CHAPTER XXXIII.
Mrs. Orme had carefully instructed Mrs. Waul concerning the details of her daughter's toilette, and selected certain articles which she desired her to wear; but Regina saw her mother no more that day, and late in the afternoon, when she knocked at the door, soliciting admission, for a moment only, the mother answered from within:
"No; my child would only unnerve me now, and there is too much at stake. Uncle Orme understands all that I wish done to-night."
Regina heard the quick restless tread across the floor, betraying the extreme agitation that prevailed in her mind and heart; and sorrowfully the girl went back to her uncle, in whose society she daily found increasing balm and comfort.
The theatre was crowded when Mr. Chesley and Regina entered their box; and though the latter had several times attended the opera in New York, the elegance and brilliance of the surrounding scene surpassed all that she had hitherto witnessed. Mrs. Orme had created a profound impression by her earlier rôles at this theatre, and the sudden termination of her engagement by the illness that succeeded her extraordinarily pathetic and touching "Katherine," had aroused much sympathy, stimulated curiosity and interest; consequently her reappearance in a new play, of whose plot no hint had yet been made public, sufficed to fill the house at an early hour.
Soon after their entrance, Mr. Chesley laid his hand on his companion's and whispered:
"Will you promise to be very calm and self-controlled, if I show you your father?"
He felt her hand grow cold, and in reply she merely pressed his fingers.
"When I hold the curtain slightly aside, look into the second box immediately opposite, where two gentlemen are sitting. They are your father and grandfather."
She leaned and looked, and how eagerly, how yearningly her eyes dwelt upon the handsome face which still closely resembled the Cuthbert of college days, and the ambrotype she had studied so carefully since her arrival in Paris.
As she watched her breathing became rapid, laboured, her eyes filled, her face quivered uncontrollably, and she half rose from her seat, but Mr. Chesley held her back, and dropped the curtain.
"Oh, uncle! How handsome, how refined, how noble-looking! Poor darling mother! how could she help giving him her heart? In all my dreams and fancies, I never even hoped to find him such a man! My father, my father!"
She trembled so violently that Mr. Chesley said hastily:
"Compose yourself, or I shall be forced to take you home, and your mother will be displeased; for she particularly desired that I would watch the effect of the play on those two men opposite."
She leaned back, shut her eyes, and bravely endeavoured to conquer her agitation, and luckily at this moment the stage-curtain rose.
By the aid of photographs procured in America, and by dint of personal supervision and suggestions, Mrs. Orme had successfully arranged the exact reproduction of certain localities: the college—the campus—the humble cottage of old Mrs. Chesley with its peculiar porch, whose column caps were carved to represent dogs' heads—the interior of a hospital, of an orphan asylum, and of the library at the parsonage.
Leaning far back in his chair, a prey to gloomy and indescribably bitter reflections, as he accustomed himself to the contemplation of the fact that the beautiful woman in whom his own fickle wayward heart had become earnestly interested, would sell herself to the grey-bearded man beside him, Cuthbert gnawed his silky moustache; while his father watched with feverish impatience for the opening of the play, and the sight of his enchantress.
The curtain rose upon a group sitting on the sward before the cottage door. Minnie Merle in the costume of a very young girl, with her golden hair all hidden under a thick wig of dark curling locks, that straggled in childish disorder around her neck and shoulders, while her sun-bonnet, the veritable green and white gingham of other days, lay at her feet. Beside her a tall youth, who represented Peleg Peterson, in the garb of a carpenter, with a tool-box on the ground, and in his hands a wooden doll, which he was carving for the child.
In the door of the cottage sat the grandmother knitting and nodding, with white hair shining under her snowy cap-border; and while the carpenter carved and whistled an old-fashioned ditty, "Meet me by moonlight alone," the girl in a quavering voice attempted to accompany him.
Minnie sat with her countenance turned fully to the audience, and when Cuthbert Laurance's eyes fell on the cottage front, and upon the face under that cloud of dark elfish locks, he caught his breath, and his eyes seemed almost starting from their sockets. His hand fell heavily on his father's knee, and he groaned audibly.
General Laurance turned and whispered:
"For God's sake, what is the matter? Are you ill?"
There was no answer from the son, who tightened his clutch upon the old man's knee, and watched breathlessly what was passing on the stage.
The scene was shifted, and now the whole façade of the college rose before him, with a pretty picture in the foreground; a tall handsome student, leaning against the trunk of an ancient elm, and talking to the girl who sat on the turf, with a basket of freshly-ironed shirts resting on the grass beside her. The identical straw hat, which Cuthbert had left behind him when summoned home, was upon the student's head, and as the timid shrinking girl glanced up shyly at her companion, Cuthbert Laurance almost hissed in his father's ear: "Great God! It is Minnie herself!"
General Laurance loosened the curtain next the audience, and as the folds swept down, concealing somewhat the figure of his son, he whispered:
"What do you mean? Are you drunk, or mad?"
Cuthbert grasped his father's hand, and murmured:
"Don't you know the college? That is Minnie yonder!"
"Minnie? My son, what ails you? Go home, you are ill."
"I tell you, that is Minnie Merle, so surely as there is a God above us. Mrs. Orme—is Minnie—my Minnie! My wife! She has dramatized her own life!"
"Impossible, Cuthbert! You are delirious—insane. You are——"
"That woman yonder is my wife! Now I understand why such strange sweet memories thrilled me when I saw her first in 'Amy Robsart.' The golden hair disguised her. Oh, father!"
The blank dismay in General Laurance's countenance was succeeded by an expression of dread, and as he looked from his son's blanched convulsed face to that of the actress under the arching elms of the campus, the horrible truth flashed upon him like a lurid glimpse of Hades. He struck his hand against his forehead, and his grizzled head sank on his bosom. All that had formerly perplexed him was hideously apparent, startlingly clear; and he saw the abyss to which she had lured him, and understood the motives that had prompted her.
After some moments he pushed his seat back beyond the range of observation from the audience, and beckoned his son to follow his example, but Cuthbert stood leaning upon the back of his chair, with eyes riveted on the play.
The courtship, the clandestine meetings, the interview in which Peleg intruded upon the lovers, the revelation to the grandmother, were accurately delineated, and in each scene the girl grew taller, by some arrangement of the skirts, which were at first very short, while she appeared in a sitting posture.
