Lord Stuart went up to Norman de Vere, and said gravely:
“Do you understand what I have been saying?”
“I have heard every word,” Norman answered; but he had a dazed look, as
if his joy was too sudden and too great for comprehension.
Lord Stuart gravely said:
“When you married the woman who called herself Miss Acton, she had a
husband already living, so her marriage to you was void in law, and
your marriage with my niece was, therefore, lawful. Sweetheart is your
wife still, and your boy has no stain on his name to prevent him from
inheriting honors from an ancestry that was noble on both sides.”
“My God, it is true; I thank Thee!” Norman cried, fervently.
He was hastening toward Sweetheart, but when he saw her resting with
her golden head on her mother’s breast, he drew back, feeling that
the scene was too holy and sacred to be disturbed even by a husband’s
yearning love.
“You understand now, Norman, that I was moved by interest for yourself
when I let you think you had cause to be jealous of me. I did not want
to betray her sin if I could avoid it, but I did not mean that you
should ever live with her again,” Lord Stuart added.
Norman stood perfectly silent. He said to himself that now he need
never betray what he knew of Camille’s sin. He was glad of it. The
man’s noble heart was fain to shield her for the old love’s sake.
Retribution had overtaken her in her guilty, shameless career. Needless
for him to lift his hand to cast a single stone. She was crouching in
her chair, terrified and shame-stricken for once, forgetting all her
passionate defiance, livid with the thought that Lord Stuart knew all
her sin, all her shame. Oh, why had she not taken his kind advice long
ago? Why had she brazened it out like this?
“What are they going to do with me, Finette?” she asked, in a hollow,
frightened tone.
“Put you in prison, I suppose. I am sure you deserve it,” was the
sullen reply.
Lord Stuart heard the faltering question and the insolent reply. He
turned to Camille.
“I think you will go quietly away, so that the law will not touch you.
Am I right?” he said.
“Yes, I will go,” she said, with a shudder. “Come, Finette, you must
pack my things.”
She dragged herself up from her chair and made an unsteady movement
toward the door, cowed at last by the fate that lowered above her
head. To be shut up alone in prison, away from Finette, the only
friend she had left on earth; to see night and day the mocking face of
her murdered husband grinning in the awful solitude--why, it was too
horrible to contemplate. She was ready to crawl in the dust at Lord
Stuart’s feet to avoid her threatening fate.
“I will go,” she muttered, abjectly again, as she strove to move; but
just then she caught sight of something that still had power to turn
the blood in her veins to liquid fire.
Thea had lifted her golden head at last from her mother’s breast, and
Norman, who had watched most eagerly for that moment, had hastened to
infold his darling in his yearning arms.
Camille’s abject submission gave way at that torturing sight. She
forgot everything but her rage at the reunion of those two she had
tried most eagerly and wickedly to put asunder. She threw up her arms,
and, with maddening shrieks, fell writhing upon the floor.
Dr. Hinton hastened to her assistance, and said, a minute later:
“It is an attack of hysteria. I think, if you will all adjourn to the
library, I can assist her maid to bring her around quicker.”
They went gladly enough, and presently Camille was far enough recovered
to go upstairs to dress for her final departure from Verelands.