Mrs. Leslie was filled with dismay and terror at the result of her
thoughtless communication to her _protege_.
"What a silly tattler I am to tell such shocking things to that poor
sick child," she said to herself, with lively compunction.
Then she flew to the dressing-table, and securing a bottle of _eau de
cologne_, proceeded to drench Irene's face vigorously.
The result of her treatment was that Irene speedily gasped, shivered and
opened her eyes.
"Oh, you are alive yet, are you, my dear?" exclaimed her friend. "I was
afraid I had killed you with my foolish tales."
"Then it wasn't true--you were jesting with me?" exclaimed the girl,
unconsciously clasping her small hands around her friend's arm, and
lifting her dark, anxious eyes to her face.
"Eh? what, my dear?" Mrs. Leslie asked, rather vaguely.
"The wreck, you know--the people who were drowned," Irene answered, with
a shudder. "Is it true?"
"Oh, yes, child, every word of it, I am sorry to say, but I oughtn't to
have told you about it while you were feeling so badly. It shocked you
very much, poor dear."
"Yes, it shocked me very much," Irene replied, in a strange voice. "You
were saying--were you not?--that one of your friends was--was--drowned,"
she concluded, with a faint quiver in the last word.
"Yes--poor Guy Kenmore of Baltimore--one of the most splendid men I ever
met," sighed Mrs. Leslie. "But do not let us talk about it any more
to-night, dear. It makes you nervous, I think."
"Yes, and I am very tired. I should like to go to sleep. Good-night,
dear Mrs. Leslie," said Irene, thus gently dismissing her friend.
"Very well, since you want to go to sleep, good-night, dear," said the
lady, good-humoredly; "I hope you will let me know if you are worse in
the night, though."
Irene promised, and received Mrs. Leslie's good-night kiss. Then the
lady went away and left her alone.
Why did she weep so bitterly upon her lonely pillow that it was drenched
with her bitter tears?
Now that her husband of an hour was dead, Irene knew that she loved him.
"Loved him with a bitter yearning
That could never pass away,
Loved him with an anguished passion
That could never know decay."
As she lay there weeping sorely on her pillow, she recalled that sweet
June night, but a few short months ago, when her own willful folly had
led her into that deplorable entanglement. She recalled the handsome
face of Bertha's lover, as she then deemed him--handsomer then and now
to her fancy than any other man she had met. He had given her no word
of blame or reproach for her folly that had led him into that mad
marriage. Nay, how kindly, how gently he had tried to make the best of
it--he had offered to keep faithfully those marriage vows he had taken,
even when he knew that she was a nameless child, and her mother a
disgraced woman. How kindly he had spoken to poor Elaine, even when her
own child madly reproached her. She seemed to feel again the warm,
gentle clasp of his arm around her waist while poor Elaine told her
sorrowful story.
"I love him. It is not wrong, for he belonged to me, and he is dead,"
she said to herself, plaintively and sadly, through her falling tears.
She forgot Julius Revington for a while in the shock of this new grief.
One hour was given to her sorrow and her tears.
"He is dead, yet I cannot realize it," the girl-widow said to herself,
trying to fancy those laughing brown eyes drowned in the salty waves of
old ocean--those languid, musical tones hushed in its everlasting roar.
It was in vain the effort. It was in life, rather than death that he
dwelt in her thoughts.
"He is dead, but no more dead to me than he was in life," she repeated
over and over to herself, "for I should never have seen him again."
And suddenly, like an Arctic wave coldly sweeping over her, came the
remembrance of Julius Revington.
"I am free now," she repeated to herself, with a shiver of horror.
"Nothing lies between my mother and happiness but my own unconquerable
repugnance to the man who holds the secret of my mother's wrongs."
Remorseful memory pictured that beautiful mother sad, lonely, bereaved,
wasting her heart in unavailing sighs and tears.
"Oh, mother, I was hard, cold, cruel to you that night in my madness,"
she cried. "I, who shadowed your life with an ever-present memory of
shame for sixteen years, now owe you reparation and atonement even to
the sacrifice of my poor life."
And in the solemn, mystical midnight hours the great battle was fought
between self-pity and mother-love.