THE HUSBAND'S KISS.
Lady Marion never did anything by halves. It was seldom that her calm,
quiet nature was stirred, but when that happened she felt more deeply,
perhaps, than people who express their feelings with great ease and
rapidity. She was amused herself at her own great liking for Madame
Vanira; it was the second great love of her life; the first had been for
her husband, this was the next. She talked of her incessantly, until
even Lord Chandos wondered and asked how it was.
"I cannot tell," she replied; "I think I am infatuated. I am quite sure,
Lance, that if I had been a gentleman, I should have followed Madame
Vanira to the other side of the world. I think her, without exception,
the most charming woman in the world."
She raised her eyes with innocent tenderness to his face.
"Are you jealous because I love her so much?" she asked.
He shuddered as he heard the playful, innocent words, so different from
the reality.
"I should never be jealous of you, Marion," he replied, and then turned
the conversation.
Nothing less than a visit to Madame Vanira would please Lady Chandos.
She asked her husband if he would go to the Cedars with her, and
wondered when he declined. The truth was that he feared some chance
recognition, some accidental temptation; he dared not go, and Lady
Marion looked very disappointed.
"I thought you liked Madame Vanira," she said. "I am quite sure, Lance,
that you looked as if you did."
"My dear Marion, between liking persons and giving up a busy morning to
go to see them there is an immense difference. If you really wish me to
go, Marion, you know that I will break all my appointments."
"I would not ask you to do that," she replied, gently, and the result of
the conversation was that Lady Chandos went alone.
She spent two hours with Leone, and the result was a great increase of
liking and affection for her. Leone sang for her, and her grand voice
thrilled through every fiber of that gentle heart; Leone read to her,
and Lady Chandos said to herself that she never quite understood what
words meant before. When it was time to go, Lady Chandos looked at her
watch in wonder.
"I have been here two hours," she said, "and they have passed like two
minutes. Madame Vanira, I have no engagement to-morrow evening, come and
see me. Lord Chandos has a speech to prepare, and he asked me to forego
all engagements this evening."
"Perhaps I should be in the way," said Leone; but Lady Marion laughed at
the notion. She pleaded so prettily and so gracefully that Leone
consented, and it was arranged that she should spend the evening of the
day following at Stoneland House.
She went--more than once. She had asked herself if this intimacy were
wise? She could not help liking the fair, sweet woman who had taken her
place, and yet she felt a great undercurrent of jealous indignation and
righteous anger--it might blaze out some day, and she knew that if it
ever did so it would be out of her control. It was something like
playing with fire, yet how many people play with fire all their lives
and never get burned!
She went, looking more beautiful and regal than ever, in a most becoming
dress of black velvet, her white arms and white shoulders looking whiter
than ever through the fine white lace.
She wore no jewels; a pomegranate blossom lay in the thick coils of her
hair; a red rose nestled in her white breast.
She was shown into the boudoir she had admired so much, and there Lady
Chandos joined her.
Lord Chandos had been busily engaged during the day in looking up facts
and information for his speech. He had joined his wife for dinner, but
she saw him so completely engrossed that she did not talk to him, and it
had not occurred to her to tell him that Madame Vanira was coming, so
that he was quite ignorant of that fact.
The two ladies enjoyed themselves very much--they had a cup of orange
Pekoe from cups of priceless china, they talked of music, art, and
books.
The pretty little clock chimed ten. Lady Chandos looked at her
companion.
"You have not tried my piano yet," she said. "It was a wedding present
from Lord Chandos to me; the tone of it is very sweet and clear."
"I will try it," said Madame Vanira. "May I look through the pile of
music that lies behind it?"
Lady Chandos laughed at the eagerness with which Leone went on her knees
and examined the music.
Just at that moment, when she was completely hidden from view, the door
suddenly opened, and Lord Chandos hastily entered. Seeing his wife near,
without looking around the room, in his usual caressing manner, he threw
one arm round her, drew her to him, and kissed her.
It was that kiss which woke all the love, and passion, and jealousy in
Leone's heart; it came home to her in that minute, and for the first
time, that the husband she had lost belonged to another--that his kisses
and caresses were never more to be hers, but would be given always to
this other.
