"What am I to do?" Irene asked herself that night when she was alone in
the quiet and seclusion of her chamber.
She had laughed and sung and jested while Guy Kenmore's eyes were upon
her, and feigned an indifference she was very far from feeling. But now
she had to tear off the mask so proudly worn, and face her fate.
"What am I to do?" she asked herself, miserably, as she walked up and
down the floor in her pretty blue dressing-gown, with her white hands
twisted together in a childish fashion she had. "I do not believe the
heroine of the most impossible novel was ever placed in a more harrowing
situation. Here am I betrothed to the villain of the story, when my
husband, whom I believed to be dead, unexpectedly pops upon the scene.
And instead of his appearance simplifying matters, it tangles them into
a Gordian knot, and I can only ask myself what I shall do!"
She laughed--a mocking, mirthless little laugh that startled a dozen
eerie little echoes in the corners of the room.
"Heigh-ho! I know what I would do if _he_ loved me," she said to
herself, wistfully, "I would fly to my husband's arms, and defy Julius
Revington to do his worst. I would say to him proudly, I have here an
honest name, and a true love of which your machinations cannot deprive
me!"
The quick tears started out beneath her golden-brown lashes.
"Alas, alas! he does not love me," she sighed. "Why should he do so? He
never saw me but once before last night. It was my own willful folly
that led him into that dreadful marriage. I doubt not he was glad when
he thought that my reckless suicide had broken the fetters that had
bound him. Last night he pretended not to know me, yet he could hardly
have been ignorant of my identity. He could not have forgotten my face
so soon. It is a fair one, they say--yet not fair enough to have won his
heart."
That momentous question, "What am I to do?" echoed drearily in her
heart. She could find no answer to it; she could think of no refuge from
her sorrow. For the first time since that awful night in the cold, dark
waves, she wished that the friendly plank had not drifted to her
reach--that she had perished miserably then rather than have lived to
find herself in this terrible strait.
"I cannot marry Mr. Revington now," she thought. "I must take back my
promise of yesterday, with no reason save that of a woman's fickleness.
He will be very angry; he will tell my miserable story to Mr. Stuart and
Mrs. Leslie, to all of these people that sneer at the mystery that
enshrouds my past. What shall I do?"
A passionate shame surged over her at the thought of the cold looks and
sneering words that would be thrown at her when her discarded suitor
should tell these strangers that her mother was a dishonored woman, and
that she, her child, had no right to her father's name. She fancied that
Mrs. Leslie and Mr. Stuart, the only two friends she had, would be
turned against her, too. She would be utterly alone and
wretched--friendless and forsaken.
"And yet I cannot be sorry that Guy Kenmore lives," she murmured.
"Though he hate me and deny me; though he bring down shame and sorrow on
my head, I must still be glad that he did not perish in the cold and
dark waves. How strange it seems that only twenty-four hours ago I wept
him dead, and now I weep him living. Alas! living or dead, he is lost to
me the same. I must ever remain an unloved, unacknowledged bride."
Worn out by the weary vigils of the past two nights she threw herself
down on the bed, dressed as she was, and fell into an exhausted slumber.
She slept late and dreamlessly, and when she opened her bewildered blue
eyes the next morning upon the beautiful sunny day no answer had come to
the question that vexed her brain last night.
But in the golden light of the new day her woful strait did not look so
grievous as it did last night. A feverish hope sprang up in her heart
that God would befriend her in her sorrow and helplessness and show her
some way out of her trouble.
When she had made her simple, pretty toilet, and gone down-stairs, she
found that everyone had breakfasted except Mr. Revington, who had
sentimentally waited for her. She swallowed her breakfast with what
appetite she could, and then he asked her to take a walk with him.
"All the ladies of the family are out in the garden," he said. "Mrs.
Leslie and her admirer, Mr. Kenmore, have been out almost an hour. That
will be a match, I think."
"I think you are mistaken," Irene answered, almost angrily.