"I HATE YOU WITH ALL THE STRENGTH OF MY ITALIAN BLOOD."
Isabel Stewart felt that she could not bear the painful interview any
longer, and was about to touch the electric button to summon her
servant to show her visitor out, when he stayed her with a gesture of
appeal.
"One moment more, Isabel, I implore," he exclaimed; "then I will go,
never to trouble you again."
Her beautiful hand dropped by her side, and she turned again to him
with a patient, inquiring glance.
"You have spoken of our--child," the man went on, eagerly, though a
flush of shame dyed his face as he gave utterance to the pronoun
denoting mutual possession. "Do you intend to continue your search for
her?"
"Certainly; that will now be the one aim of my life. I could never
take another moment of comfort knowing that my old friend and my child
were destitute, as I have been led to believe they are."
"And if--you find her--shall--you tell her--your history?" faltered
Gerald Goddard, as he nervously moistened his dry lips.
His companion bent her head in thought for a moment. At length she
remarked:
"I shall, of course, be governed somewhat by circumstances in such a
matter; if I find Edith still in ignorance of the fact that she is an
adopted daughter, I think I shall never undeceive her, but strive to be
content with such love as she can give me, as her mother's friend. If,
on the other hand, I find that she has learned the truth--especially if
she should happen to be alone in the world--I shall take her into my
arms and tell her the whole story of my life, beg her to share my
future, and let me try to win as much as possible of her love."
"If you should find her, pray, pray do not teach her to regard me as a
monster of all that is evil," pleaded her companion, in a tone of
agony that was pitiful. "Ah, Isabel, I believe I should have been a
better man if I could have had the love of little children thrown
about me as a safeguard."
Isabel Stewart's red lips curled with momentary scorn at this attempt
to shift the responsibility of his wasted and misguided life upon any
one or anything rather than himself.
"What a pity, then, that you did not realize the fact before you
discarded the unhappy young mother and her innocent babe, so many
years ago," she remarked, in a tone that pierced his heart like a
knife.
"I did go back to Rome for the child--I did try to find her after--I
had heard that--that you were gone," he faltered. "I was told that the
infant had doubtless perished with you, though its body was never
found; but I have mourned her--I have yearned for her all my life."
"And do you imagine, even if you should meet her some time in the
future, that she would reciprocate this affection which, strangely
enough, you manifest at this late day?"
"Perhaps not, if you should meet her first and tell her your story,"
the man returned, with a heavy sigh.
"Which I shall assuredly do," said Mrs. Stewart, resolutely; "that is,
if, as I said before, I find her alone in the world; that much
justification is my due--my child shall know the truth; then she shall
be allowed to act according to the dictates of her own heart and
judgment, regarding her future relationship toward both of us. I feel
sure that she has been most carefully reared--that my old friend Edith
would instill only precepts of truth and purity in her mind, and my
heart tells me that she would be likely to shrink from one who had
wronged her mother as you have wronged me."
"I see; you will keep her from me if you can," said Mr. Goddard, with
intense bitterness.
"I am free to confess that I should prefer you never to meet," said
Mrs. Stewart, a look of pain sweeping over her beautiful face; "but
Edith is twenty years of age, if she is living; and if, after learning
my history, she desires to recognize the relationship between herself
and you, I can, of course, but submit to her wish."
"It is very evident to me that you will teach her to hate her father,"
was the sullen retort.
"Her father?" the term was repeated with infinite scorn. "Pray in what
respect have you shown yourself worthy to be so regarded?--you who
even denied her legitimate birth, and turned your back upon her,
totally indifferent to whether she starved or not."
"How hard you are upon me, Isabel!"
"I have told you only facts."
"I know--I know; but have some pity for me now, since, at last, I have
come to my senses; for in my heart I have an insatiable longing for
this daughter who, if she is living, must embody some of the virtues
of her mother, who--God help me!--is lost, lost to me forever!"
The man's voice died away in a hoarse whisper, while a heart-broken
sob burst from his lips.
"Go, Gerald," said Mrs. Stewart, in a low, but not unkindly imperative
tone; "it is better that this interview should terminate. The past is
past--nothing can change it; but the future will be what we make it.
Go, and if I ever hear from you again, let me know that your present
contrition has culminated in a better life."
She turned abruptly from him and disappeared within her chamber,
quietly shutting the door after her, while Gerald Goddard arose to
"go" as he had been bidden.
As, with tottering gait and a pale, despairing face, he crossed the
room and parted the draperies between the two pretty parlors, he found
himself suddenly confronted by a woman so wan and haggard that, for an
instant, he failed to recognize her.
