Chapter LV · “IT’S WE TWO FOR AYE.”

Nina and her husband were right. They were best alone for a time, and in reality they needed no companionship but their own. They were all in all to each other.

The beautiful Mrs. Strangemore with her romantic history, carried Baltimore by storm on the night of the Governor’s reception. The best people of the city had been bidden to honor her for whom barely a week ago a scaffold had reared its ghastly front in the face of heaven. All vied with each other to do her honor. It was a perfect ovation. People went wild with enthusiasm over the peerless beauty that had been hidden so long in the gloom of the prison cell. They raved over the gold hair, the dark eyes, the perfect face with its rare red lips and sea-shell coloring. The dress that Talbot had chosen for his darling was perfect in its way. It was creamy satin embroidered in pearls and with flouncings of costly lace. A rope of large moon-white pearls clasped the slender white throat, and the bouquet she carried in her hand was of fragrant pure white flowers. She looked bride-like, queen-like, and even her own husband was amazed at the perfection of her beauty.

“Nina, you are as lovely as a queen,” he whispered to her, “I cannot help thinking that my mother was wrong when she bound you to me in your youth and innocence. She should have left you free to choose and be chosen. You are a fitting mate for a king.”

She looked up with a shadow in her splendid eyes.

“Oh, Talbot do you regret that I belong to you, beyond all chance of change?” she inquired.

“No, darling. I would not exchange you for a kingdom,” he replied.

His heart thrilled with happiness at the expression of radiant joy that beamed upon her face. She stole her dainty hand into his one moment as she said, softly:

“Then, Talbot, I would rather be your wife than a king’s.”

“Nina, you are an angel!” he exclaimed. “I believed that years must elapse before you would pardon my fault and love me again, and yet you have already filled my life with the bliss of your forgiving love. I do not know how to thank you enough for the mercy you have shown me. May God bless you forever, my sweet one.”

She looked at him with a pretty, pensive smile.

“Aunt Drusilla is quite disgusted with the readiness with which I have pardoned you,” she observed. “She says if she had been in my place she would have held you at arm’s length a year at least, before she condescended to forgive you and love you again.”

“And what did you say to that old-maidish speech?” he inquired, smilingly.

“I told her that she had never known what true love was, or she could not have fancied a loving wife being hard and cold to her husband when he came to her truly repentant for his fault.”

“Wise, loyal little wife!” he exclaimed, fondly. “And what did my aunt say to that noble little speech?”

“She answered that it was quite true she had never known anything about that kind of love and she hoped she never would, either, for women had made themselves fools over men ever since the world began, and would continue to do so to the end of the chapter.”

“It was most fortunate that she did not succeed in imbuing your mind with her peculiar sentiments,” laughed Talbot Strangemore. “I shudder to think of the risk I ran in leaving you to her care all those years. She might have made a man-hater of you.”

“Never, for I was in love with my husband long before I ever saw his Aunt Drusilla,” she answered, with a glance that set all his pulses beating with rapture.

The day after the governor’s reception Talbot and Nina went home to Selwyn Heights.

Miss Strangemore had preceded them several days in order to have everything in readiness for their return. Kitty May had remained in the city with her mistress, and had received her share of lionizing as the brave girl who had captured Sibyl St. Alban in the jaunty dude’s costume under which she had cleverly masked her identity.

Kitty had briefly narrated the manner in which she had been led to suspect the identity of the false woman.

“You see I had seen her several times while she was playing ghost, and was frightened out of my wits every time, so I began to expect to see her, or to hear her dreadful laugh, everywhere I went. But that day when they were about to hang my poor young mistress I forgot all about the dreadful ghost that had frightened me so often. I was standing as close to the gallows as I could get, sobbing and crying, when the uproar began, and all at once I saw Mr. Strangemore brush past me, and run up the steps and tear the rope from Miss Nina’s neck. I knew what it all meant in a minute, and I believe I should have fainted with joy only that at that moment I heard just behind me a smothered cry of the bitterest rage and hate, and in the very voice of the ghost that had haunted me ever since Mrs. St. Alban was buried. I turned sharply around and saw her very face behind me although it was shaded by a boy’s hat. I had always wanted to touch that ghost ever since the first time I saw it, but it had always been too sharp for me. But this time she was too close to flee. I whirled about and caught her in my arms, and, lo, she wasn’t a ghost at all, but that living, breathing sinner!”

So Kitty had her share of newspaper fame when the wonderful story went the rounds, and she enjoyed it mightily, too. She went to court to testify against Mrs. St. Alban, and she was devoutly sorry that the jury did not punish the sin of the beautiful conspirator by death.

“Lord bless you, there would be no more harm in putting that woman out of the world, than there would be in killing a snake or a spider,” she declared.

But the jury thought differently, perhaps, and so Kitty had to be satisfied with the sentence of imprisonment for a term of years. When she heard of her death in prison some years later, she said, soberly:

“I can’t say I’m sorry she died before it was time for her to come back into the world again. Perhaps it was for the best. But I hope she repented of her wickedness before it was too late.”

She was so anxious on this point that she paid a special visit to the prison chaplain to inquire about it. He pleased her very much by the information that Mrs. St. Alban had indeed repented of her sins, and left her blessing to those whom she had so cruelly wronged.

Kitty did not share Miss Drusilla’s opinion that Nina had been in too great haste to forgive her husband. She had heard from Harvey Wilson, Mr. Strangemore’s friend, the whole story of Talbot’s discovery of the real murderer, and his almost reckless haste to reach home with the news, so she thought that Talbot’s repentence, and, above all, his timely rescue of Nina at the last fatal moment, had fairly earned him his wife’s pardon.

So they went home to Selwyn Heights, where they received a perfect ovation, and where Nina’s old friend and playmate, Lion, almost went mad over her return. He looked askance at Talbot at first, but he soon came to understand that the obnoxious man stood very high in the affections of his mistress, so after some jealous sulking, Lion capitulated to the exigencies of the case, and himself adopted Talbot as a favorite.

Miss Drusilla Strangemore did not give in so readily as the Newfoundland in her anger against her nephew. In her character of a man-hater, she maintained an animosity against him for some months.

But when she came to know Talbot better, when she understood that his one great fault was counter-balanced by a thousand sterling virtues and graces, she gradually softened, and all the more rapidly because she saw that her favorite Nina was cruelly hurt by the coldness and distrust displayed toward her husband.

The day came when Miss Drusilla made quite an exception in favor of her nephew whom she declared far superior to the generality of men whom she continued to despise with unabated vigor. She was almost as proud as Nina herself when Talbot went into public life and rose rapidly from one distinction to another until he became a senator in the halls of the national capitol. Then Miss Drusilla said that there was really more in her nephew than she had ever supposed, and Nina declared that she was the happiest woman in the world, her love and her ambition both being satisfied.

No honor that ever came to him ever made Talbot Strangemore so proud and glad as those words from his wife’s lips. It was the aim of his life to make her so happy that she would almost, if not quite, forget the tragedy that had so nearly ended her sweet young life. When he found that he had succeeded, that she had put away from her heart the brooding shadow of the tragic past and lived only in the present and the future, he said to himself that now he could ask no more of fate. His cup was full to the brim.

THE END.