When the secret marriage was decided upon, and the party left the cottage by night, Cuthbert turned, rested one hand on his father's shoulder, and as the scene changed to the quiet parsonage, he pressed heavily, and muttered:
"Even the very dress that she wore that day! And—there is the black agate! On her hand—where I put it! Don't you know it? How she turns it!"
In the tableau of the marriage ceremony she had taken her position with reference to the locality of the box, and as near it as possible, and in the glare of the footlights the ring was clearly revealed.
Lifting his lorgnette, General Laurance inspected the white hand he had once kissed so rapturously, and by the aid of the lenses he recognized the costly ring, the valued heirloom, for the recovery of which he had offered five hundred dollars. Had he still cherished a shadowy hope that Cuthbert was suffering from some fearful delusion, the sight of that singular and fatal ring utterly overthrew the last lingering vestige of doubt. Stunned, miserable, dimly foreboding some overwhelming dénouement, he sat in stony stillness, knowing that this was but the prelude to some dire catastrophe.
When the telegram, arrived and the young husband took his bride in his arms, the girlish face was lifted, and the passionate gleam of the dilating brown eyes sent a strange thrill to the hearts of both father and son. Vowing to return very soon and claim her, the husband tore himself away, and as he vanished through a side door near the box, Minnie followed, stretched out her arms, and looking up full at its two tenants she breathed her wild passionate prayer which rang with indescribable pathos through that vast building:
"My husband! My husband—do not forsake me!"
Cuthbert put his hand over his eyes, and but for the voices on the stage his shuddering groan would have been heard outside the box. In the scene where Peleg's advances were indignantly repulsed, and his threats to unleash the bloodhounds of slander, hunting her to infamy, were fully developed, Cuthbert seemed to rouse himself from his stupor and a different expression crossed his features.
Skilfully the part played by General Laurance in bribing Peleg, and returning the letters of the wretched wife, the disgraceful threats, the offers to buy up and cancel her conjugal claims, were all presented.
When the grandmother departed, and the child-wife secretly made her way to New York, seeking service that would secure her bread, and still hopeful of her husband's return, Cuthbert grasped his father's arm and hissed in his ear:
"You deceived me! You told me she went with that villain to
California to hide her disgrace!"
Cowed and powerless, the old man sat, recognizing the faithful portraiture of his own dark schemes in those early days of the trouble, and growing numb with a vague prophetic dread that the foundations of the world were crumbling away.
His son suddenly drew his chair a little forward and sat down, his elbow on his knee, his head on his hand; his gaze fixed on the woman who had contrived to reproduce even the fall that caused her removal to the hospital.
The ensuing scene represented the young mother, sitting on a cot in the hospital, with a babe lying across her knees, and the storm of horror, hate, and defiance with which she spurned Peleg from her, calling on heaven to defend her and her baby, and denouncing the treachery of General Laurance who had bribed Peterson to insult and defame her.
As he was dragged from the apartment, vowing that neither she nor her child should be permitted to enjoy the name to which they were entitled, the feeble woman, shorn of her brown locks, and wearing a close cap, lifted her infant, and with streaming eyes implored heaven to defend it and its hapless mother from cruel persecution.
In the wonderful power with which she proclaimed her deathless loyalty to the husband of her love, and her conviction that God would interpose to shield his helpless child, the audience recognized the fervour and pathos of the rendition, and the applause that greeted her, as she bowed sobbing over her baby, told how the hearts of her hearers thrilled.
The curtain fell, and Cuthbert's eyes, gleaming like steel, turned to his father's countenance.
"Is that true? Dare you deny it?"
The old man only stared blankly at the carpet on the floor, and his son's fingers closed like a vice around his arm.
"You have practised an infernal imposture upon me! You told me she followed him, and that the child was his."
"He said so."
General Laurance's voice was husky, and a grey hue had settled upon his features.
"You paid him to proclaim the base falsehood! You whom I trusted so fully. Father, where is my child?"
No answer; and the curtain rose on the fair young mother, came forward with her own golden hair in full splendour.
Involuntarily the audience testified their recognition of the beautiful actress who now appeared for the first time, looking as when she made her début long ago in Paris. She was at the asylum, with a young child clinging to her finger, tottering at her side, and as she guided its steps, and hushed it in her arms, many mothers among the spectators felt the tears rush to their eyes.
Walking with the infant cradled on her bosom, she passed twice across the stage, then paused beneath the box, and murmured:
"Papa's baby—Papa's own precious baby!" and her splendid eyes humid with tears looked full, straight into those of her husband.
It was the first time they had met during the evening, and something she saw in that quivering face made her heart ache with the old numbing agony. Cuthbert could scarcely restrain himself from leaping down upon the stage and clasping her in his arms; but she moved away, and the sorely smitten husband bowed his face in his hand, luckily shielded from public view by the position in which he sat.
The dinner scene ensued, and the abrupt announcement of the second marriage. The anguish and despair of the repudiated wife were portrayed with a vividness, a marvellous eloquence and passionate fervour that surpassed all former exhibitions of her genius, and the people rose, and applauded, as audiences sometimes do, when the magnetic wave rolls from the heart and brain on the stage to those of the men and women who watch and listen completely en rapport.
The life of the actress began, the struggle to provide for her child, the constant care to elude discovery, the application for legal advice, the statement of her helplessness, the attempt to secure the license; all were represented, and at last the meeting with her husband in the theatre.
Gradually the pathos melted away, she was the stern relentless outraged wife, intent only upon revenge. She spared not even the interview in which the faithless husband sought her presence; and as Cuthbert watched her, repeating the sentences that had so galled his pride, he asked himself how he had failed to recognize his own wife?
In the meeting with the child of the second marriage, her wild exultation, her impassioned invocation of Nemesis, was one of the most effective passages in the drama; and it caused a shiver to creep like a serpent over the body of the father, who pitied so tenderly the afflicted Maud.
As the scheme of saying her own daughter, by sacrificing herself in a nominal marriage with the man whom she hated and loathed so intensely, developed itself, a perceptible chill fell upon the audience; the unnaturalness of the crime asserted itself.
While she rendered almost literally the interviews at Pozzuoli and at Naples, Cuthbert glanced at his father, and saw a purplish flush steal from neck to forehead, but the old man's eyes never quitted the floor. He seemed incapable of moving, Gorgonized by the beautiful Medusa whose invectives against him were scathing, terrible.
