kissing his withered old cheek in the fervor of her gratitude. "Now, I
shall be brave as a lion. Oh, pray telegraph him this hour, if
possible!"
CHAPTER X.
"Now, Reine, I know the hotel where Vane stays when he comes to New
York. If he received my telegram he will be waiting there for me. I will
go and bring him to you."
They are in a small, private parlor of a hotel in New York. Reine, very
dusty and anxious-looking, is walking up and down the floor, never
having even removed her hat.
"I will bring him to you," Mr. Langton repeats. "Now, dear, go to your
room and bathe your face and hands, and brush your hair. Do not let your
husband find you so dusty and travel-stained."
"As if he cared," she says, with infinite mournfulness, yet obeying his
hint all the same.
She looks with dim, pathetic eyes at the pale, grave face in the mirror.
"How these few days have changed me," she sighs. "No wonder! Yet I did
not know it was in my nature to suffer such pain. If Vane cared for me
he must be startled at the change. But he does not love me, and never
will, alas!"
She waits, perhaps the longest half an hour she ever knew in her gay,
careless life. Mr. Langton comes at last--alone!
"Whew! how confoundedly hot and dusty is New York at this season," he
splutters, mopping his face with his handkerchief. "The thermometer up
in the nineties, and the dust in clouds that choke and blind one. An
hour of life at Langton Villa is worth a year in this noisy, abominable
place. Reine, let us go home."
She stares at him with wide, dismayed dark eyes.
"Uncle, he--he is gone?" she falters.
"Gone, yes, the impertinent young puppy," he growls. "Gone without a
word, utterly ignored me and my telegram. I wish to Heaven----" he
pauses with a dark frown.
"What, Uncle Langton?" with pathetic wistfulness.
"That--that I'd never married you to him, the scamp!" he blurts out in a
fury. "He has treated us both with the most distinct contempt. We will
go home, dearie, and Vane Charteris may go to the devil!"
This from the irate old man, but Reine looks at him bravely.
"Uncle Langton, I object to your calling names," she says, distinctly.
"Mr. Charteris is my husband. I insist that you shall respect that
fact."
"A pretty husband," he mutters.
"No one shall blame him in my hearing," she goes on with shy, pretty
dignity. "After all, it was unfair to hang an unloved wife like a
millstone around his neck."
"You know all," Mr. Langton mutters, darkly, "but where the deuce you
found out is beyond my ken. If I knew, I'd shoot the fellow that told
you. Well, are you ready to go back to the mountains to-morrow?
"No, oh, no," she clasps her small hands in anguish. "Oh, uncle, you
promised to leave me your fortune. Give me only just enough money to
follow Vane across the ocean, and I'll resign all the rest!"
"What, you obstinate little vixen! You are quite determined to follow
him?"
"I _must_, uncle. Oh, you do not know how much depends on my seeing
him!"
"And you would cross the great 'herring-pond' alone? I should think you
would be frightened at the thought, you, a green little country girl.
Who knows where Vane may cast his lines? Perhaps among the frog-eating
Frenchmen, or the garlicky Italians. Can you speak French?"
"Like a native," she responds, with an arch little _moue_.
"Italian?"
"Perfectly, and Spanish, too. You know I get my living by my learning,"
she laughs, trying hard to be her own bright, careless self.
He is plainly delighted.
"Very well, you shall go," he replies. "A steamer sails to-morrow. We
will go in her."
"_You_," she cries, with incredulous joy. "It will be too wearisome for
you. You are so old."
"Not a bit," contemptuously. "Do you think I will let you go alone?"
CHAPTER XI.
The _Sea Gull_ wings her flight blithely and rapidly across the "dark
blue waves," as if she were not freighted with the heaviest heart that
ever beat in breast of mortal man.
For Vane Charteris, although his passionately longed-for revenge has
come to him in such strange and subtle fashion, is a most unhappy man.
Mingled with his almost fierce joy at the speedy retribution that has
been dealt out to Maud, his false love, is a stinging, unconquerable
remorse that pursues him like an evil spirit, although he cannot bring
himself to repentance for what he has done. A shuddering horror takes
possession of his soul when he thinks of the cloud of shame and
disgrace, and impending peril lowering darkly over that golden head he
has loved so dearly, but his passionate anger and resentment are
stronger than the languid, admiring affection he had cherished for his
fair, queenly-looking betrothed.
In the madness of his insulted pride it seems to Vane impossible that he
should lift a finger to save the treacherous one from her terrible fate.
Arriving in the great, smoky city of London, that is hot and smoky and
altogether unbearable, Vane throws himself into whatever excitement is
going with an _abandon_ and recklessness altogether unlike himself.
He is bent on losing himself and his tormenting thoughts in the deepest
oblivion he can find, but in less than a week he succumbs to fatigue and
mental agony, and decides that he is "fagged out." Either he must
recuperate or he must die.
Life is sweet to us all; even to Vane, with his dearest hope gone from
him.
He decides to run down to the sea-shore a little way, and brace his
constitution with the life-giving sea-breezes.
He hears of a quiet place, frequented by invalids, authors, and poets,
and such quiet people, "packs his traps" and goes down by the first
train. Behold, it is a coast such as Tennyson portrays:
"All sand and cliff and deep-inrunning cave."
"I shall die of memory and stagnation here in less than a week," he
tells himself grimly, as he paces along the yellow sands up to his
balconied hotel, where a few dispirited invalids and long-haired poets
eye the handsome young American with a dreamy, listless curiosity. "I
shall find health and quiet here with a vengeance. I shall go mad with
this eternal sea!"
And after one night with the long, low moan of the "sad sea waves" in
his ears, and the ghosts of the past stalking drearily in the haunted
darkness, he stoutly prepares to "fold up his tent like the Arabs, and
silently steal away" to "fresh fields and pastures new." The spirit of
unrest is upon him; strange mood for one who all his life-long had been
indolent, languid, not to say, in Reine's plain English, _lazy_.
But while he chews the end of his morning segar, and restlessly
meditates on the where to go next, a boy comes to him with a pretty
little three-cornered note. In stupid astonishment he takes it and holds
it unopened in his hand.
"I was to take back an answer, sir," the lad ventures, as a gentle
reminder.
Then Vane turns it over and looks at the superscription. It is addressed
to himself in a pretty, graceful hand, with a good deal of character in
it.
Unfolding it, he reads, with staring eyes:
"MR. CHARTERIS:--Arriving at the hotel an hour ago, I learned, on
inquiry, that you were at the 'Haven of Rest.' Will you come to me
for ten minutes? Hastily,
"REINE LANGTON."
The earth seems to yawn beneath Mr. Charteris' feet. He mutters, on the
uncontrollable spur of the moment, a profane expletive:
"_The_ devil!"
"Eh, what, sir?" the lad mutters, uncomprehendingly.
The words recall Mr. Charteris to his senses, he having been momentarily
shocked out of them.
"Who gave you this note, boy!" he demands, sternly.
Really, it seems to him there must be some mistake. Reine, his unloved
wife, here on Albion's wave-washed shore--impossible.
But the lad replies, distinctly:
"A young lady at the Sea View Hotel, a very pretty lady, with big black
eyes."
This description is too suggestive of Reine to admit of further doubt.
With a suppressed groan, Vane tears a leaf from his memorandum book, and
scribbles, hastily:
"Reine:--I will be with you in fifteen minutes.
"VANE."
Totally forgetting, in his flurry, to put her name upon it, he doubles
the sheet and puts it into the lad's hand with a generous silver piece.
"Now, fly back to the lady, you young scamp," he apostrophizes.
As if the reward had lent wings to his feet, the urchin runs lightly
along the sandy shore, and disappears in the distance.
Vane takes a turn up and down the balcony to steady his nerves. He has
had what some people are wont to call a "turn."
The authors and invalids eye him with blended curiosity and admiration.
It is not often that a handsome, comely young fellow like this anchors
his bark in this "Haven of Rest."
"She has followed me here," Vane is saying to himself, through his
compressed lips. "Now, I call _that_ downright bold and unwomanly. It
proves to me more and more how unwise a choice was forced upon me by Mr.
Langton's perverse will. Why did he let her come? And how the deuce am I
to get rid of her? For I swear I won't live with her, at least not yet."
So saying, he flings on his hat and starts off at a swinging pace along
the sands toward the hotel.
"I must see what she wants," he says, under his breath, and gnawing the
ends of his golden-brown mustache savagely, while the _habitues_ of the
place watch him carelessly, little thinking that the handsome American
is going unwillingly to the bonniest bride all England holds.
* * * * *
He had called her "bold and unwomanly," yet in his heart he is forced to
retract the words when he finds himself in her presence, and the spell
of her dark, bright beauty throws its glamor over him, against his will.
For Reine, with the pardonable vanity of "lovely woman," has hastened to
make herself fair for her husband's coming.
In London, while they rested and searched for Vane, Mr. Langton has
bought her a box of what he calls "fine things." Among them is a sheer,
white India muslin morning robe, trimmed with a profusion of fine, rich
lace. Nothing could be lovelier than Reine in this dainty robe, with
deep-hearted crimson roses in her hair and at her belt.
The slight, graceful figure advances to the center of the pretty morning
parlor, then pauses suddenly, while the curling, black lashes flutter
and fall till they waver against the burning crimson cheeks.
