CHAPTER LXI
Contrary to her usual habit, and to humor a caprice of Mrs. Wentworth's, Laurel decided to make her appearance in the hotel parlors that evening. Beatrix and her child were going back to New York with Mr. Gordon the next day. He had promised his daughter to take her home to her mother—promised her Mrs. Gordon's free and full forgiveness both for herself and her beloved Cyril. Beatrix was very happy in the reconciliation with her father—so happy that Laurel could not bear to cloud the brightness of her sky with a single shadow, so she did not refuse when Beatrix asked her to go into the parlors with her that evening.
"Papa wishes it," said Mrs. Wentworth, "and Cyril is coming, too. He has read your books, and he is very anxious to see you. He can scarcely credit my written statement that you are so young still, in spite of your brilliant literary fame. He imagines you an old lady in cap and spectacles."
Laurel laughed and promised to be introduced to Mr. Wentworth. She had a vivid remembrance of the fair, handsome young fellow who had been so kind and pitiful to her that day in London when Beatrix and Clarice had so scolded and frightened her. She felt grateful to him still and was not averse to seeing him again, herself unknown.
She chose an evening dress of pale pink brocade, with cream-white Spanish lace. The rainbow fire of opals shone on her arms and neck, and her beautiful burnished golden hair was arranged on the top of her head in a queenly fashion. Though she had scarcely given a thought to her personal appearance, she had never looked more lovely. There was not a single woman at the seaside that night who could at all compare with Mrs. Lynn for grace and beauty.
Someone else besides Ross Powell had arrived that evening—no less a person than St. Leon Le Roy.
He was rather puzzled to know why Mr. Gordon had sent him that mysterious summons; but when they met, and he frankly inquired the reason, he received an evasive reply. Mr. Gordon promised to tell him after a while, but just now he had promised to escort his daughter, Mrs. Wentworth, into the ballroom, where the lively strains of the band were already in progress.
Would Mr. Le Roy see Beatrix and forgive her for her share in his past trouble? She was so sorry, so ashamed. She had never dreamed how it would all turn out.
The publisher was a little nervous as he thus pleaded for his daughter. She had told her father the story of her unanswered letter to Mr. Le Roy. He could not tell whether time had softened his resentment at the girl's conspiracy that had ended so disastrously.
Mr. Le Roy grew very pale for a moment as he was thus brought face to face with the past. Then he remembered Mrs. Wentworth's letter with something like shame. It had been so kind, and sweet, and womanly—so truly repentant.
"I was rude and churlish to slight it so," he said to himself, remorsefully.
"I shall be very glad to see her, and I hope she will forgive me for my churlishness," he said.
Mr. Gordon conducted him to his daughter's private parlor. Beatrix was there, looking very lovely in a simple evening dress of black and white. Tears crowded thickly to her azure eyes as she confessed her fault and begged him to pardon her.
"If I had known that you were at Eden, Mr. Le Roy, I should never have sent poor little Laurel there," said Beatrix. "I was a young and silly girl enough, I own, but I should have been too wise to have sent that lovely, ignorant child into the way of temptation."
"That lovely, ignorant child!"—somehow those words seemed like a tacit reproach to him. Yes, that was what she had been—a beautiful, simple child, all unversed in the world's ways, ignorant of the enormity of her fault, or believing that her great love condoned it. How hardly, how cruelly he had judged her, the girl-wife he had taken before God, "for better, for worse."
"I have not kept my vow," he said to himself, and Beatrix, who thought him hard and stern, wondered at the softness of his voice as he replied:
"I forgive you freely, Mrs. Wentworth, and, indeed, I sometimes wonder if there is anything to forgive. My wife made me very happy. I erred when in my hardness I refused to forgive her. But for my hard, suspicious nature that made me impute mercenary motives to her, I should have pardoned the child's fault. But I was cruelly hard. It is no wonder she refuses to forgive me."
"Refuses!" Beatrix echoed, with a start of wonder, as she gazed into his pale, agitated face.
"I spoke in the present tense as if Laurel really existed. A mere slip of the tongue, Mrs. Wentworth," he said, with assumed carelessness.