As the play approached its close and the preparation for the marriage, even the details of the settlement were narrated, suspense reached its acme. Then came the letters of reprieve, the deliverance from the bondage of Peterson's vindictive malice, the power of establishing her claim; and when she wept her thanksgiving for salvation, many wept in sympathy; while Regina, borne away in breathless admiration of her mother's wonderful genius, sobbed unrestrainedly.
When the letters of Peterson and of the lawyer were read, mapping the line of prosecution for the recovery of the wife's rights, the father slowly raised his eyes, and, looking drearily at his son, muttered:
"It is all over with us, Cuthbert. She has won; we are ruined. Let us go home."
He attempted to rise, but with a glare of mingled wrath and scorn his son held him back.
The last scene was reached; the triumphant vindication of wife and child, the condemnation of the two who had conspired to defraud them, the foreclosure of the mortgages, the penury of the proud aristocrats, and the disgrace that overwhelmed them.
Finally the second wife and afflicted child came to crave leniency, and the husband and the father pleaded for pardon; but with a malediction upon the house that caused her wretchedness, the broken-hearted woman retreated to the palatial home she had at last secured, and under its upas shadow died in the arms of her daughter.
Her play contained many passages which afforded her scope for the manifestation of her extraordinary power, and at its close the people would not depart until she had appeared in acknowledgment of their plaudits.
Brilliantly beautiful she looked, with the glittering light of triumph in her large mesmeric eyes, a rich glow mantling her cheeks, and rouging her lips; while in heavy folds the black velvet robe swept around her queenly figure. How stately, elegant, unapproachable she seemed to the man who leaned forward, gazing with all his heart in his eyes upon the wife of his youth, the only woman he had ever really loved, now his most implacable foe!
The audience dispersed, and Cuthbert and his father sat like those old Roman Senators, awaiting the breaking of the wave of savage vengeance that was rolling in upon them.
At length General Laurance struggled to his feet, and mechanically quitted the theatre, followed by his son. Reaching the carriage, they entered, and Cuthbert ordered the coachman to drive to Mrs. Orme's hotel.
"Not now! For God's sake, not to-night," groaned the old man.
"To-night, before another hour, this awful imposture must be confessed, and reparation offered. I sinned against Minnie, but not premeditatedly. You deceived me. You made me believe her the foul, guilty thing you wished her. You intercepted her letters, you never let me know that I had a child neglected and forsaken; and, father, God may forgive you, but I never can. My proud, lovely Minnie! My own wife!"
Cuthbert buried his face in his hands, and his strong frame shook as he pictured what might have been, contrasting it with the hideous reality of his loveless and miserable marriage with the banker's daughter, who threatened him with social disgrace.
During that drive General Laurance felt that he was approaching some offended and avenging Fury, that he was drifting down to ruin, powerless to lift his hand and stay even for an instant the fatal descent; that he was gradually petrifying, and things seemed vague and intangible.
When they reached the hotel, they were ushered into the salon already brilliantly lighted as if in expectation of their arrival. Cuthbert paced the floor; his father sank into a chair, resting his hands on the top of his cane.
After a little while, a silk curtain at the lower end of the room was lifted, and Mrs. Orme came slowly forward. How her lustrous eyes gleamed as she stood in the centre of the apartment, scorn, triumph, hate, all struggling for mastery in her lovely face.
"Gentlemen, you have read the handwriting on the wall. Do you come for defiance, or capitulation?"
General Laurance lifted his head, but instantly dropped it on his bosom; he seemed to have aged suddenly, prematurely. Cuthbert advanced, stood close beside the woman whose gaze intensified as he drew near her, and said brokenly:
"Minnie, I come merely to exonerate myself before God and man. Heaven is my witness, that I never knew I had a child in America until to-night, that until to-night I believed you were in California living as the wife of that base villain Peterson, who wrote announcing himself your accepted lover. From the day I kissed you good-bye at the cottage, I never received a line, a word, a message from you. When I doubted my father's and Peterson's statements concerning you, and wrote two letters, one to the President of the college, one to a resident professor, seeking some information of your whereabouts, in order at least to visit you once more, when I became twenty-one, both answered me that you had forfeited your fair name, had been forsaken by your grandmother, and had gone away from the village accompanied by Peterson, who was regarded as your favoured lover. I ceased to doubt, I believed you false. I knew no better until to-night. Father, my honour demands that the truth be spoken at last. Will you corroborate my statement?"
Pale and proud, he stood erect, and she saw that a consciousness of rectitude at least in purpose, sustained him.
"Mrs. Orme——" began General Laurance.
"Away with such shams and masks! Mrs. Orme died on the theatrical boards to-night, and henceforth the world knows me as Minnie Laurance! Ah! by the grace of God! Minnie Laurance!"
She laughed derisively, and held up her fair slender hand, exhibiting the black agate with its grinning skull lighted by the glow of the large radiant diamonds.
"Minnie, I never dreamed you were his wife; oh, my God! how horrible it all is!"
He seemed bewildered, and his son exclaimed:
"Who is responsible for the separation from my wife? You, father, or
I?"
"I did it, my son. I meant it for the best. I naturally believed you had been entrapped into a shameful alliance, and as any other father would have done, I was ready to credit the unfavourable estimate derived from the man Peterson. He told me that Minnie had belonged to him until she and her grandmother conceived the scheme of inveigling you into a secret marriage; and afterward he informed me of the birth of his child. I did not pay him to claim it, but when he pronounced it his, I gave him money to pay the expenses of the two whom he claimed to California; and I supposed until to-night that both had accompanied him. I did not manufacture statements, I only gladly credited them; and believing all that man told me, I felt justified in intercepting letters addressed to you by the woman whom he claimed as mother of his child. Madame, do not blame Cuthbert. I did it all."
The abject wretchedness of his mien disconcerted her; robbed her of half her anticipated triumph. How could she exult in trampling upon a bruised worm which made no attempt to crawl from beneath her heel? He sat, the image of hopeless dejection, his hands crossed on the gold head of his cane.
Mrs. Orme walked to the end of the room, lifted the curtain, and at a signal Regina joined her. Clasping the girl's fingers firmly she led her forward, and when to front of the old man, she exclaimed:
"René Laurance, blood triumphs over malice, perjury, and bribery; whose is this child? Is she Merle, Peterson, or Laurance?"
Standing before them, in a dress of some soft snowy shining fabric, neither silk nor crape, with white starry jasmines in her raven hair and upon her bosom, Regina seemed some angelic visitant sent to still the strife of human passions, so lovely and pure was her colourless face; and as General Laurance looked up at her, he rose suddenly.
