Beatrix Gordon looked at the beautiful river with wide, dark eyes.
The summer sunshine gilded the blue waves, the white sails dotted its
wide expanse like fairy shallops gliding to and fro. It was grand and
dazzlingly beautiful, but the young girl shivered as she thought of the
dark depths below. She turned from it to look gravely into St. Leon Le
Roy's handsome face with its cold, cynical eyes.
"You would throw yourself into the river and so end all," she repeated.
"Oh, Mr. Le Roy, is it so hard for a poor girl to live that suicide is
the least choice of evils?"
Her little hands clasped each other tightly over the mass of glowing
flowers in her lap, and her red lips trembled with earnestness. He
looked at her in something like wonder.
"I do not see why Mr. Gordon's daughter should trouble herself over
such a question," he said. "But since you ask me I must answer yes. The
world is full of pitfalls for the young and beautiful girl who has her
own living to gain. Were I in the situation you describe, I believe I
should speedily end the struggle with fate by a leap into the river."
These hastily spoken words, too, he was fated to recall in an hour of
which he dreamed not now.
Beatrix did not answer him. She sat very still, looking before her with
a strange, far-away expression on her face. A long, deep, unconscious
sigh quivered over her lips.
"You are troubled over what I said--why?" he asked, curiously.
And the girl answered, with a shiver:
"I am afraid of life."
St. Leon began to feel vaguely interested in this girl whose coming
he had dreaded so much. She was not like other young ladies he had
known--not what he had expected the rich Mr. Gordon's daughter to be.
There was a spice of originality about her. Why should she, the petted
child of wealth and luxury, think about these things of which she had
talked? Was it because her lover was poor?
He did not like to think of that lover from whom her parents wished to
separate her. She was a child, he said to himself--too young to burn
her heart in the flame of love.
"I do not see why you should fear life. It is likely to prove very fair
and bright to you, if you do your duty--if you implicitly _obey_ the
wishes of your parents," he said, watching her keenly.
The lovely face flushed crimson, but she made him no answer. She played
with her flowers nervously. She was afraid of St. Leon Le Roy's keen,
merciless eyes.
"You do not wish me to lecture you upon your duty?" he said, after
waiting in vain for her to reply.
"No, I do not think I do," she replied, frankly.
"Then I beg your pardon. Indeed, I am not worthy of lecturing any one
upon that cold, hard word, duty," he said to himself rather than her.
"I have not been a very dutiful son myself," a shadow crossing his dark
features.
Beatrix again had no answer ready.
She went on quietly grouping her flowers into a large bunch. He watched
the white hands with a lazy, æsthetic pleasure in their beauty as they
gleamed among the crimson flowers of which she had gathered a larger
quantity than of any other color.
He began to talk to her of the city where she lived, of the places she
had visited, of people whom he supposed the Gordons would know. He was
amazed at her ignorance on subjects where he would have supposed her to
be at home.
"I have been to very few places, and I know very few people," she said,
blushing. "I--I haven't been introduced into society yet. I am too
young."
"Then where did she pick up that lover?" he asked himself. "She must
have become infatuated with her dancing-master or her music-master."
But that evening when Mrs. Le Roy opened the piano and asked her to
play, Beatrix begged to be excused. Being pressed, she declared that
she had never learned the piano, she did not care for music--at least
not very much.
No one expressed the surprise they felt. St. Leon played an aria for
his mother, then they closed the piano.
"So it was not her music-master who won her heart. The circle narrows
down to the professor of the terpsichorean art," he said to himself.
"My dear, I have been watching you closely," said Mrs. Le Roy,
suddenly. "You do not at all resemble your mother. She had blue eyes,
yours are black. Her features were quite different from yours. I have
seen your father, but I forget how he looked. I suppose you are like
him."
"Yes, I am like my father," Beatrix answered, but her face crimsoned,
and she looked as if she were about to burst into tears. She commanded
herself with an effort, and a little later, declaring that her head
ached, she begged to be excused, and left the room.
"Poor girl! she is very unhappy!" said Mrs. Le Roy. "Isabel Gordon was
very careless to let that child have a lover! She has no business out
of the school-room."