"You sent for me?" he says, abruptly, noting her sudden shame and
confusion with ungenerous malice.
"Yes, I--I----" she pauses, and throws up her girlish white hands as if
to ward off a blow. "Oh, do not look at me so," she says, imploringly.
"I _know_ what you are thinking and saying to yourself. It is that--that
I am bold, forward, unlady-like, to have followed you here, when you," a
choking sob, quickly suppressed, "when you despise me so!"
It is his turn to blush now under the dazzling light of the "dark, dark
eyes" she opens wide upon his face, while she makes her frantic plaint.
"It is no such thing, pray do not say so," he retorts, fibbing
unblushingly, in that he feels himself, to use his own graphic inward
phrase, "cornered." "Of course you had a perfect right," dejectedly, "to
come after me."
"Not at all," she says, decidedly. "No right that I would presume upon
thus far. Oh, Mr. Charteris," with a sudden transition from shame and
self-pity to irrepressible mirth, "pray, pray, do not look so dejected
and forlorn. I have not come after you, indeed; that is, not as you
think. I hope to leave here for America to-morrow."
"Leading me as a captive in your train?" he inquires, not feeling half
so bad at the prospect as he could have imagined ten minutes ago.
"Certainly not," she replies, in her frank, decisive way; then, a little
frigidly, "pray be seated, sir, and I will unfold to you the business
upon which I have followed you to England."
He bows silently, turning a little pale beneath his healthy, florid
tinge.
What an ominous sound that dull, prosaic word, "business," has from her
lovely, heart-shaped, crimson lips. Besides, he feels, to use his own
inward thought again, "_wilted_." She does _not_ want him, as he has
vainly imagined, and ridiculously resented in secret. She is come on a
mere matter of business. She makes him understand that thoroughly by her
pretty, dignified manner that has stiffened into ice.
"I should not have come--nothing could have induced me to," she goes on,
with sensitive deprecation and lowered eyelids, "only for the sake of
_Maud_."
"Of Maud!" he starts, and his pallor grows death-like. "What has she to
do with you and me, Reine?"
She looks up silently, and their glances meet and hold each other a
moment; the velvety black orbs, swimming in golden light, hold a mute
and stern reproach before which the proud, defiant blue ones waver and
shrink, pained and ashamed.
"I do not understand," he says, sullenly, answering her look against his
will.
"Oh, yes, you do, you know," she returns with airy frankness. "You
remember poor Mr. Clyde wrote Maud a note, swearing he would kill
himself if she didn't marry him. And Maud lost the note that day she was
in the hammock-chair under the tree. You, Mr. Charteris, found it, and
tucked it into your vest pocket, thinking it of no consequence. But in
that you were mistaken, as you learned the day of the inquest. Oh, Mr.
Charteris, will you give up that note, and pray God to pardon your
wicked revenge?"
CHAPTER XII.
There is a moment's perfect silence. From deathly white Vane Charteris
has turned to a burning crimson, then marble-pale again. No sound is
heard save the low, hoarse swell of the waves as they break on the rocky
shore.
"Oh, you did not realize, surely," the girl goes on, with pained eyes,
and clasped hands, "what a terrible thing you were doing when you went
away silently with that note in your possession, that is worth the
wealth of the world to poor Maud Langton. You were blinded by your
wounded pride and insulted love, or you could not have stooped to take
such an ignoble revenge for your wrongs."
He stares at her still, like one dreaming. Is the girl a witch? How does
she know?
"Oh, speak!" she breaks out, impatiently. "Have you nothing to say?"
"You have taken my breath away," he answers. "Why do you bring this
absurd charge against me? Who says," with a sneer, "I have that
wonderful note?"
"I am your accuser," she answers, fixing upon him the full fire of her
magnetic dark eyes. "I saw you, I was not very far away when Maud left
you that day, I saw you pick up a note from the ground and read it, then
you slipped it into your vest pocket. I am quite sure it was Maud's
note. I do not believe you will deny it."
"Since you know so much, I will not," he answers, with blended amaze and
defiance. "What then?"
The beautiful dusky face lights up with the lovely earnestness of hope.
"You will give it to me," she says. "I have followed you across the wide
ocean to ask you for it."
"Why should I give it to you?" he asks, with distinct coldness.
She gives him a glance of blended pride and patience.
"Not for any grace you owe me, certainly," she says, with gentle
calmness, "but for Maud's sake."
"Do I owe her any kindness?" he asks, sardonically.
"You owe her forgiveness, which is divine," she answers, anxiously.
"I prefer _revenge_. Do you remember these lines?
"'The sweetest thing upon this earth is love,
And next to love the sweetest thing is hate.'"
She rises and faces him, something of proud scorn in her free and
girlish bearing.
"Yes, I remember them, but such sentiments are unworthy of you, Mr.
Charteris. What! are you not the brave, noble gentleman I deemed you? Am
I to blush for my--husband?"
A subtle thrill, he cannot tell whether it be of pain or pleasure, it is
so intense, shoots through him as the low word falls from her lips. A
passionate shame, evoked by her proud scorn, tingles through all his
frame, yet he says, mockingly:
"So you own the tie that binds us? I thought not, as when I came just
now and inquired for Mrs. Charteris I was told there was no such person
staying in the hotel. I had to ask for Miss Langton."
"I am traveling as Miss Langton," she explains, simply, yet coloring
crimson under his keen, cool gaze.
"May I ask why?" with an unconscious touch of pique in his tone.
"No, you may not ask," with a great deal of dignity in her tone; then,
suddenly: "Yet I think you should know I am too sensitive to claim the
name you will not accord me of your own free will."
She opens the scrawl he has sent her awhile ago, holding it open before
his eyes. There is neither name nor address upon it.
"I, upon my word, I beg your pardon. It was entirely--I give you my word
of honor--unintentional; a mere omission. I was so flurried, you see,
and somehow I forgot. Can you forgive me?" he stammers.
"With pleasure," she returns, coolly, looking away from his shamed
countenance. "But we have digressed from our subject. We were talking of
Maud and the note you hold. How can you withhold it from her when you
know that her very life hangs upon it?"
"Reine, do you know that I hate that woman?" he cries, with subdued
fierceness.
"Then you never loved her," she replied, decisively.
"I did; but her falsity turned my love to hate," he answers, moodily.
"No," she answers.
"'That is not love
That alters where it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.'"
An utter silence which she breaks again, anxiously: "You will not refuse
my prayer? Give me the note and let me go to Maud."
He turns from her sullenly and looks out of the window at the blue,
sun-gilded waves breaking in snowy foam against the shell-strewn shore.
"You could not let her suffer for a crime of which she is innocent," the
pleading voice goes on.
"I suffered innocently," he says, shortly enough, without turning
around. "Why did she make me a mark for the finger of scorn?"
"You can live _that_ down," she answers. "But she, her very life is at
stake. Do not forget that if she suffers the full penalty of the law,
for this crime of which she is not guilty, her blood will be on your
hands. You will, in the sight of God, and to my knowledge, be Maud's
Langton's murderer."
Though he will not turn around, she sees the strong shudder that shakes
his frame.
"You will be a haunted man," she goes on, relentlessly. "By day and by
night you will dream of the girl you have slain. You will remember
always that the golden head you hoped to pillow on your breast is laid
low in a dishonored grave."
"For God's sake, Reine, why do you torment me so?" he cries, turning
fiercely round upon her.
"For Maud's sake, and your own sake, and for humanity's sake, and my own
sake," she retorts, bravely. "That Maud's innocence may be vindicated,
that you may be saved from the evil consequences of your wicked revenge,
that the world may see how divine a thing is repentance and forgiveness,
and that I," her brave voice falls to a low, pathetic cadence, "that I
may not have to die of shame because I have given my heart to one so
lost to honor, truth and mercy."
Vane Charteris stands like one stunned a moment.
"What a little vixen it is," he says to himself, darkly. "There is no
end to her tongue."
"I know what you are saying to yourself," the girl breaks in,
vivaciously; "you are wishing I would go away and leave you alone----"
"You are mistaken," he replies, thinking of a way to put her to
confusion, and silence her tongue that is but a little louder than his
own accusing conscience. "I was thinking of what you said just now. Is
it really true that you have given me your heart?"
The warm, red color creeps up to her temples under the blue fire of his
steady, curious eyes. She rallies herself with a brave little effort of
will.
"Yes," she answers, with a little touch of pathos in her low voice. "It
is quite true. Does it amuse you? It is only a girl's heart. You will
break it and throw it from you of course. I have often heard that
women's hearts were men's playthings."
He regards her in curious silence. Few women would be brave enough to
make that frank admission to a cold, careless, unloving husband. Yet
Reine is as proud as the most, she lacks none of the modesty of her sex.
There is a curious, restrained pride in her every look and movement now.
And, strange to say, he does not feel disgusted at her pathetic
admission of her love for him.
"She _loves_ me," he repeats over and over to his heart, looking at the
lissome, daintily rounded figure, and the brilliant face, bright and
rich like a tropical flower, with the softness of emotion lying on it
like dew. "She loves me," and there is a certain masculine vanity in the
thought that he, Vane Charteris, is the lode-star of her girlish dreams.
