Twenty-four hours later it was night in Jacksonville--night, all lovely
with countless stars and a full October moon.
“The light of many stars
Quivered in tremulous softness on the air,
And the night breeze was singing here and there.”
Before the gates of a palatial home, whose white walls glimmered like
a fairy palace through the dark-green shrubberies of the extensive
grounds, stood a line of carriages. The mistress of that Eden-like
home had been holding her weekly reception--not a garish ball or a
weary crush of uncongenial people, but an assemblage of choice spirits,
her most intimate friends, only fifty people all told; and now on the
stroke of midnight, after two hours most charmingly spent, they were
decorously taking their departure.
The echo of their gay voices came floating out on the orange-perfumed
air as they lingered on the pillared portico.
“Oh, Mrs. de Vere, you must be proud of your husband. Such a hero! They
say he saved two lives!”
“I am proud of him!” the musical voice of the fair hostess replied,
with a note of tenderness breaking through its proud ring; then
she bowed good-night to her friends and went back to the deserted
drawing-room, around whose door hovered sleepy servants anxious to put
out the lights, shut up the house and retire.
Their proud mistress paid no attention to them. She pushed to the door,
and began to walk slowly up and down the floor, the rich Turkish carpet
giving back no echo to the fall of her silken slippers.
A woman in the early prime of her rich beauty, thirty-three years old,
but looking barely twenty-five--beauty is always young--tall, with a
magnificent figure draped in black lace that set off with its somber
elegance her peculiar type of beauty.
Red hair--rich, dusky auburn red, with soft natural waves in it from
where it was drawn simply back from its parting on the low white
brow to the loose coil at the back of the shapely head; the clear,
colorless, dazzling skin that goes with such fiery locks; eyes of
sparkling reddish hazel with full, white lids and long, curled lashes;
a Grecian nose long enough to indicate decided characteristics; a
rather large mouth, with thin red lips that could express cruelty when
they chose, but whose smile could dazzle and betray--such she stood
in her somber garb, with diamonds flashing on her bare white arms and
throat, looking the siren that she was by right of beauty, passion
and power, yet all inconsistency, capable of heights and depths, and
predominated by something subtle and tigerish in her animal nature.
“Will he come to-night?” she muttered, half bitterly, as she paced from
one end to the other of the splendid room. “It is more than two weeks
since I came to our winter home in Jacksonville. Why did he wish to
linger, unless it was to be rid of me, to be from his chains, as no
doubt he calls them in his secret heart? What has he been doing all
this time? I will not believe it was business, as he writes. Had he
loved me as he pretends, he would have come with me; he--”
The door opened quickly, arresting the querulous complaint. She turned
and saw her husband coming toward her with an eager face, and his name
fell from her lips in a tone of mingled reproach and rapture:
“Norman!”
“Camille!” he answered, in a deep voice; and as he paused by her
side his dark eyes swept the dazzling face searchingly, and somewhat
plaintively, as if doubtful of a welcome.
But she flung herself upon his breast, and her round, white arms
clasped his neck with passionate _abandon_.
His momentary doubt dispelled, he embraced her with an ardor equaling
her own, and pressed kiss after kiss on her upturned face.
“You are glad to see me again, Camille,” he murmured, happily. “Ah!
this pays for the dreary days of absence from your side.”
Mrs. de Vere half withdrew herself at those words from her husband’s
arms, and looking up at him, cried out, reproachfully.
“If you had loved me you would not have stayed so long!”
“Did you miss me, darling?”
She pouted mutinously as a school-girl for an instant, then, as if
impelled to the truth in spite of herself, hung her graceful head and
murmured, bashfully:
“Yes--bitterly.”
Norman de Vere’s dark eyes beamed with a sort of loving triumph as he
answered:
“It was to win this sweet confession that I stayed behind. I know that
in your heart you love me well, but when I am with you constantly you
madden me with your caprices and humors, your unfounded jealousies
and wounding suspicions. Why, you never give me a loving word or an
involuntary caress, and you degrade yourself and me with such cruel
charges as I can scarcely endure. But when I am away from you, you
judge me more kindly, perhaps, and so I find an intoxicating welcome
awaiting me. It was no business that detained me, my darling. Maddened
by your coldness and distain, I remained away from you, hoping you
would think more kindly of me and meet me with just this charming
welcome,” drawing her again into his arms and kissing the curved red
lips with eager passion.
She returned his kisses ardently, murmuring the while:
“You were cruel--I love you so--I can not bear you out of my sight! I
will not bear it--your taming me by so cruel an absence--as if I were a
real shrew!”
“I will never do so again--that is--if you will always be like this,”
he answered, feasting his eager eyes on the rare beauty of the
face that lay against his breast, his tone almost pleading in its
earnestness.
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes with a shadowed gaze.
“How can I promise you?” she asked, half resentfully, half sadly.
“You do not make due allowance for me, Norman; yet you know well the
miserable doubt of your love that turns me sometimes into a fury. How
can I be quite, quite sure of your heart, remembering, as I do every
hour of my life, that I am quite thirteen years older than you, and
that the royal dower my father gave me might have tempted many a man to
forget that disparity.”
There was sudden, swift anguish in his face and voice, bitter pain and
humiliation in the tone with which he cried:
“Oh, my love, that old complaint again--and so soon, so cruelly soon!
You do injustice to yourself and your own charms. It was yourself that
won me, not your splendid dowry. For those few years between us, bah! I
never remember them unless you remind me. If I had been Cophetua and
you the beggar maid, I should have implored you to share my throne.”
“But you were only a boy when you married me--barely twenty. By and by
your fancy will change--you will repent.”
“Hush! you will be in hysterics presently,” he said, warningly. “Come
with me, darling. You will forget these morbid fancies when you see the
sweet little pet I have brought you.”
He drew her into a small anteroom adjoining, and she saw on a velvet
sofa, fast asleep, a golden-haired little fairy.
“It is a little child I rescued from the wrecked train,” he said. “I
brought her home with me until I could find her friends.”
To his amazement, her thin red lips began to curl into the cruelest
sneer.
“Are you displeased, Camille?” he asked, anxiously. “Why, I thought any
woman would be delighted with so lovely a pet. I assure you she will
win your heart as soon as you look into her sunny blue eyes.”
She flung off his caressing hand as if it were a serpent, and with
blazing eyes, hissed out:
“A likely tale! Rescued from the wreck--ha! ha!”
“My God, Camille, what do you mean by your scorn?” he cried, aghast.
She turned on him like a beautiful tigress.
“I mean, Norman de Vere, that you can not deceive me with such a
trumped-up tale! How dare you, dare you, think to bring home your
base-born brat, issue of some shameless clandestine affair, to the
shelter of this honest roof?”