Camille began to tremble with nervous excitement when she beheld the
man she had wronged so cruelly, but she rose immediately and made a
step toward him, crying out in a tone that was half pleading, half
defiant:
“Norman, I have come back, you see. I could not bear my life away from
you any longer.”
He clutched the back of a chair for support, and stood like a statue
gazing at her with dark, despairing eyes, dazed by the suddenness of
the blow that had fallen upon him. This was Camille, he knew, although
more than four years ago he had gazed on her dead face, as he thought,
and looked down upon a new-made grave where he believed she slept in
peace after her stormy life.
He realized now that he had been fooled, duped--that a clever plot
had been devised to ward off the divorce with which he had threatened
Camille. She was here again, intent on dashing from his lips the cup of
happiness--eager to make of his life a hell equal to that of her own.
For a moment he could not speak. A strong despair seized upon him; he
could only stand and stare in abhorrence and disgust at the two women
before him.
Camille waited a moment, then moved a little nearer to him. Her hazel
eyes began to glow with passion, and her old alluring beauty seemed to
return in the tender smile that parted the rich red lips. Her white
plush dress, falling in long, straight lines about her and trailing far
behind upon the floor, lent her a statuesque grace as she extended her
round, white arms with a yearning cry:
“Oh, Norman, say that you are glad to have me back! You loved me once,
and the old love can not all be gone. You must have felt a pang when
you thought me dead, knowing how madly I had loved you in the old days
when you loved me, too. Oh, forgive the past! I have suffered so much I
have surely atoned for everything. Oh, pity me--love me--take me back
to your heart!”
When she advanced toward him, he recoiled in disgust, when she flung
herself on her knees and clasped his feet in her mad longing to regain
her old power over him, he spurned her firmly though not rudely, and
made a gesture to Finette.
“Take her away!”
“Monsieur, you are cruel!” the maid cried, malevolently.
“Obey me!” he repeated, sternly; and the fire in his eyes cowed her so
that she dared not refuse. She bent over Camille, who was taking refuge
in hysterics as usual, and putting her arms about her, drew her gently
to a sofa, begging her to be calm.
Camille lay still for a moment, her hand over her eyes, breathing
heavily, and Norman turned to Finette.
“Fiend!” he said, hoarsely, “you have been the prime mover in this
hellish plot, by which I was made to believe yonder woman dead. But
you shall no longer escape punishment for your wickedness. I will
denounce you both to the authorities, and you will find that Nemesis
has overtaken your wrong-doing at last!”
Finette looked at him, a little startled by the threat, but answered,
recklessly:
“I have done no more than my mistress bid me. Her will has always been
my law.”
“Do not think to place her between us as a shield for your wickedness,
cowardly wretch! I shall spare neither of you now, and my vengeance
will recoil in most terrible fashion upon your heads!”
A stifled shriek came from the sofa. Camille glared in fury at him.
“You can not divorce me!” she cried, exultantly. “You have no cause. I
can prove by Finette that I have been willing and anxious to return to
you ever since you sent me away, but you would not permit it. I will
fight the application for divorce every step. I will hold you apart
forever from the doll-faced girl that stole your heart from me!”
She laughed aloud at the spasm of bitter agony that convulsed his
features at the thought of Sweetheart and of all the woe this fiendish
woman had brought on her and little Alan, her darling. At the echo of
her fiendish merriment the last vestige of pity faded from his heart
and left in its place only a keen thirst for revenge upon the demoniac
creature who had so cruelly desolated his life even while with the most
noble forbearance he had kept his lips sealed upon the hideous secret
of her crime.
He glanced at Finette, who stood apart, angry, yet alarmed in spite of
herself at his strange threats; then he answered Camille in low, hoarse
accents of determination:
“I shall make no application for a divorce. The dark secret of your
past, which I have mercifully kept so long, shall now be given to the
world, and to the verdict of a jury I look for final release from the
fetters that cursed my boyhood and manhood--the fetters of a mature
siren whose smiles hid a shameful past. But the veil shall be torn
away at last, and the world shall know you as you are, murderess! The
vengeance I scorned to take for myself, I take for my outraged wife and
child!”
