The Senator's Favorite

CHAPTER IV.

"FOR LOVE OF HER FAIR FACE."

In the gray dawn of the wild March morning Senator Winans came home alone, looking ten years older, the stamp of despair on his dark, handsome face.

He went at once to his wife, and found her lying awake in a fever of suspense and anxiety.

When she saw him enter alone she started up with a cry of keen despair:

"Precious! Oh, where is Precious?"

Her husband knelt by her side, clasped the feverish little hands, and kissed the woeful white face, all wet with tears, like a rain-drenched lily.

"Be brave, be patient, my dearest, for you must bear this cruel suspense yet a little longer," he sighed.

"Oh, Paul, you have not found her yet? Then she must be dead, our little darling!"

He had decided to tell her the truth. It would be better than the anguish of wretched uncertainty, so he broke it to her gently, the story of the golden-haired girl who had been carried out of the ballroom unconscious.

"It must have been our golden-haired darling. I believe she has been kidnaped for the sake of a ransom; so cheer up, my darling, for the wretches will not harm our pet; they will keep her safe and well to earn the reward they will expect to be offered in the morning papers. And I have attended to that already, Grace, for my advisers think it will be best to give great publicity to the affair, as in that case it may come to the knowledge of some persons who may be able to give us an unexpected clew. Oh, my wife; do not sob so bitterly. Our darling shall soon be found, I swear it," and for the sake of the anguish she saw in his eyes the poor mother fought with her sorrow, and tried to find a glimmer of light in the Cimmerian darkness.

But it was cruel, cruel, for the horror of the present was only augmented by the memory of the past. Her eldest born, her precious boy, had been stolen in his babyhood, and four years elapsed before he was recovered. It had taken all the strength of youth and hope to endure that cross. Now she was older, frailer, and she knew she could not bear another such agony and live.

But her husband's seeming hopefulness put a gleam of sunshine in her heart, and for his sake, because she loved him very dearly, she would not add to his remorseful grief by one reproachful word.

The morning papers in glaring black headlines chronicled the abduction of the senator's favorite daughter and the princely ransom he had offered for her restoration. Excitement ran high over the terrible sensation, and stories of the girl's wonderful grace and beauty passed from lip to lip. The studio of a famous artist who had but just completed the portrait of Precious for her father was thronged with gazers. He could not deny them, for it was hoped that familiarity with her looks might in some way help the search for the missing girl.

Among the first of the curious visitors to the studio was handsome Lord Chester.

The senator's earnest praises of his favorite child rang continuously in the young man's head.

His eager curiosity drove him to the studio of the famous artist, and when he stood at last before the full-length portrait he could not turn his eyes away; they lingered in rapture on the pictured loveliness of Precious Winans.

To the day of his death Arthur, Lord Chester, carried this picture in his memory and his heart—this picture of a girl standing by a magnificent large mastiff with one tiny white hand holding his silver collar. Beneath her fairy feet was daisied grass, and her simple white gown and the broad straw hat she carried on her arm seemed to fit the spring-time that was imaged in the golden lengths of rippling hair. So she stood—"a sight to make an old man young"—Ethel's younger sister, the senator's favorite.

The words of a poet of his own fair land leaped to his lips:

Later in the day he called at the Winans mansion, and Ethel received him alone. Her mamma was too ill and nervous to see any one.

Never had the queenly Ethel looked more charming. No shade of anxiety dimmed the dark radiance of her eyes. She had slept long and late, and when she awoke and heard that Precious was not yet found she laughed and said that she was sure that her sister had eloped with some handsome young man, and would be coming home in a few days from her bridal tour, with her husband, to ask papa's forgiveness.

And she repeated this to Lord Chester when he expressed solicitude over her sister's fate.

"I am not at all uneasy, my lord," she cried lightly; "I think it very likely that Precious has eloped with one of her tutors. Papa had several young men coming here to teach my sister music, and drawing, and dancing. Of course her French governess was always present. But she scarcely understood a word of English, so it was easy enough for one of them to make love to her if he wished, and Precious was just the kind of pretty, willful simpleton to fall in love with a nobody and marry him."

A keen, inexplicable pain tore the young man's heart at those words, and it seemed to him that Ethel's levity amounted to heartlessness. He looked gravely at her with his dark-gray eyes, and it seemed to him that there was something lacking in her beauty that he had not missed last night, but he did not realize as yet that the change was in himself.

He would have denied it if any one had taxed him with being in love with a girl whom he knew only by her portrait.

Only last night he had adored charming Ethel Winans. It was only her mother's interruption that had prevented him from laying his heart and title at her feet. The words had trembled on his lips while he looked at her with his heart in his eyes.

