"Vera, darling, Mr. Noble is in the library, and desires a private
interview with you. Here is his card. Shall I say that you will receive
him?"
It is several days after Mrs. Vernon's party, and Lady Clive comes
suddenly into the pink-hung _boudoir_ where the young countess is
listlessly reclining on a satin sofa with her white arms thrown up
carelessly above her head.
She looks like some beautiful picture, though her cheek is pale, her
lips sad, and slight, dark shadows are visible beneath her melancholy
eyes. All her beautiful dark-golden hair is arranged in a rich,
picturesque fashion on top of her head, and a few loose, curling
tendrils wander lovingly over the broad, white, polished forehead, on
which the slender, straight, black brows are so delicately outlined.
She wears an exquisite morning-dress of white muslin, profusely
trimmed with rich lace, and a rose-colored ribbon binds her slender
waist.
She starts up with a frightened cry at the words of Lady Clive.
"I will not see him! I will not exchange even one poor word with
him! How dare he have the audacity to come here?" she pants, growing
paler still with anger, and stamping her slippered foot on the bit of
pasteboard which she has cast indignantly upon the floor.
Lady Clive waits until her wrath has somewhat spent itself on the
innocent card, then argues, gently:
"I know it will be painful to you, Vera, but might it not be better,
just once, to receive him, and find out his business? You will
then know what course he means to adopt, and can govern yourself
accordingly."
Lady Vera pauses, irresolute. Her bosom heaves with quick, indignant
sighs, her dark eyes flash.
"You advise me to receive him--this man whom I hate and despise, Lady
Clive?" she says, wonderingly.
"For just once, Vera. And only _now_ that you may learn his intentions
and be on your guard against his machinations. After this time my doors
shall be closed against him as against a pestilence. But you need not
take my advice against your will, dear; use your own pleasure."
"You do not know how I dread to enter his presence," the girl cries,
with a shudder.
"Decline to see him, then," Lady Clive advises.
"No, I will bear it this once. I will receive him this time, but after
this, _never_!" Lady Vera answers, after a moment of painful thought.
"You decide well," Lady Clive comments, approvingly.
"He is in the library, you say," Lady Vera asks, with her hand upon the
door.
"Yes. Shall I accompany you, my dear, if you dread to go alone?"
"I am not afraid of Leslie Noble," the fair young countess answers,
dauntlessly. "I will face him alone."
She moves along the corridor with a free, proud step, glides down the
stairs, and flings open the library door with an unfaltering hand, and
her beautiful head held proudly, like a queen's, with defiance in her
dark and flashing eyes.
He is waiting for her there in the soft, semi-twilight of the luxurious
room, tall, and dark, and handsome, with eager admiration in his eyes
as they fall upon the lovely, queenly girl crowned with the dusky gold
of her luxuriant tresses.
She comes into the room, and he bows low and courteously before the
fair girl, who, but a few nights ago claimed him as her husband, but
she does not even bend that haughty head.
"Why are you here?" she asks, with scant courtesy and freezing contempt.
"To claim my wife," is the answer that rises impetuously to his lips,
but he restrains himself, feeling that so abrupt an avowal would be
poor policy in the face of her raging scorn.
"Lady Fairvale, surely you expected me to call after all that passed
_that_ night," he answers, in a low, smooth, deprecating voice, fixing
his soft, dark eyes pleadingly on her proud face.
"No, I did _not_ expect you to call," she flashes back scornfully.
"What can you possibly want of me? Did you not hear me say that night
that I scorned and hated you? Why, then, do you presume to intrude
yourself upon me?"
"I bring you news, my fair lady," he answers, still calmly and gently,
as if not resenting her scorn. "I have cabled to Washington, and
yesterday I received a reply."
"A reply," she echoes, faintly, and for a moment there is silence,
while he regards her with eager admiration, noting every graceful,
womanly charm so becomingly enhanced by the beautiful, white
morning-dress. After that interval he speaks.
