Alex. McVeigh Miller - An Old Man's Darling

Felise had no more heart than a stone. Her only god was wealth, and her ambition was towering. She thought only of self, and felt not the first emotion of gratitude to the mother who had schemed and planned for her all her life. All she desired was unbounded wealth and the power to rule in her own right.

"Miss Felise has caught a beau at last," said Bonnibel's maid to her as she brushed the soft locks of her mistress. She had been having a hasty chat with Miss Herbert's maid since her arrival that day, and had gathered a good deal of gossip in the servants' hall.

"Indeed?" asked Bonnibel, languidly, "what is his name, Lucy?"

"He is a Colonel Carlyle, miss; a very old man Janet do say, but worth his millions. He have buried his two wives already, I hear, and Miss Herbert is like to be a third one. I wish him joy of her; Janet knows what her temper is."

"You need not speak so, Lucy," said Bonnibel, reprovingly, to the maid whose loquacity was far ahead of her grammar. "I daresay Janet gives her cause to indulge in temper sometimes."

"Lor! Miss Bonnibel," said Lucy, "Janet is as mild as a dove; but Miss Felise, she have slapped Janet's mouth twice, and scolds her day in and day out. Janet says that Colonel Carlyle will catch a Tartar when he gets her."

"Be quiet, Lucy; my head aches," said Bonnibel, thinking it very improper for the girl to discuss her superior's affairs so freely; she therefore dismissed the subject and thought no more about it, little dreaming that it was one portentous of evil to herself.

Felise need not have troubled herself with the fear of Bonnibel's rivalry. The young girl was only too willing to be kept in the background. In the seclusion which Mrs. Arnold deemed it proper to observe after their dreadful and tragic bereavement they received but few visitors and Bonnibel was glad that her recent illness was considered a sufficient pretext for denying herself to even these few. Some there were—a few old friends and one or two loving schoolmates—who refused to be denied and whom Bonnibel reluctantly admitted, but these few found her so changed in appearance and broken in spirit that they went away marveling at her persistent grief for the uncle whom the world blamed very much because he had failed to provide for her as became her birth and position.

But while the world censured Mr. Arnold's neglect of her, Bonnibel never blamed her uncle by word or thought. She believed what he had told her on the memorable evening of his death. He had provided for her, she knew, and the will, perhaps, had been lost. What had become of it she could not conjecture, but she was far from imputing foul play to anyone. The thought never entered her mind. She was too pure and innocent herself to suspect evil in others, and the overwhelming horror of her uncle's tragic death still brooded over her spirit to the utter exclusion of all other cares save one , and that one a sore, sore trial that it needed all her energies to endure, the silence of Leslie Dane and her anxieties regarding his fate; for still the days waned and faded and no tidings came to the sick heart that waited in passionate suspense for a sign from the loved and lost one.

Strange to say, she had never learned the fatal truth that Leslie Dane stood charged with her uncle's murder, and that justice was still on the alert to discover his whereabouts. During her severe and nearly fatal illness all approach to the subject of the murder had been prohibited by the careful physician, and on her convalescence the newspapers had been excluded from her sight and the subject tabooed in her presence. She had forgotten the solemn charge of Felise Herbert and her mother that fatal night which she had so indignantly refuted. Now she was spared the knowledge that the malignity of the two women had succeeded in fixing the crime on the innocent head of the man she loved. Had Bonnibel known that fact she would have left Mrs. Arnold's roof although starvation and death had been the inevitable consequence. But she did not know, and so moped and pined in her chamber, tearful and utterly despairing, oblivious to the fact that she was doing what Felise most desired in thus secluding herself.

A blind chance at last brought about the fatal meeting between Bonnibel Vere and Colonel Carlyle which Felise Herbert so greatly dreaded and deprecated.

As the autumn months merged into winter Bonnibel had developed a new phase of her trouble. A great and exceeding restlessness took possession of her.

She no longer moped in her chamber, thinking and thinking on the one subject that began to obscure even the memory of her Uncle Francis. She had brooded over Leslie's strange silence until her brain reeled with agony—now a strange longing for oblivion and forgetfulness took hold upon her.

"Oh! for that fabled Lethean draught which men drink and straightway all the past is forgotten!" she would murmur wildly as she paced the floor, wringing her beautiful hands and weeping. "Either Leslie has deserted me or he is dead. In either case it is wretchedness to remember him! Oh! that I could forget!"

Shrouded in her thick veil and long cloak she began to take long rambling walks every day, returning weary and fatigued, so that sleep, which for awhile had deserted her pillow, began to return, and in long and heavy slumbers she would lose for a little while the memory of the handsome artist so deeply loved in that brief and beautiful summer. Those days were gone forever. Her brief spring of happiness was over. It seemed to her that the only solace that remained to her weary heart was forgetfulness.

Once, rendered desperate by her suspense, she had written a letter to Leslie—a long and loving letter, full of tender reproaches for his silence, and containing the whole story of her uncle's tragic death. She had begged him to send her just one little line to assure her that she was not forgotten, and this beautiful little letter, filled with the pure thoughts of her innocent heart, she had directed to Rome, Italy.

No answer came to that yearning cry from the aching heart of the little wife. She waited until hope became a hideous mockery. She began to think how strange it was that she, little Bonnibel Vere, who looked so much like a child, with her short hair, and baby-blue eyes, was really a wife. But for the shining opal ring with its pretty inscription, "Mizpah," which Leslie had placed upon her finger that night, she would have begun to believe that it was all a fevered dream.

She was thinking of that ring one day as she walked along the crowded street, filled with eager shoppers, for Christmas was drawing near, and people were busy providing holiday gifts for their dear ones.

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