She had scarcely uttered the words ere the men were seen approaching with their burden. They brought the woman in and placed her on Jessie's little cot.

"Oh, how beautiful she is!" murmured Jessie, little dreaming who it was that she was sheltering beneath that roof.

Chapter XVIII.
WEDDING BELLS OUT OF TUNE

Let us return to Hubert Varrick, and the marriage which was the all-absorbing topic in fashionable circles.

Mrs. Varrick had sent a note to her son at his hotel, begging for a reconciliation, and stating that she would be at the wedding without fail; but never a word did she say about Jessie Bain.

It seemed like a dream to Hubert – his ride in a cab through the cool crisp air to Gerelda's home on that eventful morning.

He noticed one thing – that the sun did not shine that day; and he said to himself that it boded ill for his wedding.

The bride-elect and her mother welcomed him effusively. Bitter anger filled the girl's heart to see how cold and stern he looked. She noticed that he had no word, no smile for her. If she had not loved him so madly, her pride would have rebelled, and she would have let him go his way even then.

She almost shrunk under the cold glance that rested upon her. She trembled, even in that moment, as she thought how he would hate her if he but knew how she had plotted to win him. Before she had a chance to exchange a word with him, her maid of honor came fluttering down the corridor, chattering in high spirits with Harry Maillard, who was to be best man.

She was quite as dazed as Varrick himself, until she found herself standing beside him at the altar.

It was over at last! The words had been spoken which made her Hubert Varrick's wedded wife, through weal or through woe, till death did them part.

Then followed the sumptuous wedding-breakfast. While the merriment was at its height, Varrick touched her lightly on the arm.

"It wants but an hour and twenty minutes until train time. Would it not be best to slip away now and arrange your traveling toilet?"

"Yes," said Gerelda.

No one noticed their exit, and at last they were alone together, away from the throng of guests; but, much to the bride's disappointment, her newly made husband did not seem to realize this fact, and Gerelda's face flushed with disappointment.

He escorted her as far as the door of her boudoir, and there he left her, saying that he would return in half an hour, hoping that would be sufficient time to exchange her bridal robes for her traveling-dress. She smiled and nodded, declaring that he should find her ready before that time.

Hubert walked slowly on until he found himself at the door of the conservatory.

"It wouldn't be a bad idea to get a cigar and return here for a quiet smoke," he thought.

He immediately suited the action to the thought. Was it fate that led him there? He had scarcely seated himself in one of the rustic arm-chairs ere he heard the sound of approaching voices.

He felt slightly annoyed that the retreat he had chosen was to be invaded at that particular moment.

He drew back among the large-leaved plants, which would effectually screen him from the intruders, and hoped that their stay would be short.

"I tell you it will be impossible for you to see her," said a voice, which he recognized as belonging to Gerelda's maid.

"But I must," retorted another voice which sounded strangely familiar. "Give her the note I just gave you, and I will wager you something handsome that she will see me. My good girl, let this plead for me with you!"

A jingle of silver accompanied the words, and Varrick could not help but smile at the magical effect the little bribe had.

"Of course, I'll take your note to her, sir," said the girl; "but that isn't promising she'll see you."

Somehow the idea formed itself in Varrick's mind that it was Mrs. Northrup for whom the man asked. Had he thought for one moment that it was Gerelda whom the man had asked for, he would have stepped forth and inquired of him what he wanted.

In a very few moments he heard the frou-frou of a woman's garments and the patter of hurrying feet.

"Gerelda has come instead of her mother to see what this person wants," he thought; adding impatiently: "This will never do; we shall be late for the train, sure. I will have to take the man off her hands."

At that instant, Gerelda, panting with excitement sprung across the threshold of the conservatory.

From his leafy seat Varrick could hear and see all that took place, while no one could see him.

He had risen, and was just about to step forward, when he caught sight of Gerelda's face. The color of it held him spell-bound. It was as pale as death, and her eyes flashed fire. She was fairly frothing at the mouth, and the look of venomous rage that distorted her features appalled him.

"You!" cried Gerelda. "Have you risen from the grave to confront me?"

"I am Captain Frazier – at your service, madame," returned her companion, with a low bow. "As for my returning from the unknown shore, why, you flatter me in imagining that I have so much power, though I have been known to do some miraculous things before now. I am sorry that so many of my friends believe the ridiculous story that was set afloat regarding my supposed death. I am – "

"Why are you here? What do you want?" cried Gerelda.

