Let's Kiss and Part

11

"She has taken poison! Follow, and bring her back!" shouted Frank Adler rising in alarm, then falling back with a groan on the sprained foot that would not support his weight.

"Pshaw, she was only shamming!" his proud sweetheart answered coolly, helping him back to his sofa, and bending to press a kiss on his brow.

But he did not notice the fond caress. He groaned in a sort of agony:

"My God, it is all my fault; I did not realize what I was doing! If she dies, poor girl, it will lie at my door, her cruel fate."

"Nonsense, Frank, it was not your fault, her making such a little fool of herself, trying to catch a rich husband! Lie still, and compose yourself! Aunt Camelia will see about the silly creature!" drawing a chair to his side and overwhelming him with attention to banish from his mind.

Meanwhile, the shame-stricken, frantic girl had rushed past Mrs. Frensh's outstretched arms to the corridor, and darting past the astonished servant, tore open the door, and disappeared in the gloom of the stormy night.

"Follow her, and bring her back by force!" exclaimed her mistress, in the wildest agitation.

"It is storming wildly, madam. The air is filled with snow, and it is deep already," the man objected.

"Go! Bring her back at once! I tell you to go!" she stormed at him, and he obeyed without further parley.

Then her writhing lips parted in incoherent words:

"Oh, God, this pain at my heart! That poor girl, she was so fatally like my lost daughter, my stolen child, that I could scarcely refrain from clasping her in my arms! Oh, if it should be my lost one! But, no, she said that her mother was dead! Oh, why am I idling here? I must telephone for a physician to be on hand when she is brought back. Perhaps her sweet young life may be saved, and I will make it my care henceforth for the sake of her haunting likeness to my lost darling!".

Poor Angelina had only carried out her intention on coming to see Adler, for life held so little charm for the unfortunate girl now that all who loved her were dead that in desperation, she had resolved to end it all by suicide, that last resort of the wretched.

In the room, she occupied at Madame Levine's was a case of medicine, and from it she had selected the tiny vial labeled "Poison," and filled with a dark liquid.

In her agony of shame, it was worse to her than if Adler had, indeed, been dead. The dark unknown was welcome to her as the terrible present.

Penniless, friendless, with no one to turn to, she yet dared not go back to Madame Levine, fearing alike her wrath at her escape, and the persecutions of her hated nephew. Crushed beneath the burden of unendurable despair, she drained the vial and fled out into the night and the storm to die.

The black night, inhospitable as the hearts she had left, greeted her with storm and fury, driving her on before a furious gale that took away her breath and tossed her to and from, at last throwing her down heavily, and striking her head against the curbing, so that in a minute she became unconscious, and lay still at the mercy of the elements.

The icy wind shrieked above her, the snow fell in thick, white sheets and wrapped her in a shroud of royal ermine, and thus she lay silent and moveless for about a quarter of an hour before she was found by the man Mrs. Frensh had sent to seek and bring her back.

She had barely gone half a square from the mansion, but in the stormy gloom it was hard to find anyone, and he was about to give up the quest in despair of success when his foot stumbled against a soft body under the snow.

With a startled cry, he stooped down and dragged her up in his arms, bearing her to a little distance, where a light gleamed through a window. By its aid, he saw that it was she whom he sought.