CONTENTS CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII A DREADFUL TEMPTATION BY MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER AUTHOR OF "QUEENIE'S TERRIBLE SECRET," "JAQUELINA," ETC. NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL BOOK COMPANY 3, 4, 5 AND 6-MISSION PLACE COPYRIGHT, 1883, BY NORMAN L. MUNRO [_All rights reserved._] A DREADFUL TEMPTATION; OR, _A Young Wife's Ambition_. By MRS. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER. CHAPTER I. "Hear the mellow wedding-bells-- Golden bells! What a world of happiness Their melody foretells!" "Hark! there's the wedding-march." "Here they come!" "Looks as white as a corpse, doesn't she?" "Oh, no; as beautiful as a dream, to my notion. Pallor is becoming in brides, you know." "He's a silly old dotard, though, not to know that she's taking him for his money." "Of course he knows it. I dare say the old gray-beard is glad he had money enough to buy so much youth and loveliness." "What a splendid veil and dress! They say her rich aunt furnished the _trousseau_." "Her jewels are magnificent." "The bridegroom's gift, of course. Well, he is able to cover her with diamonds." These were but few of the remarks that were whispered in the fashionable throng gathered at Trinity to witness a marriage in high life--a marriage that was all the more interesting from the fact that the contracting parties were so totally dissimilar to each other that the whole affair in the eyes of the outsiders resolved itself into a simple matter of bargain and sale--so much youth and beauty for an old man's gold. The bridegroom was John St. John, a millionaire of high birth and standing in the city where he lived, but so old and infirm that people said of him that "he had one foot in the grave and the other on the brink of it," and the bride was the young daughter of some obscure country people. An aunt in the city had given her some advantages, and kept her in town two seasons, hoping to bring about a good match for her, since she had no dowry of her own, save youth, talent and peerless beauty. "And what is your fortune, my pretty maid?" "My face is my fortune, sir," she said. And Xenie Carroll was fulfilling her aunt's ambitious hopes and desires to their uttermost limit as she walked up the broad aisle of Trinity that night, clothed in her bridal white, and leaning on the arm of the decrepit old millionaire, John St. John. His form was bent with age, his hair and beard were white, his eyes were dim and bleared; and she was in the bloom of youth and beauty. It was the union of winter and summer.