"You are inclined to be brusque, my dear," he replied, tauntingly. "If you had asked me that question half an hour ago, I should have answered, 'I am here to stop your marriage with Hubert Varrick at whatever cost. I have traveled by night and by day, foot-sore and hungry, to get here in time to prevent it.' I – I thought you had perished in the fire on the island, until I read the article in the paper announcing your marriage."

"If this is all you have to say to me, permit me to say good-morning," she returned icily, turning to leave the place.

"You shall listen to me!" he cried. "I vowed in days gone by that you should never be happy with Hubert Varrick. You promised that you would marry me, and those words changed my whole life."

"Well, now that I am another's bride, what can you do about it?" sneered Gerelda.

"I mean to see Varrick and have a little talk with him," he answered. "I will tell him how, on the very night before the marriage was to have taken place at the Crossmon Hotel, at Alexandria Bay, I threw myself on my knees at your feet, and cried out to you to spare me; that you had played with my heart too long, and urged you to fly with me, and that you said, while I knelt before you, that if you decided to fly with me you would let me know by sunrise the following morning, but that you must have all night to think it over.

"Do you dare face me and deny that?" continued Captain Frazier, seizing her white wrist and holding it in an iron grip.

"No, I do not deny it," she answered. "But what of it? What do you expect to make of it?"

"This!" he cried, furiously. "I intend to be even with you. I will have a glorious revenge! I will see Hubert Varrick before he leaves this house, and say to him: 'I hope you may be happy with your bride,' and I will laugh in his face, crying out: 'She eloped with me not so very long ago, and we went to my island home, where we kept in hiding until the sensation should blow over. We remained there, as I can prove by all my servants, and I was a very slave to her sweet caprices.'"

"You would not say that!" cried Gerelda. "I would tell him my side of the story – that you kidnapped me, and held me by force on the island."

"Varrick is a man of the world," he returned, tauntingly. "Your side of the story is too flimsy for him or any one else to believe."

"Stop! You must not – you shall not!" cried Gerelda, wildly. "I – I will make terms with you. I see you are shabbily dressed and in want of money. I will give you a check, here and now, for a thousand dollars, if you will go away, never again to return, and have nothing to say – nothing. Your story would ruin me, false though it is."

The captain arched his eyebrows.

"I think I could bring satisfactory proof as to where you passed your time."

Hubert Varrick, standing behind the foliage, was fairly stricken dumb by what he heard and saw.

He did not love his bride, but he believed in her implicitly. All the old doubt which had filled his heart and killed his love for Gerelda came surging back like a raging torrent, sweeping over his very soul.

In that instant the thought of Jessie Bain came to him – sweet little Jessie, whose love for him he had read in her every glance, and to whom he had given all his heart with a deeper, stronger love than he had ever given to Gerelda, even in those old days. How he longed to break from the terrible nightmare which seemed to fetter him!

"Your offer of a thousand dollars is a very fair one; but it will take double that sum to purchase my silence. You are quite right in your surmise. I am in need of money. With one fell swoop I have lost every dollar of my fortune, and now that all romance and sentiment are over between us, I have no compunction in showing you the mercenary side of my nature. Make it two thousand, and I will consent to hold my peace, seeing that I can not mend matters by undoing the marriage."

"Come with me. We will settle this now and forever. I have but five minutes to devote to you. Step this way," said Gerelda.

The next instant they had disappeared, and Hubert Varrick was left standing there alone.

How long he stood there he never knew. His valet came in search of him. He found him at the end of the conservatory, standing motionless as a statue among the shrubbery.

"Master," he said, "your bride bids me say to you that you have barely time to get into your traveling clothes."

He was shocked at the horrible laugh that broke from Varrick's lips.

Had his master gone mad? he wondered.

He followed the man without a word, and five minutes later, with a firm step, he was walking down the corridor toward his bride's apartments.

But ere he could knock upon the door, it was opened by Gerelda. He offered his arm to Gerelda, and walked slowly by her side through the throng of friends to the carriage in waiting; and, amid showers of rice, peals of joyous laughter, and a world of good wishes, they were whirled away.

During the entire ride Varrick spoke no word. Gerelda watched him narrowly out of the corner of her eye, wondering why he looked so unusually angry.

They were barely in time to catch the train, and it was not until they were seated in their own compartment that Varrick ventured a remark to the beautiful girl he had just made his wife, and who was looking up into his face with such puzzled wonder in her great dark eyes.

"I should like your attention for a few moments, Mrs. Varrick," he said, turning to her with a haughty sternness that was new to him.

"You are my wife," he went on; "the ceremony is barely over which made you that, yet I would recall it if I could."

"What do you mean, Hubert?" she cried, piteously.

