LITMIR.BIZ

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abduction, or that Senator Winans would have made him rich for life if he had given to him the clew he possessed to his lost daughter.

      Precious, the petted daughter of wealth and luxury all her life, recovered her consciousness in the smallest, shabbiest, most common-looking bedroom she had ever beheld.

      A coarse woman of about fifty years was leaning over her. She looked and smelled like a laundress.

      "Who are you, and where am I?" quavered Precious.

      A man came forward then, and at sight of him everything came back to her memory. She lifted her head from the coarse pillow with a shriek.

      "Mamma! oh, darling mamma!"

      "Be quiet. Your mother is all right, my dear," said Warwick. "The story of her death was only a ruse to make you faint, so that I could get you into my power. I love you, so I brought you away to make you my prisoner until you would consent to be my bride."

      Precious sprang to her feet, her blue eyes blazing with anger and scorn.

      "You must be crazy! Why, my papa will kill you for this!" she panted indignantly.

      Lindsey Warwick laughed mockingly.

      "Oh, no, my dear; he will not get the chance. He will never know where you are until you marry me!"

      She stamped her little foot with the pride of a queen.

      "Senator Winans' daughter marry you—a drawing-master!" she cried, with increased indignation.

      "Certainly, my dear. Pride can stoop sometimes. Your mother was only a governess when she became the senator's bride!"

      She looked at him in amazement at his knowledge of their family history, and answered proudly:

      "My mother belonged to one of the proudest families in the South. It was only the reverse of fortune that placed her for a short time in a dependent position."

      With a laugh he answered:

      "Granted, but she was only a governess, and the senator's daughter may stoop like her father to wed her tutor."

      "I hate you! I would not marry you if you were the last man on earth! Release me at once, and let me go home!" she cried imperiously.

      "I will not. I love you to madness, and I have sworn that I will make you my bride. I will keep you imprisoned here until you consent."

      "I will kill myself first."

      "I am not afraid of that."

      She looked at the coarse, frowzy-haired woman whose greasy clothes smelled of soapsuds.

      "Are you in this plot?" she asked disdainfully.

      "He is my son, and has put you in my charge, and I have promised to keep you safe; that is all," was the careless answer.

      "But my father will search everywhere for me, and he will punish you both when he finds me."

      "He will not find you, for there will not be the slightest clew for him to follow. This house is an old ruin, and my mother lives here alone. I board in one of the best neighborhoods in Washington, and I will never come here to see you only late at night."

      He made a motion to the old woman, and she immediately retired from the room.

      Then the dark, sneering face of the young man softened with love and longing. He knelt at her feet, and cried passionately:

      "Forgive me, for I love you wildly, and I knew I could never win you except by force. I have loved you madly for months. I sent you the tenderest love-letters man ever penned, but you did not reply to them. I looked at you often with my heart in my eyes, but you averted your face. Why were you so cold to me?"

      "I despised you," answered Precious. "Only yesterday I resolved to tell mamma that you were presuming on your position to try to make love to me. I wish now that I had told her. Then she would have had some suspicion of the truth."

      "She will think now that you have eloped with some low-born lover!" he sneered, rising to his feet, for she had drawn back from him in disdain. "But I will leave you to rest now, my beautiful love, and my mother will come and help you to retire. Fear nothing. You will be kindly treated here, but you will never be restored to your home until you consent to marry me—ay, until the knot is tied. So think well of my proposal, for I will make you a good husband. Good-night," and he bowed and withdrew.

      If the thought of her captivity had not been so dreadful, Precious could have laughed at the man's presumption.

      To think that she, the daughter of an illustrious statesman, should have such a lover as this—a drawing-master, the son of a laundress! Well, papa would come to find her very, very soon, and then he would punish the bold villain for his presumption.

       CHAPTER VI.

      THE FORTUNE-TELLER

      "I miss you my darling, my darling—

      The embers burn low on the hearth,

      And still is the air of the household,

      And hushed is the voice of mirth.

      The rain splashes fast on the terrace,

      The winds past the lattices moan;

      The midnight chimes out from the minster

      And I am alone!"

      Lindsey Warwick had not counted on such determined obstinacy as his lovely young captive displayed.

      From first to last she refused to taste a morsel of food beneath the roof of her jailer.

      The keenness of her thirst made her accept water from the woman, but that was all. Neither cajoleries, threats, nor bribes could induce her to taste the food provided for her, though it was of the best, with fruits and wines, and even bon-bons to tempt her girlish appetite. Although she was starving she pushed them aside with disdain, and lay all day on the couch weeping forlornly, and calling by turns on the names of her father, mother, and sister.

      Poor Precious! she had fully believed that her father would find her in less than twenty-four hours, but the long days wore away, and she gave herself up to despair. Prayers, promises, pleadings, were of no avail with the cruel old woman and her enamored son.

      But at heart the old woman was uneasy and frightened as the long days waned and the beautiful captive grew paler and weaker day by day.

      "She will die, Lindsey, for she has never tasted food since she came here, and that is a long week now. You had better let her go. She will never marry you; she will die first, as she said."

      "Then she will be mine in death. I will bury her under the cellar of this house, and no one will ever know the secret of her fate."

      "It is a wonder they did not suspect you," she exclaimed.

      "I fancy the detectives did at first, but I was clever, and threw them off the scent. In the first place, I went as usual that day to give her her lesson in drawing. When the servants told me she was missing I pretended to be entirely in ignorance. Then I devoted myself to a girl in my own rank, and contrived to make every one think me engaged to her. That cleared me, you see."

      "Better marry that girl, Lindsey. She might be happy with you. T'other one wouldn't, even if you got her. You're too poor; she couldn't bear it."

      "But her father worships the ground she walks on; he would give her a dowry if she married me."

      "Better say he would disinherit her for such a marriage."

      "Not if she could be brought to love me. He's a stickler for love matches, I know. He married a governess himself. No, mother, only let me get the little beauty to marry me; and the senator would forgive us, and my fortune would be made."

      "Go upstairs and look at that poor girl a-dying, as white as the wall, and not able to walk across the floor, and maybe you'll change your mind," replied she cynically.

      "By heaven! she shall eat!" he cried frantically. "I will force her to swallow food at the point of a pistol."

      "And drive her insane—yes, that's what you'll do!"

      "Mother,

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