"Two years afterward I found myself in Vernon, stopping for a night at the hotel. 'I will see them in the morning,' I said; 'Harry, Matty, and the little child;' and I asked the landlord where you lived. I was standing upon the stairs, and in the partial darkness he could not see my anguish when he replied, 'Bless you, miss. Harry Remington died a fortnight ago.'"
"How I reached my room I never knew, but reach it I did, and half an hour later I knelt by his grave, where I wept away every womanly feeling of my heart, and then went back to the giddy world, the gayest of the gay. I did not seek an interview with your mother, though I have often regretted it since. Did she never speak of me?
Think. Did you never hear my name?"
"In Vernon, I am sure I did," answered Maude, "but I was then too young to receive a very vivid impression, and after we came here mother, I fear, was too unhappy to talk much of the past."
"I understand it," answered Maude Glendower, and over her fine features there stole a hard, dark look, as she continued, "I can see how one of her gentle nature would wither and die in this atmosphere, and forgive me, Maude, she never loved your father as I loved him, for had he called me wife I should never have been here."
"What made you come?" asked Maude; and the lady answered, "For Louis' sake and yours I came. I never lost sight of your mother. I knew she married the man I rejected, and from my inmost soul I pitied her. But I am redressing her wrongs and those of that other woman who wore her life away within these gloomy walls. Money is his idol, and when you touch his purse you touch his tenderest point.
But I have opened it, and, struggle as he may, it shall not be closed again."
She spoke bitterly, and Maude knew that Dr. Kennedy had more than met his equal in that woman of iron will.
"I should have made a splendid carpenter," the lady continued, "for nothing pleases me more than the sound of the hammer and saw, and when you are gone I shall solace myself with fixing the entire house. I must have excitement, or die as the others did."
"Maude--Mrs. Kennedy, do you know what time it is?" came from the foot of the stairs, and Mrs. Kennedy answered, "It is one o'clock, I believe."
"Then why are you sitting up so late, and why is that lamp left burning in the parlor, with four tubes going off at once? It's a maxim of mine--"
"Spare your maxims, do. I'm coming directly," and kissing the blind girl affectionately, Mrs. Kennedy went down to her liege lord, whom she found extinguishing the light, and gently shaking the lamp to see how much fluid had been uselessly wasted.
He might have made some conjugal remark, but the expression of her face forbade anything like reproof, and he soon found use for his powers of speech in the invectives he heaped upon the long rocker of the chair over which he stumbled as he groped his way back to the bedroom, where his wife rather enjoyed, than otherwise, the lamentations which he made over his "bruised shin." The story she had been telling had awakened many bitter memories in Maude Glendower's bosom, and for hours she turned uneasily from side to side, trying in vain to sleep. Maude Remington, too, was wakeful, thinking over the strange tale she had heard, and marveling that her life should be so closely interwoven with that of the woman whom she called her mother.
"I love her all the more," she said; "I shall pity her so, staying here alone, when I am gone."
Then her thoughts turned upon the future, when she would be the wife of James De Vere, and while wondering if she should really ever see again, she fell asleep just as the morning was dimly breaking in the east.
