CHAPTER XXXIX.
HEARTS UNITED.
Then she seized a pen and wrote falteringly:
“Leon, she has never come home to me, so I read your letter, hoping to find some clew to my lost Darling.
“I have been seeking her vainly for days, but she is lost to me in this great, wicked city!
“There is much to tell, but I am weak and ill, I cannot write more. Will you come and hear the story from my lips?
“Verna.”
Calling a messenger, she dispatched the note to the Hotel Supremacy, and waited his reply in the wildest impatience.
Then she bade Suzanne dress her in a becoming negligee.
“Make me look as young and as well as possible, for I expect a visit from an old friend who has not seen me for years—he will be shocked at the change in me, I know.”
“Madame is more beautiful still than any young girl—only just a little too frail looking now from recent illness, but judicious dressing will disguise much of that,” cried the affectionate maid, applying herself with ardor to her task.
And a little later the result fairly justified her prediction.
The exquisite boudoir in white and gold harmonized well with the delicately beautiful woman whose pallor was softened by the faint rose hues of her gown overlaid with rich, creamy laces. Reclining on a pale-hued divan, with that fitful color coming and going in her cheek, with a streaming light of expectant joy in her wide, dark eyes, she was, indeed, a charming picture—one to thrill a man’s heart to the core.
“Will he come?” she asked herself in painful uncertainty, as her mind reverted rapidly over eighteen years to the bleak November day whereon they had quarreled and parted.
Oh, how they had loved and hated in a breath, both so young, so hasty, so inexperienced, that they scarcely knew what a harvest of woe they were sowing when they turned their backs on each other.
They had sown, and, alas, they had reaped—and the harvest was a plenteous crop of tears that tasted bitter on their lips.
She had taken a daring step—she had called him back whom in anger she had forsaken years ago.
Now, she began to be frightened at her own boldness.
“He will not come, he will laugh me to scorn!” she sighed, and dropped her pallid face down on her arms.
She had given her orders that if a gentleman named Dalrymple called he should be shown to her boudoir at once.
With her face bowed on her arms, she did not hear footsteps falling on the thick velvet carpet, obeying the low directions of the servant who said respectfully, as he drew back the portières:
“You will find Mrs. Dalrymple there.”
Leon Dalrymple, tall, pale, handsome still, in spite of years and sorrow, advanced softly across the room, his heart beating with loud, suffocating throbs.
He had been thinking of their parting in the shabby room amid pinching poverty that she despised, more than eighteen years ago.
Now they were meeting again, surrounded by all the luxury wealth can bestow, but how valueless it had been in exchange for what it had cost.
He saw before him a beautiful form with the dark head bowed on the folded arms as if in grief, and he stood waiting, hesitating, but she did not look up at him.
He coughed, timidly, to arouse her, and exclaimed hoarsely:
“Ver—Mrs. Dalrymple!”
A start of surprise, and she lifted her pale, excited face, and saw him standing before her—her old love, her discarded husband—older, graver, sadder by eighteen long years.
Yet her heart leaped to meet him in a great, strangling sob of joy.
Without rising from her recumbent position she held out her hand, saying faintly:
“You will pardon my not rising. I have been ill—am yet weak.”
He advanced, and touched the cold hand with his own that was quite as cold—dropped it quickly, and took the seat she indicated close by her divan.
Controlling his emotions as well as he could, he began:
“Your letter filled me with alarm. What can have happened to my daughter?”
“Our daughter,” she said, gently correcting him, with a sad smile, adding: “It was very bold in me to send for you, Leon, but I thought that in this matter we might act together.”
“Leon”—she called him Leon as of old—and it made the blood rush to his face, and his whole frame tremble with agitation, the old love rising in him like a flood.
He answered gravely:
“This is very kind in you.”
And for a moment they were very silent, the novelty of the position bearing painfully on both their hearts—“so near and yet so far.”
Little by little they gained self-possession and talked seriously on the subject so near to their hearts—the mysterious disappearance of their daughter from the hour when she had been turned away from her mother’s house by Cora.
She told him all she knew, and he could not conceal his alarm.
“It is the strangest thing in the world that she did not return to Mrs. Doyle, the only friend she had in New York!” he exclaimed.
The tortured mother bowed her head and wept.
Then Leon Dalrymple’s heart was melted with sympathy, and he cried:
“Do not weep so bitterly, Verna, I will find her for you if it is in the power of man to do it. And—and—I will never try to take her from you again. Let my heart bear all the pangs of loss and loneliness!”
“You have not told me yet how you brought Darling to life!” she suggested, with a grateful glance.
Then he had to go over the whole story, and she listened with the closest attention.
Their interview had now lasted more than an hour, and the ice between them was gradually thawing. The dark and the blue eyes looked very kindly at each other, and they were Leon and Verna again in their speech.
She opened the letter, and said daringly, encouraged by his kindness:
“I am very curious over some things you said in this letter to Darling. It seems you sent me some messages of remorse, forgiveness, and love when you thought you were about to perish. Will you tell me what they were?”
His face flushed with emotion, but he faltered nervously:
“They would not be welcome to you, Verna.”
To his delight she replied, with swimming eyes.
“My heart has been hungry for such words these eighteen years, Leon—hungry for the love that I threw away in my blindness—hungry for forgiveness that I dared not ask because I feared denial!”
“My darling!” and he was on his knees by her side, his arms opening to draw her back to her old shelter against his heart.
Gladly the dark head nestled there and in an hour all was explained and forgiven between them while hope came back to nestle in their hearts.
“We can be married again on the same day as Frank and Cora,” Mrs. Dalrymple exclaimed happily.