Mr. Le Roy and Laurel had indeed gone out upon the shore. He had
invited her to do so, and she had complied, for she was full of
half-angry wonder as to what had brought him there. She was frightened
too, when she found herself surrounded by all those people who belonged
to her past. She asked herself if it could have happened by simple
chance. She was frightened. She felt like some hunted creature brought
to bay.
She tried to shake off her feelings of mingled terror and annoyance,
bravely assuring herself that there existed no cause for them.
"I have done nothing--these people have naught to do with me. I am
foolish to feel afraid when I see them all around me," she repeated to
herself.
When she tried to analyze her feelings, she found that it was only
Ross Powell who inspired her with such terror. She was not afraid of
Mrs. Merivale. She simply despised her; and, secure in her fancied
_incognito_, she did not feel apprehensive concerning the desire of
the jealous woman to work her ill. It was only Powell of whom she felt
afraid. His evil, exultant glance had assured her that he knew her, and
she had already had evidence of his willingness to destroy every hope
of her life so far as lay in his power. It was wholly through dread of
his haunting glance that she accepted Mr. Le Roy's invitation to leave
the crowded ball-room and go out upon the shore; and once away from the
baleful presence of the enemy she feared and dreaded, she dismissed him
wholly from her thoughts, and gave herself up to the secret, trembling
joy of St. Leon's presence. Her heart was a traitor to her will. It
exulted in his nearness despite her reason, that told her they were
better apart if she meant to carry out her vow of pride and scorn.
She leaned upon his arm, and they walked silently through the lovely
moonlight down to the wave-washed shore. Laurel's heart beat quick and
fast against her husband's arm. The beauty of the moonlight and the
sea, the mellow notes of the dance-music, all had their own effect upon
her. Mrs. Merivale had rightly estimated each as a softening influence.
It was such a night as Emma Alice Browne describes in her sweet poem,
"The Bal-Masque."
"Before us, bathed in pearly light,
A reach of ocean heaved and rolled,
Girt with the purple zone of night,
And clasped with one pale glint of gold.
"Behind us, in the gay saloon,
The flutes wailed out their sweet despair;
The passionate viols sobbed in tune,
The horns exulted, and the air
Pulsed with the low, mellifluous beat
Of dimpling waves and dancing feet."
St. Leon looked down into the beautiful face that was so maddeningly
fair in the soft light, and his heart swelled with a great despair. To
think that she had once been his, that that peerless form had rested in
his arms, that sweet face slept upon his breast! And now--divided by a
woman's pride, they were as widely severed as if Jean Ingelow's "vast,
calm river, so dread to see," rolled its rushing waves between their
hearts.
Standing thus, arm in arm, each heart busy with its deep emotions,
neither heard the furtive steps creeping slowly up behind them, neither
saw the cruel, jealous face with its wild eyes glaring upon them,
neither saw the gleam of the slender dagger clutched in the murderous
hand, neither dreamed of the man who lurked behind them, nor of the
woman who followed at a safe distance, eager to sate her vengeance in
the sight of her rival's heart's blood.
"Mrs. Lynn, you are angry with me because I am here," said St. Leon,
half-questioningly.
"No," she answered, without removing her eyes from the moon-gilded
waves that broke at her feet in snowy surf. She felt too weak to meet
the mute pleading of those eyes she loved so madly.
"You think that I have followed you here," he went on, sadly. "But you
are wrong. Much as I might have wished to do so, dear as your presence
is to me, I could never--"
The deprecating words were never finished. A terrible form flashed
suddenly before them, a terrible face gleamed in the light dagger
flashed upward in the air, and a voice, hoarse with misery and madness,
rang out fiercely:
"Die, Laurel Vane--die!"
The dagger glittered against her snowy breast, the hand of the frenzied
madman would have driven it swiftly home but all in an instant she
was caught away, and the descending blade was sheathed in another
breast--the broad breast of St. Leon Le Roy. The arms that had closed
wildly around Laurel for a moment fell away from her, and he dropped
on the sands at her feet, the hot blood spurting from his heart, and
deepening the rosy hem of her satin robe to a horrible crimson, while
her agonized cry rent the summer night: "Oh, St. Leon, you have died
for me!"