THE PRICE OF A SECRET.
He went one step nearer to her and looked at her with an evil smile; his
heart was full of passion--half intense love, half furious anger.
"You thought to deceive me," he said, and the breath came like hot flame
from his lips. "You thought to blind and dupe me, but I know you now--I
have known you all along, though I could not believe the evidence of my
own senses."
He never forgot the regal grace with which she drew her slight frame to
its utmost height, the anger, the haughty pride that flashed from her
eyes.
"I do not understand you," she replied; "and I repeat my question; when
I gave orders that I should be denied to all visitors, how dare you
enter here?"
"It is late, Lady Doris," he said, "too late for that kind of thing now,
I repeat that I know you--to the rest of the world you may be Lady Doris
Studleigh, to me you are simply the girl who lived with me and ran away
from me."
She looked at him; if a glance from those proud eyes could have slain
him, he would have lain that instant dead at her feet. He continued:
"You may deny it, you may continue to carry on the same concealment, the
same deceit, but it will be all in vain; I know you, and I know you for
what you are. You can say anything you please, if you think it advisable
to waste words; I repeat that it will be in vain." She grew white, even
to the lips, as she listened to the insolent words. "I felt
sure--convinced of your identity from the very moment I saw you at the
opera," he continued. "I watched you then; I have watched you ever
since."
Her white lips opened, but all sound died away from them--he heard
nothing.
"I have admired your talent for acting," he continued; "it is a grand
one. It is ten thousand pities that you are not upon the stage; you
would be its brightest ornament. I was not wholly, but half deceived, by
your superb nonchalance; then I determined to find out the truth for
myself. I have done so."
He waited to see if she would utter one word of denial, one word of
explanation. She stood before him--pale, beautiful, silent as a marble
statue.
"I have tracked you," he said, triumphantly. "I can tell you the whole
story of your life; how you lived as a child at Brackenside; how you
carried on a pretty little love affair with your poet and gentleman,
until I saw you; how you went to Florence with me, in total ignorance of
your true origin; how on the morning I left you by the river side, some
one came from England, told you the true story of your birth, and
brought you back here. I have been to Brackenside; I am not speaking
without proof."
If she could have spoken, she would have told him that no one at
Brackenside would ever betray her; she would have liked to cast his
words back in his teeth, but the strength to speak was no longer hers.
"You thought then of being very clever. If you had never heard the true
story of your birth, you would have been content to abide with me all
the days of your life--you would have thought your lot a brilliant one.
But you were too clever, Dora; you thought to escape and to live as
though you had never heard of me. It could not be done. Did you speak?"
He might as well ask the question, for a sound that resembled no
ordinary, no human sound, came from her lips. He went on:
"Why were you not frank and honest with me, Dora?--why did you not await
my return, and tell me?--why did you not trust me? Do you know what I
should have done if you had so trusted me? I should have said that my
proposition to you had been made under a great mistake, not knowing your
true name; and I should have released you then and them from all ties
that bound you to me."
She saw her mistake then; saw what short-sighted, miserable policy hers
had been; but it was all too late.
"Surely," he continued, "you had lived with me long enough to know that I
had some semblance of a gentleman, some faint notions of honor. There
is no need to sneer, my lady; men do not reckon honor when they deal
with what you were then."
"I know it," she cried, with sudden bitterness, in a voice that had no
resemblance to her own.
"Why did you not trust me! I cannot--I shall never forgive you for the
way in which you deserted me. Had you left me one line--only one
line--telling me your true parents had claimed you, Doris, it would have
saved all this."
"I had not time."
"Because you did not wish to make it. Even suppose that, to avoid
detection, you had hurried from Florence, you might surely have sent me
a line from England; even if you could not trust me with your name and
address, you might have done that."
"I see it now. I might, nay, I should have done it. Will that admission
satisfy you?"
"There is nothing in it to satisfy me," he said, angrily; "you had no
right to desert me as you did, to treat me as you did--none in the
world. Do you know what you cost me? Do you know that I went mad over
losing you? that I searched for you day after day, month after month,
hating my life itself because you no longer formed part of it! Do you
know that the loss of you changed me from a good-tempered man into a
fiend?--can you realize that, Lady Doris Studleigh?"
"No," she replied, "I cannot."
"It is true. Fair, bright, frivolous women like you cannot realize a
man's love--they cannot even estimate it! And strange--oh! strange to
say--women like you win strong, passionate love, for which the pure and
noble of your sex seek in vain."
Alas! that she had given him the right to speak thus to her--that she
had placed herself in the power of such a man! Oh! fatal, foolish, and
wicked sin! Yet true to herself, true to her own light, frivolous
nature, it was not the bitter sin she repented so much as its discovery.
He drew nearer to her, and placed one hand on her arm.
