CHAPTER XLII
He stood there in silence, looking down at that bowed head, veiled by its sweeping golden hair. He made no effort to raise her; he answered not a word to her wild appeal. There was a smoldering fire in his dark eyes, a stern compression of his lips, that boded ill for the granting of her prayer.
He had received a terrible shock. His love and his pride alike had been outraged, and in his case, it was a strong love and a strong pride. The wound to both was accordingly all the greater.
His strange silence grew terrible to her. She lifted her face a little and looked at him, recoiling from the terrible indignation in his eyes as if he had struck her a blow.
"St. Leon, speak to me," she wailed. "Oh, you will not be hard and unforgiving to me! I have wronged you and deceived you, I know; but it was all because I loved you. No woman ever loved with so mad a love as I have given you. If I had not loved you so dearly, I had not dared so much."
He spoke then. There was concentrated passion, burning contempt, in his deep and angry voice.
"Do not speak of love!" he said. "I can fancy with what love the drunken journalist's daughter, the poor clerk's runaway fiancé, could love St. Leon Le Roy. I can imagine that the temptation to lift yourself to my level from the dust where you groveled was too strong for you. I can fancy that the greed for wealth and honor led you astray. But love—faugh! If one spark of that divine passion had burned in your scheming breast, you would have respected the unsullied honor, the proud old name of the Le Roys—you would have spared me the disgraceful alliance with a drunkard's daughter!"
Slow, cruel, bitter, every word fell like a coal of fire on her bleeding heart. Was it the gifted father, the brilliant genius whom she had loved and revered despite his weakness, who was thus stigmatized as a drunkard by her husband's lips? Had that father's sin indeed set her apart as a mark for the finger of scorn to point at, a creature too low to even lift her eyes to the proud and rich St. Leon Le Roy? It was a cruel, a bitter insult. It rankled like a sword point in her heart.
She rose slowly to her feet and faced him with a strange, newborn dignity that sat gracefully on her perfect beauty. She did not speak but waited with a drooping head and tightly folded hands for his further words.
They came, still further blighting the sad young heart:
"There can be no talk of forgiveness between you and me. You have injured me beyond reparation. You can be nothing to me henceforth."
"You will send me away from you—you will divorce me?" she asked, with a shiver.
"No, I will have no scandal. I will not drag the proud name of Le Roy through the mire of a divorce court. That for which you schemed so craftily shall not be taken away from you. I shall go away and leave you at Eden in the enjoyment of the wealth and the name you have won. Then our tacit separation and divorce will be accomplished. I shall never willingly look upon your beautiful, false face again!"
She bowed her head in speechless acquiescence. Where were the wild words, the matchless eloquence with which she meant to plead her cause, to implore for pardon when this dark hour came upon her? That love and beauty which she had deemed such powerful agents to hold his heart and win his clemency, of what avail were they now? His icy scorn, and his proud, decisive, determination left no room for dissent or appeal. The terrible weight of her sin had fallen upon her and crushed her.
"I think you understand me," he said. "The wife I loved is as one dead to me. She never existed save in my imagination. You must accept this as your punishment if indeed you can feel any remorse for your falsehood and deceit. Now go to your room and let your maid attend you there. I presume you will not care to meet our guests again. I am quite sure they will not wish to see you. Remain in seclusion. Tomorrow I will make all needful arrangements for our separation, and they shall be duly communicated to you."
She lifted her head and gave one long, grave look from her heavy, somber eyes at the handsome, haughty face, bowed slowly, and went out of the room. The slow swish of her trailing satin robe echoed drearily in his hearing as he stood there pale and statue-like, but he did not turn his head for one farewell glance at the girl who was his wife and who had so terribly deceived him.
She went to her room and sunk down wearily upon her sofa. Marie the maid came in presently. Her face showed that she knew all.
"Marie," she said, "go and ask Mrs. Le Roy if she will permit me to come to her for a few moments."
The maid returned in a moment.
"Mr. Le Roy is with his mother. He desires that you will not disturb her," she said.
Laurel answered quietly.
"You may go away, and leave me now, Marie, I wish to be alone for a while."
When the maid had gone she went to the window, drew back the rich curtains of silk and lace, and gazed out upon the scene. Night had fallen—the beautiful moonlit summer night. The perfume of roses and honeysuckles came floating heavily on the soft air, the wide expanse of the Hudson shone like a silver sea.
"I must go away from Eden," said the girl-wife to herself, drearily. "What shall I do with my empty, ruined life?"
Strangely enough, there came to her a memory of the day she had first met St. Leon Le Roy—the questions she had asked him and his strange reply:
"I believe I should throw myself into yonder beautiful river and so end all," he had said.
Comments