Originally Published: Mar. 29, 1897
Genres: Fiction
Dime Novel Bibliography: https://dimenovels.org/Item/6/Show
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55237
Chapters: 40
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
CHAPTER I
"A ROSEBUD SET WITH LITTLE WILLFUL THORNS."
"We were two daughters of one race;
She was the fairest in the face;
The wind is sighing in turret and tree.
I hated her with the hate of hell,
Therefore revenge became me well.
Oh, but she was fair to see!"—Tennyson.
"Mamma, darling, you'll take me to the Inauguration Ball, that's a love."
"Oh, my baby, what an absurd idea! And you only sixteen!"
"I'm as tall as you, Mamma, and I only look small because my dresses are too short. I wish you would let out the tucks to hide my ankles—there now!"
"But, Precious, you have the prettiest feet and ankles in the world."
"I don't care; I want my dresses long, and my hair put up. I'm tired of being only a schoolgirl! Everybody in Washington will be at the Inauguration Ball. I want to go, too, and shake hands with the new president."
"Nonsense, dear; the next Inauguration Ball will be time enough for you."
"Four years! Why, then I shall be twenty. Quite an old maid, Mamma, dear, with crows' feet and wrinkles."
Mrs. Winans, the handsome wife of a noted Southern Senator, threw back her graceful golden head, and laughed softly:
"Oh, what a ridiculous child!"
But her dark-blue eyes lingered tenderly on the lovely upturned face, for Precious was on an ottoman at her mother's feet.
Mrs. Winans was the mother of three children—a son and two daughters. Precious was the youngest—"the baby," they called her—and, like all babies, she was spoiled, and liked to have her own way, always wheedling her parents until she got whatever she wanted.
"Dear Mamma, you will let me go," she cried teasingly.
"Go where?" exclaimed a musical voice, as a tall, dark, regal beauty entered the library. "Go where?" she repeated. "And what is the baby teasing for now, Mamma?"
Precious Winans lifted her golden head from her mother's knee, and turning her pansy-blue eyes on her queenly sister replied, with the air of a little princess:
"Ethel, I've made up my mind to go to the Inauguration Ball."
"The ball, indeed?" and Ethel shook with laughter in which her mother joined.
Ere the echo of their mirth died away a tall, dark, handsome man entered the room—their father, from whom the elder girl inherited her dusky beauty, while the younger was the image of her lovely blond mother.
"What is the joke about?" he asked genially, and his wife replied:
"Precious has a new notion in her silly little noddle. She wants to attend the Inauguration Ball."
"The idea!" laughed Ethel, gently sarcastic.
But Precious had fled to her father and was hanging on his neck. As he clasped the lissome form to his heart he asked earnestly:
"Why not?"
"Yes, why not?" echoed his pretty pet.
"But, Papa, she is too young," cried Ethel, almost angrily.
"Don't listen to her, Papa. She doesn't want me to have one bit of fun. But I will go to the ball, for you will say yes, won't you, my darling old love?" and she stroked his rippling black whiskers with her dainty mite of a hand, and gazed into his eyes with innocent confidence.
He hugged the little pleader tight and looked over the top of her golden head at his wife.
"What say you, Grace, my dear? Isn't she big enough to go to the ball?"
"I'm as tall as Mamma. You needn't laugh, Ethel," cried Precious, and waited eagerly for her mother's reply.
The gentle lady said sweetly:
"I'm sorry to disappoint my dear little girl, but she is too young to go into society yet, and she would have to make her début as a young lady before she went to a grand ball."
"I don't care if I'm not a young lady, Mamma; I'm determined to go to the ball," cried Precious, with hysterical symptoms, and Mrs. Winans sighed gently.
"Indeed, my darling girl, I'm sorry to refuse you, but—" she began, and paused in dismay, for a sound of petulant weeping filled the room. Precious lay in her father's arms transformed into a Niobe.
"Oh, Precious, pray don't be such a baby," implored Ethel impatiently, but the sobbing only grew louder, and between whiles came the pathetic plaint:
"Nobody cares for me."
Those tears and sobs melted the father's doting heart. He cried out pleadingly.
"Poor little love, her heart is almost broken. Do let her go, Mamma."