"Do you know, Doris," he said, "that when you left me I had begun, even
then, to love you with such a passionate love that every pulse of my
heart was wrapped up in it."
She shook his hand from her as though there were contamination in his
touch.
"I did not know it. I do not believe it. You never loved me--you have
loved nothing on earth one half so dearly as you have loved yourself!"
His face grew dark with anger.
"Remembering how entirely you are in my power," he said, "I ask you, is
it wise to anger me?"
"You never loved me," she repeated; "Earle loved me, and would have died
any day to save my fair name! You never loved me, you loved yourself!"
"I repeat it, I loved you with a passion so terrible, so fierce, so
violent, it frightened me! I loved you so, that I would have lost
wealth, fortune, position--ah! life itself--for you!"
Her white lips smiled scornfully; that calm, proud, scorn drove him
beside himself.
"You have been some time in discovering it," she said.
"That is your mistake," he replied; "do you know, Doris, I swear what I
am saying is true. Do you know why I was so gay, so happy, so light of
heart on the day you left me? It was because my love had beaten down my
pride, and on that very evening I had resolved upon asking you to be my
wife."
"I do not believe it," she cried.
"It is true; I swear it on the faith and honor of a gentleman. I swear
it on the word of a man."
"I should need a stronger oath than that," she said.
"I swear it then by your own falseness, and by your own deceit; can any
oath be stronger than that? On that very evening I had resolved upon
asking you to be my wife. I was determined to make our union legal. I
loved you so that I could not live without you."
She made no reply for one minute, but looked steadily at him: then she
said:
"I do thank Heaven that I have been spared the degradation of becoming
your wife."
"Yet you were content to be my companion," he said.
Her face flushed hotly at the words.
"I have lost you, how long, Dora, how many months? Do you think my love
has grown less in that time? Do you think it has faded or grown cold. If
you imagine so, you do no justice to your own marvelous beauty; you do
no justice to your own fascination; a thousand times no! It is a burning
torrent now that carries all before it: it is a tempest that will know
no abatement--Dora, you had lost your usual shrewdness when you thought
that absence would cure such love as mine."
"My name is Lady Studleigh, not Dora," she said proudly. "Once for all,
Lord Vivianne, your love does not in the least interest me."
"You will have to take an interest in it," he replied; "I swear, for the
future, you shall know no other love."
"I will never know yours," she replied.
He laughed contemptuously.
"It is no use, Dora," he said; "you must really excuse me; I cannot help
enjoying my triumph; I would not laugh if I could help it, but, my dear
Dora, I _cannot_ help it. Did you ever see a fly in a spider's web? Did
you ever watch it struggle and fight and strive to escape, while the
spider, one could fancy, was shaking his filmy sides with laughter? Have
you ever seen that terrible phenomenon in natural history? You, my poor
Dora, are the helpless little fly, I am the spider. It is not an elegant
comparison, but it is perfectly true; you are in my power completely,
thoroughly, and nothing can take you from me."
She looked at him quite calmly, her courage was rising, now that the
first deadly shock had passed away.
"Perhaps," she said, "you will tell me what you want. Spare me any
further conversation with you; it does not interest me. Tell me, briefly
as you can, what you want."
"What do I want?" he repeated.
"Yes, just that--neither more nor less--what do you want? I own you
have me in your power, I own that you hold a secret of mine. What is to
be its price? I cannot buy your silence with money. You are a gentleman,
a man of honor, having my fair name in your power--what shall you charge
me for keeping it? I am anxious to know the price men exact for such
secrets as those. You wooed me and won me, after your own honorable
fashion--what are you going to exact now as the price of your love and
my mad folly? I was vain, foolish, untruthful, but, after all, I was an
innocent girl when you knew me first. What shall be the price of my
innocence? Oh, noble descendant of noble men--oh, noble heritor of a
noble race. Speak--let me hear!"
Her taunts stung him almost to fury; his face grew livid with rage; yet,
the more insolent she, the more deeply he loved her; the more scornful
she, the deeper and wilder grew his worship of her.
"I will tell you the price," he said; "I will make you my wife. Consent
to marry me, and I will swear to you, by heaven itself, that I will keep
your secret faithfully, loyally, until I die."
"I _cannot_ marry you," she replied; "I do not love you. I cannot help
it, if you are angry. I do not even like you. I should be most wretched
and miserable with you, for I loathe you. I will never be your wife."
"All those," he replied, slowly, "are objections that you must try to
overcome."
"What if I tell you I love some one else?" she said.
"I should pity him, really pity him, from the depths of my heart; but,
all the same, I should say _you must be my wife_!"
She longed to tell him that she loved and meant to marry Earle, but she
was afraid even to mention his name.
"I shall conquer all your objections in time," he said. "It is nothing
to me that you say you dislike me; it is even less that you say you like
another."
But he never even thought that she really liked Earle. Had she not run
away from him?