A moment, and she remembers! With flushed cheeks and tear-wet eyes
she wrenches herself away, and looks up at the face of her old
playmate. "Oh, Keith!" she says, "I--I was so glad to see you!"
The poor pitiful pretence does not blind him. He looks at her
sternly. "Indeed? And may I ask for an explanation of your conduct?
I think it is due to me. Why have you broken faith?"
She turns deadly pale.
"We were never really engaged," she stammers, "and all those years
you never wrote, and I thought----"
"You did _not_!" he says fiercely. "You know me better than that. I
am no saint, but I am no mawkish lover either, to fly from one
woman's feet to another, and pour out love vows at fancy. You knew I
would be true, Lauraine, and you--you have been false."
She trembles, and is silent. He looks at her longingly--thirstily,
his eyes taking in all the beauty he so well remembers--all the
changes time has wrought. It maddens him to gaze upon her--to think
she is so utterly lost to him. He feels there is nothing so cruel,
so fierce, he could not say to her at this moment, if only to inflict
upon her some of the pain, the agony that throbs in his own heart,
and runs riot in his own veins.
"You are like all your sex," he says, in a low deep voice of intense
wrath, but a voice that makes her quiver with the mingled rapture,
dread, and fear of its memories. "Truth and constancy are unknown to
you. Did I need any sign or word to keep me true? No. I said I
loved you, and would love you to my life's end; and so I shall, God
help me! Oh, child! why have you done this?"
"I was driven to it," says the girl desperately. "You cannot
understand--you never would, if I spent hours in telling you--how it
has all come about. Oh, how I hate myself!--and yet---- Oh, Keith,
say you forgive me! Let us part friends. Don't break my heart with
your reproaches. In the life before me I shall have misery enough to
bear. Give me some kind word now."
"I will not," he says fiercely. "I would not be such a hypocrite. I
could almost hate you, only that I know I love you too much for that
yet. But I will not be hypocrite enough to say I forgive you, or
wish you well, or any such d----d humbug."
"Keith!" bursts from the pale, trembling lips.
"Yes, I mean it," he goes on more wildly, for her beauty maddens him,
and he is longing with all the wildest and most passionate longing of
his hot-blooded southern nature to fold that lovely figure in his
arms, to rain kisses on the sweet quivering lips, to call her
his--his own--his love, though a hundred laws of right and honour
barred the way. "I mean it--and I hope my misery will haunt your
life, brought as it is by your own hand. To-day you have killed the
best part of me. Whatever happens in the future lies at your door."
"Do not say that," she implores.
"I will. If I go to the dogs you have driven me there, and you know
it. I have loved you since I was a boy--since we played together in
our childhood. I have been cold to all temptations, to all that
would make me less worthy of you, simply because that love lay like a
charm upon my heart and kept all evil away. I have worked and
toiled, and now, when Fortune smiles--when even your mercenary mother
might be content with my prospects--I come to claim you and find
you--married. By heaven, Lauraine, I could strangle you, as you
stand there with your innocent face looking back to mine, and fling
you dead into the arms of the brute who has bought you!"
"Oh! cease for pity's sake," implored the girl, and her hands go up
to her face and shut out that angry one before her, with the
lightning-flashes of wrath in the blue eyes, and that agony of soul
in every quivering feature. "If you only knew how sorry I am--how I
pity you--myself----"
Her voice breaks. For a moment everything is forgotten--her strange
absence--her mother's uneasiness--the wondering comments of the
guests--of these she never thinks. Just for one single moment they
stand face to face, and soul to soul, and see before them the awful
shipwreck of two young despairing lives!
"Pity me! Ah, you well may," cries Keith, softening a little at the
low, tender voice, and the misery on the young, white face. "God
knows I need it. Go--go, while I have strength to let you. If you
knew what a hell is in my heart at this present moment, you would
wonder I could bid you leave me now. It would be easier to kill you
than know I send you back to your--husband."
She shudders as he says those words. He has turned away, so that he
may not see the fatally fair face--the drooping grace of the lovely
figure round which the costly satin falls in gleaming folds. She
moves away; then looks back. His head is bent down on his arms--a
sob shakes the strong young frame. It goes to her heart like a
knife. Impulsively she approaches, and lays one little hand
caressingly on his arm.
"Dear Keith, don't grieve--don't fret for me. You are right. I was
never worth your love--never! I deserve all the unhappiness that
Fate can bring. But first say you forgive me this once; I cannot
bear to part in anger from you."
Dangerously soft, dangerously sweet is the pretty voice. It goes
straight to the aching heart to which she appeals. With a strong
effort he conquers his emotion and looks up--how haggard, how altered
is the bright young face she remembers!
"I was a brute to say what I did just now," he exclaims, with rapid
contrition. "I am half-mad with pain. Yes, Lorry, I will try and
forgive you, though it is horribly hard. You are not a man; you
don't know--oh God! how _can_ I bear it!"
She trembles violently as she stands beside him; the folds of her
dress sweep across his feet, the faint, sweet perfume of the
orange-flowers steals over his senses. He bows his burning forehead
down upon her hands, and for a moment is silent too.
