Eliot waited in the large, elegant library with eager impatience, never
doubting that Mr. Chesterton would succeed in his kindly mission. Una
could not be so cruel as to refuse him an interview.
"And once in her presence I will combat every objection she can raise
until I persuade her to go home with me," he said to himself, firmly,
and his heart began to beat lightly, happily, with the thought that
soon Una would be with him, never to be torn from him again.
"It is five years since I saw her. She was scarcely more than a child
then. Now she is a woman, beautiful, gifted, intelligent. Oh, how I
long to be wealthy, for the sake of my fair young wife!" he thought.
Then it dawned upon him that the banker was staying a long time. The
bronze clock on the mantel had chimed the quarters of an hour twice
while he had sat there all alone.
"He finds her hard to persuade," he exclaimed, rising from his chair
and beginning to pace restlessly up and down the floor.
Five, ten minutes elapsed. Then there came a step at the door. The
handle turned. Mr. Chesterton entered--alone.
Eliot turned to him in unutterable dismay.
"Una!" he exclaimed, hoarsely, then paused, speechless. He saw a
folded slip of paper in the banker's hand, and on his genial face
disappointment and regret.
"Van Zandt, I am sorry for you, upon my word!" he said, feelingly. "I
used all my eloquence, but I have failed. She gave me this note for
you," he added, thrusting the slip of paper into Eliot's hand.
He took it in a dazed, lifeless way, opened it slowly, and read the
words written in an elegant flowing hand, very different from the
cramped, childish one in which Una had penned her farewell to him five
years ago.
"Oh, forgive me," it ran, "but I can not see you now, or ever again
in this world. What I wrote you when I left you five years ago
remains unchanged. There is a barrier between us cruel as the grave.
You must seek freedom from the nominal tie that binds you to me. Then
you will forget me and find happiness with some woman more blessed
by fate than I have been. For me, I shall convince you that our
separation is irrevocable by returning at once to New Orleans, there
to enter a convent and take the veil for life. UNA."
The cruel letter fell from his hand, and staggering heavily forward,
Eliot dropped into a chair and bowed his face on the table.
"Van Zandt!" exclaimed the banker.
There was no reply.
Rushing to Eliot's side, he lifted his head from the table, and it fell
again heavily. The young man's overwrought feelings had culminated in
momentary unconsciousness.
A sharp peal of the bell brought the servants rushing to the scene, but
not so soon but that Mr. Chesterton heard a gasp of terror from behind
the curtains that divided the library from a pretty little parlor.
Poor Una had crept in there for one stolen glimpse of the face of her
beloved.
The banker saw the lovely, frightened face peering around the curtain,
and said, sharply:
"Mrs. Van Zandt, I fear you have killed your husband!"
With a stifled wail, she rushed forward and flung herself on her knees
beside Eliot's unconscious form, catching his limp hands in both her
warm, trembling white ones.
"Dead! Oh, no, no, Mr. Chesterton, do not charge me with such cruelty!"
she cried, gazing with straining eyes into that pale, handsome face.
Her touch, her voice, her gaze, seemed to recall him to life, for
suddenly his eyes opened wide on that lovely face. A cry of dismay
broke from her lips, and dropping his hands, she rushed through the
curtains and disappeared just as two servants entered at the other door.
"Bring water and wine," said the banker. "This gentleman is ill."
Both disappeared at once, and Eliot Van Zandt struggled up to a sitting
posture, gazing wildly around the room.
"Una--she was here!" he murmured, faintly.
"She has gone," Mr. Chesterton answered, gravely. "Drink this wine, Van
Zandt, it will revive you."
"No; the water, please."
He swallowed a few drops, and rose to go in spite of Mr. Chesterton's
entreaties that he would stay until he was better.
"I am all right. It was but a temporary faintness. Heaven bless you for
your kindness to a miserable man, Mr. Chesterton," said Eliot, wringing
his friend's hand fervently.
Then he repossessed himself of Una's note that he had dropped on the
floor, and went out of the room with a ghastly face. Mr. Chesterton,
alarmed at his looks, followed him at a discreet distance until he
saw him enter a car that would take him straight to Beacon Hill, then
bethinking himself of an engagement he had for that evening, he hurried
back home to don evening-dress and escort his beautiful wife to a
soirée.
Returning home in the small hours, he concluded to make a confidante
of his wife and enlist her sympathies in Eliot Van Zandt's case.
"What a romantic story!" exclaimed Mrs. Chesterton. "But I always
thought there was something very interesting hidden in the past of our
gifted governess. So she is a Van Zandt--one of the oldest, proudest
names in Boston. My dear, I will speak to her in the morning, and see
if I can not untangle the strange web of fate that has been woven
around her life by that wicked Madame Lorraine."
"I knew your sympathies would be drawn to this unhappy pair,
Constance!" exclaimed the banker, fondly.
But, alas! his story had been told too late. Morning found the young
governess gone.
She had left the house during their absence, and taken her trunks with
her, flying like a thief in the night, not from pursuit, not from
shame, but from a husband's love, the deepest, fondest, most passionate
that ever thrilled a manly breast.
"I must take the veil, then he will understand that all hope is indeed
ended," she said, resolutely to herself. "I had no business returning
here. Father Quentin told me it was wrong, but in my mad yearning to
see his face, I would not listen. Now I must go back and stay there
forever. Eliot will soon forget me, for it was more pity than love
that he felt for me. When he realizes that all is irrevocably at an
end between us, he will seek his freedom that he may return to his old
love, his first love, Ida Hayes."
With the thought of her rival, all the old-time bitter jealousy rushed
over Una's heart, and she told herself that Eliot had never really
loved any one but Ida, and that he could not but rejoice some day that
fate had freed him from the incubus of Little Nobody.
"I have spoiled his life for years, but at last he will be happy,"
she said, thinking bitterly of that year in which she had lived with
Eliot, less to him, as she thought, than his sisters, or the governess
even, wearing his name because it had been given not in love, but
through an instinct of tender pity.
She was older, wiser, now than she had been before Sylvie made that
cruel revelation to her that winter night, and she chafed with shame at
remembering the position she had filled in Eliot's home--that of a wife
in name only, unloved and barely endured.
"How they must have pitied and despised me!" she thought, with hot
tears in her dark eyes as the express train rushed along through the
night. "Ah, it is better, better for us both that things fell out as
they did. I have a very jealous mind. I should never have forgotten
that he loved Ida Hayes first, that he married me for pity's sake, so
I never should have been quite sure of his heart. Ah, I wish--wish,"
with a choking sob, "that we had died together in madame's underground
prison!"
And in this wretched frame of mind, bitter and despairing, Una went
away from Boston and her husband, back to the South and the Convent of
Le Bon Berger.