It was late when Irene came down to breakfast the next morning.
The breakfast bell had clanged noisily twice, and all the other inmates
of the villa were in their places at the table, when Miss Berlin glided
in, pale, mute, grave, and took her wonted seat by Mrs. Leslie's side.
Every eye turned curiously on the fair young face. The change was too
marked to escape observation. The white cheeks, the dark shadows beneath
the eyes, the pathetic droop of the red lips, all had a story of their
own. The simple white morning-dress, with the black velvet ribbon at
throat and waist was sad and suggestive too. All missed the bright bunch
of flowers she was wont to wear on her breast, but none guessed that the
simple black and white were mute tokens of bereavement.
"I was sorry to hear of your illness last night. I trust you are better
this morning," said Mr. Stuart from his place as host.
His voice was grave and kind, but his eyes were kinder. They often
lingered on her as if fascinated, until, with a sharp sigh of pain he
would turn away.
"Thank you, I am better," she replied, briefly, and dropped the long
lashes over her eyes because Julius Revington was trying to meet them
across the table.
He was vexed with her for looking so pale, so wan, so unhappy.
"Am I an ogre that she should look so pale, so ill, so wretched, at the
bare idea of having me for a husband?" he said to himself, in a
passionate ebullition of wounded vanity.
When breakfast was over he managed to intercept her as she was going
out.
"It is a beautiful morning, Miss Berlin. Will you walk out with me?" he
asked, pleadingly.
She brought her broad-brimmed sun-hat from the rack in the hall and
silently accompanied him.
It was a beautiful morning, as he had said. The sun shone brilliantly,
the blue sky mirrored itself in the blue river, birds sang, flowers
bloomed, and the air was sweet with the breath of roses. But for once
Irene was indifferent to the sweet influences of nature. She walked
along silently by his side, her blue eyes downcast, her face pale, her
steps slow and languid.
They paused at last to rest on a pretty garden seat beside the murmuring
river. Irene flung herself down wearily.
She, who seldom knew what weakness meant, could barely drag her weary
limbs along.
"I am sorry to see you looking so ill to-day," murmured the lover.
She glanced up quickly in his face for some sign of relenting.
Alas, his passionate look of admiration dispelled the sudden, springing
hope. Her heart sank heavily again.
"I _am_ ill," she cried. "God only knows what I suffered last night. Are
you still relentless in your cruel purpose?"
"You use hard words," he said, flinching under her scorn. "Is it cruel
to love you, and wish you for my own?"
"It is cruel to try to force me into compliance with your wishes," she
answered, with a passing flash of indignation.
"You mistake. I have not tried to force you. I merely gave you a choice
of terms," he replied.
"Scylla and Charybdis," murmured the girl, disdainfully.
"As you will," he replied; but in his heart he said, cruelly: "You find
it hard, fair lady, to tolerate a master in practice, however fine it
may appear in theory."
She sat still, looking dreamily into the rushing river, a look of
despair frozen on her white face.
"You may have guessed why I brought you here," he said.
She made him no answer. The cold despair deepened in the lovely,
downcast eyes.
"I am impatient for my answer," he went on. "Are you going to be kind
to your mother, Irene; kind to yourself, and merciful to me?"
She turned and looked at him, with the fire of scorn flashing all over
her beautiful face.
"If you mean am I going to sacrifice myself for my mother's sake, I
answer yes," she said. "Here is my hand. Take it. But it is empty--there
is no heart in it. There never will be. I shall never love you, were I
twenty times your wife. I shall always hate you for driving me to the
wall, for making me untrue to myself."
Unheeding her wild words he took the hand and kissed it, but she tore it
madly away. It rushed over her drearily how strange it was for Guy
Kenmore's widowed bride to be thus plighting her hand to another almost
in the first hour of her bereavement.