Originally Published: 1883
Genres: Fiction
Dime Novel Bibliography: https://dimenovels.org/Item/216/Show
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18006437
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43037
Chapters: 28
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
CHAPTER I
A dusky, piquante face, arch, sparkling, bright, as only brunette faces can be, dark, waving hair, and pansy-dark eyes with golden lights in their soft depth, delicious lips, tinted with the velvety crimson of the rose, a slight girlish figure, unformed as yet, but with a willowy grace all its own—Reine Langton.
She comes singing along the graveled path between the trim borders of bright verbenas, velvety pansies, and fragrant pinks, swinging her large straw hat by its scarlet ribbons. The golden light of the summer day falls on the uncovered head, and on the fair, low forehead with its silky rings of clustering hair, and its slender, straight, black brows. She sings shrilly, but sweetly
"'Love not—love not, ye hapless sons of clay;
Hope's gayest wreaths are made of earthly flowers;
Things that were made to fade and fall away
When they have blossomed but a few short hours;
Love not—love not.'"
The handsome, blonde face of a young man lifts itself from the reclining depths of a hammock chair, swung under a wide-spreading tree; as she draws nearer, he breaks out with careless raillery:
"Pray forbear, Miss Langton! your shrill soprano has frightened me from a charming dream. I do not believe your match could be found for keeping one's nerves continually on edge."
"Men have no business with nerves," she retorts, coolly. "For shame, Mr. Vane Charteris. Get out of that hammock and stir yourself. I can't abide a lazy man."
He looks at her with sleepy, half-shut eyes that mirror the deep, beautiful blue of the sky overhead.
"Fortunately you do not have to abide me," he says, bruskly. "After tomorrow I shall forever be out of reach of your shrill voice and scolding tongue!"
A strange look comes into her dark eyes a moment. Some of the golden light dies out of them, they grow darker and vaguely sad, but she laughs.
"A pity for you, too. My influence and example might rouse you otherwise from your stupid inertia. Tennyson must have had a lazy man in his mind's eye when he wrote the Lotos-Eaters."
He smiles, and quotes with careless good-nature:
"'In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills, like gods together, careless of mankind.'"
"Is not that an idyllic life, Reine?"
"No," she says, promptly. "I have no patience with the dolce far niente of some people. It is a pity you are to marry Maud Langton!"
He colors and asks:
"Why?"
"Because she is as lazy as you are. When you marry her and come into Uncle Langton's money, you'll both be too lazy to breathe, just that! You will die for lack of energy to live."
She has stopped beside the hammock chair, and leaning against the tree looks down into the handsome, debonair face with a gleam of audacious levity in the dusky eyes. He starts up to a sitting posture, thoroughly aggravated.
"Thank you," he remarks, with immense dignity. "I understand," with cutting irony, "the reason of your spite. You wanted Mr. Langton's money yourself."
"Not a bit of it," decidedly. "Thank goodness, I know how to earn my own living. Not but that Uncle Langton has treated me unfairly, though. I am as near kin to him as Maud. My father was his own brother. Why should he make her his heiress, and marry her to the son of his old sweetheart, cutting me off with a beggarly invitation to spend three weeks, and be her bride's-maid?"
"Why don't you tell him that?" he queries, watching the rich color deepen on the delicate cheek.
"I don't care to," with careless indifference. "I don't want his money."
"No—do you mean to say you do not care for all this?" He glances around him at the spacious white villa, set in the midst of a green, flower-gemmed lawn, shaded by stately trees. "Only think, my lady disdain: A summer home in these grand old mountains, a winter palace in Washington, a cottage by the sea, and a fabulous bank account; does it all count for nothing in your eyes?"
"Yes," pertly, "if, like poor Maud, I had to take you as an incumbrance with it all!"
He flushes with wounded vanity and anger.
"The feeling is mutual," he retorts, under the spur of pride. "If I had to take you with Mr. Langton's money, it might go to found an idiot asylum."
"Vane Charteris, I hate you!" she exclaims, with a flash of childish passion.
"I take it as a compliment," he replies, with a profound bow.
"Quarreling as usual," says a clear, sweetly modulated voice, and both turn with a start.
A tall, imperially stately woman has come sauntering down the path from the house. You think of Tennyson's description:
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall.
