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Dreadful Temptation

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<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> Xenie sprang to her feet, broad awake at those fearful words. "Oh, mamma!" she gasped, in terror-stricken accents, "what is it? My sister—is she worse? Is she——" She thought of death, but she paused, and could not bring her lips to frame that terrible word, and stood waiting speechlessly, with parted lips and frightened, dark eyes, for her mother to speak. But Mrs. Carroll, as if that one anguished sentence had exhausted all her powers, fell forward across the bed, her face growing purple, her lips apart in a frantic struggle for breath. Xenie hurriedly caught up a pitcher of water standing near at hand, and dashed it into her convulsed face, with the quick result of seeing her shiver, gasp, and spring up again. "Mamma, speak!" she cried, shaking her wildly by the arm; "what has happened to you? What has happened to Lora?" Mrs. Carroll's eyes, full of a dumb, agonizing terror, turned upon Xenie's wild, white face. She tried to speak, but the words died chokingly in her throat, and she lifted her hand and pointed toward the door. Instantly Xenie turned, and rushed from the room. As she crossed the narrow hallway a breath of the fresh, chilly morning air blew across her face. The door that Mrs. Carroll had securely locked the night before was standing wide open, and the wind from the sea was blowing coolly in. With a terrible foreboding of some impending calamity, Xenie sprang through the open doorway of Lora's room, and ran to the bed. Oh! horrors, the bed was empty! The beautiful young mother and the little babe, the day-star of Xenie's bright hopes, were gone! Xenie looked around her wildly, but the pretty little chamber was silent and tenantless. With a cry of fear and dread commingled, she rushed toward the door, and encountered her mother creeping slowly in, like a pallid ghost, in the chilly, glimmering dawn of the new day. "Oh, mamma, where is Lora?" she cried, in a faint voice, while her limbs seemed to totter beneath her. Mrs. Carroll shook her head, and put her hands to her throat, while her pallid features seemed to work with convulsive emotion. The terrible shock she had sustained seemed to have stricken her dumb. [Pg 44] "Oh, mamma, mamma, cannot you speak? Cannot you tell me?" implored her daughter. But by signs and gestures Mrs. Carroll made her understand that the terrible constriction in her throat made it impossible for her to utter a word. For a moment Mrs. St. John stood still, like a silent statue of despair, but with a sudden inspiration she brought writing materials, placed them on a small table, and said to her mother: "Sit down, mamma, and write what you know." Mrs. Carroll's anguished face brightened at the suggestion. She sat down quickly at the little table, and drawing a sheet of paper toward her, dipped the pen into the ink, and began to write. Xenie leaned over her shoulder, and watched eagerly for the words that were forming beneath her hand. But, alas, the nervous shock her mother had sustained made her hand tremble like an aspen leaf. Great, sprawling, blotted, inky characters soon covered the fair sheet thickly, but among them all there was not one legible word. Xenie groaned aloud in her terrible impatience and pain. "Oh, mamma, try again!" she wailed. "Write slowly and carefully. Rest your arm upon the table, and let your hand move slowly—very slowly." And with an impotent moan, Mrs. Carroll took another sheet of paper and tried to subdue her trembling hands to the task for whose fulfillment her daughter was waiting so anxiously. But again the blotted characters were wholly illegible. No effort of the mother's will could still the nervous, trembling hands, and render legible the anguished words she laboriously traced upon the paper. She sighed hopelessly as her daughter shook her head. "Never mind, mamma," she said, "let it go, you are too nervous to form a single letter legibly. I will ask you some questions instead, and you will bow when your answer should be affirmation, and shake your head to indicate the negative." Mrs. Carroll gave the required token of assent to this proposition. "Very well. Now I will ask you the first question," said Xenie, trying to subdue her quivering voice into calm accents. "Mamma, did Lora go to sleep after I left you together?" A shake of the head negatived the question. "She was restless and flighty, then, perhaps, still dwelling on her dream about her husband?" This question received an affirmative answer. [Pg 45] "But after awhile she became composed and fell asleep—did she not?" continued Mrs. St. John. Mrs. Carroll