The gay season was just beginning at the fashionable hotel where the
De Veres had taken rooms, and Norman’s wife proved a great acquisition
to the social circle. Scores of Northerners were arriving every day,
fleeing from wintery blasts to the blue skies and warm airs of the
Southland, and in the brilliant coterie of fashion and intellect
combined she became at once a leader by right of her royal dower of
wealth, beauty, and fascination.
And her husband?
He veered back and forth between Verelands and his capricious wife.
All the time that he could snatch from the exacting Camille was spent
with his mother and the little child whose disease had assumed such a
malignant form, and whose life was wavering in a balance so evenly cast
that at any moment it might drop her into the yawning grave.
“Is it not sad, poor little one! to have been saved from the wrecked
train and the perils of the river, only to die like this?” Norman’s
mother said to him, with tears in her eyes, one day as they hovered
over the little couch where Sweetheart lay muttering in delirium, her
skin covered with patches of the scarlet eruption, her pretty golden
curls cropped short by the doctor’s orders, her heavy blue eyes half
shut and recognizing no one--strange contrast to the lovely, coquettish
little fairy whose baby wiles had won their way to the young man’s
heart.
“Mother!” he cried out, in a pained, incredulous tone, and she
answered, sadly:
“She is very ill, Norman. It is the malignant type of fever, and it
is but very seldom any one recovers from it. Doctor Hall is doing his
best, I know, but from his face to-day I do not believe he has much
hope.”
His handsome face grew pale, and by the pang that pierced his heart he
realized how dear the child had grown to him--dear as a little sister.
From his stricken heart there arose a silent prayer:
“Dear Lord, spare this sweet little life. Amen!”
“You have heard nothing of her friends yet, Norman?”
“Nothing,” he answered, huskily; then stood silent, looking down at
the poor little creature, who in her delirium was trying to sing her
favorite song, but the sweet loving words rose hoarse and tuneless from
the sore and swollen throat.
“It is very strange that we can hear nothing of her friends,” Mrs. de
Vere said, thoughtfully. “Poor little darling! she will have to lie in
an unnamed grave.”
“Don’t, mother--you hurt me,” the young man said, pleadingly.
He was scarcely more than a boy, and could not control his emotion.
With a long, deep sigh he added:
“I have so longed that she should live to be a dear little sister to
me. You know, mother, how I always wished for a sister’s love.”
“I thought you had got over that--since you married,” she said, with
some uneasiness.
Somehow the thought of his fondness for Sweetheart was not pleasant to
his mother. There hung over her always the dread of Camille’s jealous
anger. She said to herself:
“Foolish boy! He does not understand his wife, else he would not
display such fondness for the child she hates.”
But she dared not breathe her thoughts aloud, lest he should reproach
her for her share in his marriage. Her cue was silence.
He did not answer her half-questioning words save by a long, deep sigh,
and presently he went away from the darkened room and the suffering
child back to his beautiful wife, who was so deep in a flirtation
with a new-comer at the hotel that she barely nodded to Norman, and
did not think it worth her while to ask after the welfare of the sick
child. The only news she would have cared to hear would have been that
Sweetheart was dead.
The proud, passionate, undisciplined nature was bent now on punishing
Norman for every jealous pang she had suffered over innocent Little
Sweetheart. To wound him with her indifference, to torture him by the
smiles she gave to others, in this she found a bitter balm for the
indignity she felt she had suffered at his hands when he had taken
Sweetheart’s part against her--his wife.
He sat apart with sad eyes and watched the beautiful, vivid creature
as she coquetted with the flattered Englishman whose admiration was
plainly written on his face, and wondered if it could be true that she
really loved him, her boy-husband, or had she wearied of him long ago?
Did she chafe at the fetters that bound their two lives in one?
“I believe that in her heart she despises me; that she believes me a
miserable fortune-hunter, who loves her gold more than her charms,”
he said to himself, miserably, with a pang of shame so great that it
seemed to him he could almost have died to assure her of his innocence
of all mercenary designs upon her fortune.
She stole furtive glances at him, and she knew by his pale, stern face
that he was suffering intensely. Her beautiful lips curled into a smile
of triumph. Had she not vowed to pay him back?
“Let him suffer,” she said to herself, with cruel firmness; but by and
by, when a beautiful young girl sat down near Norman and began to talk
to him, she grew restless and ill at ease. She did not want him to be
consoled, so she soon found a pretext for dismissing her companion and
joining her husband and the fair girl who seemed to find such pleasure
in his company.
The young girl--an heiress from New York--smiled mischievously as Mrs.
de Vere came near. Her jealousy of her young husband was an open secret.
“Mrs. de Vere, I was just telling your husband that we are going to
have a real live lord here to-night,” she said, vivaciously.
“Indeed, Miss Spaulding? Why, how delightful! What is his name?”
exclaimed the lady, pretending great interest in the subject.
“He is Lord Stuart, and is said to possess vast estates in England.
He has engaged a suite of rooms here for a month, the landlord says.
All the girls are in ecstasies! There will be great fun seeing them
pullings caps for him, won’t there? But of course I shall be as bad as
any!” said Miss Spaulding, candidly.
Mrs. de Vere made up her mind that she would be before any of those
silly girls in winning the admiration of the titled Englishman. She
would show Norman de Vere how she could be adored by others. It would
teach him a needed lesson. When he began to realize that she could be
happy in the society of other men, his jealousy would be aroused--he
would be more careful how he offended her, lest he should lose her love.
She made her toilet with the greatest care for the ball-room that
night. Her dress was of dead-white silk; her ornaments were of emeralds
set in pearls. It was very effective, as she meant it should be. Every
one gazed at her admiringly as she swept gracefully into the ball-room,
leaning on the arm of her handsome husband, and carrying in her hand
the superb bouquet of white camellias he had brought her from Verelands
that day. There was a glow on her smooth cheek and a fire in her hazel
eyes, brought there by the praises he had just been whispering in her
ear.
Lord Stuart was there, looking on with the rest--a rather
common-looking man after all, and fifty if he was a day old. But he was
dressed in the extreme of English dude fashion, and was attracting his
full share of attention from title-hunters, Miss Spaulding foremost
among them, as she had declared she would be.
His lordship started with surprise and admiration when he saw Camille
de Vere in all her stately beauty.
“What a magnificent beauty!” he exclaimed, in some excitement; and it
was not long before he managed to secure an introduction to Mrs. de
Vere.
“Will you dance with me?” he asked; and she lifted her eyes and looked
at him with a puzzled gaze.
His voice sounded strangely familiar.
“But I certainly can not have met him before,” she decided; and she
acceded to his request with a winning smile.
“You have been abroad, Mrs. de Vere?” he asked, in a pause of the dance.
“Several times,” she replied; and she wondered to herself if she had
ever met him before.
Certainly there was something strangely familiar to her in his voice
and eyes.
But she did not intimate to him that such was the fact. Something
deterred her, for Camille de Vere shrunk from the memory of one past
episode in her life. If Lord Stuart belonged to that time, she would
not dare recall it to his mind.
“But I need not be afraid. It is so long ago, and all is so different
now. No one would know me for the same,” she said to herself, with a
sensation of keen relief, though her hands turned icy cold with the
bare memory of that never-to-be-forgotten time.