But before he can think of anything to say, she goes back, pertinacious,
to the old theme:
"But we have digressed from the original subject. Once more, Mr.
Charteris, will you give me the note?"
And he answers, bluntly, almost angrily:
"No, I will not."
And for the first time since their interview, Reine shows a sign of
weakness. She reels unsteadily, and throws up her white hands in the
air.
"I have failed, I have failed," she cries, despairingly. "Oh, you are
merciless; you are a veritable Shylock. Nothing will sate your thirst
for vengeance but a pound of flesh!"
He catches the falling figure in his arms. For one moment the white,
anguished face rests against his breast, then she opens her eyes and
struggles from his clasp.
"Do not touch me," she says, with indignant scorn. "You are a monster!"
And his own conscience, knocking loudly at the door of his heart, echoes
the words.
"Reine, Reine," he falters, hurriedly, "do not be hasty. Give me a
little time. I will answer you to-morrow."
"You take back your refusal?" brightening so swiftly that you think of
the sun coming out from under a cloud.
"Until to-morrow--yes," he says, feeling a sort of relief at his own
words. "You can wait until then?"
"Yes, for I cannot go until to-morrow. Did I forget to tell you that
Uncle Langton is with me?"
"Is he, really?"
"Yes, and I fear the trip has been too much for him, poor old dear,"
with loving compassion. "He feels worn and tired. He is lying down this
morning. Will you go to him?"
"I shall be very glad. Does he--does he know why you came?"
"No," quietly; then, flushing: "You will not mind if he is a little
cross, and--and fault finding? He is so old, you know, and then he is
tired and half sick."
"I shall not mind," he answers, a little grimly, as he follows her
through a small suite of rooms to Mr. Langton's own especial one.
"Mr. Charteris is here, uncle," she says, quietly ushering the visitor
in, and sensitively withdrawing.
CHAPTER XIII.
Vane Charteris, entering the cool, breezy white room, with its wide
windows opening upon the sea, encounters the half-indignant gaze of his
old friend, who is lying on a low couch in a silken dressing-gown and
tasseled cap, his wrinkled old hands grasping the knob of his
gold-headed cane, which he proceeds to thump viciously on the floor at
the young man's entrance, thereby expressing the war-like state of his
mind.
"I hope I see you well, Mr. Langton," airily observes the handsome young
"reprobate," as Mr. Langton mentally dubs him.
"Then you'll be disappointed," snaps the old millionaire, irefully.
"Never was so mortally used up before in my life. Soul and body will
scarcely hold together. And all on your account, you disobedient young
rascal."
"Disobedient?" Mr. Charteris queries, in a mild tone, slightly arching
his eyebrows.
"Disobedient, yes;" with an emphatic thump of the cane. "Didn't you
receive my telegram ordering you to remain in New York until I came?"
"Ye-es, I did," admits the culprit, with no great show of repentance,
"but being, according to the old law, free, white, and twenty-one, I
didn't seem to see that I was under any man's orders."
"Nor any woman's either?" testily.
"Nor any woman's either," Vane repeats, undauntedly.
"At least I expected a show of courtesy from a young fellow whom I had
tried hard to benefit," Mr. Langton retorts, with his stiffest air.
Whereat Mr. Charteris, after a little ambiguous cough, puts on a show of
meekness.
"Ah, there I see my naughtiness," he says. "I acted like a churl. There
can be no two opinions as to _that_. But, sir, if you could only know
the madness of the passion that drove me on, I think you might find some
excuse for me in your heart."
Mr. Langton, differing from him on this latter point, says nothing in
reply, but discreetly changes the conversation.
"You talked with Reine?" he inquires.
"Oh, yes; or, I may say, she talked with me," this ruefully.
Mr. Langton at this chuckled heartlessly.
"She has a sharp tongue of her own, I warrant you," he says.
"Inherited honestly enough," replies Mr. Charteris, with a pointed bow
at the old gentleman.
"Yes--yes; chip of the old block," Mr. Langton retorts, in nowise
disconcerted at the hint of his niece's resemblance to himself. "Well,
Vane, this mission on which she has followed you abroad--has she
broached it?"
His yet keen eyes detect the flush that steals up to the young man's
temples as he replies in the affirmative.
"I hope it was concluded to her satisfaction."
"It has not been decided yet," Vane replies, with no little
embarrassment.
"I may not venture to inquire into its nature?" Mr. Langton asks,
curiously.
"No, I think not--at least, not just yet. Later on you shall hear,
perhaps," Vane responds, ambiguously, and with very palpable confusion.
They have some desultory conversation, then Mr. Langton asks, casually:
"Well, and have you enjoyed your '_outing_?'"
"Recklessly," responds he.
"I don't think I quite enter into your meaning," the old millionaire
retorts; and Vane, laughing carelessly, replies:
"I mean I have enjoyed it down to the ground, as the fellows say here."
"Humph! looks as if you had been dissipating straight through," Mr.
Langton comments, glaring keenly at him under his shaggy brows. "You
don't ask me anything about that wretched girl," he says, startlingly.
"Reine has told me," Vane replies, pale to the lips.
"Serves her right. I can't, for my life, feel sorry for the treacherous
little cat! To think that she should have treated me so!" said the
vindictive old man.
"This affair is likely to go hard with her," says Vane, with
admirably-acted indifference.
"Pooh! nothing of the sort," Mr. Langton returns, trying to salve his
uneasy conscience. "No danger of such a pretty girl as Maud coming to
grief. That cold, white beauty that reminds you," maliciously, "of a
lily, would win over any jury in the world."
They discussed the subject a little while, carelessly, almost
unfeelingly, it would seem, since Maud Langton has been so much to them
both a little while ago; then the old millionaire turns carelessly, to
all intent, to another subject.
"Do you know it seemed to me superlatively ridiculous to be dragging my
old, sapless bones so far as this, dancing attendance on another man's
wife?"
Vane colors, then turns aside the implied reproach.
"It must have weighed upon you, certainly," he responds. "I am rather
surprised at such thoughtlessness, even on the part of Reine. Why did
you let her persuade you?"
"Nothing of the kind. I simply came in spite of her. Did you think I
would have suffered your wife to come alone, Vane?"
"Will you smoke?" Mr. Charteris inquires, proffering a choice Havana,
and lighting one himself.
Mr. Langton, taking one gingerly between his fingers, resumes:
"There is a good deal more to Reine than we thought for. I am downright
pleased over the exchange of heiresses I made. I wish now, seeing how
all fell out, that I had taken her without encumbrance."
"Meaning me?" Vane asks, with an uncomfortable flush.
"Meaning _you_," Mr. Langton replies, beginning to puff away furiously
at his Havana, as if he were a smoke-stack. "You see I am mistaken in
you, Vane. After all you said I didn't believe it was in you to treat
your bride in such a cavalier style. If I had thought you would really
run away from Reine the next day, and set all the country talking and
sneering, you might have gone to the devil before I'd have given you my
pretty little niece!"
"The regret is mutual, sir," Vane replies, with some heat; and then,
glancing up, warned by some strange instinct, he sees his unloved wife
standing just within the door.
She has entered just in time to catch Mr. Langton's closing speech and
the angry answer.
Vane sprang to his feet, very red and confused.
"I--I beg your pardon," he says, in the utmost confusion.
She bows, speechlessly. Her face has gone quite white; her eyes shun
his in a kind of fearful shame. She says at last, in a strange voice,
but with desperate calmness:
"I feared Uncle Langton would be rude to you. You must pardon him, and
pardon me."
"For what?" he gains courage to ask, a little blankly.
"For our share in making you unhappy," she answers, very low.
Something in the proud humility of her attitude strikes a remorseful
pang through his heart.
She stands alone in the center of the room, slender and graceful as a
young palm tree, her head drooped slightly forward, the dew of unfallen
tears shining like pearls in her long, dark lashes. She is like, yet
unlike, the giddy Reine of a month ago.
"There is nothing to pardon," he says, in a flurried tone, "Mr. Langton
was right. I have acted very badly--like a brute, in fact. You must wish
you had never seen me."
"Yes," she says, low, but steadily. "It would have been so much better
for you."
"I did not mean that," says he, disconcerted.
"You are good enough to say so," she replies, with delicate disbelief,
and then she goes up to her uncle.
"The physician you sent for is here," she says. "Shall I send him in?"
"Are you so bad as that?" Vane asks, with a slight start.
"Yes; I can scarce hold myself together," Mr. Langton replies, and his
trembling old hands attest the truth of his words. "I must have
something for my nerves or I shall not be able to stir from this
to-morrow."
Vane rises, glad to get away under any terms.
"_Au revoir_," he says. "I will call again to-morrow."
He goes back to the Haven of Rest with the poets, ├Žsthetes and such
people, lounging on the balconies. That name is a misnomer. It appears
to him a haven of unrest. He wanders away to the shell-strewn beach, and
smokes like a chimney while he reviews the situation.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, the physician attending Mr. Langton has thrown a bomb-shell
into that camp.
"You are quite broken down and exhausted," is his dictum. "Rest and
recuperation are what you need. I will leave you a tonic, and in about
ten days you may be well enough to be taken for a short drive, and in
two days more you may be strong enough to walk down to the sea-shore,
and----"
"Distraction, man!" thunders the irascible invalid. "Do you think I have
come to this place to stay a year? No, sir. I am going to start back to
America to-morrow."