"Idiot!" hissed Anna Correlli, through her pallid, tightly-drawn lips;
"traitor! coward! viper!"
She was forced to pause simply because she was exhausted from the
venom which she had expended in the utterance of those four
expletives.
Then she sank, weak and faint, upon a chair, but with her eyes
glittering like points of flame, fastened in a look of malignant
hatred upon the astonished man.
"Anna! how came you here?--how long have you been here?" he finally
found voice to say.
"Long enough to learn of the contemptible perfidy and meanness of the
man whom, for twenty years, I have trusted," she panted, but the tone
was so hollow he never would have known who was speaking had he not
seen her.
He opened his dry lips to make some reply; but no sound came from
them.
He put out his hand to support himself by the back of her chair, for
all his strength and sense seemed on the point of failing him; while
for the moment he felt as if he could almost have been grateful to any
one who would slay him where he stood, and thus put him out of his
misery--benumb his sense of degradation and the remorse which he
experienced for his wasted life, and the wrongs of which he had been
guilty.
But, by a powerful effort, he soon mastered himself, for he was
anxious to escape from the house before the presence of his wife
should be discovered.
"Come, Anna," he said; "let us go home, where we can talk over this
matter by ourselves, without the fear of being overheard."
He attempted to assist her to rise, but she shrank away from him with
a gesture of aversion, at the same time flashing a look up at him that
almost seemed to curdle his blood, and sent a shudder of dread over
him.
"Do not dare to touch me!" she cried, hoarsely. "Go--call a carriage;
I am not able to walk. Go; I will follow you."
Without a word, he turned to obey her, and passed quickly out of the
suite without encountering any one, she following, but with a gait so
unsteady that any one watching her would have been tempted to believe
her under the influence of some intoxicant.
Mr. Goddard found a carriage standing near the entrance to the hotel,
and they were soon on their way home.
Not a word was spoken by either during the ride, and it would have
been impossible to have found two more utterly wretched people in all
that great city.
Upon entering their house, they found Emil Correlli in a state
bordering on frenzy, occasioned by the escape of Edith, and this
circumstance served for a few moments to distract their thoughts from
their own troubles.
Mr. Goddard was intensely relieved by the intelligence, and plainly
betrayed it in his manner.
When angrily called to account for it by his brother-in-law, he at
once replied, with an air of reckless defiance:
"Yes, I am glad of it--I would even have helped the girl to get away;
indeed, I was planning to do so, for such a dastardly fraud as you
perpetrated upon her should never be allowed to prosper."
He was rewarded for this speech, so loyal to Edith, only by an angry
oath, to which, however, he paid no attention.
Strangely enough, Anna Correlli, after the first emotion of surprise
and dismay had passed, paid no heed to the exciting conversation; she
had sunk into a chair by the window, where she sat pale and silent,
and absolutely motionless, save for the wild restlessness of her fiery
black eyes.
Mr. Goddard, finding the atmosphere so disagreeable, finally left the
room, and, mounting the stairs, shut himself in his own chamber, while
the enraged lover dashed out of the house to the nearest telegraph
office to send the message that caused the policeman to intercept
Edith upon her arrival in New York.
A few moments later, Mrs. Goddard--as we will, from courtesy, still
call her--crept wearily up to her room, where, tottering to a couch,
she threw herself prone upon her face, moaning and shivering with the
agony she could no longer control.
The blow, which for twenty years she had been dreading, had fallen at
last; but it was far more crushing and bitter than she had ever
dreamed it could be.
She had come at last to the dregs of the cup which once had seemed so
sweet and alluring to her senses, and they had poisoned her soul unto
death.
She knew that never again while she lived would she be able to face
the world and hide her misery beneath a mask of smiles; and the
bitterest drop of all, the sharpest thorn in her lacerated heart, was
the fact that the little insignificant girl who had once been her
hated rival in Rome, should have developed into the peerlessly
beautiful woman, whom all men admired and reverenced, and whom Gerald
Goddard now idolized.
An hour passed, during which she lay where she had fallen and almost
benumbed by her misery.
Then there came a knock upon her door, which was immediately opened,
and Mr. Goddard entered the room.
He was still very pale, but grave and self-contained.
The woman started to a sitting posture, exclaiming, in an unnatural
voice:
"What do you want here?"
"I have come, Anna, to talk over with you the events of the
morning--to ask you to try to control yourself, and look at our
peculiar situation with calmness and practical common sense," he
calmly replied.
