Cora Ellyson had, indeed, refused her lover’s request.
Ernest Noel had gauged her quite correctly in asserting that she would
be unwilling to be married simply, without the pomp and ceremony so
dear to the feminine mind.
And, besides, though pained over her lover’s accident, she could not
forgive in her heart the first cause of it.
She argued to herself that if he had not gone to the funeral he would
not have been forced to the haste that had resulted so disastrously to
himself and caused her so cruel a mortification.
“Whoever heard of anything so outré as a man’s going to a funeral in
his wedding suit, and on the eve of his marriage?”
She cried to herself in a passion of jealous anger, hating poor Jessie
for the sympathy he had shown and the few thoughts she had taken from
the proud bride who had claimed all.
Despite her love for him, Cora longed to punish her lover for his
fealty to Jessie’s memory.
She did not consider that he had already suffered enough. She desired
his punishment to come through her, the chosen of his heart.
If any one had told her that the fire of his love that had burned
so fiercely until that day in the park had cooled down into an
indifference that he would not own even to his own heart, she could not
have believed it.
They had had their lovers’ quarrels before, flirted with others before,
kissed and made up always. She expected things to go as usual.
She had not punished him enough yet, and the refusal to marry him on
his sick bed was a stroke that secretly pleased her very much. It would
cause him such cruel pain he would realize her value more.
She even declined to visit him while he lay ill at the hospital on the
plea that her nerves could not bear the shock.
“Tell him to get well as soon as possible, so that my wedding gown will
not get out of fashion,” was the gay message sent by Mrs. van Dorn, who
with Mrs. Dalrymple went to call on the invalid.
Perhaps it was the sight of the bereaved mother in her deep mourning
that put the thought of Jessie in his mind--perhaps she had never been
out of it since that tragic night. Anyhow, he received Cora’s messages
with apparent resignation, and in the long days of convalescence, while
she thought he was yearning for her with ceaseless impatience, his
thoughts kept wandering to the dead girl, living over in memory their
brief acquaintance--the first time he had seen her and been startled by
her naïve, girlish beauty, the struggle with Doyle when he had rescued
her from the villain’s rude advances, the drive to the park, and--the
fatal kiss!
Whenever Laurier recalled that sweet, clinging kiss he had taken from
Jessie’s red, flowerlike lips, his heart would beat wildly in his
breast, and the warm color flush up to his brow.
The garbled story of a glass of wine too much that he had told to
Jessie in excusing himself, was quite untrue. He had not taken any
wine; it was a bewildering flash-up of emotion that had throbbed at his
heart and made him yield to the temptation to press her sweet lips with
his own.
It was true that the influence of Cora still remained so strong that he
had soon turned from the girl to watch the passing throngs for his old
love that he might note the jealous flash of her great eyes at sight
of an apparent rival--afterward when suffering from the effects of his
accident in the park, and exposed to the tender witcheries of Cora, it
had been easy to win him back.
But the events of that night, when Jessie had come to Mrs.
Dalrymple’s--her love, her humiliation, her despair, coupled with
Cora’s heartless behavior, were impressed ineffaceably on his heart.
The one had inspired pity and sympathy, the other deep disgust.
“Pity is akin to love,” and now that Jessie was dead Laurier knew that,
had she lived, he could have loved her as well--aye, better--than he
had ever loved proud, jealous Cora, who looked on him as a sort of
slave to her caprices, to be scolded and sent away, then whistled back
at will.
Had Jessie lived, he would have bidden this tenderness back, knowing
that his fealty belonged to his betrothed, but it did not matter now if
he gave Jessie some tender regrets in the few days that must elapse
before he married Cora and pledged to her irrevocably the devotion of
his heart.
In the meantime, new influences were at work to sunder more widely the
two hearts already chilled by jealousy and anger.
Ernest Noel, having always admired beautiful Cora at a distance,
was now brought into more intimate relations with her by the errand
on which he had gone for Laurier, and the young girl, not averse to
a little flirtation to relieve the tedium of waiting her lover’s
recovery, smilingly encouraged his frank advances.
It became the customary thing to call every evening and report
Laurier’s progress on the road to recovery to his fair betrothed.
No secret was made of these calls to Laurier, who each morning received
an enthusiastic description of how Cora had looked and acted and the
flippant messages she had sent her lover.
Believing that she was arousing Laurier’s jealousy, as she had often
done before, and thus increasing the fervor of his love, she rested
secure, though secretly burning with anxiety to see him again, and only
deterred from a visit to him by the rooted determination to pay him out
for his fault, as she called it, to herself.
Beautiful, vindictive, jealous, she was capable of savage fury when
aroused, but in indulging her fierce resentment she was running a risk
she little dreamed.
Laurier, getting an insight into the flirtation, did not feel the least
disturbed, but was startled at himself when he detected a latent wish
that she would transfer her affections to Noel.