"But, my friend, you know that is quite impossible," laughs the stout,
good-natured physician. "At your time of life, recuperation goes on but
slowly, and----"
"I tell you I'm as young as I ever was," this from Mr. Langton, in tones
of mulish obstinacy.
"And I tell you you're breaking down of old age, and you'll not stir
from this for two weeks; if you do you'll risk your life. You understand
me, young lady?" turning to Reine.
"Yes, sir, and your directions shall be implicitly carried out."
"But, Reine," he objects when the doctor has gone, "you know you said it
would be impossible we should stay beyond to-morrow."
"We must manage some way--you must not be hurt by our haste. We will go
as soon as we can, that is all," she answers, patting his cheek, then
turning gently from him to the window.
The dark, blue waves go splashing softly past under the gaze of her
dark, sad eyes. A thought comes into her mind:
"But most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love.
The honey of poison flowers, and all the measureless ill."
CHAPTER XIV.
"Another day. Never was mortal so glad to behold daylight," ejaculated
Vane Charteris, yawning with all the weariness of one who has seen the
long hours of a sleepless night glide past.
This is somewhat an unusual experience for our hero, but for once mind
has so far triumphed over matter as to keep the drowsy god Somnus far
away. A day and a night have been passed in vexing thought. Now when
the first golden beams of sunshine gild the sea, he rises weary and
unrefreshed, and goes for a stroll on the shore, this early outing being
also a novel experience for him.
Early as it appears to him, others are astir before him. He meets
several people returning from an early morning dip in the briny element.
Down on the sands he comes face to face with a vision fresh and fair as
the summer morn itself--Reine, in a graceful boating dress, stepping
lightly into a little boat that rides at anchor on the tide.
As she takes up the oars with consummate skill, his voice falls on her
hearing, giving her a shock of surprise:
"Good morning; will you carry a passenger?"
She lifts to him her lovely face, flushed with a Hebe-like bloom, the
light of the new day sunning itself goldenly in her pansy-dark eyes.
Somehow in this out-of-doors chance encounter there is none of the
embarrassment that would attend a formal meeting in the house. There is
even some of the old time _badinage_ and sauciness in her tones as she
replies:
"Can I believe my ears or my eyes? Mr. Charteris out at this unheard-of
hour? I thought you 'never, never----'"
"'Well, hardly ever,'" he returns, with a spice of malice. "How came you
to do it yourself?"
"Because I always _do_, you know," she returns, smilingly. "I have been
out some time; I have had a glorious bath in the sea this morning, have
you?"
He laughs no, and again renews his petition to be taken in, to which she
assents, carelessly.
"I did not know you could manage a boat," he observes, as with a
skillful sweep of the oars she turns the little craft forward, dancing
lightly on the crest of the waves.
"Did you not? Well, that is not strange, seeing how little you know of
me anyway. I am a good swimmer, too. You would not have guessed that?"
she says, lightly.
"No, and yet it is a knowledge all women should possess," he returns.
"Where have you learned these things?"
"My father taught me. He wanted me to be thorough in such things as well
as in more lady-like accomplishments."
"He must have been a sensible man," Mr. Charteris comments to himself,
and then there is a silence broken only by the soft, steady splash of
the oars in the water. An embarrassing consciousness has fallen over
both. Vane is thinking to himself that after all there may be some
excuse for the _brusquerie_ and wildness of the little savage, as he
sometimes unkindly termed her in his thoughts. He remembers what Maud
had told him of her tuition under her father. Masculine training would
be apt to give her that touch of wildness.
She in her turn studies him shyly, but intently. She sees the haggard
impress of the sleepless night on the pale, handsome face, and about the
dark-blue eyes, with their slight heaviness and the faint blue circles
around them. Impulsively she speaks:
"You have thought the matter well over. You will forego your revenge and
save Maud?"
"Why should you think so? What sign have I given of yielding?" he asks,
curiously.
"Your face, even your voice betrays you. If you had decided to refuse my
prayer, you would look and speak differently. You would despise
yourself, and your very looks would reveal it."
"I did not know you were such a close observer," he replies, "but it is
true. You have saved me from myself, Reine."
As he speaks he leans forward, tossing a folded paper into her lap. The
oars lie idle a moment, as they drift at the mercy of the wind and tide,
while she reads the precious note.
Then she lifts her eyes, full of eloquent thankfulness, to his face.
"I expected no less of you," she says. "I knew you could not be so cruel
to Maud."
The handsome blonde face darkens.
"It was not solely for Maud's sake," he replies. "Pray remember that I
would not have yielded to you, Reine, only--only you showed me so
plainly what a monster I was, and how truly I would be that false girl's
murderer if I persevered. And then--then, I could not bear to have my
wife ashamed of me."
He looks away consciously as he speaks. A thousand tingling little
arrows of rapture shoot through her frame as the low words, "my wife,"
fall from his lips; spoken not harshly nor sneeringly, but kindly,
almost tenderly. Is it possible, she asks herself, in thrilling silence,
that he may one day forgive her, and be kind to her--nay, even give her
love for love?
"I remembered," he goes on, even more kindly, "that this was the _first_
request my wife had made of me, and I could not choose but grant it."
He can be dangerously winning when he pleases. It pleased him to be so
then--perhaps to try his power over her. The result is quite
satisfactory. The rich color leaps to her cheeks, the light of joy
flashes into her deep, dark eyes, the low-breathed answer is freighted
with emotion.
"I thank you more than I can express for your kindness," she answers,
earnestly. "You make me very happy."
"Then, while you are in that pleasant mood, there is something I must
ask you," he ventures.
"Yes?" She flashes him a bright, swift look of inquiry.
He is silent for a moment. He has an air of confusion that does not sit
ill upon him.
"Reine," he says, "it was all a mistake, your traveling under your
maiden name. It--it places you in a false position."
"No one knows aught of us here--it cannot matter," she replies, with a
blush, and quickly-drawn breath.
He studies the beautiful face attentively. How fair, how young, how
lovely it is. How sweet the heart-shaped, crimson lips, how long and
dark the lashes that droop against her cheeks. How luxuriant and long
the silken tresses that float like a banner on the fresh morning breeze.
And she loves him; some strange, sweet thrill strikes through him
whenever he recalls the truth she had owned with such pathetic
frankness.
"I have acted badly--no one realizes that fact more than I do," he
continues, gravely; "but, Reine that is past. I am your husband; you are
my wife, shall we let bygones be bygones and begin again?"
"You mean----" she says, giving him a little wondering look.
"I mean," he replies, "that I will go back to America to-day with you,
and I will try to do my duty by you in future if only you will forgive
me for shirking it in the first instance, and running away in such a
dastardly fashion."
Two crimson spots rise into her cheeks, her lashes fall lower.
"But--but we are not going back to-day," she explains, in an agitated
voice, telling him what her uncle's physician had said.
"Not get away for two weeks?" he says. "Very well, Reine, then I shall
leave the Haven of Rest and come to stay at Sea View Hotel, and it must
be publicly made known that you are mine."
"Indeed you will not, then," she breaks out with sudden self-assertion.
"I am not willing."
"Not willing?" he cries, and Reine's quick ear fancies it detects a tone
of relief in his voice. "You refuse to be my wife, Reine--woman-like,
taking revenge for a transient wrong."
"It is not that," she says, falteringly; "I am not angry with you, Vane,
but it is best to--to wait."
"Until when?" he asks, bending his curious eyes on the bright, arch
face.
And looking frankly at him, she replies, gently:
"Until love comes."
"Until love comes?" he repeats, blankly. "But I thought you owned----"
"Yes, I know," she says, checking him with uplifted finger, "but I mean
mutual love."
With a light dip of the oars she whirls the boat around on its homeward
way. The graceful head is poised in a free, half-haughty fashion. He
cannot understand the strange look on the dusky, lovely face. It is
neither pride nor humility, yet a strange blending of both.
After a moment she says in her clear, sweet voice, toned to a softer
cadence than usual:
"Do not think me stubborn that I refuse to own your claim just now,
Vane--I am proud in my own way. I cannot come to you until you wish it
from your heart."
He is silent, gazing at her in sheer perplexity. She goes on gently:
"You see I was deceived at first, Vane--not willfully--I do not accuse
you of _that_, but I fancied there must be in your heart some little
spark of tenderness for love to grow upon. When I found out my
mistake--how my uncle had forced the match upon you, and how but for my
too eager consent Maud might have been yours, I--well, _it was hard to
bear_! So I would rather wait, Vane--until the year you wished is over.
Perhaps by then, the soreness of your regret for--another--will be past,
and your heart may be open to me."
Has the moisture of the sea got into his eyes that they look so dim? He
draws his handkerchief across them, and can find no words to answer. So
she resumes, after a minute's weary waiting:
"I am not perverse, Vane. I am not fighting against my fate--only trying
to make the best of it. You will give me a fair chance to win your heart
before I wear your name? Will you not?"
"Yes," he answers, wondering at her strangeness.
"Thank you. Now we will return to my uncle. I will take the liberty to
invite you to breakfast with him. Will you come?"