"Papa is the only friend I have in the world!" wailed the diplomatic little darling, and he pressed her closer to his throbbing heart.
"Ah, Gracie, how can you refuse?" he exclaimed, but Ethel cried out pettishly:
"Papa, you have spoiled Precious until she is a perfect baby, and if she cried for the moon I believe you'd try to have a ladder built up to it. You always find it easy enough to refuse me when I ask imprudent things, and I don't think you ought to take sides against Mamma in this. Let Precious wait a few years before she comes out."
But dismal sobs were the only answer to this plea, and Precious wept, persuasively:
"Oh, Papa, darling Papa, do say that I may go, for Mamma will do anything you wish."
The senator's pleading dark eyes met the anxious blue ones of his wife, and he said eagerly:
"Dearest, she wants to go so very, very much, and it will break her sweet little heart if you refuse. Besides, this is different from a regular ball, for thousands and thousands of people attend the Inauguration Ball just to see the new president. There will be a great crush as usual, and you will bring the girls home very soon, I know. So for this one time, I think we may humor our baby's curiosity. Now dry your eyes, my pet."
"Oh, you darling! you darling!" cried Precious ecstatically, and lifted her face, all lovely and damp like a rain-washed rose. She embraced him rapturously, then flew to her mother.
"Mamma, you shall never repent this, for I'll be as good as gold hereafter."
Ethel had turned away and left the room with a frowning brow and darkly flashing eyes.
"He loves her best," she murmured bitterly. "He would never have yielded like that to my entreaties for anything against dear Mamma's wish. Ah, why is it so? Am I not beautiful and good, and his elder daughter? Why should Precious be always first in my noble father's heart?"
That jealous heart cry strikes the keynote of our story, dear reader, for had the senator not loved Precious best, this story of Ethel's temptation and her sister's suffering would never have been written.
Ethel Winans was bitterly unhappy.
Unhappy? and why?
Externally she had everything to make her blessed.
Young, beautiful, healthy, the fortunate daughter of a rich and distinguished statesman, this girl had
"But lain in the lilies
And fed on the roses of life."
But Milton has aptly written:
"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
Ethel Winans' lifestream had been poisoned at its very source by a baleful jealousy.
Those who knew her gifted father best were aware that his early married life had been embittered by the faults of a passionately jealous nature intent on supremacy in everything. This elder daughter had inherited his beauty and his temperament. Every parental influence was working against her happiness.
She went with a weary, listless step to her own apartments, and fell heavily upon a silken divan. Her red lips were trembling, and tears began to rain from her beautiful eyes.
"Why was I ever born?" she cried angrily. "No one cares for poor Ethel! Mamma, in spite of her denials, loves my brother Earle the best, and Papa worships Precious. If I were dead they would scarcely miss me."
She began to pace up and down the luxurious room, her rich crimson silk gown trailing soundlessly over the thick velvet carpet, her loosened tresses pouring in a dusky torrent below her waist, her lovely jeweled hands writhing together in agony.
"How I love him, my noble, handsome father!" she cried. "But ever since Precious was born before I was three years old, she has supplanted me in everything. I can remember it all although I was so young. She pushed me from my mother's breast, she crowded me from my father's heart. I was no longer the petted baby. I must give way to Little Blue Eyes, as they call her, and from the first, I hated my rival. When I was little I used to strike her until my mother's gentle teachings made me ashamed, and then I tried to love my little sister for Mamma's sake. I do love her. God knows I love her, for who could help it, she is so sweet and lovely? Yet there are times—horrible times—when Satan seems to possess my soul, and I give way to something that is awful—to jealous hate and fury—and then, oh, then, I wish that Precious were dead, or that I had never been born. Once I confessed all to Mamma, and she shuddered and wept at my wickedness. But she clasped me in her tender arms, and told me that she loved me—oh, very, very much and that she would pray for me daily! Dear Mamma! she is an angel, and I am a wicked, rebellious girl, and frighten everyone with my fits of temper and imperious ways. And I forget to pray for myself as Mamma bade me do, and when I forget, the Evil One gets possession of my weak soul."
She fell on her knees, she lifted her streaming dark eyes heavenward.
"Oh, Heaven help me, make me a better girl, keep me from hating my dear little sister, and save me from my own evil nature!" she prayed, with desperate fervor.
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