known the girl before that night. He met her first in the town where you live before she went upon the stage, and fell in love with her then, so he says. But she had some sort of a strange disappearance, then, and he believed her dead until coming home, unexpectedly, the night of our grand ball, he saw her on the stage and knew her at once for the missing girl. He was so agitated between his duty to you and his love for her that he did not make his presence known to us, but went out into the grounds to overcome his agitation. There he had the good fortune, as he calls it, of saving her life. The romance of this incident increased his love to recklessness so that he threw pride and duty to the winds and proposed to the girl yesterday. She accepted the offer, and this morning he procured a minister, and they were married, with the Clines as witnesses.”
Lucile chimed in furiously:
“He had the impudence to come and tell us all about it when the thing was irrevocably done, and to beg us to accept that nobody for a sister!”
Rosalind would never be paler than now, as she sat and listened, speechless with rage, at Charley’s escapade.
Where were all the clever plans she had made for circumventing him now? All shattered to pieces by this action of the ardent lover, who had cleverly forestalled everything by his hasty wedding.
“We will never accept her for a sister—never! We will never forgive him for the slight to you whom we loved already as a sister!” sobbed Marie, and at this juncture Rosalind thought it was time to fall back, half fainting, in her seat, but not to go entirely unconscious until she had heard all there was to tell.
They ran to chafe her face and hands and to drop tender little kisses on her brow, until she seemed to revive, and murmured faintly:
“I am better now. Go on, tell me everything.”
“Of course, we overwhelmed him with bitter reproaches,” declared Marie, “and we told him we wanted nothing more to do with him, or with the low nobody he has married.”
“And he said—what?” demanded Rosalind.
“He pleaded for her at first, and then when he saw we were not to be placated, he grew angry, too, and left the house, saying he would rather have his little bride’s love than ours. So as soon as he left we telegraphed father, in Washington, to come home at once and see if he could do anything to break up the match, for Charley had suddenly lost his mind and married a low actress that we could never receive in the family, to say nothing of the slight he had put upon you!”
“Cruel! cruel! Oh, my heart will break! I can never hold up my head again for very shame; me, Rosalind Montague, to be jilted for a creature like that—the daughter of the New Market tailoress, a woman that worked by the day in a shop!” groaned Rosalind hysterically.
“Then you know the girl?” asked Madam Fortescue.
“Yes, she grew up in abject poverty there in New Market. Her father drove a delivery wagon—till he died—for the tailor his wife sewed for, and there were a host of children, and this girl, the youngest, who grew up idle and rather pretty so that she cared for nothing but flirting and flaunting about, never soiling her hands with honest work. I knew that Charley flirted with her a little, but mamma advised me not to find fault with him, saying it wouldn’t amount to anything. Soon after she disappeared from the town and I never saw her again until that night of the play. I was almost sure that Vera Vane was little frisky, flirting Berry Vining, the little schemer, that has cut me out of my lover!”
They hastened to caress her again, assuring her of their warm sympathy, and adding their unalterable determination never to accept the scheming little actress for a sister. Charley could never be their brother again, either; they would punish him by treating him as a stranger.
“If he had told you that he loved her best and wanted his freedom, it would not have seemed quite so wicked, but when he told us he had done so, we did not believe him, as you would have told us if such were the case,” added Mrs. Fortescue.
“Oh, how could he be totally false? He has never breathed one word of all this to me. If he had I should have freely confided in all of you. You know I have made no secret of my troubles,” sighed Rosalind.
“Only wait till papa comes and he will find a way, I’m sure, to break the marriage and bring poor Charley back to his senses,” declared Marie, between tears and anger.