"Yes, thank you," he replies, and the little boat touching the shore,
they spring out and go up the walk together, both very silent and
thoughtful. He begins to think that Mr. Langton's quaint phrase of
yesterday is true. "There is more in Reine than we suspected."
CHAPTER XV.
A sociable breakfast for three being laid in Mr. Langton's room, the
small party proceed to enjoy it, Vane and Reine with appetites sharpened
by the early morning air, and the sharp sea-breeze.
The old millionaire regards the young people curiously beneath his
shaggy brows. Something in their expressions makes him say, confidently:
"You have come to an understanding regarding that secret mission, you
two, I see."
"Yes," Reine answers, giving him a radiant glance from under her
drooping, black-fringed lashes.
"And you are ready to return to America?"
"As soon as you are strong enough," Reine makes answer, trying not to
let him see her inward anxiety to be gone.
"It is too bad that this old hulk of mine should be the means of
detaining you," he grumbles. "What shall you do now?"
She lifts her dark, inquiring eyes to the face of Mr. Charteris. He
nods, affirmatively.
"I will tell you, uncle," she replies. "I shall write to Maud's counsel,
and tell him I have found the missing note, and that I shall soon
return, bringing it with me. He must obtain a stay of proceedings until
my return."
"And this was your mission abroad?" Mr. Langton queries, surprised.
She smiles and nods, and Mr. Charteris comes in for his share of the old
man's scrutiny.
"Then _you_ had the note, Vane!" he says.
"Yes, sir," he responds, rather shame-facedly.
Mr. Langton looks from one to the other of the expressive faces, and
comes to a very fair comprehension of the truth.
After a moment passed in silent thought, he breaks out with
irrepressible enthusiasm:
"Reine, you are a trump!" whereat both the young people laugh with
contagious merriment.
"Where are you staying, Vane?" Mr. Langton queries.
"At the Haven of Rest. I wished to change my quarters to the Sea View
Hotel, but this imperious little lady here forbids me," he replies.
The keen little old eyes turn curiously on the crimsoning face of the
girl.
"Why should you do that?" he asks, and stammering some incoherent excuse
Reine flies from the room.
Then Vane rather ruefully explains the reason. To tell the truth he
begins to feel ashamed of himself, the more so that Mr. Langton applauds
Reine's determination.
"I am proud of her," he declared. "I was vexed at first. I thought she
meant to follow you and plead her own case. Now I cannot help but glory
in her nobility and her reasonable pride. She has the head of a Solomon
on her young shoulders. If you were not blind, Vane, you could not fail
to see what an adorable girl you have married."
"She is different from what I thought, certainly," Vane admits, gravely.
"She can hold her own--I am glad of that," Mr. Langton grunts, amicably.
"You see you could not have her for the asking. Serves you right. There
is hardly any excuse for the way you acted."
"It was outrageous, certainly," Vane answers, with admirable penitence,
"but I wish she would have made it up and let me come here. The Haven of
Rest is a dry place certainly--given up to invalids and poky people."
"I hear that Sea View is rather gay," Mr. Langton replies. "Some new
people arrived this morning. There is talk of a ball to-night."
"A ball! Will Reine go down?" Mr. Charteris inquires.
"Scarcely, I think. You see I shall not be able to escort her."
"Perhaps she will allow me that honor," Mr. Charteris observes,
promptly.
"Perhaps so," Mr. Langton responds, with a dry smile.
The ball comes off. Vane constitutes himself the attendant cavalier of
Reine. In a white lace dress with Marechal Neil roses on her breast and
in her hair, she has never looked more brilliant and beautiful. There is
a softened grace about her, a new light in her eyes that is wondrously
winning. She is withal a perfect dancer, embodying the very poetry of
motion.
Some very pretty girls are present, some very nice men, but Reine is the
belle of the ball. Mr. Charteris looks on in surprise. Reine had not
been appreciated at Langton Villa.
"You have not given me a single dance," he says to her late in the
evening.
"You have not asked me," she replies, in just the slightest tone of
reproach, "and now I cannot; my card is full."
She floats away with a partner who has just claimed her. Vane, leaning
carelessly against a chair in the corner, watches her languidly. She
seems to enjoy herself. Smiles hover on the crimson lips, the dark eyes
flash beneath their curling lashes.
Suddenly someone comes up to him--an acquaintance he has formed in
London, and who has, somehow, found his way to this secluded spot.
"Ah, Charteris, how-de-do," the new-comer says, unceremoniously. "Who is
the dark-eyed beauty? I've been watching her this half hour."
"Which one, Sir George?" with affected nonchalance.
"By Jove! there is but one, you know, the divinity in white lace and
yellow roses. I saw you speaking to her just now," returns Sir George
Wilde, with a look of interest in his handsome brown eyes.
"_That!_" says Mr. Charteris, "oh, that is--Miss Langton," with a
curious hesitation over the name.
"Friend of yours?" inquires the dashing young baronet.
"Slight acquaintance," Charteris answers, warily.
"A compatriot, I take it," pursues Sir George.
Vane nods affirmatively.
"You'll introduce me, then?"
"With her permission," Vane responds, a trifle stiffly.
"_That_, of course," laughs Sir George.
A little later Vane goes to her to proffer his request. She stands for
the moment alone in the embrasure of a window, her dark eyes turned from
the giddy dancers out upon the mystic, lonely sea, with the moon and
stars asleep upon its breast. He tells her, watching the bright face
narrowly, that an English baronet has been so attracted by her beauty
that he desires an introduction. Will she accord it?
The laughing, dark eyes, a spice of mischief in their starry depths,
glance up into his own.
"A baronet!" she says, making a little round O of her rosy mouth. "Do
you think, Mr. Charteris, I could really bear the burden of such an
honor without being crushed by it?"
"You can but try," he retorts, lightly. "England expects every man and
every woman to do their duty."
"Then I am ready for the sacrifice," she laughs, as lightly.
He looks at her a moment in thoughtful silence.
"Well?" she asks, interpreting a question in his look.
"It is this, then, Reine: I am placed in an awkward position. How shall
I introduce you--as Miss Langton, or as--as Mrs. Charteris?"
He flushes uncomfortably as the words leave his lips. His bride's face
reflects the crimson glow. After a minute she replies, with outward
indifference:
"Better, perhaps, as--Miss Langton, according to our agreement this
morning."
Some slight feeling of pique rises in his heart. He will not own to
himself that when he condescended to ask her the question he had thought
to give her pleasure, and had felt, too, that he should not be ashamed
to see this peerlessly-lovely girl wearing his name.
"Perhaps she does not really care for me as she pretended," he thinks to
himself, and the first spark of jealousy is lighted in his heart when he
sees her long lashes fall before Sir George's admiring gaze, and sees
with what calm and graceful self-possession she acknowledges the
introduction to the handsome, titled nobleman. "Who would have thought,
when she first came to Langton Villa, that the wild little 'school
ma'am' had so much dignity?" he thinks. "Is it, after all, a new phase
of her character, or was I simply blinded then by my admiration for
Maud? It seems that Sir George is irresistibly attracted by her graces.
What can he see in the girl that I was blind to?"
And full of this wonder, he sets himself to watch the young baronet, who
hovers around Reine with the palpable desire of the "moth for the star."
The whole room sees his admiration, and smiles at the fair American's
conquest.
Vane is a good deal amused, and unknowingly piqued.
"What barefaced admiration," he says, within himself. "The young dandy
is falling in love with my wife, confound him!"
CHAPTER XVI.
At a rather early hour the next morning, Mr. Charteris is astir, and out
upon the sands.
Not so early as some others, though, he finds, for in a merry group of
young people on the sands, he meets Sir George Wilde in close proximity
to Reine. Vane, giving them a careless good-morning, passes on to some
little distance, where he pauses with folded arms, and a slightly sulky
aspect, to look out over the wide waste of heaving sea, his shapely
back turned resolutely on the merry-makers.
"Confound the fellow's impudence," he remarks to himself, with needless
savagery. "How he follows her around. Of course she would rather be with
me. She loves me, or pretends to."
Why he should feel vexed at Sir George's monopoly of his, Vane's,
unloved bride he could not explain to himself. Yet the feeling is there.
Glancing furtively over his shoulder, and seeing the undeniably handsome
and well-matched pair strolling on side by side, creates a feeling of
decided ill-humor within him.
"It is quite a flirtation," he tells himself. "Reine should know better,
being a married woman. But perhaps she has taken a fancy to the fellow.
Perhaps she was mistaken in the notion that she cared for me. She had
seen no one else then. But now, meeting this handsome, spoony young
baronet, she may regret this nasty marriage as much as I do."
While these thoughts flash through his mind, the gay hum of voices die
away. The party have gone out of sight, and a sudden resolution comes
into Vane's mind.
"I'll go and breakfast with the old gentleman again," he thinks. "After
all it's only the proper thing to call and inquire for his health. Of
course Reine will not have come in from her walk yet."
In this he deceives himself. Reine is there by the side of the old man's
couch, with a lapful of rosy-tinted shells which she is displaying with
a good deal of childish pleasure in their acquisition.
"Sir George found this one; isn't it a beauty?" she is saying,
vivaciously, as the door opens, and Mr. Charteris is ushered in.