"We will not have any theatricals, if you please," he said, waving her back. "A guilty conscience should need no accuser. It is best to speak plainly to you, and to the point. Suffice it to say I was in the conservatory at the time you entered. I heard all that passed between Captain Frazier and yourself. Now, here is what I propose to do: We were to take a wedding-trip to Montreal. We will go there, but when we reach our destination, you and I will part forever. I shall institute proceedings for a divorce at once, and I shall never know another happy moment until the divorce is granted. You shall be wife of mine but in name until we reach Montreal; then we part forever."

"Oh, Hubert, Hubert, you will not do this!" she sobbed, wildly. "It would ruin my life – kill me!"

"You did not stop to think that marriage with you would ruin my life," he interposed, bitterly. "What have you to say for yourself? Was Captain Frazier's story false or true? Remember, I heard him say that he could furnish proof of all he charged."

"It is useless to hide the truth from you," she whispered, hoarsely. "I see that you know all. Give me a chance to think – only to think of some way out of it. It would kill me, Hubert, to part from you. Better death than that. You are my world, the sunshine of my life. I would pine away and die without you. Oh, Hubert, you must not leave me!"

"The words are easily said," he replied, "but they do not sound sincere. I may as well make a clean breast of the whole matter," he went on, "and tell you the truth, Gerelda. I do not love you. I – I – love another, though that love has never been confessed to the one I love. I – I – married you because I felt in honor bound to do so, and in doing so I crushed all the love that was budding in my heart. But was it worth the sacrifice of two lives? You can not answer me. I shall not intrude upon you again until we reach Montreal. You can send for your mother; it would be best for me to leave you in her charge. Telegraph back to her from the next station we arrive at. The moment we reach Montreal we part forever!"

But at that instant a strange event happened.

Chapter XIX.
THE COLLISION – THE PILOT AT THE WHEEL

Gerelda had been looking intently out of the window. Suddenly she sprang back with a wild cry that fairly froze the blood in Varrick's veins.

"What has frightened you, Gerelda?" he asked, gravely; and the look she turned on him he never forgot, there was something so terrible in the gaze of those dark eyes. She did not attempt to repel him from drawing near her, or from clasping her hands; but ever and anon she would laugh that horrible laugh that froze the blood in his veins.

"Let us talk the matter over calmly, Gerelda," he said at length, "and arrive at an understanding."

"There is no need," she returned. "As long as I understand, that is quite sufficient."

There was something in the tone of her voice that frightened him. He looked into her face. A grayish pallor overspread it. To Varrick's infinite surprise, Gerelda commenced to laugh immoderately; and these spells of laughter so increased as the moments flew by, that he became greatly alarmed.

He wondered what he could do or say to comfort her. She grew so alarmingly hysterical as he watched her, that it occurred to him he must find medical aid for her. Fortune favored him; he found a doctor seated in the compartment next to him. The gentleman was only too glad to be able to render him every assistance in his power.

One glance at the beautiful bride, and an expression of the gravest apprehension swept over the doctor's face.

"My dear sir," he said, turning to Varrick, "I have something to tell you which you must summon all your fortitude to hear. Your young wife has lost her reason; she is dangerously insane."

Varrick started back as though the man had struck him a sudden blow.

"You are bound for Montreal, I believe," continued the doctor. "You will see the need of conveying her to an asylum, with the least possible delay, as soon as you arrive there. If there is anything which I can do to assist you during this journey, do not hesitate to call upon me. Consider me entirely at your service."

That was a day in Hubert Varrick's life that he never looked back to without shuddering. How he passed the long hours he never knew. Gerelda grew steadily more violent, and twice Varrick's life would have paid the forfeit had it not been for his watchfulness.

With great difficulty he succeeded, with the doctor's assistance, in making the change from the train to the boat.

That was how his wedding journey began.

As night came on, the doctor touched him again on the arm.

"You have not left your young bride's side for an instant during all these long hours," he said. "You are wearing yourself out. Let me beg of you to go out on deck and take a few turns up and down; the cool air will revive you. Nay, you must not refuse; I insist upon it, or I shall have you for a patient before your journey is ended."

To this proposition, after some little coaxing, Varrick consented.

The doctor was quite right; the cool air did revive him amazingly. He felt feverish, and paced up and down the deck, a prey to the bitterest thoughts that ever tortured a man's soul.

One by one the stars came out in the great blue arch overhead, and mirrored themselves in the bluer waters.

Varrick watched them in silence, his heart in a whirl. All at once it occurred to him that he knew the pilot of the boat – that, as he was from Montreal, it wouldn't be a bad idea to interview him as to the location of some private asylum to which he might take Gerelda.

