“I WILL NEVER FORGIVE HER.”
“Mrs. Strangemore, I think yours is the most romantic marriage I ever
heard of. You were the merest child, weren’t you?” said Virgie Mason,
curiously.
The gentlemen were lingering over their cigars, and the ladies had
gone back to the parlor. Virgie, a pretty and very voluble young lady,
started the after-dinner conversation with the above remark.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” Miss Drusilla snapped to
herself. “Now, what under heaven does that chatterbox want to discuss
Nina’s marriage for? And before that hateful St. Alban’s woman, too!”
She hoped that Nina would, as _she_ mentally phased it, “shut her up;”
but the girl only answered, in a dreamy sort of way:
“Yes, I was only a child--barely thirteen years old.”
Sibyl St. Alban flashed her a look of hate under her drooping lids.
Only eighteen, while she was twenty-six.
“Were you very much impressed with the importance of your
position--married, although but a child in years?” continued
inquisitive Virgie, while her bosom friend, Miss Starr, tried to
telegraph her a warning glance, but failed utterly, because Virgie’s
grey eyes were fixed admiringly on Nina’s agitated face, as she
answered, slowly:
“I was very much impressed by the dying words of Talbot’s mother
addressed to me. I have never forgotten one single word.”
“They were solemn words, perhaps,” the girl said, with irrepressible
curiosity.
“Yes,” her hostess answered. “Would you like to hear them? These were
the words she said:”
She looked straight into Sibyl St. Alban’s face as she repeated:
“‘Talbot is your husband now, my darling. You will belong to him
always, and he to you. Promise me now that you will give him all
your love and all your life, that you will always try to secure his
happiness.’”
The blue-eyed beauty flashed her a furtive look of defiance, but her
heart sank with fear. It seemed to her that Nina had already penetrated
her secret, and that she was appealing to the dead against her.
“How sweet! how romantic!” said Miss Starr’s gentle voice.
“You promised her, I know,” said Virgie, with that confidence with
which one young, noble heart reads another.
“Yes, I promised her,” Nina answered, and suddenly at the thought of
all the wasted love and trust she had lavished on Talbot Strangemore a
pulse in her heart seemed to snap asunder--her bitter pride seemed to
fail her--she broke down before them all, and hiding her face in her
hands, sobbed passionately.
“Oh, I was too thoughtless, making you talk about those long past
things; I am so sorry! Do forgive me dear Mrs. Strangemore,” cried
Virgie, full of compunction.
Miss Drusilla scowled at the penitent girl.
“Let her alone, please, she is not used to being so badgered,” she
cried, testily. “Nina, my dear, let me take you to your room until you
feel better--or let me call Talbot.”
“Not for worlds,” shivered the girl, dashing the tear-drops from her
eyes, and turning them full of superb wrath upon Sibyl St. Alban. “Why
should you call him to my side to comfort me?” she flashed. “He is
not mine, no, not even though God and his mother gave him to me! He
belongs to that woman there, who this evening put her arms around him
and rested her head on his breast. Do not look at me so strangely, all
of you, I know all that you thought was hidden from me! Aunt Drusilla,
I heard all that Talbot confided to you, yesterday. I know that Talbot
Strangemore is my husband in name only, for this woman here who cast
him aside when he was a boy to marry a richer man, has thrown her
fetters around him again. She is cruel, heartless, shameless, for she
kept him from me all the time while I was waiting for him and loving
him so truly. She is false and wicked and I hate her for what she has
done--”
“Nina, hush, dear!” Miss Drusilla implored.
“I will not hush!” the girl raved, madly, “she is a wicked woman, and I
pray God to punish her for her sin. I will never forgive her for what
she has done by the power of her cruel beauty. I--”
She looked up, saw Talbot Strangemore gazing at her in wonder and
dismay from the open door-way and with an inarticulate moan of shame,
she fell forward senseless and apparently lifeless, at Miss Drusilla’s
feet.