"Pauline Laurance, my sister; the exact, the wonderful image!
Laurance, all Laurance, from head to foot."
He dropped back into the chair, and smiled vacantly.
Cuthbert sprang forward, his face all aglow, his eyes radiant, and eloquent.
"Minnie, is this indeed our child? Your daughter—and mine?"
He extended his arms, but she waved him back.
"Do not touch her! How dare you? This is my baby, my darling, my treasure. This is the helpless little one, whose wails echoed in a hospital ward; who came into the world cursed with the likeness of her father. This is the child you disowned, persecuted; this is the baby God gave to you and to me; but you forfeited your claim long years ago, and she has no father, only his name henceforth. She is wholly, entirely her mother's blue-eyed baby. You have your Maud."
As she spoke a wealth of proud tenderness shone in her eyes, which rested on the lily face of her child, and at that moment how she gloried in her perfect loveliness.
Her husband groaned, and clasped his hand over his face to conceal the agony that was intolerable, and in an instant, ere the mother could suspect or frustrate her design, the girl broke from her hand, sprang forward and threw herself on Cuthbert's bosom, clasping her arms around his neck, and sobbing:
"My father! Take me just once to your heart! Call me daughter; let me once in my life hear the blessed words from my own father's lips!"
He strained her to his bosom, and kissed the pure face, while tears trickled over his cheeks and dripped down on hers. Her mother made a step forward to snatch her back, but at sight of his tears, of the close embrace in which he held her, the wife turned away, unable to look upon the spectacle and preserve her composure.
A heavy fall startled all present, and a glance showed them General
Laurance lying insensible on the carpet.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
In the clear, cold analytical light which the "Juventui Mundi" pours upon the nebulous realm of Hellenic lore and Heroic legend, we learn that Homer knew "no destiny fighting with the gods, or unless in the shape of death, defying them,"—and that the "Nemesis often inaccurately rendered as revenge, was after all but self-judgment, or sense of moral law." Even in the dim Homeric dawn, Conscience found personification.
Aroused suddenly to a realization of the wrongs and wretchedness to which his inordinate pride and ambition had chiefly contributed, the Nemesis of self-judgment had opened its grim assize in General Laurance's soul, and he cowered before the phantoms that stood forth to testify.
No father of ordinary prudence and affection could have failed to oppose the reckless folly of his son's ill-starred marriage, or hesitated to save him, if compatible with God's law and human statutes, from the misery and humiliation it threatened to entail. But when he made a football of marriage vows, and became auxiliary to a second nuptial ceremony, striving by legal quibbles to cancel what only Death annuls, the hounds of Retribution leaped from their leash.
The deepest, strongest love of his life had bloomed in the sunset light, wearing the mellow glory of the aftermath; and his heart clung to the beautiful dream of his old age, with a fierce tenacity that destroyed it, when rudely torn away by the awful revelations of "Infelice." To lose at once not only his lovely idol, but that darling fetich—Laurance prestige; to behold the total eclipse of his proud reputation and family name; to witness the ploughshare of social degradation and financial ruin driven by avenging hands over all he held dearest, was a doom which the vanquished old man could not survive.
Perhaps the vital forces had already begun to yield to the disease that so suddenly prostrated him at Naples, dashing the cup of joy from his thirsty lips; and perchance the grim Kata-clothes had handed the worn tangled threads of existence to their faithful minister Paralysis, even before the severe shock that numbed him while sitting in the theatre loge.
When his eyes closed upon the spectacle of his son, folding in his arms his firstborn, they shut out for ever the things of time and sense, and consciousness that forsook him then never reoccupied its throne. He was carried from the brilliant salon of the popular actress to the home of his son; medical skill exhausted its ingenuity, and though forty-eight hours elapsed before the weary heart ceased its slow feeble pulsations, General Laurance's soul passed to its final assize, without even a shadowy farewell recognition of the son, for whom he had hoped, suffered, dared so much.
"Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after."
During the week that succeeded his temporary entombment in the sacred repose of Père La Chaise, Mrs. Orme completed her brief engagement at the theatre where she had so dearly earned her freshest laurels; and though her tragic career closed in undimmed splendour, when she voluntarily abdicated the throne she had justly won, bidding adieu for ever to the scene of former triumphs, she heard above the plaudits of the multitude the stern whisper, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay."
The man whom she most intensely hated, and most ardently longed to humiliate and abase in public estimation, had escaped the punishment; housed from reproach by the stony walls of the tomb, mocking her efforts to requite the suffering he had inflicted; and the keenest anticipations of her vindictive purpose were foiled, vanquished.
One morning, ten days after the presentation of "Infelice," Mrs. Orme sat listening to her daughter, who, observing her restless, dissatisfied manner, proposed to read aloud. Between the two had fallen an utter silence with reference to the past, and not an allusion had been made to Cuthbert Laurance since the night he had first held his daughter to his heart. Death had dropped like a sacred seal upon its memorable incidents, which all avoided; but mother and child seemed hourly to cling more closely to each other.
To-day sitting on a low ottoman, with her arm thrown across her mother's knee, while the white hand wearing the black agate wandered now and then over her drooping head, Regina read the "Madonna Mia."
She had not concluded the perusal, when a card was brought in, and a glance at her mother's countenance left her no room to doubt the name it bore.
"After five minutes, show him in."
Mrs. Orme closed her eyes, and her lips trembled.
"My daughter, do you desire to be present at this last earthly interview?"
"No, mother. My wrongs I freely forgive, I told him so, but yours I can never forget; and I would prefer in future not to meet him. God pity and comfort you both."
She kissed her mother's cheek, lips, even her hands, and hastily retreated. As she vanished, Mrs. Orme threw herself on her knees, and her lips moved rapidly while she wrung her fingers; but the petition was inaudible, known only to the Searcher of hearts. Was it for strength to prosecute to the bitter end, or for grace to forgive?
She placed a strong metal box on the ormolu stand near her chair, and had just resumed her seat when Mr. Laurance entered, and approached her. He was in deep mourning, and his intensely pale but composed face bore the chastening lines of a profound and hopeless sorrow; but retained the proud unflinching regard peculiar to his family.
Of the two, he was most calm and self-possessed. Bowing in answer to the inclination of her head, he drew a chair in front of her, and when he sat down she saw a package of papers in his hand.
