Deep emotion overpowered Laurel's speech for a moment. Her lips parted
as if to speak, but closed again without a sound. Her fair head drooped
like a beautiful flower too heavily laden with dew. It had come upon
her like a great shock that St. Leon Le Roy loved her--loved her, the
false Beatrix Gordon, the perjured girl living a deliberate lie beneath
his roof. She called it by its worst name to herself, even though she
flinched from it, for she had, as Clarice Wells said of her, a habit of
calling things by their right names. To her a "spade" was a "spade."
She had the moral courage to recognize her sin, but this love had made
her a coward. She could not confess the truth. For the sake of this man
she had risked all. She could not put his love from her now. Yet his
next words stabbed her with keenest pain.
"For the first time, Beatrix, I feel like thanking God for Maud's
falsity, since it has left me free to win you, my true, angel-hearted
girl!"
"True! angel-hearted--oh, my God!" she shuddered to herself, and a
longing came over her to be all that he thought her, honest, innocent,
true. Should she confess all, and trust to his great love to pity and
pardon her?
She lifted her dark, wistful eyes to his glowing, eager face.
"If you had not loved me perhaps you would have forgiven the wrong Mrs.
Merivale did you," she said, anxiously.
The stern lines she dreaded came around his lips again.
"I forgave her long ago--as long ago as my fancy for her died!" he
said. "But I can never respect her, nor even like her again. She
deceived me. I can never forget that! Women should be little lower than
the angels, Beatrix.
"'A perfect creature, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command,
And yet a spirit still and bright,
With something of an angel's light.'"
Wordsworth's ideal is mine, Beatrix. I could never again love a woman
who had deceived me. Once fallen from her lofty pedestal, the broken
idol could never be restored again!"
He was unconsciously warning her, but he only frightened her. She said
to herself that he would never forgive her if she told him at this late
day how she had deceived him. And she could not do it. She would not
risk it. She loved him too dearly. She would have his love while she
could, whether it lasted for a year or a day.
"Why did you deceive her this evening?" she asked, gaining courage
as she made her wild resolve. "You were so devoted and attentive she
thought she had won you back."
His scornful laugh was not good to hear.
"That was my revenge," he said. "I fooled her to the top of her bent,
while I laughed in my sleeve at her credulity. She should have known me
better, yet she came down here with the deliberate intention of winning
me back. She did not find St. Leon the boy who was blinded by her
beauty, she found Le Roy, the man who saw through her shallow arts and
despised her." She had no answer ready and he went on more slowly after
a moment: "Shall I confess that I had another motive too, Beatrix? I
longed to pique you if possible. Since you came to Eden you have been
cold, shy, frightened of me always. I confess that I gave you room at
first, but I soon became interested in you and would have repaired
my error if you had let me. But you did not. You treated me with a
distant, respectful civility, as if I had been as old as my mother.
When Mrs. Merivale came I determined to show you that I was not too
antiquated to admire fair women and to be admired by them. But you held
your own so bravely, you flirted so charmingly with Count Fitz John
that I was completely blinded and half maddened by your indifference.
Ah, my darling," he bent toward her with a flash of triumphant love
in his splendid eyes, "if you had not come in here to night, I should
never have dreamed, never have known--"
"You heard--you saw?" she broke in, hot and red with bitter shame. "Oh,
I could sooner have died!" hiding her burning face in her small hands.
"Hush, Beatrix." He drew the trembling hands away, put his arms around
her tenderly, and pillowed the flushed face on his breast. "It was a
happy chance, my love. Do not regret it for my sake. Do not think I
spied upon your actions, darling. I did not mean to disturb you, only
I could not forbear peeping through the curtains and feasting my eyes
on your sweetness. So it came to pass that I heard and saw--that which
made me the happiest of men!"
"You take it for granted that I--that you--" she began to remonstrate,
incoherently, with a mutinous, trembling pout upon her sweet red lips.
"That you belong to me--that I may ask you for your love--since you
have broken with Wentworth--yes," he answered, full of happy faith. "Is
it not true, Beatrix, my beautiful, dark-eyed love? Will you not be my
cherished little wife?"
And paler than the marble statue that glimmered coldly white in the
shadowy corner yonder, she murmured:
"I will."
Full of boundless trust and passion he bent down and pressed a
lingering, passionate kiss on the lips of the beautiful impostor.
"God bless you, my little love," he said, huskily, and with deep
_empressement_, "you shall never regret that sweet promise."
He meant to keep his word, but we mortals are so blind. The day came
when she felt that all her life was one long regret!
"Oh, that word regret!
There have been nights and morns when we have sighed
'Let us alone, Regret! We are content
To throw thee all our past, so thou wilt sleep
For aye.' But it is patient, and it wakes!
It hath not learned to cry itself to sleep,
But plaineth on the bed that it is hard."
Dizzy with passionate love and happiness, she rested in his arms a
moment, then drew herself shyly away.
"It grows late. Indeed, I must leave you now," she whispered.