"Yes, I have received my reply," he answers; "you were right, Lady
Fairvale, though God knows what strange mystery lies around your
supposed death and your rescue from the grave. But they have opened the
coffin in which I swear I beheld Vera Campbell Noble buried, and--_it
is empty_. I can no longer doubt that you are, indeed, my wife."
She stares at him with whitened lips, and a shudder of horror chills
her heart. Such truth is stamped upon his face that it seems impossible
to doubt. Yet she asks herself, with little, awsome chills creeping
over all her frame, is it possible that she, Vera, has actually lain in
the gloom and darkness of the grave? Has that warm, throbbing flesh,
instinct with life and vitality, been closed around with the blackness
of the coffin? Has the black earth been heaped upon her living form?
What fearful mystery is this?
"Tell me," she says, almost piteously, "is it true that Vera Campbell
died and was buried? Will you answer it?"
His face expresses the most honest surprise.
"Are you Vera Campbell, and pretend to doubt it?" he answers. "This is
a mystery I cannot fathom. The girl, Vera, whom I made my wife by her
mother's wish, committed suicide, and was buried in Glenwood. This I
swear by this holy book," lifting a Bible lying on the table beside
him, and pressing his lips upon it. "If you would go to America, Lady
Fairvale, you would see the monument I erected in Glenwood to the
memory of my wife!"
And again there is silence while Lady Vera, standing silently with
little thrills of icy coldness creeping over her frame, shudders to
herself. So they had buried her while she lay in that trance-like
slumber. How had her father resurrected her, and why had he held it a
secret?
Wondering at her silence, he speaks again.
"I have answered your question truly and fairly, Lady Vera. Let me ask
you one in turn. Are you really ignorant of the fact that you have
undoubtedly been buried alive?"
She shivers, palpably. All the warmth of the summer sunshine cannot
keep back the icy winds that seem to blow over her like arctic waves.
"I never even imagined anything so horrible," she answers. "I
distinctly remember my maddened attempt at suicide. There were two
small vials in my mother's medicine chest. One meant death, the other
sleep. I chose the poison, as I thought; drank it, and lay down to
die. But I had made a mistake. I fell into a deep, narcotic sleep. I
awakened in the dawn of another day and found myself in a small, humble
room, watched over by a man who declared himself to be my father. I
know no more than this."
"Yet he, undoubtedly, rescued you from the grave and concealed the fact
from some motive of his own," Leslie Noble answers. "It was a mistaken
kindness on his part. There are those who are ready to doubt your
identity on the score of your ignorance of that strange event in your
life, Lady Vera--some who would insinuate that you are an impostor and
have no right to the title you bear. But I am not one of those carping
disbelievers. I am quite convinced that you are really the Vera we
believed to be dead so long, and I am ready to acknowledge you and to
make reparation and atonement for the unconscious wrong I have done
you."
"To make atonement--how?" Lady Vera asks him, with a curling lip and
scornful eye.
Her scorn disconcerts him for a moment. His face flushes and his eyes
fall, then he rallies, facing her with assumed calmness and humility
that but poorly hide the eagerness of his heart.
"In the only way possible, of course," he answers. "By repudiating and
putting aside the lady whom I married after your supposed death, and by
installing you in your rightful place. Will you come home to me, Vera,
my beautiful wife? Darnley House shall open wide its door to receive
you, and there is no more beautiful home in London. It is elegant
enough for you, even, my haughty princess."
She stares at him speechless with anger and amazement.
"Will you come to me, Vera?" he repeats, half opening his arms and
speaking very tenderly.
She retreats before him as he advances. Her face flames with anger.
"How dare you--how dare you?" she pants, brokenly. "I scorn you, Leslie
Noble! Surely you know that. Why, you are less to me than the dust
beneath my feet."
"I am your husband by your own confession," he answers, sullenly, and
with the fire of baffled purpose blazing in his eyes.