"I am glad, Mrs. Laurance, that you grant me this opportunity of saying a few words, which after to-day I shall seek no occasion to repeat; for with this interview ends all intercourse between us, at least in this world. These papers I found in poor father's private desk, and I have read them. They are your notes, and the marriage contract, which only awaited the signature he intended to affix."
She held out her hand, and a burning blush dyed her cheek, as she reflected on the loathsome purpose which had framed that carefully worded instrument.
"To-day I leave Paris for America, to front, as best I may, the changed aspect of life. I have not yet told Abbie of the cloud of sorrow and humiliation that will soon break over our family circle, for poor little Maud has been quite ill, and I deferred my bitter revelation until her mother's mind is composed and clear enough to grasp the mournful truth. In the suit which I presume you will commence, as soon as I land in America, you need apprehend no effort on my part to elude the consequences of my own criminal folly and rashness. I shall attempt no defence, beyond requiring my counsel to state that no communication ever reached me from you; that I believed you the wife of another; and I shall also insist upon the reading of the two letters in answer to those I wrote, requesting the President and Professor to ascertain where you were. I was assured that a marriage contracted during my minority was invalid, and without due investigation of the statutes of the State in which it was performed and which had unfortunately undergone a change, I believed it. Your right as a wife is clear, indisputable, inalienable, and cannot be withheld; and the divorce you desire will inevitably be granted. I cannot censure your resolution, it is due to yourself, doubly due to your child—our child! My child! Oh! that I had known the truth seventeen years ago! How different your fate and mine!"
She leaned back, closing her eyes, against the eloquent pleading of that mesmeric countenance which was slowly robbing her of her stern purposes; renewing the spell she had never been able to fully resist.
He saw the spasm of pain that wrinkled her brow, blanched her lips; and gazing into the lovely face so dear to him, he exclaimed:
"Minnie! Minnie! Oh, my wife! My own wife!"
He sank on his knees before her, and his handsome head fell upon the arm of her chair. She covered her face with her hands, and a smothered sob broke from her tortured heart.
"I have sinned, but not intentionally against you. God is my witness had I known all twenty oceans could not have kept me from my wife and my baby. When you lived it all over again that night, when I saw you ill, deserted, in a charity hospital, with the child you say is mine cradled in your arms, oh! then indeed I suffered what all the pangs of perdition cannot surpass. When you and I married we were but children, but I loved you; afterward when I was a man, I madly renewed those vows to one, whom I was urged, persuaded, to wed. I am not a villain, and I know my duties to the mother of my afflicted Maud, to the child of my loveless union, and I intend rigidly to discharge them. But, Minnie, God knows that you are my true, lawful wife, and I want here upon my knees, before we part for ever, to tell you that no other woman ever possessed my heart. I have tried to be a patient, kind, indulgent husband to Abbie, but when I look at you, and think of her, remembering that my own rash blindness shut me from the Eden that now seems so deliciously alluring, when I realize what might have been for you and me, my punishment indeed appears unendurable. Ah, no language can describe my feelings, as I looked at that noble, lovely girl. Oh the fond pride of knowing that she is mine as well as yours! My wife! my wife, let the holy blue eyes and pure lips of our baby, our daughter, plead her father's forgiveness——"
His voice faltered. There was a deep silence. Although kneeling so near, he made no attempt to touch her. For fifteen years she had struggled against all tender memories, and every softening recollection had been harshly banished. She had trained herself to despise and hate the man who had so blackened her life at its dewy threshold; but the mysterious workings of a woman's heart baffle experience, analysis, and conjecture.
Listening to the low cadence of the beloved voice that first waked her from the magic realm of childhood, and unsealed the fountain of affection, the days of their courtship stole back; the blissful hours of the brief honeymoon. He was her lover, her noble young husband; above all, he was the father of her baby; and yielding to the old irresistible infatuation she suddenly laid her hand upon his head. As yet she had not uttered a syllable since his entrance, but the floodgates were lifted, and he heard the despairing cry of her famished heart:
"Oh, my husband! My husband, my own husband!"
He threw his arms around her as she leaned toward him, and drew the head to his shoulder. So in silence they rested, and he felt that one arm tightened around him, as he knelt holding her to his heart.
"Minnie, your true heart forgives your unworthy husband. Tell me so, and it will enable me to bear all that the future may contain. Say, Cuthbert, I forgive you."
She struggled up, gazed into his eyes, and exclaimed:
"No; I loved you too well, too insanely ever to forgive, had loved you less, I might have forgiven more. There is no meekness in my soul, but an intolerable bitterness that mocks and maddens me. I ought to despise myself, and I certainly shall, for this unpardonable weakness. But very precious memories unnerved me just then, and I clung, not to you, not to Abbie Ames' husband, but to the phantom of the Cuthbert whom long ago I loved so well, to the vision of the young bridegroom I worshipped so blindly. Let me go. Our interview is ended."
She withdrew from his arms, and rose.
"Before I go, let me see our child once more. Let me tell her that her father is inexpressibly proud of the daughter who will honour his unworthy name again."
"She declines meeting you again."
"Minnie, don't teach her to hate me."
"I gave her the opportunity, and she made her own choice, saying she freely forgave the wrongs committed against her, but her mother's she could never forget. If I had asked of Heaven the keenest punishment within the range of vengeance, it seems to me none could exceed the wretchedness of the man who, owning my darling for his child, is yet debarred from her love, her reverence, her confidence, and the precious charm of her continual presence. My sweet, tender, perfect daughter! The one true heart in all the wide world that loves and clings to me. You forsook and disowned me, repudiated your vows, offered them elsewhere, making unto yourself strange new gods; profaning the altar, where other images should have stood. The banker's daughter, and the Laurance heiress she bore you, are entitled to what remains of your fickle selfish heart, and I trust that the two who supplanted my baby and me will suffice for your happiness in the future as in the past. Into my own and my darling's life you can enter no more. 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?' You deem me relentless and vindictive? Think of all the grey, sunless, woeful existence I showed you behind the footlights not many nights since, and censure me if you can. There is no pious resignation in my proud soul for indeed 'there are chastisements that do not chasten; there are trials that do not purify, and sorrows that do not elevate; there are pains and privations that harden the tender heart, without softening the stubborn will.' Of such are the sombre wrap and woof of my ill-starred life. When you reach New York Mr. Erle Palma, who is my counsel, will acquaint you with the course he deems it best to pursue."
She looked calm and stately as the Ludovisian Juno, and quite as lovely, in her pale pride.