Camille cowered under the flash of his eyes, but she did not yet
believe he would betray her crime to the world.
“Wife and child!” she uttered, scornfully; and some epithets fell from
her lips that made him turn deathly white with fury.
“Were you a man, you should not live to repeat those words!” he warned
her, bitterly; and then he turned to Finette, who, ever since the
utterance of that word murderess by his lips, had stood quaking with
fear and astonishment. “Where are they--my wife and child?” he asked,
sternly.
“They went away the morning after we came,” sullenly.
“After you two had poured your poisonous story into her ears?”
“After my mistress had told her the plain truth--that you never loved
her, and only married her to quiet the scandalous story that she was
your illegitimate child!” defiantly.
“My God!” he groaned, and for a minute she feared he would murder her,
so terrible was his aspect.
But he controlled himself with an effort, and asked:
“Where did they go?”
“I do not know.”
“But my mother accompanied them?” he went on.
“They went alone. Mrs. de Vere was not here when we came. She has never
returned.”
“And the fraudulent telegram that summoned me to New York?” he said,
beginning now to understand the whole diabolical plan.
“I sent it,” Camille answered, lifting her head with a gesture of
triumph. “I planned everything. I got you out of the way so that I
would have no trouble in getting the girl’s ear. After she heard all I
had to tell, she was glad to go. I told her I had come to stay, as I
mean to do. I shall never allow you to drive me from Verelands again.”
“I shall leave you in full possession for a short time,” he replied,
with so strange and meaning a smile that she trembled in spite of her
bravado.
“But he would not dare,” she thought, uneasily.
“If you will tell me now what device you used to lure my mother away
from her home that night, I will go in search of her at once and leave
you to the enjoyment of your triumph,” he said, icily.
“I got Nance to send for her to come to her death-bed. With all an
old woman’s curiosity, she went, and once there she fell sick and had
to remain a few days to recuperate,” Camille answered, with heartless
mirth.
Her last _coup_ had failed. He despised her as heartily as ever; he
would never be lured by her siren wiles again. Her love turned at last
to hate. She became reckless.
“I have triumphed over you completely!” she cried out, wildly. “You
have forever lost the girl for whose love you deserted me. You will
never see her face again. Doubtless she and her nameless brat are at
this moment lying at the bottom of the river!”
He did not look back at her, for he was already crossing the threshold;
but with that awful taunt ringing in his ears he staggered from her
presence, leaving her to the mingled sweet and bitter of her triumph
and defeat.
Camille flung her arms over her head with a piercing shriek of rage
that died into silence a minute later, for she had grown rigid and
unconscious. It required all Finette’s art to bring her out of that
long, death-like swoon.
She was lying, white and exhausted, when Finette bent over her with
menacing eyes.
“He called you murderess. What did he mean?” she asked, sharply.
Camille cowered, and protested that the maid had not understood Norman;
he had uttered no such word.
“I do not believe you. I heard him distinctly. Come, I thought I knew
the worst of you, but I did not believe you were as bad as that. I
understand much now that used to puzzle me. I have a mind to leave you
forever.”
“‘Rats always desert a sinking ship!’” Camille quoted, scornfully.
“And very sensible in them, too,” Finette muttered. She rose suddenly
to her feet. “I’ll follow their example, and let you go to the gallows
by yourself, miladi,” she said, heartlessly.
But Camille clutched her skirts with a shriek, as she turned to go.
“Stay with me, Finette, and I will make you rich,” she cried,
pleadingly. “You shall have another one of those uncut gems--that great
emerald that cost me many thousands. Only stay with me! You are the
only friend I have in the wide world!” hysterically.
“You may thank your own folly for that,” the maid said, bluntly. “You
are a she-devil, if ever I saw one, and I don’t know as even that
emerald will tempt me to stay long with you unless you try to be more
agreeable,” insolently.