So closely love and passion blend—
Their limits we can not define—
One hardly knows they've reached the end
Until they've passed beyond the line.
To Mrs. Sinclair, Stella was lost indeed. Almost insane with grief, the good woman placed the matter in the competent hands of Scotland Yard, and closing her house to all visitors, gave herself up to a grief more bitter far than that which would be felt at death itself. She had at last discovered beyond dispute that her son had frequented the clubs and theatres of London for a year past, under different names and often in the company of a young girl, who, although evidently from the middle classes, was still sufficiently beautiful to attract the attention of casual observers and win the attention and preference of one so (presumably) fastidious as Maurice Sinclair.
This girl, she also learned, lived quietly with her grandparents on G—St., and was in all respects a most estimable young woman. Obtaining this information some two months after the disappearance of Maurice and Stella, Mrs. Sinclair went in person to the address given to ascertain, if possible, some further facts regarding her son's unrighteous past.
The house in G—St. looked deserted when Mrs. Sinclair's carriage stopped before its unpretending portals, but she was promptly admitted by a neat maid servant, to the presence of Elizabeth's aged grandparents. She found them mourning in pitiful grief the loss of their idolized grandchild, who they said had, according to newspaper accounts, committed suicide by jumping from the London Bridge on the very date corresponding to Maurice's appearance at his mother's home. They had identified the shawl which she had dropped from her shoulders, before taking the awful plunge into the river, and that was the only proof they had ever received, that their dear one's fate was the sleep that knows no waking.
Finding in Mrs. Sinclair a tearful, sympathetic[Pg 79] listener, they gladly told her of Elizabeth's quiet, happy life with them; of her beauty and virtue, and from this emanated the story of Lawrence Maynard, the young lodger, and their belief that it was her unrequited love for him that drove her to the fatal act.
The young man was clever and handsome, the aged woman said. He wore a close cropped auburn beard, but his hair grew long, and lay in large, loose curls upon his forehead. He seemed quiet and steady, and seldom remained away from his rooms at night, particularly, after his apparent fondness for Elizabeth had been observed by them. No one had ever called upon him except a queer Chinese peddler who, he said, brought him rare and expensive substances for his chemical experiments. Between this man and himself, there was evidently a most satisfactory understanding. They had met first in China, and Elizabeth frequently stood and listened to their comical gibberish, while the Mongolian's beady eyes watched her with never failing interest.
There were times even when she fancied he looked anxiously at her, and once, when Mr. Maynard[Pg 80] was absent, he tried with poor success to tell her something, but what that mysterious something was she could never ascertain.
Mr. Maynard had frequently warned them all against touching any of the test tubes, flasks, retorts and crucibles in his room, but evening after evening he called Elizabeth to watch the changing colors in the delicate fluids, or the crystillization of rare substances while he instructed her, so they honestly supposed, by many scientific and wonderful experiments.
This was all Mrs. Sinclair could learn from the aged mourners, and weary at heart she returned once more to her now cheerless home. She felt certain that this Lawrence Maynard and her son were one and the same person, but little did she dream of the actual facts that remained untold in the aged woman's innocent recital.
It was in this cleverly improvised laboratory that Elizabeth Merril, unknown to her feeble grandparents, passed the few deliriously happy hours of her otherwise unromantic life. She had entered in the full possession of her womanly dignity and virtue, only to become faint from the exhalations[Pg 81] of tempting perfumes and intoxicated by the fascinations of the tempter's smile and passionate pleadings. Long and fiercely she struggled with her new born passion, but her lover's first, warm kiss drew her very heart from her bosom and almost insane with love and fear she twined her white arms around his neck and pleaded for his dear protection.
At last, in a moment of reckless passion, he consented to a private marriage only insisting on concealment of the same until he should give her permission to announce it.
A private marriage is but a compromise with virtue in every instance, but Elizabeth was young and inexperienced.
She trusted her lover implicitly, and although the affair was not as she in her girlish fancies desired, still it was a bondage of love and she would willingly have submitted to its chains until death if her lover had so commanded.
It was only the insurmountable difficulty of her condition that at last counteracted the mental and moral poison of his presence and broke completely the spell that his impassioned caresses had thrown so fatally about her.
[Pg 82]
When the truth burst upon her that concealment was no longer possible, she fled to his apartments and fell on her knees before him.
"Oh, Lawrie, Lawrie," she sobbed, "You must tell Grandma of our marriage, you must, or I am ruined!" and she wept as if her heart would break.
Then an awful fear seized upon her as she noticed the stern, defiant look that crept into his face at her words.
"Get up Lizzie" he answered, brutally. "You should have thought of this before. There," he exclaimed, throwing a paper at her feet, "there is your Marriage Certificate. It is false every word of it; our marriage was a mockery from beginning to end. Show the paper to your grandparents and clear yourself if you can,—I can do nothing for you."
White as death, Elizabeth staggered slowly to her feet, but no word escaped her lips.
For a moment man and woman looked into each other's eyes, then with a mocking smile Lawrence Maynard, her lover, her idol, her perjured husband, passed rapidly from the room.
Like one in a dream she bent and raised the[Pg 83] paper from the ground, then with head erect and steady step she walked to her own small room and locking the door behind her, fell heavily upon the bed with the lying certificate clasped closely in her rigid hand. She awoke to the realization that he had wronged her, and before she could fairly endure that knowledge she realized that he had also deserted her, and from that time forth her misery was complete. Too proud to tell her weakness now in the hour of shame, she reasoned that death alone would erase the stain upon her character, and with this sole purpose forming in her half crazed brain she fled to the sluggish river and took the frightful plunge into its awful depths.
The fate of her supposed suicide had been chronicled, first by the descriptive reports of the bridge officers, at their respective stations, and secondly by the busy newspaper scribes who haunt police stations for the necessary matter to fill their allotted space in the columns of the various dailies.
Elizabeth, holding her babe on her arm, read the report of her supposed entrance to the great unknown world, on the very night of Mrs. Sinclair's visit to her grandparents and her own discharge[Pg 84] from the Hospital, and smiling bitterly, she muttered to herself, "Yes, that is true. I am dead, dead and buried. Now nothing remains but the walking ghost of Lizzie Merril and"—here she looked sadly down upon the face of the sleeping child and added, "the mother of this innocent babe." Then she wrapped the shawl a nurse had given her, closer around the infant and hurried onward through the gloomy night:—whither she did not know.
Almost at that moment a young man turned the corner of the street and brushed past her, so near that his arm accidentally touched her shoulder. For a moment she stood perfectly still, then with a piercing cry, woman and child fell heavily forward and were caught in Maurice Sinclair's arms.