"I _must_ go," whispers the girl desperately, at last. "Good-bye,
Keith--darling Keith. For my sake, try and bear up now; and oh,
promise me you won't carry out your awful threat; you won't go to
the--bad."
"I can't promise any such thing," he says, relapsing into gloom and
anger once more. "You don't know what you've done to me. I never
was particularly good, and if I tried to be, it was simply for your
sake. Now my anchor is gone, and I am cut adrift. Whatever evil I
do lies at your door, as I said before!"
"You are cruel--cowardly to say that!" she cries quickly. "I have
not been blameless, but I have not been false to you in my
heart--that I know, and if you had only told me, only written----"
"Your mother made me promise I would hold no communication with you
for four years!" he says eagerly. "At the end of that time my
prospects began to brighten. This Mr. Hezekiah Jefferson took me up,
and then promised to leave me all his fortune. He was rich as
Croesus, and hadn't a relative in the world. I told her all this,
and begged her to tell you. I had no answer from either. Then old
Hezekiah died, and I jumped clear into two million dollars. I rushed
home as soon as I could put things square, and get here--just too
late! Do you expect me to sit down like a tame cat, and console
myself by saying it can't be helped? I think you know my nature
better than that?"
She drew a long, quivering sigh. "If I had but known?" she says.
"So your mother never told you? I was a fool to trust her. Women
don't seem to have more honour than they have constancy. But it's no
use going over the old ground. You are lost to me, and I don't care
two straws what becomes of me now. There, I see you are impatient to
be off. Good-bye, don't let me detain you from your--husband!"
He rises as he speaks, and all the old evil light comes back to his
eyes and his face. The girl looks sadly, reproachfully at him; she
is white and trembling--this scene has tried her terribly.
"Shall I--shall we see you again?" she asks faintly.
"No," he says, drawing his brows together in an angry frown. "I am
not going to intrude myself as a spectator of your happiness. I
shall take myself off at once."
"And will you not be--friends? Am I never to see you?" she says with
a foolish longing that he may not pass utterly out of her life--a
longing she feels to be wrong, and yet cannot refrain from expressing.
A sudden light flashes up into the young man's face, then fades, and
it grows black and thunderous once more. "If I see you again it will
either be a great deal better, or a great deal--worse--for us both,"
he says huskily. "You had better not tempt me, Lauraine."
A great wave of crimson flushes her face. Her eyes sink before the
sudden fire and passion that leap up beneath those dusky lashes of
his.
"Good-bye!" she says again, and holds out her hand. "We do
part--friends?"
He hesitates for a second's space, then a cold, strange smile comes
to his lips. "Certainly--the best of friends, Lady Vavasour." The
door opens as those mocking words escape his lips. Before them
stands Mrs. Douglas, her face white and anxious.
"I am just coming, mamma," says Lauraine calmly. "I cannot prevail
upon Mr. Athelstone to join us at breakfast!"
"So pleased to see you, my dear Keith!" says Mrs. Douglas sweetly.
"Only such an unfortunate time for a visit. Impossible to hear all
your news. We must have a long, quiet chat together when all this is
over. Lauraine, my dear, you must really come back to the
drawing-room. Can't we prevail upon you, Keith?"
"No, you can't," says Keith rudely. "I have been so long away from
fashionable society that I am afraid I shouldn't get on with your
guests. But I am quite ready to have a chat with you, Mrs. Douglas,
when you can favour me with your company. I think we have something
besides news to discuss."
"Most happy--delighted, I'm sure," answers Mrs. Douglas vaguely. "I
will write and tell you what day, my dear Keith. So many engagements
just now, you know."
She sails out of the room, with Lauraine beside her.
"Really, Keith has become quite American," she says complainingly.
"So altered--so quite too coarse, and all that. It makes me shudder
to hear him speak. He will be just like the Bradshaw Woollffes, I
suppose. What a time you were with him, Lauraine--such bad form, you
know! However, I am glad he's going. It would have been quite
unpleasant if he had stayed."
Lauraine draws her hand away from her mother's arm, and looks her
steadily in the face.
"You are right," she says, "it _would_."
Mrs. Douglas feels anything but comfortable as she meets that cold
gaze. But in her heart she says:
"How fortunate that he did not come sooner--even yesterday!"
She almost shudders as she thinks of the "slip" that might have been
between the costly cup she had been occupied in raising, and the lips
to which it had been successfully carried. "All is safe now,
though," she thinks. "But how thankful I shall be when she is fairly
off. Was ever such a wedding day as this?"
And then she sails into her splendid rooms, and receives
congratulations, and flutters about in graceful agitation, and feels
that if ever a mother deserves the victor's crown of matrimonial
success she deserves it.
Of course all danger is over now. Do not all novels end with a
wedding? Are not all Society's daughters considered settled and
established once the ring is on, and the rice and slippers thrown?
Still, as she looks at her daughter's face, an odd little
uncomfortable feeling thrills her heart. There is something so
strange, so _dead_-looking about bright, beautiful Lauraine.
But she is married--safely married now. What is there to fear in the
future, to regret in the past? Ay, _what_?