To-morrow came--one of the fairest of summer days, with a sea-blue sky
and the goldenest sunshine and most fragrant flowers. Laurel prepared
for her drive with Mr. Le Roy with a beating heart. She felt that she
was acting imprudently in going with him, for she scarcely dared trust
herself in his presence; but she could not draw back from her promise.
An irresistible fascination drew her on to the meeting with the husband
so hopelessly and madly loved in the long years while she wandered afar
from him, an alien from his home and heart.
Some strange thoughts were stirring in her heart, evoked by his looks
and words. She could scarcely fail to see that he had repented.
"Perhaps, if he knew that Laurel Vane was living, he would forgive her
and take her back. Her fault might not seem so black and bitter now,
seen through the kindly veil of years," she said to herself. "He might
even love and trust me again."
But there came to her a sudden remembrance of words he had spoken long
ago, when he had told her of Maud Merivale's deceit and falsity.
"I could never again love a woman who had deceived me. Once fallen from
its pedestal, the broken idol could never be restored again."
She looked at the beautiful, passion-pale face reflected in the
glittering mirror, and a hopeless sigh drifted across her lips.
"I am a 'broken idol,'" she said, drearily. "I have fallen from my
place in his heart, and I can never be taken back, St. Leon is too
proud to forgive my girlhood's sin."
She had not been unloved in all these years. Proud men and gifted had
bowed before her, won by her beauty and her genius. They marveled at
her coldness, her indifference. No one guessed at the mad love lying
deep in her heart under the ashes of the dead years--a smoldering fire
that in the past few days had leaped into a living flame. It needed
all her strength, all her pride, to fight it back. She went with him,
and when he saw her he could scarcely repress a startled cry. She had
chosen the colors that always became his young wife best--white and
scarlet. Her white hat and a wreath of scarlet poppies; some scarlet
passion-flowers were fastened in the neck of her white dress. She was
so like--so like his dead wife that it would only have seemed natural
to have taken her in his arms and kissed her and called her by the name
of the dead.
Suddenly, as they paused before the white gates of a great, wide
inclosure, she uttered a cry of dismay.
"This is the cemetery, Mr. Le Roy! Surely, you did not mean to bring me
here!"
"Yes," he answered, and helped her down from the landau and led her
into the grim necropolis of the dead.
She did not understand. She walked by him, silent and frightened, among
the gleaming marbles, the dark-green shrubbery, the beautiful flowers
with which loving hearts had decorated the graves of their dead. She
heard her husband dreamily repeating some sad familiar words:
"The massy marbles rest
On the lips that we have prest
In their bloom:
And the names we loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb."
Suddenly he drew her hand in his arm, and led her down a shaded green
alley-way. In a minute they paused before a little plot of ground whose
velvet-green turf was bright with beds of rarest flowers. In the midst
was a single grave, with roses and passion-flowers trailing over it.
Laurel lifted her eyes and read the name cut deep into the gleaming
marble shaft.
"LAUREL,
Beloved wife of St. Leon Le Roy."
She felt a strangely hysterical inclination to laugh out aloud. How
strange it seemed to stand there, so full of life and youth and
passion, and read her own name carved upon a gravestone! How strange,
how horrible to feel that, standing there by her husband's side, she
was as dead to him as if, indeed, her lifeless clay were moldering in
that low, green grave!
His low, deep voice broke the trance of hysterical horror that held her
senses enchained:
"Mrs. Lynn, I told you yesterday that there were elements of romance
and tragedy in my marriage that might interest even you. I promised,
too, that I would tell you the story some day. Here, at poor Laurel's
grave, I propose to keep my word."
He found her a seat, and she waited silently to hear him speak. She was
most curious to hear the story of her girlhood's love and temptation
told by her husband's lips from his own standpoint.