St. Leon Le Roy and his mother had a very quiet drive homeward. Both
were busy with their own thoughts. The lady leaned back against the
cushions of the phaeton with closed eyes, and a look of grave thought
on her pale, wan features. St. Leon, with his calm, dark eyes, and
sternly set lips, was as much absorbed as she was in grave and earnest
thought. He sat very quietly holding the reins, and neither spoke until
they had reached home. Then, when they were sitting together, St. Leon,
with an open book before him, her keen eyes noted that he had not
turned a page for half an hour, and she spoke abruptly:
"St. Leon, what do you think of the famous authoress?"
His head drooped still lower over his book, as he answered, quietly:
"She is very beautiful and brilliant. I had not expected to find her so
young and fair."
"She is the loveliest woman I ever saw," said Mrs. Le Roy.
"Yes," he answered, simply, in his gravely quiet tone.
He did not care to talk. He was like one in a strange, trance-like
dream. His soul had been shaken and stirred to its depths by the
beautiful woman who had flashed before him with his dead wife's face
and voice and the crimson roses in her hands, such as Laurel had loved
to gather. The tide of time rolled backward, and in place of the proud,
calm woman, the gifted genius before whom he had bowed to-day, came a
vision of a simple, dark-eyed girl, wandering through the grounds at
Eden, flitting among the fragrant flowers, herself the fairest rose of
all. Did she love him, that beautiful impostor, St. Leon Le Roy asked
himself, as he had done many times before in the eight years, while
that marble cross had towered above the dead heart, whose secret now
would never be told? Did she love him, indeed? Had she sinned through
her love, not for wealth and position as he had believed that terrible
night? And there came back to him through the mist of years the memory
of that beautiful, tearful face, and the pleading voice.
"Ah, if only I had forgiven her!" he said to himself, in an agony of
remorse and regret. "She loved me. I was mad to doubt it. Save for
her one fault, her one deception, Laurel Vane was pure and true and
innocent. I was hard and cold. Few men but would have forgiven her such
a transgression for love's sake."
His face fell forward on the open pages of the book where he had been
reading drearily enough some mournful lines that seemed to fit his mood:
"Glitters the dew and shines the river,
Up comes the lily and dries her bell,
But two are walking apart forever,
And wave their hands for a mute farewell."
A light touch fell on the bowed head whose raven locks were threaded
with silver that grief, not time, had blanched. He glanced up,
startled, into his mother's wistful face.
"Well?" he said, with a slight contraction of his straight, dark brows.
There was a strange, repressed emotion in her face as she answered:
"It is not _well_, St. Leon. You are unnerved, troubled, thoughtful
even beyond your wont. Will you forgive me for asking why?"
The dark, inscrutable eyes looked at her gravely.
"I might turn your deeds upon yourself," he said. "Why did you faint in
the garden at Belle Vue to-day?"
She flushed, and then grew very pale again.
"I will tell you the truth," she said, "or a part of it at least. I was
unnerved and startled by the terrible resemblance of the beautiful Mrs.
Lynn to--"
"My lost wife," he said, slowly, filling up her painful pause.
"So you noticed it?" she said.
"Could one help it?" he asked in his slow, repressed voice. "Why do you
call it a terrible resemblance, mother?"
"She is so like, so like--she is the living image of what Laurel must
have been now if she lived! And the child, St. Leon, the child--" she
broke down suddenly, and burst into wild, hysterical sobbing.
Shocked by the passionate grief so unusual in his stately lady-mother,
he drew his arm tenderly around her and led her to a seat, kneeling
down humbly before her.
"Mother, does the old wound still ache so bitterly?" he said, in
blended pity and remorse. "I had thought the pain of it was past. Ah, I
can never forgive myself for the madness, the cruelty, that robbed you
of the daughter you loved!"
"And the grandchild I expected," she sobbed bitterly. "Ah, St. Leon, I
can never forget how my hopes were blasted! Forgive me for those weak
tears, my son. All the old regret and sorrow were stirred anew in my
heart to-day by the sight of Mrs. Lynn and her beautiful child."
He had no answer for her. He was too proud and reserved to tell his
mother the truth--that he, too, had been shaken by a ghost from the
past that day. He knelt by her silently, letting her sob out all her
grief and sorrow against his shoulder, and when she had grown calmer he
said, gently:
"Mother, dear, you must not see this Mrs. Lynn again. It agitates you
too much. After all, it is only a resemblance. She might not feel
flattered if she knew that we compared her with my simple, little
girl-wife, dead so long ago. Let me take you away to the seashore or
the mountains while Mrs. Lynn remains at Belle Vue."
But she negatived the proposition in extreme alarm.
"It could only afford me pleasure to see Mrs. Lynn again," she
declared. "I love her for her likeness to the dead. I am unwilling to
lose a single chance of seeing her. And I promise you, St. Leon, that I
will not lose my self-control again as I did to-day in the first shock
of meeting her. I will be as calm and cold as she is."