Laurie Meredith leaned his handsome head carelessly back, and the smile
that he had worn for Jewel's sake faded away and left his face grave
and sober, as it had grown to be since that summer when he had gone
away from the sea-shore, leaving his little love behind him because she
had changed her mind almost at the last moment and declined to go with
her lover-husband.
His tender thoughts of the dead girl were always mixed with pain and
remorse, for he believed that Flower's love for him had been less
strong than he had believed it at first. Her refusal to go away with
him, and her subsequent short and strange letters, led him to this
belief.
"She was little more than a child, and it was a girlish fancy that she
took for love," he thought now. "It was cruel in me to take advantage
of her, and bind her by a tie that afterward made her miserable. Jewel
may say what she pleases, but I am not sure that Flower drowned herself
wholly on account of the unhappy circumstances of her birth. I fear
that her sorrow over her hasty marriage, and despair at her situation,
helped to drive her to that mad deed."
At times he could not help contrasting the fickleness of Flower's love
with the constancy and devotion of Jewel's. He had said to himself
more than once, with a pang of wounded pride:
"Flower cared but little for my love, but Jewel valued it above all
else on earth. It is right that I should reward her devotion. I will
try to love the faithful, dark-eyed girl as she deserves."
But such is the strangeness of the human heart that he prized the
memory of the lost girl far more than he did the living love of
beautiful, passionate Jewel. He could not have helped it if he would,
and he did not struggle much against the feeling, for it seemed to
him that he owed his greatest allegiance to the memory of her who had
loved him, for a time at least, tenderly and truly, and who had died so
young; and to his heart there came sometimes, with a shuddering pain,
the strangely fitting words of Poe, the passionate poet, who sounded
the heights and depths of love's emotion:
"Would to God I could awaken!
For I dream I know not how,
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken--
Lest the dead who is forsaken
May not be happy now!"
Almost without his own volition, and perhaps partly inspired by the
strain of half-sad music that floated out from the ball-room, these
often-recurring thoughts came to him again, and, wrapped in their pain
and pathos, he forgot the flight of time until he saw Jewel coming back
to him alone, with such a pale, drawn face that he started in wonder.
"My dear, what is it? You look as if you had seen a ghost!" he
exclaimed.
She fell wearily into the seat by his side, and answered, in a low,
strained voice:
"Oh, Laurie, I have had a great shock!"
He could well believe her, for she was trembling violently; her face,
and even her lips were ghastly pale, and her eyes had a startled
expression in their dark, liquid depths.
No one was near, and he took her hand and pressed it gently, murmuring
something suitable to the occasion in his tender solicitude.
He was rewarded by a faint, sweet smile and look of adoration from her
dark eyes.
"Perhaps you will think me foolish," she said--"perhaps you will not
see any resemblance at all. It was only that both had the same eyes and
hair; but I was so startled! I--I feared you would be shocked, too, so
I hurried back to tell you--to warn you!"
"Jewel, whom are you talking about? I do not understand you," her lover
said, with a gleam of wonder in his grave, brown eyes.
She answered with a palpable reluctance, yet as if compelled to the
confession:
"Of Miss Brooke, the English beauty. She is very beautiful--a blonde,
with the brightest golden hair, and eyes with the purple-blue of wet
violets. And, oh, Laurie, she looked so much like--like Flower, that I
was frightened. But," growing braver, "of course, there was nothing in
it to frighten me, only I was taken by surprise. There are plenty of
striking resemblances in the world."
Her jealous eyes saw his handsome face whiten with emotion.
He said, in a strange, agitated voice:
"Why do you say there could be nothing in it? No one could be quite
sure that Flower drowned herself. It was only suspicion. No one saw her
commit suicide. And her body was never recovered."
"Oh, Laurie, what nonsense! I told you she had vowed to drown herself,
that I watched her all the time to prevent her from carrying out her
threat; but that night when she got away, I went immediately to the
shore, and there I found her shawl. What further proof could one need
after what she had threatened so often? Besides, she was never seen nor
heard of afterward. Some one must have heard of her if she had not been
dead!"
"There was that strange dream of the mulatto, Sam, you know," he
answered.
"Sam--a drunken fool!" said Jewel, with compressed lips and flashing
eyes. "His wife denied every word of it. She was a clever, truthful
woman."
He sighed and relapsed into silence while she continued, with feverish
eagerness:
"Of course, I know that Flower is dead! I have never doubted it with
the evidence that I had. But, in spite of all, it gave me a shock to
see Azalia Brooke. I feared you might be startled, too, and betray some
agitation on meeting her, so I hurried back to warn you."
"You are very kind, dear Jewel," he said, affecting indifference. "I
dare say the resemblance is not very striking. I promise you to meet
the English beauty with due calmness."