A start, a blush, a dimpling smile. She rises, gathering her treasures,
child-like, in her apron overskirt.
Mr. Charteris, vouchsafing her a careless nod, passes on to Mr. Langton.
"I hope I find you better this morning, and rested?" he observes, taking
the chair Reine places, without seeming to see her.
"A trifle easier, yes," Mr. Langton responds, with more than ordinary
graciousness, and then Vane steals a furtive glance at Reine.
Some of the brightness that came into her face at his entrance has faded
from it. She has quietly seated herself again, her long lashes droop to
the shells in her lap, which she fingers rather at random.
"So the baronet helped you gather shells," he remarks, condescendingly.
She looks up, with returning smiles.
"Yes," she returns, spreading the pretty collection out to view. "Will
you look at them? Some are quite pretty."
"Reine has been telling me about your friend," put in Mr. Langton. "He
was very kind."
"Not my friend, a mere acquaintance," Vane replies with acerbity. "I saw
him a few times in London; he is wild, rather."
"Indeed! and _I_ thought him so nice," Reine says, with dismay.
"So he _is_ nice; wildness, a little, you know, doesn't count," Vane
hastens to say, ashamed of the spirit in which he has spoken a moment
before. "Sir George is unexceptionable, rich, titled, and all that. He
is what the ladies term a most desirable _parti_. A pity you are
a-a-already married, Reine."
"Were I free he could be nothing to me," Reine retorts, a crimson flame
coming to her cheeks.
Mr. Langton, struck by something in Vane's tone, looks from one to the
other of the flushed faces, and says, laughingly:
"O-ho, my fine young lad, jealous, are you?"
Mr. Charteris is positively indignant.
"Don't tease, if you please, Mr. Langton," he retorts, with immense
dignity. "Jealousy only exists with love, you know. And I haven't
pretended to fall in love with my wife yet!"
With this most ungenerous stab, he flies out of the room in a passion.
The rosy-lipped shells fall unheeded from Reine's lap to the floor as
she rises and stands before her uncle, the bitter tears of shame
crowding into her eyes.
"Oh, Uncle Langton, how _could_ you--how _could_ you?" she cries, in
bitter distress. "It--it is too--too absurd. He never could, you
know----"
"There--there, don't cry, dear," he soothes, gently. "I am an old
bungler, I know, and I shouldn't have said it so plain, but the fact
remains. Vane Charteris, whether he knows it or not, is falling in love
with you, my dear, and is correspondingly jealous of the baronet's
attentions to you."
The beautiful dark eyes looked at him incredulously. She shakes her
head.
"You are mistaken," she answers, decidedly. "Your hopes mislead you.
Confess now," smiling pensively through her tears, "that 'the wish was
father to the thought.'"
"Perhaps so," he answers, willing to drop the subject and sorry he had
agitated it.
* * * * *
Vane goes home rather ruefully, without breakfasting with Mr. Langton,
as he had promised himself.
"What possessed me to be so rude, I wonder?" he soliloquizes. "Though I
did not love her, it was awkward and ill-considered to cast it in her
teeth. I begin to believe that it is I who am brusk and unmannerly, not
she."
The day goes, long and wearily it seems to Vane, who is conscious of
some new feeling he cannot realize, perhaps does not try to.
He smokes and reads, turning an unsociable cold shoulder on the rather
dry _habitues_ of the hotel. In the evening, drawn by "a spirit in his
feet," and thoroughly _ennuyed_ with his own society, he saunters over
to the Sea View Hotel.
On his way he meditates rather slowly.
"It is doubtful whether she will receive me," his musings run. "I was
rude this morning. Of course the little spitfire will resent it. She has
too much spirit to tamely brook such shameless impudence. I certainly
forgot myself in my vexation at that stupid old man."
The wide balcony of the Sea View presents a pleasant sight. A dozen or
two of "young men and maidens" are assembled on it, some sitting, some
walking, but one and all flirting with the greatest interest and
delight.
Vane's quick eye singles out one solitary figure sitting apart from the
rest, a slight, girlish one in white, the dark head bent over a book.
To this figure Vane goes forward, not without a lurking dread of meeting
a petulant repulse.
He stops behind her chair, and Reine, startled, looks around.
Vane is relieved to find that there is no resentment in her face, only a
new, sweet gravity a little strange to see on the piquant, girlish face.
"Ah, it is you, Mr. Charteris!" she says, carelessly. "You left us so
unceremoniously this morning, I fear--thought you would not return."
Vane slips into the chair beside her, his heart unconsciously lightened
of the burden that has weighed it down all day.
"To tell the truth I was half-afraid to come," he answers; "I was very
rude to you this morning, and I knew you had reason to resent it, and
expected you would. You remember you were wont to give me a piece of
your mind very often in the days 'when we were first acquainted.'"
"Yes, but things are changed, you know," she returns, gently.
Reine is changed too. The thought flashes over him suddenly as he looks
at her keenly, taking advantage of her momentary obliviousness of his
presence.
She has folded her very small and slender white hands across the book in
her lap, and is gazing a little dreamily out to sea.
The dark eyes are not so free and glad as they were of old.
They have grown larger and vaguely sad, the peachy cheek, rounded
daintily like a child's, is pale to-day, the crimson lips have a slight,
pathetic droop. Something in the softened loveliness of the brilliant
face goes to his heart like a wordless reproach.
For a moment he regrets the arch, daring, sparkling face that used to
flash defiance at him and his opinions.
"You are changed, too, Reine," he says, unconsciously putting his
thought into words. "You used to scold me when I was naughty. I hope you
are not afraid of me now because you are my wife?"
A great wave of color surges into her cheek at his words. She turns on
him the half-shy gaze of the frank, dark eyes.
"Afraid of you--oh, no, it is not that," she says. "But you disliked my
wild ways so much that I have tried to be more what you wished me, more
dignified, more gentle."
He looks at her with a half question in his blue eyes, a flush on his
handsome face.
"Like Maud," she explains, further.
"Like Maud--why, really," he begins, with supreme anger and sarcasm, but
she interrupts him, somewhat incoherently:
"I thought--I was told, I mean that--that I was to stay with Uncle
Langton a year, and be formed over into a woman like Maud."
His blue eyes darken with shame and anger.
"So you have heard _that_!" he says, with self-contempt. "I was a fool,
a dolt. Give over the attempt, Reine. You can never be like Maud any
more than--than a rose is like a lily!"
"So I thought," she answers, visibly abashed. "Maud is so grand, and
white, and queenly, and I am so little, and dark, and ugly."
"That is not true," he answers, hastily. "You are beautiful, Reine. I am
sure you know _that_. You are like a beautiful 'queen-rose,' all
sweetness, color and dew, 'set round with little willful thorns.' Maud
is like a grand white calla lily, beautiful, but devoid of sweetness and
perfume."
"The lily is the most beautiful of all flowers," the girl answers,
sighing.
"But the rose is the emblem of love," he replies, smiling as the swift
color floods her cheeks.
She has no answer ready, and he goes on with some embarrassment:
"Do not try to be like Maud, Reine. Though so beautiful and stately,
she was mercenary and treacherous. Perhaps a less perfect manner is
preferable with a heart free from guile. Do you not think so?"
Before she can reply, Sir George Wilde comes up to them. His eyes rest
admiringly on the beautiful, graceful, dark-eyed girl by the side of
Vane Charteris.
"Sentimentalizing and reading poetry?" says the intruder, looking at
Reine's book. "Upon my word it is simply shocking, the number of
flirtations going on this evening. Miss Langton, let me see your
verses," coolly taking the open volume from her hand.
Vane, looking off to sea, unreasonably vexed, and out of humor, hears
him reading in a clear, full voice, the lines on which Reine's hands
have been closely folded since he sat down by her.
"'We stand at the window watching,
Oh, God! through the glass of time,
For the sails of our hopes to blossom
Out on life's horizon line.
"'And we see not across the islands
The clouds that come up the sun,
Until they have folded in silence
The headlands one by one.
"'And the winds to each other calling
Over the waters pass,
And we say: "They are wrecked at dawning,
The hopes of our lives, alas!"'"
"Lugubrious reading, certainly," comments the lively young baronet.
"Does Charteris enjoy that style of poetry for a summer evening by the
sea?"
"I--I was not reading to Mr. Charteris," the girl stammers, vaguely
confused. "I was reading when he came, and then I laid the book down."
Both men regard her a little gravely.
The touch of sadness in face and voice is strange, yet sweet, in the
young and lovely girl.
Sir George tells himself that there is some depth to this lovely
American girl, and wonders why Charteris doesn't fall in love with her.
For himself, he is very far gone indeed, and Vane, irritated by his
society, abruptly announces that he will go up and see Mr. Langton.
"He will be very pleased, I know," Reine answers, brightening suddenly,
and Vane turns away with a sudden angry conviction that she is glad to
have him gone.
Sir George is glad at least, there can be no two opinions as to that. He
settles himself delightedly in Vane's vacated chair.
CHAPTER XVII.
"I have a proposition to make to you," Vane says, after he has conversed
with Mr. Langton awhile on indifferent subjects.
Mr. Langton, lying on his couch, looking dull and weary, glances up with
some interest.
"Well?" he says, abruptly.