Why did he not speak to-day?

The opportunity was very favorable, for it was but seldom he could find the brilliant belle alone.

And Ethel's languid air, just touched with the softness of love, was very inviting. It was just the gentle mood in which a girl is likely to accept a proposal.

But he did not propose, although he said to himself that really he ought to, and he was afraid she expected it, after last night. But really it might not be quite correct to speak just now when the family was crushed with grief over the kidnaping of a beloved daughter. He would postpone the declaration.

In truth last night's zest was lacking. Last night Ethel had seemed to him a peerless goddess. To-day she was only an ordinary mortal—beautiful, but—not as divine as her younger sister.

If he had dreamed of the mad passion of jealousy surging under her calm exterior he would never have uttered his next words:

"I saw your sister's portrait at Valentine's studio to-day. Her beauty merits all her father's praise."

She bit her scarlet lip and tore to pieces a rose in her fingers.

"The portrait is flattered. Precious is not half so beautiful," she answered coldly, and a sudden constraint came between them. Lord Chester, blind to the smoldering fury under the long black lashes, thought her weary of him, and soon took leave.

Ethel, left alone in the splendid room, with the scattered rose petals at her feet, flung out her arms with a gesture of rebellious despair, and moaned bitterly:

"She has won my lover's heart with that fatal, luring, childish beauty! How can I help but hate her now?"

The evening's post brought a mysterious type-written letter to Senator Winans. It ran thus:

"You have made a mistake. I did not steal Precious for a ransom, but for love of her fair face. Do not be uneasy. I shall not harm your beautiful daughter. She is safe in the care of a kind, motherly woman, but she is also my prisoner, and will remain so until she consents to become my bride. After she is married to me you shall see her again, but never before; so you must be patient, for she is a little obdurate now, but in the end I shall win her consent."

The letter had no date or signature, but it was postmarked Washington.

"Didn't I say it was an elopement?" cried Ethel, in scornful triumph, but her father turned on her a lightning glance of reproof, and cried sternly:

"Never dare, Ethel, to repeat that false word elopement of your innocent sister again. You have just read in this letter that it was an abduction, not an elopement. So do not make another such mistake."

CHAPTER V.

IN A VILLAIN'S POWER

When Senator Winans left Precious standing like a vision of beauty under a garlanded pillar to await his return, he did not dream that the vulture of danger hovered near his blue-eyed darling.

But burning eyes only a little distance away glared on the girl with wolfish eagerness, and minute by minute those small keen eyes grew fiercer with the fire of passion.

Precious, all unconscious of those burning eyes, stood quietly watching the strangers that surrounded her, coming and going in ceaseless ebb and flow like the waves of the sea.

Suddenly those eyes came nearer, nearer, and burned on the lovely face. Then a voice spoke in her ear:

"Good-evening, Miss Winans."

Precious started and looked at the speaker.

She recognized her drawing-master, Lindsey Warwick, a young man she secretly disliked because she had a vague suspicion that he was the writer of several mysterious love-letters she had lately received.

She gave him a haughty nod, but she did not speak, only stared in surprise at his elegant evening suit and the rose in his buttonhole, that transformed him from the poor drawing-master to the elegant man of fashion.

Lindsey Warwick was not at all abashed by her supercilious air. He seemed to be wildly agitated, his face pale, his firm chin trembling with emotion. Bending close to the girl's ear he whispered:

"Come! your father wishes me to take you to your mother."

Something about him, his awe-struck tone, his agitation frightened the girl. She gasped inquiringly:

"Mamma?"

And Lindsey Warwick answered unhesitatingly, though his voice was hoarse and strange:

"Yes, poor child, your mother has just dropped dead of heart-disease over yonder. Come," and he held out his arm.

If she had uttered a cry the little scene might have attracted attention from the vast crowd surging about, but had he thrust a sword to the very hilt in her heart Precious could not have fallen more silently or swiftly at his feet. She just dropped down unconscious without moan or cry—that was all.

No one had observed anything strange, only one or two looked around when he exclaimed, "My sister has fainted!"

His ruse had succeeded admirably. Precious lay like a dead girl at his feet, and there was no one to interfere.

The villain lifted the slender white form in his arms and pushed through the crowd, trying to gain the door. People made way when they saw his burden and heard him mutter his formula, "My sister has fainted." But no one displayed any special interest. Half a score of women had fainted that night.

So Lindsey Warwick gained the outer air with his burden, and soon finding a cab took her away.

It was a daring game that he had played, but he had won.

The project had flashed into his mind when he saw her alone and unguarded in the heedless crowd, and in the desperation of a mad and hopeless love he had carried it out. He knew that the chances were terribly against him, but he resolved to run the risk in hope of the prize.

