WHAT BLISS HAD SHE ONLY LOVED ME.
Barrington looked at beautiful Josephine in frank astonishment at her
vehement outburst.
Her large brown eyes were flashing, her full crimson lips pouted
enchantingly, and in her tasteful white gown she made a fairer picture
than any he had ever seen, save one that was indelibly imprinted on his
heart.
His surprised glance assured her that she had gone too far, and
catching a rose from the table, she pulled it to pieces with trembling
fingers, her lashes drooping in seeming embarrassment as she faltered:
“I beg your pardon for my childish complaint. Of course, I cannot
expect you to care for me as you did for poor Maisie. She was almost
the same as your sister--your sister, as I expected to be once, but
never can be now! You see what a jealous girl I am--wanting to be loved
best by every one!”
She threw the stripped rose from her pettishly, with a long, quivering
sigh, and Barrington smiled indulgently, as at a child, while he
answered:
“A laudable ambition, if you mold your actions according to your
wishes. The lovable must be loved.”
Josephine answered daringly:
“Why, then, did not Maisie love you?”
“I do not count myself lovable,” he returned coldly.
Josephine said not a word. She simply rolled her great eyes at him in a
way she had when doing her most effective work on the susceptible male
heart. He was not vain, but he could not pretend to misunderstand her
meaning.
He looked away from the sparkling face, with its cloud of scented
dark hair, at the distant hills in their blue haze, with the sunshine
above their misty peaks, and thought of another face--fairer, younger,
even--lost out of his life forever. Ah! if she would but have loved
him, he thought, how blessed his life would have been.
He could read the wretched little coquette before him like an open
book, and her treachery filled him with secret disgust.
But he did not betray it in the musing smile with which he turned back
to her presently, saying:
“I did not understand your saying just now, Josephine, that once you
had expected to be my sister, but never could be now.”
“Of course, you know I was once engaged to Delmar?” she faltered.
“Yes, and broke faith with him on his disinheritance--repenting your
folly afterward, as you told him just after his marriage. Do you
intend to tell me you did not mean what you said, Josephine?” cried
Barrington, with more sternness than he was aware of in his excitement.
The arch coquette cowered and hid her face in her jeweled hands,
sobbing:
“How can you be so hard on me? Of course, I meant every
word--but--but--perhaps I oughtn’t to have openly confessed it before
Maisie--only--only--I couldn’t bear his reproaches!”
“He was wrong to taunt you, and you were equally wrong to tell him the
truth when he had married another. But it is too late to take back
anything now. Among us all we drove sweet Maisie to her death with
despair and heartbreak, and Delmar is free again. So there is no reason
why you should not yet become my sister.”
“There are reasons that--that--you do not understand!” she murmured.
“You mean his disinheritance? That your parents would never consent to
your wedding a poor man. Listen, Josephine, the day you marry Delmar
you will go to him rich. My wedding-gift to you will be a check for two
hundred thousand dollars.”
She was dumb with amazement for a moment; then she rallied herself,
thinking disdainfully:
“Two hundred thousand dollars! While he is worth five millions! Bah!”
Her great eyes flashed mutinously.
“You would bribe me to marry Delmar!” she cried reproachfully.
“No, no; I would only make smooth the way to your marriage. Tell your
parents what I have told you, and they will readily consent.”
“Oh, how noble you are!” she murmured admiringly.
“Then I have made you happy, Josephine?”
No answer but a long, tremulous, heart-broken sigh.
He said questioningly:
“Are you afraid that Delmar will not forgive you--will not come back to
you gladly?”
“It is not that--oh, no!” she sighed with down-dropped lashes.
“Was my offer too small for your expectations?”
“How can you think so? You are most generous,” with a tender, grateful
glance.
“Then I am all at sea. I wished to make you happy, but I cannot find
the way.”
Josephine turned her head aside, and faltered:
“I am ashamed to tell you the truth. You--will--think me--fickle! And
that would break my heart.”
He said to himself impatiently:
“What is the girl hinting at? I cannot imagine, and I vow I will not
ask the little torment another question!”
Josephine felt the change in the air, and looked up at his bared face,
so thin and pale from recent illness. In fancy she contrasted it with
Delmar’s dark, brilliant beauty, to Byrd’s great disadvantage.
