Berenice was walking past the open door of the sitting room, when Marie called to her kindly:
“Come in, you dear, pale little ghost, and help us to plan for the wedding this evening.”
Berenice’s heart gave a wild, startled leap as she obeyed.
They were all there together, the sisters with their husbands, the senator and Rosalind, all planning for the wedding that Berenice knew must never be.
The senator placed a chair for her and started when he saw her pallid face with the dark circles around the heavy eyes. Even her little hands were trembling with terrible agitation.
“Really, Berenice, you look ill this morning. Did you have a bad night, dear?” Lucile asked, with affectionate interest.
“Yes, I had a very bad night. I could not sleep. Something troubled my mind,” she faltered.
“You must learn not to take your troubles to bed with you, child,” declared Marie; “it’s the worst plan in the world. But stay with us and we will divert you, talking about the wedding. Do you think this room will do, if we order some flowers? It is very small, to be sure, but there will be no invited guests. Poor Rosalind has not even a wedding gown of white, except an old torn lace robe that she brought in her dressing bag with her, to see if the clever lacemakers of France could mend it.”
“Yes, it is a priceless, real lace gown,” explained Rosalind, “that I wore at a ball at Bonair one night, and some clumsy partner of mine must have put his foot through the edge of the flounce and torn it, for there’s a piece as large as your hand torn out and missing, though the servants searched the ballroom carefully for it next morning. You remember the very night, Berry,” graciously, “for you played on the Bonair stage that night in ‘A Wayside Flower.’”
Berenice parted her dry lips with a sort of gasp, and murmured, in husky tones:
“Oh, yes, I should remember it, I think, for it was on that same night the disguised fortune teller, my secret enemy, tried to murder me by pushing me into the bear pit, hoping Zilla would kill me in her rage over being disturbed with her young.”
“Oh, that terrible night; don’t recall it!” shuddered Rosalind, adding, to change the subject: “My misfortune with my costly lace gown was as nothing compared to your dreadful accident.”
Berenice smiled strangely, for all at once there had come to her the answer to her prayer of last night to be shown some way to bring her enemy to confusion.
She forced herself to look at Rosalind, courteously, but feeling all the while like a traitor, as she said:
“But cannot the gown be patched up for the ceremony, some way, with a scrap of lace? I think I might help you, as I have some fine lace, and am rather skillful with the needle. Will you show it to me?”
“Willingly!” cried Rosalind, falling into the trap, and hastening to secure the gown that was folded away in a dressing bag she had brought.
She came back and unfolded the tissue wrappers and spread the lovely web of lace open before their eyes.
There, in the front flounce, was the great tear, as big as your hand, marring all its beauty. Every one began to exclaim over it in sympathy with Rosalind.
“Now, a needle and some very fine thread, please,” said trembling Berenice, and when they were supplied she opened a large gold locket on her bosom and drew from it a little wad of lace that when fitted into the torn flounce matched the pattern perfectly.
Several voices cried, in unison:
“The missing piece of lace—how wonderful!”
“You found it!” cried Rosalind, in amazement. “But where?”
But even as she spoke she turned slightly pale, and added:
“Oh, it doesn’t matter where it was found so that I have it back. What a fuss we are all making over a bit of lace!”
“You made fuss enough yourself when it was lost at Bonair!” cried Marie, sharply, while they all fell to watching Berenice, who was putting in the torn lace with neat little stitches, though her hands shook sadly, so that she said:
“I am making a poor job of it, Miss Montague, but you can get a real lace maker to do it over again for you. You see, it makes me so nervous just thinking of the night when I found this scrap of lace, and of all I suffered afterward.”
“Try not to think of it at all,” soothingly said Rosalind, but Berenice raised her dark eyes, swimming in tears, and murmured:
“I must think of it, for it is my duty to tell everything I know about that night.”
“Go on, I am sure it will be very interesting,” exclaimed Clarence Carlisle, Marie’s husband.