"I saw your physician to-day," Vane observes, slightly embarrassed. "He
thinks it would be at the risk of your health if you left this place
under a month."
"The rascal! He's keeping me here to swell his fee for attendance,
that's all," groans the millionaire; "well, and what has that to do with
your proposition, eh?"
"A great deal. You know your delay in returning to America is attended
with serious risk to Maud Langton, languishing in prison, and waiting
for a release that cannot come until she regains possession of that note
that is to prove her innocence."
"I have urged Reine to return alone, but she is unwilling to leave me,"
Mr. Langton answers, hastily.
"There would be no risk in doing so," Vane replies, "with a competent
nurse left in charge of you. It is of that I wished to speak to you.
Persuade Reine to go back without you. I will myself accompany her."
"_You!_" Mr. Langton exclaims, in such thorough surprise, that Vane
flushes a deep red.
"Yes," he answers, a little testily, "I will go with her. Why not? She
is my wife."
"Certainly, and it will be a very good plan," Mr. Langton replies,
secretly delighted at Vane's repentance, but pretending to be very calm
and non-committal.
"You see," Vane continues, with a sigh of relief, "after the business
that took us home was concluded, I should bring Reine back. By that time
you would be well and strong again, and we would travel some, the three
of us, and remain abroad some time. Do you like my plan?"
"Very much. I am pleased with the idea. Have you spoken with Reine on
the subject?"
"No, not yet. To tell the truth I have relied on you to persuade her. I
might fail, you know. Will you undertake to plead my case for me?"
inquires Vane, blushing like a girl.
"I thought you were lawyer enough to plead your own case," laughs the
old millionaire.
"You see, this is different," answers Vane. "I--I do not quite
understand Reine. I do not know how she would receive such a proposal.
Perhaps she would laugh at me. I should have to plead as a lover, not as
a lawyer. Only imagine the spirited little lady laughing in my face."
"I do not believe it is likely," Mr. Langton replies. "But since you are
so afraid of your wife, I will speak to her about the matter. But, pray
tell me, is your anxiety solely over Maud, or are you reconciled to your
strange marriage?"
A step at the door, a hand at the latch, and Reine comes in,
interrupting the answer hovering on his lips. Vane rises abruptly.
"I will go down and smoke my segar on the balcony," he says, then,
looking at his wife: "Reine, will you walk on the sand with me
afterward? It will be moonlight, and the nights are very pleasant."
A smile of surprise and pleasure lights the changeful face into
splendor.
"Thank you, I shall like it very much," she answers, with some inward
wonder at his kindness.
"I will wait for you, then, on the balcony," he replies, and when he's
gone, Mr. Langton hastens to tell her of Vane's proposal.
Her color comes and goes, her bosom heaves as she listens.
"But you know I could not leave you here alone with only a hired nurse,"
she remonstrates.
"You could, and you must," he replies, seriously.
"Listen, Reine, your husband has held out the olive-branch of peace, and
you must not decline to accept it if you care for him. I shall do very
well here with the doctor and the nurse. After all, I am not sick, only
weak and fatigued. Remember Maud's peril before you refuse."
"I have written to Maud's lawyer. He will know that I have the note, and
they will wait until I come," she replies.
"Delays are dangerous," he answers, "and the mails are not sure. Suppose
your letter should not reach them. Letters have been lost before now,"
he says, artfully.
The girlish face grows white and troubled.
"If I thought that mine would be lost----" she begins.
"You would go," he finishes for her. "Very well, Reine, take my advice
and go. I will remain here until you return. Go down now to your husband
and tell him you will be ready to accompany him to-morrow."
"If anything should happen to you, I should never forgive myself," she
says, with lingering hesitation.
"Nothing _will_ happen," he answered. "You will find me here, when you
come back, safe and well. Go, now, to Vane, and tell him you will go."
She lingers a moment, warned by some strange presentiment of evil; then,
conquered by his renewed persuasions, and her own anxiety over Maud's
fate, she goes from the room with a strangely beating heart to seek her
husband.
He throws away his segar with a smile at sight of her, and comes out
from a little knot of men who have clustered around him.
"You are ready?" he says, with a new tone of tenderness in his voice
that makes the girlish heart beat all the faster, and drawing her hand
through his arm they bend their steps to the shore.
It is twilight, that most seductive hour of all the twenty-four. The
moon is rising softly, a few stars shine in the purple vault above, and
mirror themselves in the laughing waves below.
The murmurous sound of the great deep is all that breaks the silence.
"Mr. Langton has told you, Reine," he says, looking down into the
brilliant face that is "luminous, star-like, gem-like," in the soft,
twilight haze.
"Yes," she answers, in a low voice, as if she scarcely cared to break
the charmed silence brooding around them.
They walk slowly arm-in-arm along the sandy shore. Vane has drawn her
hand very closely through his arm, and the tips of her velvet-soft
fingers lie against his wrist, sending thrills of sweetness along every
nerve. To him also "silence seemed best," so they stroll on quietly
awhile. Reine lost to everything but the magic charm that lies in the
presence of the man she loves, and Vane held in thrall also by some new
feeling, whose power he is scarcely prepared to acknowledge.
He looks down at the young face that is strangely fair and tender in the
mystic light, and wonders at his own blindness that he has never quite
realized the charm of her beauty before. She has thrown some soft trifle
of filmy lace over her waving dark hair, with soft ends knotted beneath
the round, dimpled chin. Nothing could be more becoming. It frames the
glowing face so delicately and so exquisitely, making her fairer than
she knows. A strange, delicious thrill goes through Vane's heart as he
remembers that this girl belongs to him--she is his wife.
"And she loves me," he says to himself, with the same wonder he had felt
when that truth first flashed upon him. It flatters his manly vanity,
cruelly hurt by Maud's treachery, to know that one true heart clings to
him and loves him, though the woman he had loved had deceived him.
Suddenly her lips part with an anxious question:
"And you think it wise and prudent that I should go back to Maud leaving
Uncle Langton here?"
"Yes," he answers, and there is a silence which she does not break.
"What do you think of the plan?" he asks.
"I hardly know," the girl answers, with some embarrassment.
"But you will do as I wish you--you will go back--in my care, Reine?"
"If you think it for the best," she answers very low.
"I do think so, otherwise I should not urge it. You need not be afraid
to go with me, Reine. I will care for you with every tenderness--you are
my wife, you know."
And, stooping over her, he lays his lips full and softly upon her own.
The shock of a great, new happiness tingles through the girl's sensitive
frame. It is the first caress her unloving husband has ever offered her.
With that impulsive kiss hope, which has almost died in her wounded
heart, is born anew.
"You are my wife," he repeats, gently. "I shall not lose sight of that
fact again. I shall remember my duty better."
She sighs a little. That word "duty" sounds so cold.
"I will try to make you happier," he continues; "I fear you have not
been so light-hearted as you used to be since _that_ night. Do you know
those verses you were reading this evening sounded like a reproach to
me?"
She glances up, inquiringly.
"The verses you shut your hands over when I came up to you," he
explains. "The sad words ring in my head:
"'And we say: "They are wrecked at dawning.
The hopes of our lives, alas!"'
"Did you think, my child, that they applied to your own case?"
"I was tempted to think so--can you blame me?" she says, with a gentle
reproach in her voice.
"Do not fall into such despondent thoughts again," he answers,
evasively. "You are too young for sorrow, Reine. Look on the bright side
of the picture. I foresee that this play will end with my falling
desperately in love with my own wife."
"I hope so," she answers, with sudden, piteous earnestness, and a quiver
of passionate sorrow in her voice.
"So do I," he says, filled with sudden penitence. "I am sure it cannot
be hard to learn to love so fair and noble a wife. You have saved me
from my own sinful passions, Reine. I can never forget that."
"And now I must go back," she says, with a bitter sigh of regret. "Uncle
Langton will be lonely, and if--if I go to-morrow I have a great deal of
packing to do first."
They walk slowly back to the hotel through the murmurous silence of the
summer night by the sea, with the strong, sweet smell of the brine in
their faces. It is the first time they have been together without cold
words from one or the other, the first time her husband has caressed
her.
And when he leaves her at the balcony steps he presses his lips to her
white hand, and whispers, kindly:
"After to-night, little wife, we are never to be parted any more,
remember."
CHAPTER XVIII.
No one can recall without a shudder of horror the midnight burning of
the steamer _Hesperus_ in mid-ocean in 188-, and the terrible loss of
life consequent upon that marine disaster.
She had been five days out, with fair skies and smooth seas, and every
prospect of a prosperous and speedy voyage, when that disastrous fire
stole upon her like a thief in the night, and wrapped her noble and
majestic form in a winding sheet of flame.
Fifty souls perished miserably, including the captain and a part of
crew.
In that terrible holocaust of fire and water, Reine Charteris was
_lost_.
Her husband was saved--saved through such a tragedy of horror as sowed
silvery threads in his fair, clustering locks, and almost broke his
heart with remorse and pain.
We will hear him tell the story in his own words, as he told it that day
when seated in the gloomy prison-cell, where Maud Langton was expiating
her folly in bitterness of soul, he placed in her hands a small metallic
case, locked with a tiny key, and said, solemnly and slowly:
"This means freedom and release to you, Maud. It is a legacy to you from
the dead."
