CHAPTER XLIII
Mlle. Marie was very glad to get away from attendance on her mistress for a few hours. There is nothing happens in the parlor, but is immediately communicated to the kitchen, so the dénouement in high life had immediately become the sensation in low life below stairs. The maid was eager to join the gossip.
So Laurel remained alone and undisturbed in the elegant rooms, where she had spent such happy hours with her husband who now disowned and abandoned her. She stared out into the beautiful summer night with dark, inscrutable eyes, trying dimly to pierce the veil that hid the future from her aching sight.
St. Leon Le Roy remained in attendance on his mother. The poor lady, in her weak, enfeebled state, had sustained a terrible shock. She had fallen from one fainting spell to another, and the nurse and her son remained constantly by her side. At length, she recovered her reason and was given a composing draught. She fell into a light slumber, and St. Leon stole away and consummated that fatal interview with his wife, then returned to watch by the invalid's couch.
He did not intend to deny his wife an interview with his mother, though he did not think it would avail her anything, believing that she would take sides with himself against the wife who had so bitterly deceived him. He did not think it prudent to allow a meeting between them that night, so when Marie came he returned the curt message that swept the last hope from Laurel's heart, and, as it seemed, the last plank from between her and despair.
Mrs. Le Roy slumbered fitfully until midnight. St. Leon sent the nurse to the lounge in the dressing room, and kept vigil himself by the sick bed, looking more like a statue than a man, as he sat there in the shaded night light, pale and moveless, as if carved in marble; his lips compressed sternly, a smoldering fire burning in his veiled, dark eyes. His mind was busy with thought and memory. He was going over, step by step, his acquaintance with the false Beatrix Gordon from the day when she had first stood, shy and frightened in the doorway of Eden, until tonight. He held the key now to many a subtle enigma that had puzzled him in those past days.
"So fair, so young, and seemingly so ignorant of the world, and yet so false," he said to himself. "False to her lover, Ross Powell, first, then doubly false in wedding me in borrowed plumes. There is no faith nor truth in women. They are bad and mercenary to the core—all of them, except my honored mother. Yet my wife has the face of an angel. Who would have believed that the greed of gold could have tempted her to such a sin!"
Mrs. Le Roy stirred and opened her eyes. They rested wistfully on the stern, impassive face of her son.
"Your wife, St. Leon," she said, faintly. "Have you forgiven her?"
"Could there be any forgiveness for such falsity as hers, Mother?" he asked, turning sternly toward her.
A sigh breathed over Mrs. Le Roy's lips.
"She was such a child," she said, plaintively, almost excusingly. "Have you given her any chance to exculpate herself, my son?"
"Could any exculpation be acceptable?" he asked again, sternly.
"Where is she? What has been done to her?" she asked, anxiously.
He told her his decision, told her all that he had said to his wife in his outraged pride and wrath. She was weeping bitterly when he had finished.
"Mother, surely you do not blame me and excuse her," he said, wonderingly. "I had no thought but that you would take my part against her."
"I must see her first," she said, almost angrily in her deep earnestness. "I cannot condemn her unheard. You will let me see the child, St. Leon?"
"Of course," he answered, impatiently. "You do not suppose I would deny any wish of that kind you choose to express, Mother. But tonight you are too ill and nervous. You will wait until tomorrow."
"Oh, my son, do not be angry with me—I cannot wait. Send her to me now," she wept.
"I am quite sure you had better wait until tomorrow," he began, but at that moment Mlle. Marie pushed open the door and looked in with a pale, frightened face.
"Is Mrs. Le Roy here?" she asked. "Because she is not in her room, and I cannot find her anywhere."
"St. Leon, you have driven her away," his mother cried out, wildly.
He sprung to his feet in dismay.
"No, no," he said, quickly. "Do not think such a thing, mother. Stay here, Marie, I will go and find her if she can be found. She is not far, of course."
But all the same, a hand of ice seemed to grip his heart as he hurried from the room.
She was gone—the dark-eyed bride whom he had loved so well, and who had so fatally deceived him. While Marie gossiped with her familiars she had quietly stolen away. A little, tear-blotted note lay on her dressing table.
"I have gone away, my husband," it said. "I shall never trouble your peace again. Perhaps when I am dead you will forgive me for having loved you, 'not wisely, but too well.'"
And to the pathetic note she had simply signed the despised name of "Laurel Vane."
The white satin dress, the withered crimson roses, lay on the dressing-room floor; the jewels she had worn, some costly sparkling rubies, on her dressing table, beside the little note. A simple walking dress and close hat and veil were gone from her wardrobe; but the next morning the dark-blue veil and a pair of pretty dark kid gloves, with the dimpled impress of her hand still in them, were found upon the river bank close to the greedy gurgling waves. They suggested a horrible possibility to everyone.
And one week later a mutilated unrecognizable body was washed up on the shore near Eden. The face was defaced beyond recognition; but the golden hair, the dark dress, the dainty linen, were like Laurel's. No one doubted that the despairing wife had sought oblivion from her woes in the deep, swirling river. If St. Leon forgave her now for her sin, he made no sign. He remained silent, grave, inscrutable. But the waif from the river was buried quietly in the Le Roy vault, with all the honors due to his wife. He shed no tears, he spoke no word of the feelings that held sway within him. The separation of death was no wider than he had meant should exist in life.
But Mrs. Le Roy was inconsolable. She wept bitterly for the daughter-in-law who had so deceived her. She forgave her for her sin because she was so young and had loved St. Leon so dearly. And there was another reason, which one day, through her bitter lamentations, she revealed to St. Leon.
"You must have forgiven her if you had known it, St. Leon," she said. "But she was so shy and she had only known it a little while herself. She told me first, and I was so happy over the news! There was soon to be a little heir to Eden."
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