There was one moment--only one moment of silence; but while it lasted a
sharp sword pierced her heart; the next, Lady Chandos, with a laughing,
blushing face, had turned to her husband, holding up one white hand in
warning.
"Lance," she cried, "do you not see Madame Vanira?"
She wondered why the words seemed to transfix him--why his face paled
and his eyes flashed fire.
"Madame Vanira!" he cried, "I did not see that she was here."
Then Leone rose slowly from the pile of music.
"I should ask pardon," she said; "I did not know that I had hidden
myself so completely."
It was like a scene from a play; a fair wife, with her sweet face, its
expression of quiet happiness in her husband's love; the husband, with
the startled look of passion repressed; Leone, with her grand Spanish
beauty all aglow with emotion. She could not recover her presence of
mind so as to laugh away the awkward situation. Lady Chandos was the
first to do that.
"How melodramatic we all look!" she said. "What is the matter?"
Then Lord Chandos recovered himself. He knew that the kiss he had given
to one fair woman must have stabbed the heart of the other, and he would
rather have done anything than that it should have happened. There came
to him like a flash of lightning the remembrance of that first home at
River View, and the white arms that were clasped round his neck when he
entered there; and he knew that the same memory rankled in the heart of
the beautiful woman whose face had suddenly grown pale as his own.
The air had grown like living flame to Leone; the pain which stung her
was so sharp she could have cried aloud with the anguish of it. It was
well nigh intolerable to see his arm round her, to see him draw her fair
face and head to him, to see his lips seek hers and rest on them. The
air grew like living flames; her heart beat fast and loud; her hands
burned. All that she had lost by woman's intrigue and man's injustice
this fair, gentle woman had gained. A red mist came before her eyes; a
rush, as of many waters, filled her ears. She bit her lips to prevent
the loud and bitter cry that seemed as though it must escape her.
Then Lord Chandos hastened to place a chair for her, and tried to drive
from her mind all recollection of the little incident.
"You are looking for some music, madame," he said, "from which I may
augur the happy fact that you intended to sing. Let me pray that you
will not change your intention."
"Lady Chandos asked me to try her piano," she said shyly.
"I told Madame Vanira how sweet and silvery the tone of it is, Lance,"
said Lady Chandos.
And again Leone shrunk from hearing on another woman's lip the word she
had once used. It was awkward, it was intolerable; it struck her all at
once with a sense of shame that she had done wrong in ever allowing Lord
Chandos to speak to her again. But then he had pleaded so, he had seemed
so utterly miserable, so forlorn, so hopeless, she could not help it.
She had done wrong in allowing Lady Marion to make friends with her;
Lady Marion was her enemy by force of circumstances, and there ought not
to have been even one word between them. Yet she pleaded so eagerly, it
had seemed quite impossible to resist her.
She was roused from her reverie by the laughing voice of Lady Marion,
over whose fair head so dark a cloud hung.
"Madame Vanira," she was saying, "ask my husband to sing with you. He
has a beautiful voice, not a deep, rolling bass, as one would imagine
from the dark face and tall, stalwart figure, but a rich, clear tenor,
sweet and silvery as the chime of bells."
Leone remembered every tone, every note of it; they had spent long hours
in singing together, and the memory of those hours shone now in the eyes
that met so sadly. A sudden, keen, passionate desire to sing with him
once more came over Leone. It might be rash--it was imprudent.
"Mine was always a mad love," she said to herself, with a most bitter
smile. "It might be dangerous--but once more."
Just once more she would like to hear her voice float away with his. She
bent over the music again--the first and foremost lay Mendelssohn's
beautiful duet. "Oh, would that my love." They sang it in the summer
gloamings when she had been pleased and proud to hear her wonderful
voice float away over the trees and die in sweetest silence. She raised
it now and looked at him.
"Will you sing this?" she asked; but her eyes did not meet his, and her
face was very pale.
She did not wait for an answer, but placed the music on a stand, and
then--ah, then--the two beautiful voices floated away, and the very air
seemed to vibrate with the passionate, thrilling sound; the
drawing-room, the magnificence of Stoneland House, the graceful presence
of the fair wife, faded from them. They were together once more at the
garden at River View, the green trees making shade, the deep river in
the distance.
But when they had finished, Lady Chandos was standing by, her face wet
with tears.
"Your music breaks my heart," she said; but she did not know the reason
why.