"Minnie, do not part from me in anger. Oh, my wife, let me fold you in my arms once more! And once, just once, I pray you, let me kiss you! Are you not my own?"
She recoiled a step, her brown eyes lightened, and her words fell crisp as icicles:
"Since I was a bride, three weeks a wife, since you pressed them last, no man's lips have touched mine. I hold them too sacred to that dear buried past to be submitted to a pressure less holy—to be profaned by those of another woman's husband. Only my daughter kisses my lips. Yours are soiled with perjury, and belong to the wife and child of your choice. Go, pay your vows, be true at last to something. Good-bye."
He came closer, but her pitiless chill face repulsed him. Seizing her beautiful hand, white and cold as marble, he lifted it, but the flash of the diamonds smote his heart like a heavy flail.
"The death's head that you gave me as a bridal token! Is there not a fatality even in symbols? Upon my wedding ring stands the cinerary urn that soon sepulchred my peace, my hopes. A mockery so exquisite could not have been accidental, and faithfully that grinning skeleton has walked with me. The ghastly coat of arms of Laurance."
She had thrown off his clasp, raised her hand, and turned the ring over, till the jewels glowed, then it fell back nerveless at her side.
"Minnie."
His voice was broken, but her lustrous eyes betrayed no hint of pity.
"My wife has no pardon for her erring husband. I have merited none, still I hoped for one kind farewell word from lips that are strangely dear to me. So be it. Tell my daughter, if her unhappy father dared to pray, he would invoke Heaven's choicest blessings on her young innocent head. And, Minnie love, let our baby's eyes and lips successfully plead pardon for her father's unintentional sins against the wife he never ceased to love."
He caught the hand once more, kissed the ring he had placed there eighteen years before, and, feeling his hot trembling lips upon her icy fingers, she shut her eyes. When she opened them—she was alone.
"We twain have met like ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet;—
One little hour! and then, away they speed,
On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud and foam—
To meet no more!"
CHAPTER XXXV.
From the window of one of those beautiful villas that encrust the shores of Como, nestling like white birds at the base of the laurel and vine-clad hills that lave their verdant feet in the blue waters, Regina watched the sunshine falling across the placid bosom of the lake. Far away, on the sky-line opposite, and towering above the intervening mountains, glittered the white fire of the snowy Alps, as if they longed to quench their dazzling lustre in the peaceful blue sleeping beneath.
Luxuriant vines clambered along the hillsides, and where the latter had been cut in terraces, and seemed swinging like the gardens of Semiramis, orange, lemon, myrtle, and olive trees showed all their tender green and soft grey tints, and longhaired acacias waved in the evening air, that was redolent of the faint delicious vesper incense swung from the pink chalices of climbing roses.
"No tree cumbered with creepers let the sunshine through,
But it was caught in scarlet cups, and poured
From these on amber tufts of bloom, and dropped
Lower on azure stars."
Never weary of studying the wonderful beauty of the surrounding scenery, Regina surrendered herself to an enjoyment that would have been unalloyed had not a lurking shadow cast its unwelcome chill on all. Mr. and Mrs. Waul had returned to America, and for a month Mrs. Laurance, accompanied by Mr. Chesley and Regina, had been quietly ensconced in this lovely villa, whose terraces and balconies projected almost into the water, and commanded some of the finest views of the lake.
But anxiety had followed, taking up its dreary watch in the midst of that witchery which might have exorcised the haunting grey ghost of care; and though shrouded by every imaginable veil and garland of beauty, its grim presence was as fully felt as that of the byssus-clad mummy that played its allotted part at ancient Coptic feasts.
The steamer in which Mr. Laurance embarked with his family for America had been lost in mid Atlantic; and only one boat filled with a portion of the passengers and crew had been rescued by a West Indian ship bound for Liverpool. Among the published names of the few survivors that of Laurance did not appear.
Had old ocean mercifully opened its crystal bosom and gathered to coral caves and shrouding purple algae the unfortunate man, who had quaffed all the rosy foam beading the goblet of life, and for whom it only remained to drain the bitter lees of public humiliation and social disgrace?
When Mrs. Laurance received the first intimation that Cuthbert had probably perished, with his wife and child, she vehemently and stubbornly refused her credence. It seemed impossible that envious death could have so utterly snatched from her grasp the triumph upon which her eager fingers were already closing.
Causing advertisements to be inserted in various journals, and offering therein a reward for information of the missing passengers, she forbade the topic broached in her presence, and quitting Paris retired for a season to Lake Como, vainly seeking that coveted tranquillity which everywhere her own harrowing thoughts and ceaseless forebodings effectually murdered.
As time wore on she grew gloomy, taciturn, almost morose, and a restlessness beyond the remedy of medicine robbed her of the power of sleep. To-day she clung convulsively to her daughter, unwilling that she should leave her even for an instant; to-morrow she would lock herself in, and for hours refuse admittance to any human being. The rich bloom forsook her cheek, deep shadows underlined her large melancholy eyes, and her dimpled hands became so diaphanous, so thin, that the black agate ring with difficulty held its place upon the wasted fingers.
With patient loving care, Regina anticipated her wishes, indulged all her varying caprices, devoted herself assiduously to the task of diverting her mind, and comforting her heart by the tender ministrations of her own intense filial affection. By day she read, talked, sang to her. When in the tormenting still hours of night her mother refused the thorns of a sleepless pillow, the daughter drew her out upon the terrace against which the wavelets broke in a silvery monologue, and directed her thoughts to the glowing stars that clustered in the blue dome above, and shimmered in the azure beneath; or with an arm around the mother's waist, led her into the flowery garden, and up the winding walks that climbed the eminence behind the villa, where oleanders whitened the gloom, and passionate jasmines broke their rich hearts upon the dewy air; so, pacing to and fro, until the moon went down behind myrtle groves, and the bald brow of distant Alps flushed under the first kiss of day.
For Mrs. Laurance, nepenthe was indeed a fable, and while she abstained from even an indirect allusion to the subject that absorbed her, the nameless anxiety that seemed consuming her, Regina and her uncle watched her with increasing apprehension.
This afternoon she had complained of headache, and, throwing herself on a couch in the recess of the window that overlooked the lake, desired to be left alone, in the hope of falling asleep.
Stooping to kiss her, Regina said:
"Mother, let me sit by you, and while I fan you gently read the 'Lotos Eaters.' The drowsy rhythm will lull you into that realm of rest,—
'In which it seemed always afternoon.'
