Irene sat still where her angry lover had left her, lost in a
trance-like maze of troubled thought. With her small, white hands folded
in her lap, and her dreamy blue eyes fixed on vacancy, she remained
there, statue-like and unheeding, and time, albeit its wings were
clogged with sorrow, flew past unnoted, until the noon-day sun rode high
in the heavens.
A step, a voice, startled her from her dreamy revery.
"Ah, Miss Berlin, you see I have discovered your charming retreat," said
Guy Kenmore. "Will you permit me to share it?"
The swift color flew to her brow, as she looked up into the handsome
face, with the slightly wistful smile about the firm lips.
"This spot is free to all Mr. Stuart's guests," she replied, coldly. "I
have no right to forbid you to come here."
"Would you, if you had?" he asked, throwing himself down in the grass at
her feet, and lifting to her face his slightly quizzical brown eyes.
"Why should I?" she retorted, gazing down into his face with an air of
the most serene indifference.
"Why, indeed?" he asked himself, with sudden bitterness. "Serene, in her
fancied incognito, she cares not whether I go or stay. I am no more to
her than the earth beneath her feet," and aloud, he answered calmly as
he could speak, and in a slight tone of banter:
"I fancied you might prefer to share this lovely solitude with some more
favored friend--for instance, Mr. Revington."
The hot flush deepened on the beautiful face, and she answered with an
impulse of passionate willfulness:
"That would be natural, would it not? I suppose you have heard that I am
to marry, Mr. Kenmore?"
His brown eyes flashed beneath their shady lashes.
"She dares to twit me with her preference for that puppy," he said,
angrily to himself. "Does she indeed believe that I am blinded by her
borrowed name, and that I am unaware of her real identity? Will she
attempt to carry the farce through to the end?"
An impulse came over him to claim her then and there as his own; to take
the slight young figure in his arms and press it to his beating heart;
to kiss the beautiful, proud face and the defiant eyes, and to say,
jealously: "You are my own wife, Irene, and whether you love me or not,
no one shall take you from me."
Ah, if only he had obeyed the prompting of his heart, how much sooner
happiness would have come home to them to crown their lives with bliss;
but their mutual pride stood like a wall between. He shook off the
tempting impulse to claim his own, and believed that he was but obeying
the command of chivalry and honor in keeping stern silence.
"What, claim an unwilling, reluctant bride?" he thought to himself,
sadly. "No, no! never! I must wait until of her own free will she owns
her fealty to me. I must woo and win her before I claim her."
Perhaps the struggle in his heart betrayed itself on his face, for the
resentment died out of her blue eyes and they were filled with a mute,
pathetic longing.
"Ah, if he would only love me, if he would only claim me," she thought.
"I would tell him how I hate and despise Julius Revington! He might help
me to right my mother's wrongs!"
At that moment his downcast gaze fell on Julius Revington's guitar which
that worthy had forgotten in his hurried and angry exit from Irene's
presence. A jealous gleam lightened in his brown eyes.
"Ah, I see that Mr. Revington has already been with you this morning,"
he said frigidly.
"Yes," she replied, with coldness equal to his own.
"Are you fond of music?" he inquired, taking up the instrument, and
striking a few chords, softly.
"Passionately," she replied.
Obeying a sudden impulse he played a soft, sweet symphony and began to
sing in a mellow baritone. He had chosen the beautiful song, "My Queen,"
and the girl's heart vibrated painfully to the sweetness of the strain.
"Who will be his queen?" she asked herself, with a jealous pang at her
heart. "He is so grand and handsome, he will only love some one gifted
beyond her sex with beauty and genius. Ah, why did I come between him
and his future?"
She looked at him wistfully when he had finished.
"I did not know you could sing like that," she said.
"Is it equal to Revington's performances?" he inquired, smiling at her
implied compliment.
To his dismay she sprang up crimson with anger and resentment.
"Revington, Revington! It is always Revington with you," she cried, and
flung away disdainfully from him.