And most divinely fair."
Vane Charteris' face lights with languid pleasure. It is Maud Langton, his betrothed. This very night she is to be his bride.
"Ah, Maud," he says, "I am glad you are come. Perhaps you will deliver me from this little vixen!"
There is a grave, far-away look in the light blue eyes of the bride-elect. She looks at Reine, not at her lover, as she answers lightly:
"It is very undignified to call names, Vane, and how often have I told you, Reine, that you must bridle that sharp tongue of yours?"
"He began it," mutters Reine, with a childish petulance.
"You should have known better than to tease the child, Vane," says Miss Langton. "If you are in fault, you must apologize, of course."
"I'll be shot if I do," he begins, stoutly, then stops at her look of dignified amazement, and says, with a gleam of tender relenting: "Very well, Maud. Of course, I can refuse you nothing on this day of all days. See here, Reine, I beg your pardon for what I said. Will you forgive me?"
"No, I won't—so there!" she flashes, with some wrathful tears splashing down her cheeks.
"Reine!" Miss Langton cries, horrified.
"Reine!" mimics the girl, provokingly.
"Ah, me!" with a pretty sigh of resignation, "I see it is no use trying to train you," but Reine Langton is already out of hearing. They catch the distant gleam of her white dress among the trees.
Vane Charteris rises from his indolent pose in the hammock chair and installs his blonde angel in his place. Tall, graceful, with the fair beauty of a Greek god, he might hold any woman's heart, but as he stands by her side, lightly swaying the chair, Miss Langton's large, blue eyes wander from him to the line of the distant hills that stand around about her beautiful home in a glorious green wooded circle.
"Ah, Maud, my beautiful, gentle darling," he says, "how hard it is to believe that Reine Langton is your cousin. You are so utterly unlike. You are so calm and sweet and gracious, she is so rude, so pettish, so like a chestnut burr!"
"Poor Reine," she says, not disputing him, yet a little apologetically, "she has had no training. Her mother died in Reine's infancy, and her father brought her up after his own fashion, dying two years ago, and leaving her to get her own living. You cannot expect an underpaid teacher to have the manners of a lady."
"She is rather young to teach others, isn't she?" he says.
"Rather," she replies. "Sixteen or seventeen at the most, I should say. But now, Vane, I really must go in; I have fifty things to attend to. All my bride's-maids will be coming presently."
"My sweetest, how shy you are," he laughs; "you will barely look at me, yet in a few hours more you will be my own. Mine to love and caress as much as I please. Do you realize it, my dignified darling?"
A slight, a very slight shiver passes over the imperially molded form. She looks at him, then, half-fearfully, half-questioningly—
"Vane, tell me the truth," she says. "Is it me you love or is it my uncle's money?"
A dark red flush stains his handsome face.
"Maud, that question is unworthy of you. I have loved you from the first hour I saw you. I have told you how irritated I was at first when my mother's old friend wrote to me offering me a wife and a fortune. Poor as I am I was determined not to marry you unless I loved you. But your peerless beauty conquered me as soon as I saw you."
Something very like a sigh ripples over the delicate rose-leaf lips. She does not smile nor blush as if she felt flattered.
"I will tell you something else, now, my Maud, if you'll promise not to laugh," he goes on; "I was jealous at first of that handsome, black-eyed Clyde that came so frequently to call on you. I was very glad when you sent him away. You never cared for him, did you, dear?"
"Of course not, you foolish boy," she laughs, and with that, she slips away from him.
He watches the flutter of her pale blue robe out of sight, then, dropping his eyes, sees a folded slip of paper lying on the ground at his feet. In a careless, mechanical way he picks it up and reads the few lines hastily scribbled in a man's strong hand.
"My darling," it says, "you have relented at the last and made me the happiest of men. God forever bless you. Do not fail to be at the appointed place. If you do not marry me I swear I'll shoot myself through the heart, but if you keep your promise I promise to make you the happiest woman on earth."
The note was signed with a blurred, undistinguishable initial. Vane Charteris tucked it into his vest pocket in happy unconsciousness of the fatal truth.
"Reine Langton must have dropped this," he thinks to himself. "I'll restore it to her the first opportunity. I wonder who her suicidal correspondent may be?"
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