"It is late and you are weary," he said, tenderly. "I must send you
to your rest, my precious one, but for me I shall sit here all night
rejoicing over my sweet, new happiness."
They had heard no step in the hall, but at that moment the door swung
open and Mrs. Merivale appeared on the threshold in an exquisite
dressing-gown, her loosened golden hair flying over her shoulders. She
gazed in dismay for an instant, then started backward with a quick
smile of scorn.
"Pardon! I could not sleep, and came for a book. I did not dream of
interrupting such an interesting midnight _tête-à-tête_," she said,
sneeringly.
St. Leon drew his arm gently around the slight form of his betrothed,
an ominous gleam in his eyes.
"Congratulate us, Mrs. Merivale," he said, "Miss Gordon has promised to
be my wife."
The snaky fire of hate flashed in greenish sparkles from the eyes of
the disappointed woman.
"With all my heart. May you be as happy as you deserve," she answered,
scornfully.
Then, turning to go, she bent swiftly toward Laurel Vane and whispered
in her ear with the hissing tone of hate:
"You have triumphed over me--you have come between us, but do not
forget that '_Who breaks--pays!_'"
"An omen," Laurel sighed to herself.
He was loath to let her go when the jealous, angry woman had
disappeared. The pale, frightened face touched his heart. He made her
tell him what Maud Merivale had hissed in her ear.
"A mere idle threat," he said. "She can do you no harm, Beatrix. You
are too secure in your high position as Mr. Gordon's daughter and my
promised wife for her hate to touch you. As the mistress of Eden you
will be socially her superior, for old Midas Merivale made his millions
in trade, and the Le Roys have inherited their wealth from several
generations of blue-blooded ancestors. Indeed, we trace our origin from
the French nobility."
Everything he told her only frightened her worse. She trembled at her
presumption in entering this family which prided itself less on its
great wealth than on its noble pedigree. She silently recalled some
verses she had read that evening:
"I knew that every victory,
But lifted you away from me;
That every step of high emprise
But left me lowlier in your eyes;
I watched the distance as it grew,
And loved you better than you knew!"
"He counts his ancestors back to the French nobility, while I do not
know what my grandfather's name was," said Louis Vane's daughter to
herself.
"Before you go, my darling," said St. Leon, suddenly, "there is one
thing I should like to hear you say."
"Tell me what it is," she answered.
He took both her trembling hands in his and looked deep into her eyes
with a piercing gaze that seemed to read her soul.
"Lift up your head, Beatrix, look straight into my eyes, and say, 'St.
Leon, I love you.'"
Blushing "celestial, rosy red," she obeyed his fond command, and there
was a depth of pathos and passion in her voice of which she was herself
unconscious.
"St. Leon, I love you," she repeated from the depths of her adoring
heart.
"My darling!" he caught her in his arms and strained her eagerly to
his breast. "Forgive me for calling out your blushes so, but they are
more lovely than your roses. Now good-night, my little love, but do
not speak another word. Let those last sweet words live in my memory
to-night."
He kissed her and put her gently from him, then stood at the door to
watch the little white figure going lightly along the hall and up the
wide polished stairway.
"Mine, mine, my little love!" he murmured, gladly. "How pleased and
happy my mother will be!"
He went back into the room, threw himself down into a chair, and,
true to his word, spent the remaining hours of the night in a happy
vigil, dreaming over the sweet, new happiness which had come to him so
strangely when his heart had been weighed down by despair.
And Laurel Vane! She kept a wakeful vigil, too. Her eyes were not so
bright as they should have been next morning, her cheeks and lips were
not so rosy, but her beauty was as marked as ever, and Count Fitz John
was very loath to follow the angry, disappointed widow back to New York
that day.
"I not only found an Eden but an Eve!" he said to Maud, rather
disconsolately.
"You need not vex your heart over her, for she has found her Adam in
St. Leon Le Roy," she answered, bitterly.
When they were gone, St. Leon sought his mother.
"Congratulate me," he said. "The desire of your heart will be granted.
I am about to marry."
Her handsome, proud old face did not look as bright as he had expected.
"You have chosen Maud Merivale again?" she said, and then he
understood the shadow on her face and the tone of regret in her voice.
"You are still prejudiced against Maud!" he said, quietly.
"I have never forgiven her for the slight she put upon my son!" she
answered, gravely.
Laurel's slim young figure went flitting past the open door at that
moment. He called to her, drew the small hand through his arm, and led
her up to his mother.
"Mother, here is your daughter," he said, with the brightest smile she
had ever seen on his darkly handsome face.
"And Cyril Wentworth?" she asked, blissful, but bewildered.
"I have never loved him. It was only fancy. I have broken with him
forever!" answered the girl.
"Thank God!" she cried, drawing her new daughter into her arms and
kissing her fondly; while she added to St. Leon, gladly: "I am so glad
it is our sweet little Beatrix, and not that odious Maud Merivale!"
And that day she wrote a letter to Mrs. Gordon, telling her how
cleverly their plot had succeeded, and that St. Leon had taken Cyril
Wentworth's place in her daughter's heart.