“I needn’t tell about that night when I was pushed into the bear pit,” continued Berenice, “for all that are here have heard the story over and over, but some things that I never told before I mean to betray now, and one is that the pretended Indian seeress was no Indian at all, but a disguised and jealous enemy of mine, who desired to compass my death. I am sure of it, for in our struggle on the edge of the pit the woman uttered some angry words, in her own voice, which I instantly recognized. Then I clutched at her, and as I fell I knew I had something clutched in my frantic grasp that I had torn from her gown. It was this piece of lace that Mrs. Cline, simple soul, not dreaming of the mute witness it bore against my would-be murderer, disentangled from my unconscious fingers and kept for me. But it did not need this mute witness for me, for as I fell I saw my enemy’s face and heard her taunting voice, and I knew you, Miss Montague, for what you were, a guilty sinner, wreaking a terrible revenge on a hapless rival. Then when Charley sprang down to my rescue, you flew back and tried to destroy him also by a cowardly bullet, for the Clines saw the white figure running away from the scene of the double crime.”
She heard low, startled cries all around her, and lifting her accusing eyes she looked at Rosalind.
Out of her dead-white face her blue eyes glared like two points of steel, with murder in their gleam, and from between her stiff, white lips came bleakly:
“You lie! Had this charge been true, you would have told the secret long ago.”
Berenice, paling, trembling, continued:
“You are mistaken, for an impulse of generous pity made me keep your hideous secret locked fast in my own breast, until now. I never meant to speak until—last night—when—I—heard—you—with—your—lover—beneath—the trees!”
“Liar! Viper! Oh, let me tear her false tongue from her lips!” snarled Rosalind, but strong hands pinioned her and held her back, that Berenice might finish speaking.
She turned her dark, solemn, truthful eyes upon her father-in-law.
“Last night the nurse sent me out for a breath of fresh air, and while I rested under the trees a man passed by on horseback and reined up before the cottage gate. He came back presently with Rosalind, and not dreaming of my presence they talked over their terrible secrets together. Those two lovers, Senator Bonair, ridiculed you, laughed at you as old Moneybags, plotted to remain lovers after her marriage to you, and to make way with you as quickly as possible that she might take him for a second husband. Then they sealed their terrible bargain with a hundred kisses and caresses, and went away, unconscious of a listener, who, to save you, sir, from their cruel machinations, has broken the silence of more than a year to warn you of lurking danger, if you marry Rosalind Montague.”
The voice ceased and Berenice waited with a beating heart for them all to denounce her and take Rosalind’s part.
Then Senator Bonair said dully, as if shocked into apathy:
“Now, Rosalind, for your defense!”
She answered, with angry evasion:
“If you can take that low creature’s word against mine, why need I attempt a defense?”
Marie’s husband spoke up quickly:
“I can corroborate Mrs. Bonair’s word in one thing. Last night I saw the horseman she spoke of ride up to the gate, saw Miss Montague meet him and walk away with him. Afterward witnessed their return and parting, with a kiss. You remember, Dallas, I told you and asked your advice?”
“And I counseled secrecy over what seemed the close of perhaps a harmless flirtation,” Dallas Dreem replied.
“You should have told us!” pouted the young wives, darting angry glances at Rosalind, who, seeing the game was all up, cleared her throat and said angrily, defiantly:
“Take your hands off me, sirs; I shall not touch the little liar. I am only going to say that I admit everything, and am only sorry I did not kill both her and Charley in the bear pit.”
Her blue eyes blazed fury, and Senator Bonair cried wrathfully:
“I shall be forever grateful to Berenice for unmasking you and saving me from a detested marriage. Now go to your lover; we must be rid of you as soon as possible!”
“Would you send me away penniless?” cried Rosalind, angry and humiliated at the utter failure of her schemes. “I sold my jewels to come to you, and my lover is a poor man!”
The senator plucked a great roll of bills from his pocket and tossed them at her feet.
“There are three thousand dollars. It is the price of never seeing your face again,” he thundered. “Now go and leave us to the happiness of a reunited family!”
She snatched up the money and the lace gown and rushed from the room. Three days later she and Adrian Vance appeared before Mrs. Brander, in Paris.
“We are married and settled in Paris,” she announced calmly. “Old Moneybags was so homely, with his smallpox scars, that I threw him over and married my poor, handsome Adrian. I have written to mamma, but I fear she will never forgive us.”
Mrs. Brander thought it all very strange, but later on the truth leaked out, and she knew the false beauty for what she really was—a reckless, disappointed schemer.
But Charley Bonair did not learn all that happened until many days after, when his convalescence was an assured thing and he could hear, without danger to his health, the happy news that Rosalind had been banished in disgrace, and that the senator had reinstated him in his good graces, and given the Washington palace to Berenice as a wedding gift.