had several young men coming here to teach my sister music, and drawing, and dancing. Of course her French governess was always present. But she scarcely understood a word of English, so it was easy enough for one of them to make love to her if he wished, and Precious was just the kind of pretty, willful simpleton to fall in love with a nobody and marry him."
A keen, inexplicable pain tore the young man's heart at those words, and it seemed to him that Ethel's levity amounted to heartlessness. He looked gravely at her with his dark-gray eyes, and it seemed to him that there was something lacking in her beauty that he had not missed last night, but he did not realize as yet that the change was in himself.
He would have denied it if any one had taxed him with being in love with a girl whom he knew only by her portrait.
Only last night he had adored charming Ethel Winans. It was only her mother's interruption that had prevented him from laying his heart and title at her feet. The words had trembled on his lips while he looked at her with his heart in his eyes.
Why did he not speak to-day?
The opportunity was very favorable, for it was but seldom he could find the brilliant belle alone.
And Ethel's languid air, just touched with the softness of love, was very inviting. It was just the gentle mood in which a girl is likely to accept a proposal.
But he did not propose, although he said to himself that really he ought to, and he was afraid she expected it, after last night. But really it might not be quite correct to speak just now when the family was crushed with grief over the kidnaping of a beloved daughter. He would postpone the declaration.
In truth last night's zest was lacking. Last night Ethel had seemed to him a peerless goddess. To-day she was only an ordinary mortal—beautiful, but—not as divine as her younger sister.
If he had dreamed of the mad passion of jealousy surging under her calm exterior he would never have uttered his next words:
"I saw your sister's portrait at Valentine's studio to-day. Her beauty merits all her father's praise."
She bit her scarlet lip and tore to pieces a rose in her fingers.
"The portrait is flattered. Precious is not half so beautiful," she answered coldly, and a sudden constraint came between them. Lord Chester, blind to the smoldering fury under the long black lashes, thought her weary of him, and soon took leave.
Ethel, left alone in the splendid room, with the scattered rose petals at her feet, flung out her arms with a gesture of rebellious despair, and moaned bitterly:
"She has won my lover's heart with that fatal, luring, childish beauty! How can I help but hate her now?"
The evening's post brought a mysterious type-written letter to Senator Winans. It ran thus:
"You have made a mistake. I did not steal Precious for a ransom, but for love of her fair face. Do not be uneasy. I shall not harm your beautiful daughter. She is safe in the care of a kind, motherly woman, but she is also my prisoner, and will remain so until she consents to become my bride. After she is married to me you shall see her again, but never before; so you must be patient, for she is a little obdurate now, but in the end I shall win her consent."
The letter had no date or signature, but it was postmarked Washington.
"Didn't I say it was an elopement?" cried Ethel, in scornful triumph, but her father turned on her a lightning glance of reproof, and cried sternly:
"Never dare, Ethel, to repeat that false word elopement of your innocent sister again. You have just read in this letter that it was an abduction, not an elopement. So do not make another such mistake."
CHAPTER V.
IN A VILLAIN'S POWER
"To see her is to love her, And love but her forever; For nature made her what she is, And never made another!"—Burns.
When Senator Winans left Precious standing like a vision of beauty under a garlanded pillar to await his return, he did not dream that the vulture of danger hovered near his blue-eyed darling.
But burning eyes only a little distance away glared on the girl with wolfish eagerness, and minute by minute those small keen eyes grew fiercer with the fire of passion.
Precious, all unconscious of those burning eyes, stood quietly watching the strangers that surrounded her, coming and going in ceaseless ebb and flow like the waves of the sea.
Suddenly those eyes came nearer, nearer, and burned on the lovely face. Then a voice spoke in her ear:
"Good-evening, Miss Winans."
Precious started and looked at the speaker.
She recognized her drawing-master, Lindsey Warwick, a young man she secretly disliked because she had a vague suspicion that he was the writer of several mysterious love-letters she had lately received.
She gave him a haughty nod, but she did not speak, only stared in surprise at his elegant evening suit and the rose in his buttonhole, that transformed him from the poor drawing-master to the elegant man of fashion.
Lindsey Warwick was not at all abashed by her supercilious air. He seemed to be wildly agitated, his face pale, his firm chin trembling with emotion. Bending close to the girl's ear he whispered:
"Come! your father wishes me to take you to your mother."
Something about him, his awe-struck tone, his agitation frightened the girl. She gasped inquiringly:
"Mamma?"
And Lindsey Warwick answered unhesitatingly, though his voice was hoarse and strange:
"Yes, poor child, your mother has just dropped dead of heart-disease over yonder. Come," and he held out his arm.
If she had uttered a cry the little scene might have attracted attention from the vast crowd surging about, but had he thrust a sword to the very hilt in her heart Precious could not have fallen more silently or swiftly at his feet. She just dropped down unconscious without moan or cry—that was all.
No one had observed anything strange, only one or two looked around when he exclaimed, "My sister has fainted!"
His ruse had succeeded admirably. Precious lay like a dead girl at his feet, and there was no one to interfere.
The villain lifted the slender white form in his arms and pushed through the crowd, trying to gain the door. People made way when they saw his burden and heard him mutter his formula, "My sister has fainted." But no one displayed any special interest. Half a score of women had fainted that night.
So Lindsey Warwick gained the outer air with his burden, and soon finding a cab took her away.
It was a daring game that he had played, but he had won.
The project had flashed into his mind when he saw her alone and unguarded in the heedless crowd, and in the desperation of a mad and hopeless love he had carried it out. He knew that the chances were terribly against him, but he resolved to run the risk in hope of the prize.
The cab took him and his captive to the very suburbs of South Washington—to an old tumble-down red brick house of two stories that stood alone in a large neglected lot. There were but a few more houses in the square, and those strictly of the shanty order.
Cabby held out his hand, remarking grumpily:
"Five dollars, you know, is legal fare for Inauguration night."
"I'll make it ten for good luck, and you can go on a big spree to-morrow," laughed Lindsey Warwick, handing him a bill.
Cabby thanked the kind gentleman vociferously, but he did not wait till the next day, but went on his orgies at once, and wound up early next morning in the police court, where he was sent to jail for ten days in default of payment of his fine. He never saw the papers, never knew of the sensation that had followed the simple fact of his driving a young lady and gentleman home from the Inauguration Ball. He did not dream that he had been concerned