Part 54 (2/2)
”I am telling you the truth; you have but to ask Florence herself. Has she not broken off her engagement with you?”
”She has, and a good thing, too,” he muttered under his breath.
”Ah! I heard those words, though you said them so low, and it is a good thing for you. You would never have been happy with a girl like Florence. I know her well. I don't pretend that I played a very nice part; but still I am not ashamed. I want money now; I did not want money when I offered my productions to Florence. I hoped that I should be a very rich woman. My hopes have fallen to the ground; therefore I take back that talent with which Nature has endowed me. You can give _me_ orders for the _Argonaut_ in the future. You will kindly pay _me_ for that story. Now I think I have said what I meant to say, and I wish you good-morning.”
”But you must stay a moment, Miss--I really forget your name.”
”My name is Keys--Bertha Keys. Other well-known magazines will pay me for all I can write for them; but I am willing to give you the _whole_ of my writings, say for three months, if you are willing to pay me according to my own ideas.”
”What are those?”
”You must double your pay to me. You can, if you like, publish this little story about Florence and myself in some of your society gossip--I do not mind at all--or you can keep it quiet. You have but to say in one of your issues that the _nom de plume_ under which your talented author wrote is, for reasons of her own, changed. You can give me a fresh t.i.tle. The world will suspect mystery and run after me more than ever. I think that is the princ.i.p.al thing I have to say to you. Now, may I wish you good-morning?”
Bertha rose as she spoke, dropped a light mocking curtsey in Franks's direction, and let herself out of the room before he had time to realize that she was leaving.
CHAPTER XLVII.
FINIS.
It is, alas! true in this world that often the machinations of the wicked prosper. By all the laws of morality Bertha Keys ought to have come to condign punishment; she ought to have gone under; she ought to have disappeared from society; she ought to have been hooted and disliked wherever she showed her face.
These things were by no means the case, however. Bertha, playing a daring game, once more achieved success.
By means of threatening to take her work elsewhere she secured admirable terms for her writing--quite double those which had been given to poor Florence. She lived in the best rooms in Prince's Mansions, and before a year had quite expired she was engaged to Tom Franks. He married her, and report whispers that they are by no means a contented couple. It is known that Franks is cowed, and at home at least obeys his wife. Bertha rules with a rod of iron; but perhaps she is not happy, and perhaps her true punishment for her misdeeds has begun long ago.
Meanwhile Florence, released from the dread of discovery, her conscience once more relieved from its burden of misery, bloomed out into happiness, and also into success.
Florence wrote weekly to Trevor, and Trevor wrote to her, and his love for her grew as the days and weeks went by. The couple had to wait some time before they could really marry, but during that time Florence learned some of the best lessons in life. She was soon able to support herself, for she turned out, contrary to her expectations, a very excellent teacher. She avoided Tom Franks and his wife, and could not bear to hear the name of the _Argonaut_ mentioned. For a time, indeed, she took a dislike to all magazines, and only read the special books which Mrs. Trevor indicated.
Kitty Sharston was also her best friend during this time of humiliation and training, and when the hour at last arrived when she was to join Trevor, Kitty said to her father that she scarcely knew her old friend, so courageous was the light that shone in Florence's eyes, and so happy and beaming was her smile.
”I have gone down into the depths,” she said to Kitty, on the day when she sailed for Australia; ”it is a very good thing sometimes to see one's self just down to the very bottom. I have done that, and oh! I hope, I do hope that I shall not fall again.”
As to Mrs. Trevor, she also had a last word with Kitty.
”There was a time, my dear,” she said, ”when knowing all that had happened in the past, I was rather nervous as to what kind of wife my dear son would have in Florence Aylmer, but she is indeed now a daughter after my own heart--brave, steadfast, earnest.”
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