May I?"
"No. To-day your blue eyes would stab my sleep. I will ring when I want you."
Dropping the filmy lace curtains, in order to lessen the reflection from the water, Regina softly stole away, and sat down at the window of the salon, where satin-leaved arums and dainty pearly orchids embellished the consoles, and fragrant heliotrope and geraniums were blooming in pots clustered upon the stone balcony outside.
Each day the favourite view of the lake and bending shore line, upon which she gazed from this spot, developed some new beauty, hidden hitherto under leafy laurel shadows, or behind the snowy soil of some fishing-boat, rocking idly upon the azure waves.
Now the burden of her reflections was:
"If we could only spend our lives in this marble haven, away from the turmoil and feverish confusion of the outside world—forgetting the past, contented with the society of each other—and shut in with God and nature, how peaceful the future would be! nay, how happy all might yet become!"
Sympathy with her mother had forced her to put temporarily aside the contemplation of her own sorrow, but in secret it preyed upon her heart; and whenever a letter arrived, she dreaded the announcement of Mr. Palma's marriage.
His parting allusion to a brief European visit she had by the aid of her fears interpreted to mean a bridal tour, curtailed by his business engagements; and though she never mentioned his name when it could be avoided, she could not hear it casually pronounced by her uncle or mother, without feeling her heart bound suddenly.
Once, soon after her arrival in Paris, her mother, in reading a letter from Mr. Palma, glanced at her, and said:
"Your guardian desires me to say, that in your undisguised devotion to Uncle Orme he presumes he is completely forgotten; but consoles himself with the reflection, that from time immemorial wards have been like the Carthaginians—proverbially ungrateful."
Regina made no response, and since then she had received no message.
While she sat gazing over Como, a mirage rose glistening between her eyes, and the emerald shore beyond: the dear familiar outlines of that Fifth Avenue library, the frescoed walls, polished floor, mellow gas lamps; and above all, the stately form, massive head, high brow, so like a slab of marble, and blight black eyes of the dear master.
She was glad when Mr. Chesley came in, with an open book in his hand, and stood near her.
"Is your mother asleep?"
"I hope so. She sent me away that she might get a nap."
"Just now I stumbled upon a passage which reminded me so vividly of the imaginary home you last week painted for us, somewhere along the Pacific shore, that I thought I would show it to you. That home, where you hope to indulge your bucolic tastes, your childish fondness for pets—doves, rabbits, pheasants—and similar rustic appendages to our cottage—in—the—air. Here, read it, aloud if you will."
She glanced over the lines, smiled, and read:
"'Mong the green lanes of Kent stood an antique home
Within its orchard, rich with ruddy fruits;
For the full year was laughing in his prime.
Wealth of all flowers grew in that garden green,
And the old porch with its great oaken door
Was smothered in rose-blooms, while o'er the walls
The honeysuckle clung deliciously.
Before the door there lay a plot of grass
Snowed o'er with daisies,—flower by all beloved,
And famousest in song,—and in the midst
A carved fountain stood,…
On which a peacock perched and sunned itself;
Beneath, two petted rabbits, snowy white,
Squatted upon the sward.
A row of poplars darkly rose behind,
Around whose tops, and the old-fashioned vanes,
White pigeons fluttered; and over all was bent
The mighty sky, with sailing, sunny clouds."
"Thank you, Uncle Orme. The picture is as sweet as its honeysuckle blooms, and some day we will frame it with California mountains, and call it Home. I shall only want to add a gently sloping field, wherein pearly short-horns stand ankle deep in clover, while my dear old dog Hero basks upon the doorstep; and upon the lawn,—
'An almond tree
Pink with her blossom and alive with bees,
Standing against the azure.'"
"Yonder come the letters."
As he spoke, Mr. Chesley left the room, and soon after a servant entered with a letter addressed to Regina.
It was from Olga, dated Baden-baden; and the vein of subdued yet hopeless melancholy that wandered through its contents, now and then intertwined strangely with a thread of her old grim humour.
"Do you ever hear from that legal sphinx—Erle Palma? Mamma only now and then receives epistles fashioned after those once in vogue in Laconia. (I wonder if even the old toothless gossips in Sparta were ever laconic?) I am truly sorry for Erle Palma. That beautifully crystallized quartz heart of his is no doubt being ground between the upper and nether millstones of his love and his pride; and Hymen ought to charge him heavy mill-toll. My dear, have you seen Elliott Roscoe's little tinted-paper poem? Of course his apostrophe to 'violet eyes, overlaced with jet!' will sound quite Tennysonian to a certain little shy girl, now hiding at Como, and who 'inspired the strain.' But aside from the pleasant association that links you with the verses, they are—pardon me, dear—as thin and flavourless as—well, as the soup dished out at pauper restaurants. You are at liberty to consider me consumed by envy, green with jealousy, when I here spitefully record that Elliott's ambitious poem reminds me of M. de Bonald's biting criticism on Madame de Krüdener: 'I make bold to declare, with the Bible in my hand, that the poor we shall always have with us, were it only the poor in intellect.' Coke and Story will befriend poor Elliott much more effectually than the Muses, who have most ingloriously snubbed him. Are you really happy, little snowbird, nestling in the down of mother-love, which—like the veritable baby you are—you so pined for?
"Regina, I am going to tell you something. Bar the windows, lock the doors, shut it up for ever, close in your own heart. A few nights ago, I went with an English friend to the Conversationshaus. When we had leaned awhile against one of the columns, and watched the dancers in the magnificent saloon, he proposed to show me the grand gambling-room.
"As we walked slowly along, listening to the click of the gold that pattered down from trembling hands, I saw, sitting at a Roulette table, deeply immersed in the game (never tell it!) Belmont Eggleston. Not the same classic, god-like face that I would once have followed straight to Hades—not the man upon whom I wasted all the love that God gives a woman to glorify her life and home; but a flushed, bloated creature, as unlike the Belmont of my hopes and dreams as 'Hyperion to a Satyr!' I watched him till my very soul turned sick, and all Pandemonium seemed to have joined in a jeer at my former infatuation. Next day, I saw him reel from a saloon to the steps of his wife's carriage. Years ago, when Erle Palma told me that my darling drank and gambled, I denied it; and in return for the warning, emptied more wrath upon my informer than all the Apocalyptic vials held. Ah! for poor Belmont, I fought as fiercely as a tawny tigress, when her youngest cub is captured by the hunters. Ashes! Bitter ashes of love and trust! Truly 'there is no pardon for desecrated ideals.' I have lived to learn that—
'Man trusts in God;
He is eternal. Woman trusts in man,
And he is shifting sand.'"