"Ah! if only he knew the real truth! But I can see that he is deeply repentant, and I foresee a joyful reconciliation between him and his beautiful gifted wife," said Beatrix to herself, hopefully.
In a little while Cyril Wentworth came in. It was but a distant greeting the two gentlemen gave each other. Cyril thought that Mr. Le Roy had treated his erring bride hardly and unjustly, and he could not be cordial to him, for pretty Laurel's sake—and on the other hand, St. Leon remembered how jealous he had been of this handsome young man in the days before he learned the truth about his wife. The old dislike and resentment lingered with him unconsciously still. He took leave very soon after Cyril's entrance, promising to meet them later in the ballroom or the parlors.
"Now, I am going to introduce you to Mrs. Lynn," said Beatrix to her husband. "You will escort her to the ballroom, and Papa will take me."
She led him to Laurel's apartment and watched him closely as he bowed before the gifted authoress whose writings he admired so much. Cyril was almost dumb with surprise and admiration. It was some time before he recovered himself sufficiently to offer her his arm to conduct her to the ballroom.
"Well, Cyril, what do you think of her?" Beatrix asked him eagerly, as soon as she found a chance to hang upon his arm apart from the rest.
He looked fondly down into the fair face.
"You must not be jealous of my opinion, my darling," he said. "Of course, you are the sweetest, fairest woman on earth to me. But Mrs. Lynn is the most beautiful as well as the most gifted one I ever met."
It was eloquent praise, but somehow Beatrix looked disappointed. He read it plainly on the fair mobile face.
"Is there anything more that I ought to say about your favorite?" he inquired, laughingly.
"Have you, indeed, no more to say about her?" she returned wistfully.
"Yes, there is something else—only I am afraid you will laugh at the fancy, dear," said Cyril Wentworth, with a masculine dread of ridicule.
"No, I will not laugh at you. Tell me," said Beatrix, anxiously.
"I am not at all sure you will not laugh," he said, "but I will tell you the truth. Although I have never seen anyone quite so lovely as your Mrs. Lynn, yet she recalls to my mind someone else whom I have met—indeed Beatrix, the resemblance is simply marvelous," he exclaimed, glancing across to where the lovely authoress stood conversing with Mr. Gordon.
"Whom does she resemble?" Beatrix inquired with her heart on her lips.
"I am sure you will see the likeness as soon as I mention it," he said. "Look closely at Mrs. Lynn, Beatrix—at her rare type of beauty, her dark eyes, her golden hair, her blonde coloring, her delicately chiseled features, her sweet, sad lips. She is like one long dead. She is like Laurel Vane."
A sigh of relief came from her lips.
"I was sure you could not fail to see the resemblance," she said.
"So you had already noted it?" he said.
"Could one help it?" she whispered. "I will tell you a secret, Cyril. I believe that this is Laurel Vane herself."
"But she is dead," Cyril objected, dazed by the suddenness of his wife's revelation.
"I do not believe it. There has been some dreadful mistake. I believe that St. Leon Le Roy's wife lives in the person of Mrs. Lynn," exclaimed Beatrix, whispering to him earnestly for a few minutes.
Laurel and Mr. Gordon, together with Mr. Ford, stood a little apart watching the gay crowd of waltzers whirling down the center of the long room to the measured beat of the gay dance music. She did not know why she turned her head and looked in another direction, but it must have been in magnetic obedience to an evil spell, for in a moment she met the glance of Maud Merivale—Maud standing near and leaning on the arm of a man who regarded her with bold and eager eyes.
To have saved her life, Laurel could not have repressed that agitated start, that tremor that shook her from head to foot at the sight of her old enemy's face! She had been proof against the softness of love, and the allurements of friendship, but in that instant, the deadly influence of fear and detestation sent a shudder through her frame and blanched her lovely face to the pallor of death. It seemed as though she was possessed by some horrible nightmare dream, as she met those bold, evil eyes, and realized he recognized her as Laurel Vane whom he had so relentlessly pursued with his evil designs.
With a terrible effort, she turned her eyes from the villain's exultant face, and they rested by chance on Beatrix, where she stood leaning on her husband's arm. But whose was that other form beside Beatrix—that tall and stately presence? She gave a great gasp of blended emotion—St. Leon Le Roy!
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