"Yes, you are my husband," she answers, with a scorn intense enough to
blight him where he stands. "You are my husband, but you have no rights
over me that I shall acknowledge, be sure of that. You forfeited all
claim on my respect in that hour when you stood tamely by and suffered
my enemies to insult and revile me, while you, my husband, uttered no
word to defend me from their wicked abuse."
"I was a fool, and blind then," he answers. "I was weakly dominated and
ruled by a passion for Ivy Cleveland, which, God knows, I have rued and
repented long ago. I know her now for what she is, a selfish, heartless
woman, and her mother, a devil incarnate. I have told them that there
is no bond between us, and that they must go. If you will forgive me
and come home to me, Vera, I will devote my life to your happiness."
"If that is all you came for, you may go," she answers, icily. "I shall
never be nearer to you than I am at this moment. I should never have
confessed my secret, I should never have claimed you, whom I hate and
scorn, for my husband, but that it was the only way to keep my oath
of vengeance to my dying father. But I have done with you now. The
greatest kindness you can show me, Leslie Noble, is never to let me see
your hated face again on earth."
Leslie Noble's face grows dark with passion and shame. To be defied
and scorned by this beautiful girl is something that would make most
men cower and feel humiliated, and though this man has had the most of
his finer feelings dulled and blunted by his life with the Clevelands,
still some faint instinct of shame stirs in him at her words and looks.
But rage overpowers it.
"In your supreme scorn for me, Lady Fairvale, you seem to lose sight of
one stubborn fact," he answers, in low, menacing tones. "I have been
humbly pleading with you for what I may lawfully claim as my right."
"Your right!" she echoes, retreating toward the door as if she could
not bear another word.
"Yes, my right," he answers, following and placing himself between her
and the door. "Do not go, Lady Fairvale; stay and hear me out. You are
my wife; your place is in my home and by my side. What is there to
hinder me from taking possession of you?"
There is a dull menace in his look and tone, but Lady Vera's high
courage does not falter.
"Would you attempt such a thing against my will?" she inquires, fixing
on him the scornful gaze of her proud, dark eyes.
"I have fallen in love with you, Vera, I would dare much before I would
give up the hope of winning your heart in return," he answers, doggedly.
The angry color flames into her cheeks.
"Then you are simply mad," she answers. "Have I not told you that I
hate and despise you, and that I hope never to see your face again
after this hour? Were you the last man on earth, I should never give
you even one kind thought."
"Perhaps you have given your love elsewhere," he sneers. "Rumor assigns
Colonel Lockhart the highest place in your favor."
"Rumor is right," Lady Vera answers, with calm defiance. "I love
Colonel Lockhart, and I should have been his wife had not you
reappeared upon the scene. I believed you dead. Tell me who was it that
died last year in your native city, having the same name as your own?"
"It was my uncle, Leslie Noble, for whom I was named," he answers,
sullenly, and then, quite suddenly, he falls down on his knees before
her, and tries to take her hand, but she draws it haughtily away.
"Oh, Vera," he exclaims, in abject despair, "you drive me mad when you
so heartlessly declare your love for another man. You have no right to
love any other man than me; I am the lord of your heart and person, yet
once more I plead with you, humbly, because I love you, come home with
me, Vera, my darling. Be my wife in truth. Let me claim what already
belongs to me in the eyes of the law."
"Never!" she answers, decisively. "Rise, Leslie Noble, do not kneel to
me. I will have naught to do with you now or ever. I would die before I
would recognize your claim upon me. You have my answer now and for all
time. Go, and do not trouble me again."
She moves to the door and holds it open, pointing to it with one white,
taper finger. She looks so proud, so imperious, so commanding, that
against his will he is compelled to obedience.
He moves to the door, but looks back to say with a dark, menacing frown:
"I am going, but do not please yourself with the fancy that you have
seen the last of me, Lady Fairvale. You belong to me, and I swear that
I will have my own."
With that ominous threat he goes.