The cab took him and his captive to the very suburbs of South Washington—to an old tumble-down red brick house of two stories that stood alone in a large neglected lot. There were but a few more houses in the square, and those strictly of the shanty order.

Cabby held out his hand, remarking grumpily:

"Five dollars, you know, is legal fare for Inauguration night."

"I'll make it ten for good luck, and you can go on a big spree to-morrow," laughed Lindsey Warwick, handing him a bill.

Cabby thanked the kind gentleman vociferously, but he did not wait till the next day, but went on his orgies at once, and wound up early next morning in the police court, where he was sent to jail for ten days in default of payment of his fine. He never saw the papers, never knew of the sensation that had followed the simple fact of his driving a young lady and gentleman home from the Inauguration Ball. He did not dream that he had been concerned in an abduction, or that Senator Winans would have made him rich for life if he had given to him the clew he possessed to his lost daughter.

Precious, the petted daughter of wealth and luxury all her life, recovered her consciousness in the smallest, shabbiest, most common-looking bedroom she had ever beheld.

A coarse woman of about fifty years was leaning over her. She looked and smelled like a laundress.

"Who are you, and where am I?" quavered Precious.

A man came forward then, and at sight of him everything came back to her memory. She lifted her head from the coarse pillow with a shriek.

"Mamma! oh, darling mamma!"

"Be quiet. Your mother is all right, my dear," said Warwick. "The story of her death was only a ruse to make you faint, so that I could get you into my power. I love you, so I brought you away to make you my prisoner until you would consent to be my bride."

Precious sprang to her feet, her blue eyes blazing with anger and scorn.

"You must be crazy! Why, my papa will kill you for this!" she panted indignantly.

Lindsey Warwick laughed mockingly.

"Oh, no, my dear; he will not get the chance. He will never know where you are until you marry me!"

She stamped her little foot with the pride of a queen.

"Senator Winans' daughter marry you—a drawing-master!" she cried, with increased indignation.

"Certainly, my dear. Pride can stoop sometimes. Your mother was only a governess when she became the senator's bride!"

She looked at him in amazement at his knowledge of their family history, and answered proudly:

"My mother belonged to one of the proudest families in the South. It was only the reverse of fortune that placed her for a short time in a dependent position."

With a laugh he answered:

"Granted, but she was only a governess, and the senator's daughter may stoop like her father to wed her tutor."

"I hate you! I would not marry you if you were the last man on earth! Release me at once, and let me go home!" she cried imperiously.

"I will not. I love you to madness, and I have sworn that I will make you my bride. I will keep you imprisoned here until you consent."

"I will kill myself first."

"I am not afraid of that."

She looked at the coarse, frowzy-haired woman whose greasy clothes smelled of soapsuds.

"Are you in this plot?" she asked disdainfully.

"He is my son, and has put you in my charge, and I have promised to keep you safe; that is all," was the careless answer.

"But my father will search everywhere for me, and he will punish you both when he finds me."

"He will not find you, for there will not be the slightest clew for him to follow. This house is an old ruin, and my mother lives here alone. I board in one of the best neighborhoods in Washington, and I will never come here to see you only late at night."

He made a motion to the old woman, and she immediately retired from the room.

Then the dark, sneering face of the young man softened with love and longing. He knelt at her feet, and cried passionately:

"Forgive me, for I love you wildly, and I knew I could never win you except by force. I have loved you madly for months. I sent you the tenderest love-letters man ever penned, but you did not reply to them. I looked at you often with my heart in my eyes, but you averted your face. Why were you so cold to me?"

"I despised you," answered Precious. "Only yesterday I resolved to tell mamma that you were presuming on your position to try to make love to me. I wish now that I had told her. Then she would have had some suspicion of the truth."

"She will think now that you have eloped with some low-born lover!" he sneered, rising to his feet, for she had drawn back from him in disdain. "But I will leave you to rest now, my beautiful love, and my mother will come and help you to retire. Fear nothing. You will be kindly treated here, but you will never be restored to your home until you consent to marry me—ay, until the knot is tied. So think well of my proposal, for I will make you a good husband. Good-night," and he bowed and withdrew.

If the thought of her captivity had not been so dreadful, Precious could have laughed at the man's presumption.

To think that she, the daughter of an illustrious statesman, should have such a lover as this—a drawing-master, the son of a laundress! Well, papa would come to find her very, very soon, and then he would punish the bold villain for his presumption.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FORTUNE-TELLER

Lindsey Warwick had not counted on such determined obstinacy as his lovely young captive displayed.