"Well?" was all the response vouchsafed, as he paused an instant.
"I have not come to offer any excuses for myself, or for what you
overheard this morning," he thoughtfully resumed; "indeed, I have none
to offer--my whole life, I own, has, as Isabel rightly said, been a
failure thus far, and no one save myself is to blame for the fact. Do
not sneer, Anna," he interposed, as her lips curled back from her
dazzling teeth, which he saw were tightly locked with the effort she
was making at self-control. "I have been thoroughly humiliated for
the first time in my life--I have been made to see myself as I am, and
I have reached a point where I am willing to make an effort to atone,
as far as may be, for some of the wrongs of which I have been guilty.
Will you help me, Anna?"
Again he paused, but this time his companion did not deign to avail
herself of the opportunity to reply, if, indeed, she was able to do
so.
She had not once removed her glittering eyes from his face, and her
steady, inscrutable look gave him an uncanny sensation that was
anything but agreeable.
"I have come to propose that we avail ourselves of the only remedy
that seems practicable to relieve our peculiar situation," he
continued, seeing she was waiting for him to go on. "I will apply to
have the tie which binds me to Isabel annulled, with all possible
secrecy--it can be done in the West without any notoriety; then I will
make you my legal wife, as you have so often asked me to do, and we
will go abroad again, where we will try to live out the remainder of
our lives to some better purpose than we have done heretofore. I ask
you again, will you try to help me? It is not going to be an easy
thing at first; but if each will try, for the sake of the other, I
believe we can yet attain comparative content, if not positive
happiness."
"Content! happiness!"
The words were hissed out with a fierceness of passion that startled
him, and caused him to regard her anxiously.
"Happiness!" she repeated. "Ha! ha! What mockery in the sound of that
word from your lips, after what has occurred to-day!"
"I know that you have cause to be both grieved and angry, Anna," said
Gerald Goddard, humbly; "but let us both put the past behind us--let
us wipe out all old scores, and from this day begin a new life."
"'Begin a new life' upon a heap of ashes, without one spark among them
to ignite the smallest flame!" was the mocking rejoinder. Then, with a
burst of agony, she continued: "Oh, God! if you had taken a dagger
and stabbed me to death in that room to-day, you could not have slain
me more effectually than by the words you have uttered. Begin a new
life with you, after your confessions, your pleadings and
protestations to Isabel Stewart? Heaven! Never! I hate you! hate you;
hate you! with all the strength of my Italian blood, and warn
you--beware! And now, begone!"
The woman looked like a maniac as she poured this wild torrent upon
him, and the man saw that she was in no mood to be reasoned with or to
consider any subject; that it would be wiser to wait until the
fierceness of her anger had spent itself.
He had broached the matter of their future relations, thus giving her
something to think of, and now he would leave her to meditate upon it
by herself; perhaps, in a few days, she would be in a more reasonable
frame of mind, and look at the subject from a different point of view.
"Very well, Anna," he said, as he arose, "I will obey you. I do not
pretend to claim that I have not given you cause to feel aggrieved in
many respects; but, as I have already said, that is past. I simply ask
you to do what I also will do--put all the old life behind us, and
begin over again. I realize that we cannot discuss the question to any
purpose now--we are both too wrought up to think or talk calmly, so I
will leave you to rest, and we will speak of this at another time. Can
I do anything for you before I go?--or perhaps you would like your
maid sent to you?"
"No," she said, briefly, and not once having removed her wild eyes
from his face while he was speaking.
He bowed, and passed out of the room, softly shutting the door after
him, then walked slowly down the hall to his own apartment.
The moment he was gone Anna Goddard sprang like a cat to her feet.
Going to her writing-desk, she dashed off a few lines, which she
hastily folded and slipped into an envelope, which she sealed and
addressed.
She then touched the electric button above her desk to summon her
maid, after which she sat motionless with the missive clasped in her
hands until the girl appeared.
"Dress yourself for the street, Mary, and take this note to Mr.
Clayton's office. Be quick about it, for it is a matter of
importance," she commanded, while she forced herself to speak with
outward calmness.
But Mary regarded her mistress with wonder, for, in all her
"tantrums," as she termed them, she had never seen the awful look upon
her face which was stamped upon it at that moment.
But she took the note without comment, and hastened away upon her
errand, while Mrs. Goddard, throwing herself back in her chair, sat
there waiting with an air of expectation that betrayed she was looking
for the appearance of some one.
Half an hour later a gentleman was admitted to the house, and was
shown directly up to my lady's boudoir.