bowed, her lips moving continually in a vain and yearning effort after words. "And then you lay down upon the lounge to snatch a few minutes of repose?" asserted Xenie. Again she received an affirmative reply. "Mamma, did you sleep long?" was the next question. Mrs. Carroll shook her head with great energy. "Oh! no, of course you did not!" exclaimed Xenie, quickly, "for it was midnight when I left you, and if Lora was wakeful and restless it must have been several hours before either one fell asleep. And it is not daylight yet, so you must have slept a very little while. Were you awakened by any noise, mamma?" The question was instantly negatived. "You were nervous and ill at ease, then, and simply awoke of yourself?" continued Mrs. St. John, anxiously. Mrs. Carroll's earnest, dark eyes said yes almost as plainly as her bowed head. "And when you woke, Lora and the babe were gone, mamma, and the front door stood wide open—is that the way of it, mamma?" continued Xenie, anxiously watching her mother's face for the confirmation of her question. Mrs. Carroll gave assent to it while a hoarse wail of anguish issued from her drawn, white lips. Xenie echoed the wail, and for a moment her white face was hidden in her hands while the most terrible apprehension stabbed her to the heart. Then she looked up and said quickly: "She must have wandered away in a momentary fit of flightiness—don't you think so?" And again Mrs. Carroll gave a quick motion of assent. "Then I must find her, mamma," said Xenie, quickly. "She cannot have gone very far. She was too weak to get away from us unless—— Oh! my God! she cannot have gone to the water!" moaned Xenie, clasping her hands in horror. Mrs. Carroll looked as if she were going into a fit at the bare suggestion. Her face turned purple again, her eyes stared wildly, she clutched at her throat like one choking. Xenie forced her back upon the lounge, applied restoratives, then exclaimed wildly: "Mamma, I cannot bear to leave you thus, but I must go and seek for my sister. Even now she may be perishing in reach of our hands. Ninon, the maid, will be here in a little while. She will care for you, and I will bring back my poor little Lora." [Pg 46] She kissed her mother's face as she spoke, then hurried out, shawlless and bare-headed, into the chill morning air. It was a dark and gloomy dawn, with a drizzle of rain falling steadily through the murky atmosphere. A fine, white mist was drawn over the sea like a winding sheet. The sun had not tried to rise over the dismal prospect. Xenie ran heedlessly down the veranda steps, and bent her steps to the seashore, looking about her carefully as she went, and calling frantically all the time: "Lora, Lora, Lora! Where are you, my darling? Where are you?" But no answer came to her wild appeal. The soft, low patter of the steady rain, and the solemn sound of the waves as they madly surged upon the shore, seemed like a funeral requiem in her ears. She could not bear the awful voice of the sea, for she remembered that Lora had hated it because her husband was buried in its illimitable waves. But suddenly a faint and startling sound came to her ears. She thought it was the moan of the wind rising at first, then it sounded again almost at her feet—the shrill, sharp wail of an infant. Xenie turned around and saw, not twenty paces from her, a little bundle of soft, white flannel lying upon the wet sand. She ran forward with a scream of joy, and picked it up in her arms, and drew aside one corner of the little embroidered blanket. Joy, joy! it was Lora's baby—Lora's baby, lying forlorn and deserted on the wet sand with the hungry waves rolling ever nearer and nearer toward it, as though eager to draw it down in their cold and fatal embrace. With a low murmur of joy, Xenie kissed the cold little face and folded it closely in her arms. "Lora cannot be very far now," she thought, her heart beating wildly with joy. "She was so weak the babe has slipped from her arms, and she did not know it. She will come back directly to find it." She ran along the shore, looking through the gray dawn light everywhere for her sister, and calling aloud in tender accents: "Lora, Lora, my darling!" But suddenly, as she looked, she saw a strangely familiar form coming toward her along the sand. It was a man clothed in a gray tweed traveling suit, such as tourists wear abroad. He stopped with a cry of surprise as they met, and there[Pg 47] on the wild shores of France, with the rain beating down on her bare head and thin dress, with Lora's baby tightly clasped in her bare arms, Xenie St. John found herself face to face with her enemy. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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