From first to last she refused to taste a morsel of food beneath the roof of her jailer.

The keenness of her thirst made her accept water from the woman, but that was all. Neither cajoleries, threats, nor bribes could induce her to taste the food provided for her, though it was of the best, with fruits and wines, and even bon-bons to tempt her girlish appetite. Although she was starving she pushed them aside with disdain, and lay all day on the couch weeping forlornly, and calling by turns on the names of her father, mother, and sister.

Poor Precious! she had fully believed that her father would find her in less than twenty-four hours, but the long days wore away, and she gave herself up to despair. Prayers, promises, pleadings, were of no avail with the cruel old woman and her enamored son.

But at heart the old woman was uneasy and frightened as the long days waned and the beautiful captive grew paler and weaker day by day.

"She will die, Lindsey, for she has never tasted food since she came here, and that is a long week now. You had better let her go. She will never marry you; she will die first, as she said."

"Then she will be mine in death. I will bury her under the cellar of this house, and no one will ever know the secret of her fate."

"It is a wonder they did not suspect you," she exclaimed.

"I fancy the detectives did at first, but I was clever, and threw them off the scent. In the first place, I went as usual that day to give her her lesson in drawing. When the servants told me she was missing I pretended to be entirely in ignorance. Then I devoted myself to a girl in my own rank, and contrived to make every one think me engaged to her. That cleared me, you see."

"Better marry that girl, Lindsey. She might be happy with you. T'other one wouldn't, even if you got her. You're too poor; she couldn't bear it."

"But her father worships the ground she walks on; he would give her a dowry if she married me."

"Better say he would disinherit her for such a marriage."

"Not if she could be brought to love me. He's a stickler for love matches, I know. He married a governess himself. No, mother, only let me get the little beauty to marry me; and the senator would forgive us, and my fortune would be made."

"Go upstairs and look at that poor girl a-dying, as white as the wall, and not able to walk across the floor, and maybe you'll change your mind," replied she cynically.

"By heaven! she shall eat!" he cried frantically. "I will force her to swallow food at the point of a pistol."

"And drive her insane—yes, that's what you'll do!"

"Mother, you're a fool! Come along and help me, and we'll pour some wine down her throat. She shall not die. I love her too well. Life would be a desert without her."

She followed him up the dark, rickety stairway, carrying the lamp, for it was after dark, and presently unlocked the door of the girl's prison.

"What is that?" he cried in horror.

Precious lay face downward on the floor, seemingly lifeless.

"I told you so. She's dead! You've killed her!" the woman muttered.

With a groan he flung himself on his knees and lifted the silent form. The white face with its closed eyes fell inertly across his arm. He bent his ear to her heart.

"No, no, she is not dead. Her heart beats faintly. Quick! some wine in a spoon. Here, put it between her lips. Let it trickle down her throat," and with wild anxiety he held the still, white face up to the light.

Meantime there were suspense and horror unutterable in the senator's splendid mansion.

Since that bold and daring letter that had told them Precious was in the power of a lover whose passion amounted to insanity, no further clew had been found.

The most alert detectives of Washington and New York were completely baffled, though neither time nor money was spared in the quest.

Mrs. Winans had taken to her bed, a weak, nervous, weeping woman, and the physician declared that she would never rise from it again unless her daughter were soon restored. Her husband looked like a man whose mind might go wrong at any moment. Ethel, who had been sullenly indifferent at first, and secretly exultant at her sister's strait, began to get over her first anger, and missing the sunshine from the house prayed God to pardon her mad jealousy and restore her little sister to their yearning hearts.

"And let Lord Chester love her if he will, for if he can turn so easily from one to another he is not worth the winning," she thought with bitter pride.

She did not see him much in those days, but she knew that he was often with her father, and that he was eager to join in and forward every plan for finding Precious.

"I am forgotten already; but let him go, he is nothing to me," she said to herself with jealous pride, trying to cheat her own aching heart.

Suddenly her brother, Earle, who had been abroad, came home, and his grief and horror at the fate of Little Blue Eyes, as he had loved to call his younger sister, were most intense.

Ethel could not resist one bitter fling.

"Now that your idol is gone, perhaps you will be able to remember sometimes that you have another sister," she cried bitterly.

Earle, who was dark and handsome and impetuous, like his father, turned on her a glance of displeasure.

"Ethel, how can you speak so? Have I ever forgotten you? Did I not bring you from abroad more costly gifts than I brought Precious?"

"Earle, forgive me; I was only jesting;" she cried quickly. But the pretense did not deceive the brother, who said to himself:

"Ethel is as foolishly jealous as ever. What a pity!"

But he put his arm around her and kissed the rosy cheek.