Mischievous Maid Faynie | Page 8

an hour's time, or my name isn't--"
"Lester Armstrong," put in the other, laconically.
The coach was instantly stopped, and both men made a flying leap into the huge snowdrift that banked both sides of the country road, calling back to the driver to light a lantern, if he had been careful enough to bring one with him, and hand it to them in double-quick order.
The search lasted for fully half an hour. Had the ground suddenly opened and swallowed her? they asked each other, with imprecations both loud and furious.
To have a fortune of a cool million so near his clutches, and suddenly lose it, was more than the villain could endure calmly. He was frenzied. His rage at the girl slipping so cleverly, so audaciously, through his fingers knew no bounds, and he made no attempt to stifle the fierce exclamations that sprang to his lips of what he should do when he once found her.
When Faynie had jumped from the vehicle she lay for an instant half stunned upon the cold, frozen ground where she had fallen. It had taken the coach a minute to stop, but that minute had carried it several rods beyond the spot where she lay. She saw by the uncertain glimmer of the carriage lamp the two forms spring out into the darkness and come back in search of her, and a piteous cry of unutterable fear rose to her blanched lips from the very depths of her panting, terror-stricken heart.
She tried to spring to her feet and fly, but the depth to which she sank with every step exhausted her quickly, and she sank down among the white drifts awaiting her doom like a wounded bird in the brush whom the cruel sportsmen are nearing with their hounds.
She raised her lovely young face to the dark night sky, calling upon God and the angels to protect her, to save her from the man she had loved with all the passionate strength of her heart up to that hour, and whom she hated and feared now a thousandfold more than she had ever loved him.
All in a few moments of time her idol had fallen from its high pedestal of manly honor and lay in ruins at her feet.
How could she ever have believed Lester Armstrong noble, good and true, a king among men? Where was the tenderness in voice and manner that had won her heart from her, and his oft-repeated assurance that he cared for her for herself alone; that he wished to Heaven she were no heiress, but as poor as himself, that he might show her the power of his great love? An hour ago--only an hour ago--yet it seemed the length of a lifetime in the shadowy past, she had crept out of the house to meet her lover at the trysting place, her heart beating with love for him, sobbing out to Heaven to send her true love quickly back to her.
As she had closed the door of the great mansion noiselessly behind her, she realized that she was putting wealth and luxury away from her deliberately and choosing a life of rigid economy with the lover whose earnings were, alas, so much smaller than even the pin money she had been accustomed to.
But with love to brighten the way, she felt that she could endure any hardship with noble Lester Armstrong, who loved her so dearly and devotedly.
After a time, perhaps, her father would forgive her for this step, and take her back to his home and heart, and welcome Lester, too. She had read of such things.
The night air blew bitterly cold against her face as she stepped bravely forth, but she did not waver.
The great hall clock chimed the hour of ten, and her heart beat faster, for she said to herself that her lover was nearing the trysting place and she had not much time to spare.
"Good-by, papa," she murmured, turning for an instant and looking up at his lighted window. "Good-by, my stepmamma," she whispered. "You have always hated me and wished me out of the way. I am going now, and you will rejoice. Good-by, Claire," she added, as her eyes wandered upward to the little lighted window in the western wing. "You never hated me. You always loved me as though we had indeed been sisters. Good-by, kind old family servants. You will all miss me, I know, but I am going to happiness and love. What fate could be better?"
She waited some moments at the trysting place ere she heard the sound of crunching wheels on the snow. A moment later she heard the welcome voice saying: "Faynie, where are you?" The next instant she was folded in a pair of strong, masculine arms.
But as the owner of them touched