Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/261

Rh not really understood myself until I received my long expected letter tonight. Dear aunt Barbara," she continued, caressing the little hand she held in her own, "you have been laboring under a cruel mistake ever since that morning, so long ago, that was to have seen you Leonard Clayton Arnold's bride."

"Etta, what can you mean," asked the lady in a tone of surprise.

"Did you ever have a thought that your sister cared for Clayton Leonard Arnold, twin brother to your lover?"

"No, Etta, most assuredly I never did. How could she? for although he was Leonard's exact counterpart in looks, he was just the reverse in everything else. In a word he was a spend-thrift, a gambler, and all that was bad. I cannot understand your meaning Etta."

The moonbeams rested upon Etta's face, showing it deadly pale, and her voice was full of pain as she replied, "Aunt Barbara what you say of Clayton Arnold is true, but it is nevertheless true that he was my mother's husband and my father. They were married the day after she left her home. I have their marriage certificate and can prove what I am saying, " said the girl in a low, firm voice.

"Then in Heaven's name why did she call him Leonard in her letter to me, and where, oh where was Leonard?"

"I do not positively know why she called him Leonard in writing you, but knowing as I do that she thoroughly disliked the name of Clayton, she had formed the habit of calling him Leonard, during their stolen visits, and therefore in the excitement of going away used the name unthinkingly. If I have been rightly informed—and I think I have—Leonard had been absent on business for two weeks, but was to return to L the night before the wedding. He did so and as he stepped from the train, he saw his brother and your sister just entering the forward car. With only one thought, and that to save her from such a mad act, he followed them. It was in vain, however, that he expostulated and even threatened, they were married as I told you the next day. He only went with them, however, as far as the city of A, for being assured that Clayton really intended to marry her, and not having any authority to prevent it, he started to return to L. When but a few miles from A a serious railroad accident occurred, and uncle Leonard was terribly injured. For three months, while you was thinking him false to you, he lay utterly unconscious, in a poor laborer's hut not fifty miles from L. Then when he came slowly back to life again and discovered that three months had elapsed since the day which was to have been his wedding day, he fretted himself into a fever which again brought him nearly to the grave. When he at length began once more to recover he wrote to you, but at that time the fever was raging at L, and you never received the letter. When he was able to travel he hastened to your old home at once, only to find you gone no one knew where. He searched for you, advertised for you in vain. Aunt Barbara my uncle Leonard is still living. He has never married. The letter I received tonight was from him in answer to one I wrote him soon after I came here. I have never seen him but once, and then only for a few moments soon after my mother's death. He gave me fifty dollars and desired me to remain with Mrs. Eaton until he could make arrangements for having me sent to school. The night before my mother died she told me how she had left her home and how bitterly she had always regretted it. She knew you had not married Leonard, and supposed her own marriage to have been the cause of a quarrel between you. Father had kept our whereabouts a secret from his brother, as he had forged his name soon after his marriage, thereby securing a thousand dollars. Mother desired me to write to him and tell him of my destitute condition, thinking that as he is very wealthy he would assist me to go to you. He came to me at once, and I had only to see him to love him dearly. In the box of old letters you gave me to overlook the week after I came here, I found the letter my mother