CHAPTER XXXI.
ALLOY ALWAYS GLITTERS.
Berenice was so overwhelmed with joyous excitement that the tears rushed in a torrent to her eyes, and she half sobbed:
“Ah, you could do much for me if you would—but—I fear to ask.”
“Only try me, dear girl; only name your wishes and see. If you need money, and very likely you do in your position, I am very rich and surely the saving of my life is worth a little fortune to me. Come, dry your tears and let me make you happy. I shall write you a check for five thousand dollars. That is little enough for all I owe you, too little! Will that please you?”
She flung out her white hands convulsively, sobbing:
“No, no, no—not a penny! I am not rich, but a fortune is not what I crave. There is something dearer, dearer!”
“What else, child, speak? What other favor can I do for you?” the senator asked, in growing wonder.
He was more amazed than ever when the white-gowned figure knelt, humbly, at his feet, with little, upraised, beseeching hands.
Berenice pleaded, wildly, through raining tears:
“Oh, sir, there is one who loves you dearly, one whom you used to love, but your heart is turned against him and he is in bitter sorrow for your anger. It was I who unwittingly came between you, and if I have done aught to merit your favor, the reward I ask is not for myself but him—only this, forgive him, take him back to your heart!”
There was an awful silence.
Senator Bonair sat still, growing deadly pale through his florid color, like a statue stiffening into stone, his eyes fixed, sternly, on the beautiful, kneeling suppliant.
“Who are you, then, if not Miss Brown?” he asked, in a hard, cold voice.
“Oh, don’t you know already, sir? Have you not guessed?” she faltered.
“Are you my—I mean Charley Bonair’s wife?”
“Ah, yes, yes—I am his wife, the little actress you hate because she rivaled proud, rich Rosalind,” she confessed. “Must I go now, must I go?”
“Not yet. Wait and tell me if this was a plot to creep back into favor for the sake of my fortune? Did Charley send you here to nurse me so devotedly that I could deny you nothing?” The tone was harsh and grating.
Berenice, still kneeling, put up her small hands as if to ward off a blow.
“Ah, cruel, cruel!” she moaned. Then bitterly: “How could you think your son so low? Did he show a mercenary spirit when he married poor little Berry Vining? Oh, may I tell you all about it? Will you listen fairly?”
“Yes, I will listen, but stop crying first and get up and sit in this chair close by, while you tell me how it happened.”
Berenice, looking adorably pretty and pitiful, obeyed him, and after drying her wet eyes again, said patiently:
“It was this way, sir: Just as I tell you, Charley loved all of you dearly and grieved over the separation, not for your money’s worth, but for true love’s sake. So that day when he read you were in England, he said he would go and find you and beg your forgiveness. But I—I—was timid and afraid of you, so I stayed here. I refused to go. When he was gone I was lonely, and the maid told me of the desperate case of the sick man up here, with no doctor or nurse, so I thought it must be you and I came to you, asking no one’s leave because I knew when Charley should come back he would feel I had only done my duty coming here to succor his dear father. And I was right, for so he said in his letters afterward. Oh, sir, we are not after your money, we only want your pardon—for him, if not for me, poor Charley! Because he loves you so! As for me, I have done very little, really, for there was no risk nursing you since I had already had the disease years ago. I—I—might never have told you who I was, or claimed any favor, only that you bade me to, and then my heart leaped at the thought of my husband. Oh, cannot you understand?” She broke down and hid her lovely face in her dimpled hands.
Her dazed father-in-law sat watching her, noting her wonderful grace and charm, recalling what his son had said to him the day of their bitter quarrel.
In his weakness and loneliness, the old love, smothered under anger, seemed to surge upward again and flood his whole being with tenderness for his son. But he called pride to his aid, lest she should see too quickly, this lovely suppliant, how the ice was melting around his heart.
“Tell me,” he said, and his voice sounded stern and harsh in her ears, “tell me all about yourself and Charley—how you first met, how love grew between you until he forgot his troth to Rosalind. Begin at the beginning; leave nothing unsaid.”
Berenice obeyed, nothing loath, for it pleased her to recall everything connected with Charley, and she left nothing untold from the hour of their first meeting until now.
Senator Bonair, resting easily, with half-closed eyes, did not miss a word of her story, nor an expression of her radiant face that glowed with happy blushes as she told her tale of love.
He sighed heavily, and turning to her as she ended her story, remarked:
“It would make a pretty novel, this love story of yours and Charley’s, and I should not have found much fault with it if Rosalind had been left out of it, but her wrongs made me indignant, caused all my bitterest anger against you both.”
“It was sad,” replied Berenice, “that she should suffer for our happiness—very hard. But it was better for Charley to tell her the truth frankly, as he did, and ask for his release.”
“Yes, I agree with you on the latter point, but Rosalind denies that Charley ever asked for a release. She claims that she was betrothed to him all the while, and her mortification was so extreme that to palliate my son’s offense I——” he paused and bit his lips, but Berenice finished the sentence for him:
“You threw yourself into the breach, with your high sense of honor, and offered to heal the wound by marrying her yourself, thus still making her prospective heiress of the Bonair millions, the high stakes for which she was playing.”
He quickly took up the cudgel in Rosalind’s defense.
“Hush! she is not mercenary. I am sure she loved my son dearly, and can never give me but a tame affection. If I believed Rosalind unworthy of my respect and love, I could sooner forgive my son’s perfidy. For I must own you are a very charming little lady!” exclaimed the senator frankly.
She smiled up at him gratefully.
“Not little lady—little daughter,” she pleaded.
“Little daughter, then,” he amended smilingly, and felt his heart thrill warmly at the word.
“I thank you a hundred times!” she cried, blushing with joy, and adding: “Now I know you will forgive Charley and call him son.”
He answered gravely:
“Do you think if I will forgive him and receive him again he will be content with that? For you know I have disinherited him out of justice to Rosalind, whom I am to marry.”
“Oh, sir, if you marry Rosalind, Charley will not strive for the miserable money. We have been happy without it for more than a year. But—but—I prophesy that you will never marry Rosalind, because you will learn, before it is too late, that she is unworthy of you!”
He frowned, and said:
“Nay, you have already wronged Rosalind enough; let her name rest. She will surely be my bride.”
Berenice sighed and held out her hand, replying:
“If I believed that, I should be very sorry for you, sir. But I must be going now. My poor boy is wearying for me this long time. Tell me, do you forgive him? May he come to-morrow?”
“He may come to-day. I am too impatient to wait,” the senator cried, with a sudden outburst of tenderness.