He stood there in silence, looking down at that bowed head, veiled by
its sweeping golden hair. He made no effort to raise her; he answered
not a word to her wild appeal. There was a smoldering fire in his dark
eyes, a stern compression of his lips, that boded ill for the granting
of her prayer.
He had received a terrible shock. His love and his pride alike had
been outraged, and in his case it was a strong love and a strong pride.
The wound to both was accordingly all the greater.
His strange silence grew terrible to her. She lifted her face a little
and looked at him, recoiling from the terrible indignation in his eyes
as if he had struck her a blow.
"St. Leon, speak to me," she wailed. "Oh, you will not be hard and
unforgiving to me! I have wronged you and deceived you, I know; but it
was all because I loved you. No woman ever loved with so mad a love as
I have given you. If I had not loved you so dearly, I had not dared so
much."
He spoke then. There was concentrated passion, burning contempt, in his
deep and angry voice.
"Do not speak of love!" he said. "I can fancy with what love the
drunken journalist's daughter, the poor clerk's runaway _fiancé_,
could love St. Leon Le Roy. I can imagine that the temptation to
lift yourself to my level from the dust where you groveled was too
strong for you. I can fancy that the greed for wealth and honor led
you astray. But love--faugh! If one spark of that divine passion had
burned in your scheming breast, you would have respected the unsullied
honor, the proud old name of the Le Roys--you would have spared me the
disgraceful alliance with a drunkard's daughter!"
Slow, cruel, bitter, every word fell like a coal of fire on her
bleeding heart. Was it the gifted father, the brilliant genius whom she
had loved and revered despite his weakness, who was thus stigmatized as
a drunkard by her husband's lips? Had that father's sin indeed set her
apart as a mark for the finger of scorn to point at, a creature too low
to even lift her eyes to the proud and rich St. Leon Le Roy? It was a
cruel, a bitter insult. It rankled like a sword point in her heart.
She rose slowly to her feet and faced him with a strange, new-born
dignity that sat gracefully on her perfect beauty. She did not speak,
but waited with drooping head and tightly folded hands for his further
words.
They came, still further blighting the sad young heart:
"There can be no talk of forgiveness between you and me. You have
injured me beyond reparation. You can be nothing to me henceforth."
"You will send me away from you--you will divorce me?" she asked, with
a shiver.
"No, I will have no scandal. I will not drag the proud name of Le Roy
through the mire of a divorce court. That for which you schemed so
craftily shall not be taken away from you. I shall go away and leave
you at Eden in the enjoyment of the wealth and the name you have won.
Then our tacit separation and divorce will be accomplished. I shall
never willingly look upon your beautiful, false face again!"
She bowed her head in speechless acquiescence. Where were the wild
words, the matchless eloquence with which she meant to plead her cause,
to implore for pardon when this dark hour came upon her? That love and
beauty which she had deemed such powerful agents to hold his heart
and win his clemency, of what avail were they now? His icy scorn, his
proud, decisive, determination left no room for dissent or appeal. The
terrible weight of her sin had fallen upon her and crushed her.
"I think you understand me," he said. "The wife I loved is as one
dead to me. She never existed save in my imagination. You must accept
this as your punishment, if indeed you can feel any remorse for your
falsehood and deceit. Now go to your room and let your maid attend you
there. I presume you will not care to meet our guests again. I am quite
sure they will not wish to see you. Remain in seclusion. To-morrow I
will make all needful arrangements for our separation, and they shall
be duly communicated to you."
She lifted her head and gave one long, grave look from her heavy,
somber eyes at the handsome, haughty face, bowed slowly, and went out
of the room. The slow swish of her trailing satin robe echoed drearily
in his hearing as he stood there pale and statue-like, but he did not
turn his head for one farewell glance at the girl who was his wife and
who had so terribly deceived him.
She went to her room and sunk down wearily upon her sofa. Marie the
maid came in presently. Her face showed that she knew all.
"Marie," she said, "go and ask Mrs. Le Roy if she will permit me to
come to her for a few moments."
The maid returned in a moment.
"Mr. Le Roy is with his mother. He desires that you will not disturb
her," she said.
Laurel answered quietly.
"You may go away, and leave me now, Marie, I wish to be alone for
awhile."
When the maid had gone she went to the window, drew back the rich
curtains of silk and lace and gazed out upon the scene. Night had
fallen--the beautiful moonlit summer night. The perfume of roses and
honeysuckles came floating heavily on the soft air, the wide expanse of
the Hudson shone like a silver sea.
"I must go away from Eden," said the girl-wife to herself, drearily.
"What shall I do with my empty, ruined life?"
Strangely enough there came to her a memory of the day she had first
met St. Leon Le Roy--the questions she had asked him and his strange
reply:
"I believe I should throw myself into yonder beautiful river and so end
all," he had said.