The beautiful, queenly-looking girl, wasted and worn from long
confinement, and sickening dread and terror, looks up at the man's pale,
haggard face, at the deep crape band on his hat, and shudders.
"You mean----" she says, then pauses, struck dumb by the white agony of
his face.
"I mean I have lost my wife; Reine is dead."
"Dead!" the beautiful prisoner cries in wonder--not sorrow.
_That_ is so plain to his senses, sharpened by grief, that he cries out
bitterly:
"Yes, dead! But look at your legacy, Maud. That is all your selfish soul
will care for!"
She gives him one look of cold surprise, and then turns eagerly to her
treasure.
The small key grates in the lock, the lid of the box flies open.
Within lies a package wrapped in oil silk. Undoing this with eager
fingers, Maud comes upon the precious note that means so much to her in
this terrible plight, the note poor Reine had crossed the seas to win
from the vengeful grasp of Vane Charteris.
All of Maud's cold, superb dignity breaks down at sight of that little
slip of paper. She weeps and laughs together.
"This means hope, freedom, happiness to me," she cries, tearfully. "And
you had it all the time, Vane. And Reine knew. It was for that she
crossed the seas?"
"Yes," he answers, "and it was for that she died."
"No, no!" Maud says, and shakes her head; "how could that be? Oh, how I
thank you for bringing me this! You did not know when you went away how
much it was worth to me, did you? That my very life would depend upon
it?"
He looks at her with steady, somber eyes.
"Yes, I _knew_," he answers. "I knew, but I did not care. My love for
you was turned to hate by the crushing indignity you had put upon me. At
that time I would have sold myself to the evil one for the chance of
revenge upon you. Guess how I felt when, at the inquest over the dead
body of the lover you had preferred to me, I found what terrible power
fate had put into my eager hands. I rejoiced wickedly. I went away that
the great ocean rolling between us might keep from me the tidings of
your too probable fate, for I shuddered at the horror of my revenge,
although I could not forego it. Yes, Maud, I, who had loved you dearly
once, would not have lifted my finger to save you from the horror of a
shameful death upon the scaffold; do you realize, now, the intensity of
my hate?"
She puts her delicate hand to her grand, white throat and sobs
hysterically. By day and by night she has dreamed of that horrible,
impending death. She knows that all believed her guilty of her lover's
death, and that no jury would have cleared her without that note in
Clyde's own writing, swearing that he would shoot himself if she failed
to marry him.
"You were cruel, cruel," she moans.
"Say rather that I was insane," he answers; "my heart and my brain were
on fire, and my soul was numb within me until Reine came to me and
showed me what a wretch I was, and how I should be your murderer if I
persisted in my wicked silence. Then I yielded to that white-souled
child who was far too pure to be my wife, and I prayed God to forgive
my sin, as I now pray you, Maud."
She looks at him with her large, clear blue eyes, with the glad tears of
joy still pendant on the golden lashes and holds out her hands.
"I cannot refuse to forgive you since you have relented and brought me
this invaluable paper," she answers, "and more especially since I know
that I did you a cruel wrong. Can _you_ forgive _me_, Vane?"
"Once I thought I could not, but it is easy enough now," he answers,
gravely, just touching for a moment the soft, white, extended hands. "I
have no longer any room in my heart for anger or resentment. I think
only of my grief."
"For Reine!" she asks, with an almost imperceptible lifting of the
golden eyebrows indicating surprise.
"For Reine," he answers, with a tortured sigh.
"Did she die abroad?" Maud asks in an awed and softened voice.
"She was drowned at midnight in the Atlantic Ocean, amid all the horrors
of fire and flood," he groans.
"On the ill-fated _Hesperus_," she exclaims. "Oh, I read the news in the
papers, but there were no particulars, and I did not dream of such a
tragedy. You were with her, were you not? Why was it that you could not
save her?"
His gloomy eyes fell with a look of loathing on the paper in her hand.
"She died, Maud, to save _you_ from the consequences of your folly. She
might have been saved but for that paper you hold in your hand," he
answers, sternly.
"I do not understand you, Vane. Surely you know not what you say," Miss
Langton utters in perplexity.
"Listen, and you shall be the judge," he answers, with a heavy sigh. "I
sailed with my wife on the _Hesperus_----"
"And Uncle Langton?" she interrupts him to ask.
"We left Mr. Langton resting at a quiet summer resort. He was too much
indisposed to return with us so soon. We were to have gone back for him
as soon as your freedom had been secured," he explains.
She bows, silently, and he goes on, the pale, beautiful girl listening
attentively.
"Reine came to me the day that we had been five days out, with that
little metallic case in her hand. She had been very bright and happy
since we started, but just then she was pale and grave. 'Vane,' she said
to me, 'I have put Maud's precious paper in this little case for greater
safety. But I have a strange dread of losing it. Put it in your breast
pocket and keep it for me!' I--oh, Heaven! I obeyed her," he exclaims,
struggling with a bitter remorse.
The beautiful prisoner regards him with silent sympathy.
"I obeyed her," he repeats, with a passionate remorse, "and that night
when we sprang into the water together, fleeing from the devouring
flames, it was still on my person. All hope seemed gone, and we clung to
each other in the desperation of despair, determined at least to die
together. Suddenly a crowded life-boat came in sight. A man shouted
there was room for one more and that they would take the woman in. At
these words she cried out frantically that I had Maud's precious paper,
and that I was the one to be saved, and with that she loosed her hold,
and with an awful suddenness pushed me from her, and sank down, down in
the terrible water. With the awful shock of her loss I became
unconscious. They drew me into the boat in the place of my poor girl,
and the boat swept on over her awful burial-place. It was for you, Maud.
She gave her beautiful, innocent life freely for you rather than risk
the loss of the legacy I have brought you!"
CHAPTER XIX.
Even Maud Langton's cold and shallow nature, utterly incapable of such
an act of dauntless heroism as Reine's, is touched by the man's
overmastering grief and the story of the woman's devotion.
"Poor little Reine! I did not deserve such a sacrifice from her," she
exclaims, with a guilty consciousness of her cruel and contemptuous
treatment of her generous rival.
Vane Charteris makes her no reply. He has dropped his pale, handsome
face into his hands, his strong frame quivers with silent sobs. Maud
watches him in amazement.
"You take it hard," she says; "yet I thought you did not love her, that
you would not care."
"Not care!" lifting his somber blue eyes a moment to her pale, wondering
face. "I care so much that by night or by day, sleeping or waking, her
image is never absent from my thoughts. I would give the whole world to
have her back, my poor lost darling!"
"Then you learned to love her?" Miss Langton exclaims, recalling his
fastidious dislike of Reine's wild ways and sharp little speeches.
"Yes; now, when it is all too late," he answers, in a wild burst of
remorse and sorrow.
Then there is a brief silence. How often those sad words, "too late,"
come home to stricken hearts with a pathos that words are all too
powerless to express. Could Reine but have known--in that fair land to
which her soul had flown--her husband's poignant repentance, she might
well have answered with the poet:
"Too late, too late, thy beaming smile rests on me,
Warm sighs and loving whispers come too late
Since thou hast lost that true and loving passion
Which, while it lived, met but thy scorn or hate.
"It might have been--had but thy love awakened
Before my ruined life no power could save;
But now, alas! thy warm and tender glances
Fall on my heart like sunlight on a grave."
"Believe me, Vane, I am very, very sorry," Maud says to him in her
gentlest tones. "Perhaps you think I was not worthy little Reine's
generous self-sacrifice."
He has no answer ready for her. She begins to realize that he is
strangely changed. The fair and handsome face that used to be so gay and
debonair has grown wan and haggard. Some silver threads shine in the
fair, clustering locks on his temples. His step is slow and heavy as he
turns to go.
"How long will it be before I shall be free?" she asks him, wistfully,
as he turns to go.
He starts, and turns back, remembering suddenly what the petted beauty
must have endured in these weary weeks of confinement, with the shadow
of an awful fate hanging over her.
Looking closer into the white face with its finely-chiseled features,
sharpened and refined by the agony she has endured, his heart swells
with momentary pity for the cold beauty who has wronged him so deeply.
"But a little while, I think," he answers, kindly. "I have seen your
lawyer. He told me that the trial which he has been staving off from
time to time, will take place to-morrow. He is quite sure that your
innocence will be indisputably proven by the paper you hold, together
with other facts in his possession. I congratulate you, Maud, upon your
narrow escape from the terrible web that circumstantial evidence had
woven around you."
She shudders, and grows deathly pale at the thought of it, and Vane
hurries from the room and from the presence of her who had been, for a
brief while, the sun of his existence.
Hurrying back to his hotel, he finds there a letter which has followed
him across the sea from the quiet watering-place where he had left Mr.
Langton. It is from the genial, kindly physician, and the news is
startling.
The old millionaire, the sharp-tongued, irascible, yet kindly-hearted
old gentleman, is dead--has died suddenly and strangely of disease of
the heart in two days after Reine and Vane had left him in the confident
hope of soon rejoining him. They have buried him there in the quiet
churchyard by the sea, far away from his native land, and the friends he
loved. All unknowing of Reine's fate, he has gone to rejoin her in the
unknown land.