But she saw that he would not help her out with any more questions, so
she sighed:
“I will tell you the truth if you hate me for it, for I cannot
bear to seem deceitful to one who has my happiness so greatly
at heart. I--I--can never marry Delmar now--not if he had fifty
millions--because, since he went away, I find I do not love him any
longer.”
The lie was out. How strange that it did not sear her beautiful, rosy
lips!
She waited coweringly for his sentence, her perjured lips trembling as
he exclaimed:
“That is very strange!”
“Do you think so? But I cannot help it. Think how badly he acted,
deceiving poor Maisie into marrying him. She was so sure of his love,
poor, injured girl. It was not manly to marry her for spite, was it,
Mr. Barrington?” anxiously.
“No, it was not manly,” he agreed, and Josephine continued eloquently:
“He did wrong, although, of course, one must consider the provocation.
It is not for me to throw stones; I was not blameless myself,
but--but--somehow, since poor Maisie died I cannot help but despise
him, and wonder why I ever fancied I was in love with him. It was only
a fancy for a pair of bright eyes, I’m sure now, for lately he seems
so weak, so shallow, so immature--a dozen years too young for me! Did
you know I am quite a year older than Delmar, sir? Yes, it is true; I’m
twenty-two--and--and--rather than marry a younger man I’d really prefer
one ten or twelve years older.”
He did not nibble at the tempting bait of flattery as she hoped,
but gazed at her in astonishment, wondering at her self-confidence,
thinking so transparently to deceive him.
She stole a glance at him under her lowered lids, but she could not
read his thoughts, as he did hers without an effort.
“You are angry with me for my frankness!” she cried resentfully.
“Not angry; oh, no, Josephine!”
“But--but--why did you draw your brows together in that frown that
frightens me so?” she persisted.
“I was merely thinking--I am sorry I frightened you.”
“Please tell me what you were thinking?” coaxingly.
“Only about the strangeness of women--wondering if they really have any
hearts,” he replied cynically.
“I wish you could look into mine, and you would soon find out, but I
could never bare its secrets before your cold eyes.”
To her amazement and anger, the invalid suddenly lost his temper, and
exclaimed curtly:
“Josephine, go to my aunt, do, for the rest of the day! I’m tired; I
want to be alone!”
She sprang up, with rage in her heart and tears in her eyes, sobbing
resentfully:
“Tired of me! Oh how rude, how unkind! When I have tried so hard to
amuse your lonely hours!”
Barrington gave a savage, sarcastic laugh.
“You have amused me very much indeed, thank you, for the time. But now
I am tired of your little fibs and coquetries, and I can see through
you as plainly as if you were glass. You are not twenty-two at all,
Josephine; only twenty! I can remember the day you were born, and
Delmar was a year old then. Don’t think I should like you any better
for being almost as old as I am. I loved Maisie better than my own
life, and she was barely eighteen, so don’t cherish impossible hopes,
and don’t deny again that you love Delmar. I don’t believe you, and I
feel certain that you will eventually take him, with my wedding-gift
thrown in the balance to make smooth sailing!”
She lowered her lids, to hide their murderous gleam of hate, and rage
held her speechless before him for a minute, before cunning came to her
aid, and she half-sobbed reproachfully:
“You despise my love; you mock at it! You are cruel--unmanly!”
With the words, she darted from the room, but outside she shook her
small clenched fist at the door, hissing under her breath:
“I hate you, hate you, hate you! I should like to stick a knife in your
heart, you brute! I wish you were dead, so that Del and I could get
all your money and be happy!”
Too bitterly humiliated, at her failure to marry five millions, to meet
Mrs. French, she hurried home, while Barrington, at first heated and
angry, recovered himself presently, and said to himself with a little
laugh:
“She was right. I was unpardonably rude, but the little cat irritated
me with her bold scheme to marry me, while her heart, I know, is still
my brother’s. Then, too, my illness has unstrung my temper. Well, well,
it will be easy to make up the quarrel, anyhow, and then she will
understand, even if she follows me to the White Sulphur Springs, that
I’m not in the market for a heartless coquette!”