"Regina!"
The girl looked up, and saw her uncle with an open letter in his hand.
"What is it? Some bad news!"
"Dear little girl, you are indeed fatherless now."
She bent her head upon the ledge of the window, and after a moment
Mr. Chesley sighed, and smoothed her hair.
"With all his faults, he was still your father; and having had several interviews with him in Paris, I was convinced he was more 'sinned against than sinning,' though of course he knew that he could never have legally married again while Minnie lived. God help us to forgive, even as we need and hope to be forgiven."
"He knows I forgave him. I told him so the night he held me to his heart and kissed me; and you never can know how that thought comforts me now. But mother! Uncle——"
She sprang up pale and tearful, but he detained her.
"Mr. Palma writes me that there remains no longer a doubt that Laurance perished in the wreck. He encloses a detailed account of the disaster, from an American naval surgeon, who was returning home on furlough, when the storm overtook them, and who was one of the few picked up by the West Indian vessel. Mr. Palma wrote to him, relative to your father, and it appears from his reply—in my hand—that he knew the Laurances quite well. He says that during the gale, he was called to prescribe for Maud, who was really ill, and rendered worse by terror. When it was evident the steamer could not outlive the storm, he saw Cuthbert Laurance place his wife in one of the boats, and return to the cabin for his sick child. Hastening back with the little cripple in his arms, he found the boats were beyond reach, and too crowded to admit another passenger. He shouted the nearest to take his child, only his child; but the violence of the gale rendered it impossible to do more than keep the boat from swamping, and with many others, he was left upon the doomed vessel. There was no remaining boat; night came swiftly on, the storm increased, and next day there was no vestige of boat or ship visible. Mrs. Laurance was in the second boat, the largest and strongest, but it was overladen, and about twilight it capsized in the fury of the gale, and all went down. The surgeon who heard the wild screams of the women knows that the wife perished, and says he cannot indulge the faintest hope that the father and child escaped. Cuthbert was a remarkably skilful swimmer; he had once contended for a wager off Brighton, with a party of naval officers, and Laurance won it; but none could live in the sea that boiled and bellowed around that sinking ship, and encumbered as he was with the helpless child, it was impossible that he would have survived. I would rather not tell Minnie now, but Mr. Palma writes that the sister and nephew of General Laurance will force a suit to secure the remnants of the property, and he wishes to anticipate their action. Come with me, dear. Minnie is not asleep. As I passed her door, I heard her walk across the floor."
"Uncle Orme, can't you wait till to-morrow? I do not know how this news will affect her, and I dread it."
"My dear child, her suspense is destroying her. After all, delay will do no good. Poor Minnie! There is her bell. She knows the hour our mail is due, and she will ask for letters."
Opening the door, both paused at the threshold, and neither could ever forget the picture she represented.
In a snowy peignoir, she sat on the side of the couch, with her long waving hair falling in disorder to the marble floor, and seemed indeed like Japhet's "Amarant":
"She in her locks is like the travelling sun,
Setting, all clad in coifing clouds of gold."
The wan Phidian face was turned toward them, and was breathless in its anxious eagerly questioning expression. Her brown eyes widened, searching theirs; and reading all, in her daughter's tearful pitying gaze, what a wild look crossed her face!
Regina pushed her uncle back, closed the door and sprang to the couch, holding out the letters.
Sitting as still as stone, Mrs. Laurance did not appear to notice them.
"Darling mother, God knows what is best for us all."
Slowly the strained eyes turned to the appealing face of her kneeling child, and something there broke up the frozen deeps of her heart.
"Are you sure? Is there no hope?"
"No hope; except to meet him in heaven."
Throwing her hands above her head, the wretched woman wrung them despairingly, and the pain of all the bitter past wailed in her passionate cry:
"Lost for ever! And I would not forgive him! My husband! My own husband! When he begged for pardon I spurned, and derided, and taunted him! Oh! I meant sometime to forgive him; after I had accomplished all I planned. After he was beggared, and humiliated in the eyes of the world, and that woman occupied the position where they all sought to keep me, a mother and yet no lawful wife, after I had enjoyed my triumph a little while, I fully intended to listen to my heart long enough to tell him that I forgave him because he was your father! And now, where is my revenge? Where is my triumph? God has turned His back upon me; has struck from my hands all that I have toiled for fifteen years to accomplish. They all triumph over me now, in their quiet graves, resting in peace; and I live, only to regret! To regret!"
Her eyes were dry, and shone like jewels, and when her arms fell, her clenched hands rested unintentionally on her daughter's head.
"Mother, he knows now that you forgive him. Remember that for him all grief is ended; and try to be comforted."
"And for me? What remains for me?"
Her voice was so deep, so sepulchral, so despairing, that Regina clung closer to her.
"Your child, who loves you so devotedly; and the hope of that blessed rest in heaven, where marriages are unknown, where at last we shall all dwell together in peace."
For some time Mrs. Laurance remained motionless; then her lips moved inaudibly. At length she said:
"Yes, my child, our child is all that is left. When he asked to kiss me once more, I denied him so harshly, so bitterly! When he tried to draw me for the last time to his bosom, I hurled away his arms, would not let him touch me. Now I shall never see him again. My husband! The one only love of my miserable and accursed life! Oh, my beloved! do you know at last, that the Minnie of your youth, the bride of your boyhood has never, never ceased to love her faithless, erring husband?"
Her voice grew tremulous, husky, and suddenly bending back her daughter's head, she looked long at the grieved countenance.
"His last words were: 'Minnie love, let our baby's eyes and lips plead pardon for her father's unintentional sins.' They do; they always shall. Cuthbert's own wonderful eyes shining in his daughter's. My husband's own proud beautiful lips that kiss me so fondly every time I press his child's mouth! At last I can thank God that our baby is indeed her father's image; and because in death Cuthbert is my own again, I can cherish the memory, and pray for the soul of my husband! Kiss me, kiss me—oh, my darling!"
She kissed the girl's eyes and lips, held her off, gazing into her face through gathering mist, then drew her again to her bosom, and the long hoarded bitterness and agony found vent in a storm of sobs and tears.
"I must sit joyless in my place; bereft
As trees that suddenly have dropped their leaves,
And dark as nights that have no moon."