"Dear Laurie," she whispered, fondly, and twined her jeweled fingers
softly about his. "Do you know," she went on, smilingly, "I was
actually feeling jealous of Azalia Brooke? I thought--since she looked
so much like Flower--that she might win you from me!"
"Nonsense!" he replied, with a smile, that lightened her heart of much
of its fear, and gave her courage to say, tenderly:
"Promise me, dear Laurie, not to fall in love with Azalia Brooke, for
you know that would break my heart. Once before, when I fondly dreamed
that you were mine alone, I lost you to another, and I could not bear
that cruel pain again and live!"
His heart was deeply touched by her devotion.
"Jewel, I am not worthy of such passionate love," he said, feeling that
his lukewarm passion compared most unfavorably with her fond affection.
Then seeing how anxious she looked, he added, "I will promise you most
willingly not to fall in love with Miss Brooke."
"Very well, then, I will not take you away at once, as I was on the
point of doing in my terror of a rival," she rejoined, laughingly, yet
hoping that he would offer to go.
But he did not do so. A secret longing to see Azalia Brooke took
possession of him--a longing that he was wise enough not to confess to
jealous Jewel.
"Let us go into the conservatory," she said, longing to rest awhile
in its leafy, odorous coolness, that she might settle her disordered
nerves, and he gave her his arm and led her toward that favorite resort
of lovers.
"Young flowers were whispering in melody
To happy flowers that night--and tree to tree;
Fountains were gushing music as they fell."
In that enchanted spot Jewel thought she should have him all to
herself, for she had left Azalia Brooke in the ball-room surrounded
by eager admirers, but what was her surprise to see, just ahead of
her, with a handsome young man, the beautiful English girl talking so
earnestly that she did not hear nor see the new-comers at all.
If Azalia Brooke could have been permitted to decide under what
circumstances she should be seen first by Laurie Meredith, she could
not have chosen a more striking moment than the present.
She had paused with her attendant cavalier beside a perfect thicket of
her namesake flowers--red and white azalias. A fountain and some lofty
palm-trees were in the background, and made a lovely setting for her
face and dress.
The former we have described before in all its wondrous beauty; the
latter was an exquisite robe of silvery white moiré antique, draped
in billows of white tulle, looped crystallized sea-grasses and
water-lilies. The perfect throat and arms were clasped with large
pearls, and the golden waves of hair were banded back with a Grecian
fillet of the same pure jewels. It was a trying costume; but the blue
of her eyes was so deep, the sheen of her hair so goldenly bright, and
the rose-hue so warm on her delicate cheek, that the unbroken white and
green were perfectly relieved, and set off her charms to the greatest
advantage.
Her companion was talking to her earnestly, and she was listening to
him with an absent smile, when Laurie Meredith first caught sight of
her face.
He stopped short. Jewel felt him start and tremble. She glanced into
his face and saw it pale, startled, eager. A low whisper came from his
lips, and her keen ear caught the burden. It was the one word:
"Flower!"
They were only a few yards away from the couple. Jewel pinched his arm,
warningly.
"Laurie!"
He withdrew his eyes with difficulty from Azalia's face, and he looked
down at his betrothed.
"Do not stare so," she whispered, uneasily. "I warned you of the
likeness, you know."
With a heavy sigh he came back to himself.
"Pardon me," he said, confusedly, and moved on.
A meeting was inevitable now. Laurie Meredith and Azalia Brooke were
face to face.
Jewel's voice was uttering, not overcordially, the words of
introduction.
Both bowed and murmured something almost inaudible, then Jewel drew her
lover on with her to a quiet spot, leaving the couple alone.
That was but the beginning. They met night after night in the saloons
of fashion, although Jewel contrived to keep them apart, they studied
each other closely, and both were startled by the other's likeness to a
dead love.
Jewel was puzzled, too, by the terrible resemblance of Azalia Brooke to
her dead half-sister.
"If I did not know that she was dead, if I did not know what was lying
in that old cellar under the noisome water, ay, if I did not know whose
ghost it was that haunted the corridors of that old house, I could
almost swear that this was Flower masquerading under a grand seeming,"
she told herself over and over, with a shudder; for Jewel's life had
the stain of a dark sin on it now, and she had seen more than once or
twice the vision of a light, shadowy figure all in luminous white, with
floating golden hair, flitting at twilight through the corridors of her
stately home.
"It is Flower's spirit!" she decided, fearfully, and wondered if the
murdered girl were going to haunt her all her life.
"Oh, how much I have done for the sake of my love for Laurie Meredith!"
she thought. "And yet, I half believe that but for dread of me he
would woo this hateful English girl only for the sake of that fatal
resemblance. He is attracted toward her. I can see that in spite of the
indifference he pretends. Let him beware! Let both beware, for if they
played me false both should answer with their lives!"