The change of conversation was so sudden that Laurel started and
shivered uncomfortably.
"Are you cold, my dear?" asked Maud Merivale.
"I felt chilly for a moment," Laurel answered. "It does not matter. You
were saying--"
"I asked you what you thought of St. Leon Le Roy, Beatrix. Is he
not"--enthusiastically--"grand, handsome, noble--a very king among men?"
Little thrills of icy coldness shot along Laurel's tingling nerves.
She remembered his cold, proud bearing to her, as contrasted with his
winning and tender demeanor to Maud Merivale that evening. She answered
with impulsive bitterness:
"He may be all that to you, Mrs. Merivale, but to me he has always
seemed cold, hard, stern!"
"Poor St. Leon!--ah! I know who warped his generous nature so," sighed
the lady. "Beatrix, I am so fond of you I have a mind to tell you my
story--mine and St. Leon's."
They paced back and forth in the fine, clear moonlight, their rich
robes shining in the night: the fragrance of flowers all about them;
the sound of the river in their ears. A hand of ice seemed to clutch
Laurel's heart in its fierce grasp. She could find no words in which to
answer.
"You have heard that we were old friends, St. Leon and I--they have
surely told you that, dear," went on Maud Merivale's sweet, insidious
voice. "Beatrix, in the olden times, we were more than that--we were
lovers."
"Lovers!" echoed Laurel's low, sad voice.
"We were lovers," repeated Mrs. Merivale, in a tone of triumph. "But
we were both very young, and--well, old Midas Merivale was even richer
than St. Leon. My parents were poor, and so they parted me from my
young lover and sold me to that old man for his sordid gold."
There was a plaintive quiver in the cooing voice, and Laurel's heart
suddenly went out to the lovely victim in tender sympathy.
"After my marriage I did not see St. Leon for years," continued the
sweet tones. "But they told me he had changed--that he had grown hard,
cynical, cold--that he cared nothing for women save to rail at them.
But I am free at last--and you see for yourself that he unbends to me
as to none other. The old love still burns in his heart. I shall win
him back, Beatrix, and this time no one shall come between us!"
"Maud," called a strong, sweet voice, coming down the marble steps.
"I am here, St. Leon," she answered back, gladly. "This pretty Beatrix
here promised me some roses all sweet with moonlight and dew, but she
has not given me one. You shall give them to me, St. Leon."
He came out to them, his handsome dark head bare in the moonlight, a
smile in his eyes and on his lips--subtly sweet and dangerous as he
sometimes willed it to be.
"Miss Gordon, will you go into the house with the count and my mother?"
he said, looking straight into the girl's dark eyes. "I will find the
roses 'all sweet with moonlight and dew.'"
Laurel bowed silently and turned away. She did not turn her head, but
she knew that the widow had taken St. Leon's arm and was walking across
the velvety greensward with him. The echo of firm tones and happy
laughter floated back to her.
She did not go back to the count and Mrs. Le Roy as she had been bidden
at once. She sat down at the foot of the marble steps and laid her hot
brow wearily down on the cold white stone.
"Their words hurt me here," she murmured, pressing her small hand on
her beating heart. "But I cannot understand why it should be so. Why
should their love pain me? I care nothing for either of them. They are
nothing to me. But, oh! this terrible pain at my heart--what does it
mean?"
The slight form shivered and trembled, the beautiful face was deathly
white in the moonlight. She rested there silently a long time, looking
down with sharpened mental vision into her own heart.
And suddenly a moan of intense self-scorn and bitter despair trembled
over the beautiful girlish lips.
"I have been willfully blind; I have not understood till now," she
moaned. "But, by the flash of jealousy and grief, I have seen my
heart. Clarice was right, and I spoke falsely when I denied her. I
love him--that haughty, handsome man, who has never given me one
thought--who belongs to Maud Merivale. That is why I risked all to
remain at Eden! Oh, God! how hard it is to read my own heart first by
its jealousy and aching!"
And the night winds and the river echoed her faint, despairing moan.