He acted upon this thought at once, and making his way to the upper deck, he recognized the man at the wheel, in the dim light, although his back was turned to him.

"How are you, John?" he exclaimed, tapping him on the shoulder. "Don't let me frighten you; it is your old friend Varrick."

Much to his surprise, the pilot neither stirred nor spoke. Varrick stepped around, and faced him with some little laughing remark on his lips. But the words died away in his throat in a gasp. The dim light was falling full upon the pilot's features. What was there in that ashy face and those staring eyes that sent the cold blood back to his heart?

"John!" he cried, bending nearer the man and catching hold of his arm roughly as it rested upon the wheel. But his own dropped heavily to his side.

The terrible truth burst upon him with startling force – the pilot was dead at the wheel!

But even in the same instant that he made his horrible discovery, a still greater one dawned upon him. Another steamer came puffing and panting down the river, signaling the "St. Lawrence."

Each turn of the ponderous wheels swept her nearer and nearer, and the "St. Lawrence" was drifting directly across her bow. It was a moment so feighted with horror it almost turned Varrick's brain. Five hundred souls, or more, all unconscious of their deadly peril, were laughing and chattering down below, and the pilot was dead at the wheel!

Ere he could give the alarm, a terrible catastrophe would occur. He realized this, and made the supreme effort of his life to avert it. But fate was against him. In his mad haste to leap down the stair-way to give warning, his foot slipped, and he fell headlong to the floor of the lower deck, his temple, coming in contact with the railing, rendering him unconscious. Heaven was merciful to him that he did not realize what took place at that instant.

There was a sudden shock, a terrible crash, and half a thousand souls, with terrified shrieks on their lips, found themselves struggling in the dark waters!

It was a reign of terror that those who participated in it, never forgot.

When Hubert Varrick returned to consciousness he found himself lying full length upon the greensward, and his face upturned to the moonlight, with the dead and dying around him, and the groans of the wounded ringing in his ears.

For an instant he was bewildered; then, with a rush, Memory mounted its throne in his whirling brain, and he recollected what had happened – the pilot dead at the wheel, another steamer sweeping down upon them; how he had rushed below to inform the passengers of their peril; how his foot had slipped, and he knew no more.

He realized that there must have been a horrible disaster.

How came he there? Who had saved him? Then, like a flash, he thought of Gerelda. Where was she? What had become of her? He struggled to his feet, weak and dazed.

He made the most diligent search for her, but she was nowhere to be found. Some one at length came hurriedly up to him. In the clear bright moonlight Varrick saw that it was the doctor in whose care he had left his young bride when he had gone on deck for fresh air.

"You are looking for her, sir?" he asked, huskily.

"Yes," cried Varrick, tremulously.

"Are you brave enough to hear the truth?" said the other, slowly.

"Yes," answered Varrick.

"Your wife was lost in the disaster. I was by her side when the steamer was struck. We had both concluded to go on deck to join you. With the first terrible lurch we were both thrown headlong into the water. I did my utmost to save her, but it was not to be. A floating spar struck her, and she went down before my eyes."

For an instant Varrick neither moved nor spoke.

"She is dead?" he interrogated.

"Yes," returned the doctor.

Varrick sank down upon a fallen log, and buried his face in his hands. For a moment he could scarcely realize Gerelda's untimely fate. He had not loved her, it was true; still, he would have given his life to have had her reason restored to her.

For an hour or more Hubert Varrick forgot his own sorrow in alleviating the terrible distress of others.

When there was no more assistance that he could render he thought it would be best for him to get away from the place as quickly as possible.

Scarcely heeding whither he went, he took the first path that presented itself. How far he walked he had not the least idea. In the distance he saw lights gleaming, and he knew that he was approaching some little village. He said to himself that it would be best to stop there for a few hours – until daylight, at least, and to recover Gerelda's body if possible.

He followed the path until it brought him to the edge of a little brook. The white, shining stones that rose above the eddying little wavelets seemed to invite him to cross to the other side. Midway over the brook he paused.

Was it only his fancy, or did he hear the sound of music and revelry?

He stood quite still and looked around him; the scene seemed familiar.

For an instant Hubert Varrick was startled; but as he gazed he recognized the place. He must be at Fisher's Landing. Up there through the trees, lay the home of Captain Carr, the uncle of little Jessie Bain.

As he stood gazing at it, the clock in some adjacent steeple slowly struck the midnight hour. He wondered if Jessie was there. How he felt like telling some one his troubles!