Stella Rosevelt

When that first dance was over, Lord Carrol led Josephine to a seat, and, bowing before her, said, in as light a tone as he could command:

“Thank you, Miss Richards. I suppose our part in this little farce closes now. Allow me to congratulate you upon having assisted in carrying it off in the most perfect manner. I must confess,” he added, a slight shade falling over his face, “that it does not strike me as just the thing to make a mockery of sacred subjects; but since Minnie Shelton, who is a veritable witch, and our guests have enjoyed it, perhaps I should not preach about it.”

Josephine looked up at him with a strange glitter in her eyes, while her face was crimson.

Oh, if he would but utter one fond, tender word to her—if he would but give her a sign even, to show that his heart had been thrilled like her own while they were standing there side by side!

He noticed her heightened color, and thought she looked at him queerly, but he never mistrusted the storm that was tearing her heart asunder.

“I fear you are very warm,” he said, kindly. “Shall I get you an ice?”

“Thanks, no. I shall do very well,” she answered, constrainedly.

And then, with another bow, he excused himself and left her.

A convulsive sob broke from the girl’s lips as she watched him pass down the long room and out at a lower door; then she, too, arose and glided through the window near which she had been sitting.

She sped along the wide piazza until she came to the end, where a flight of steps led down to a little arbor, or cluster of small trees which inclosed a great piece of statuary.

She fled within it, and sinking down upon the granite base which supported the marble group, she gave vent to her misery in a burst of passionate tears.

Lord Carrol, too, as he passed out of the ball-room, was more deeply moved than he would have liked to betray, and not very well pleased either with the part he had been compelled to play so much against his inclination.

Had his companion been any other than Josephine, perhaps he would have felt differently; but he could not forget that he had once been represented as her lover, and something in her manner to-night warned him that she would not have regretted it had that farce been a bona fide marriage service instead, and he was exceedingly annoyed over the affair.

He met his mother as he was going through a hall, and she detained him by gently laying her hand upon his arm.

“Has anything disturbed you?” she asked, looking up into his clouded face.

“No, mother; nothing but that farce which has just been enacted. I do not like such things; they seem too much like sacrilege,” he returned.

“Neither do I like them, Archie,” she said, gravely. “We have no right to make light of any subject so serious as marriage; but Minnie is a wild, thoughtless girl, intent only on the excitement of the moment, and did not stop to consider. I must say, though, that Miss Richards helped to carry it off splendidly, and appeared the blushing, modest bride to perfection. She is a fine-looking girl.”

She said this to sound him, regarding him searchingly all the time that she was speaking.

“Yes; she appears to attract considerable admiration,” he replied, indifferently, and then passed on.

He went out at the great hall-door upon the veranda, which Josephine had just a moment or two ago traversed, and followed almost in her footsteps, until he came to that little circle of shrubbery, when, instead of going within it, he went around it.

He could not shake off the unpleasant sensations that were upon him; everything in his nature had suddenly seemed to become out of tune, and he wished to get away from even the sounds of the gay revelers within the house, while his thoughts turned wistfully toward the new world and Star.

He was getting very impatient to go to her, and he had intended to be on his way thither before this, but circumstances had recently transpired by which he would be detained another month, and the time seemed very long to him.

He paced back and forth in the moonlight for some time, his footsteps making no sound on the velvety turf; but all at once, as he passed that evergreen circle, within which Josephine still sat, a sob fell upon his ear and startled him. He stopped to listen, and heard the sound repeated. With his usual energy and decision, he passed around to the entrance and approached the group of statuary to ascertain who was there.

At first he could see no one, for just then the moon was hidden by a cloud, and Josephine’s dress being white, her form blended with the marble and could not be distinguished, while she was so absorbed by her own emotions that she was not aware of Lord Carrol’s presence until he touched her on the shoulder and said:

“Pardon me, you are grieving; is your trouble anything that I can help?”

She sprang to her feet instantly and confronted him, her cheeks blazing hotly, her whole form trembling from the touch of his hand.

“Miss Richards!” he exclaimed, in surprise, as he recognized her, while involuntarily he recoiled from her, so unexpected and disagreeable—in his present frame of mind—was this meeting.

“I thought,” he added, “that you were in the ball-room enjoying yourself with the other merrymakers.”

She noticed the coldness of his tone, as well as his unconscious shrinking from her, and it cut her to the heart, while at the same time it aroused her anger.

“Enjoying myself!” she repeated, passionately and unguardedly; “the evening is spoiled for me; everything is spoiled—the world and my life. That mockery through which we have just passed has made me miserable.”

It was strange, he thought, that they should both feel thus.

“I regret that anything should have occurred to make you so unhappy,” he returned. “I hoped while you were the guest of my mother that nothing would transpire to mar the pleasure of any one. But,” he added, more cheerfully, “you must not allow that farce to oppress you thus. I do not, as I have said before, approve of making light of such serious things, and marriage, to me, seems like a sacred ordinance. But no harm was done, I trust; our friends were amused for a half hour; and really, Miss Richards,” he concluded, smilingly, “if, when you come to be married in earnest, you make as charming a bride as you did to-night, the happy man will be one to be envied.”

“Don’t, Lord Carrol,” Josephine cried out, in a sharp tone of pain, and laying her hand appealingly on his arm; “don’t say such things to me!”

She was trembling like a leaf, and he saw that she was terribly excited, while the piteous tone in which she had just spoken went directly to his kind heart. He took her hand and drew it under his arm.

“You are nervous,” he said, kindly. “Come and walk with me a few moments until you are calmer—the night is almost like summer—then I will take you back to the company.”

His tone was so sympathizing, his touch on her arm so gentle, while it thrilled every fiber of her body, that it was more than she could bear.

She was going to-morrow, and this man whom she loved with a passion almost amounting to idolatry, would be beyond her reach. She would not meet him again for months, perhaps never, and this thought, added to her other pain, broke her down completely.

She grasped his arm with both her white hands, her heart was beating like a frightened bird’s, there was a choking sensation in her throat, and bowing her graceful head upon her clasped and trembling hands, she burst into a fresh fit of weeping, which was like a tempest.

The young lord found himself in a very awkward position. Those shaking hands, that bowed head lying so near his heart, that lithe, quivering form, those tears and sobs, told him but too plainly what caused this deep emotion.

“Miss Richards—Josephine,” he said, unwittingly using her first name in his embarrassment, “let me take you in. You will make yourself ill. What can I do for you?”

But she could not control herself. She had abandoned herself too entirely now to her passion to conquer it readily, and she sobbed on, conscious only of how she loved him, and that she was near him.

Oh! if he could but have returned her love, she would gladly have given the best years of her life. There was no sacrifice too great, she thought at that moment, for her to make in exchange for the prize she wished to win.

“What can I do for you, my friend?” he asked again.

“Love me!” burst most unconsciously from her trembling lips.

He started violently. He had not imagined that she would dare to give utterance to such words as these; while she knew, the instant that they were spoken, that instead of gaining his affection, she had forfeited even his respect.

There was a moment of awkward silence. Then Lord Carrol said very gravely, but still very gently:

“Miss Richards, you have become so excited over what has transpired, that I think you are hardly conscious of, or responsible for what you have said. Shall we go in now?”

“No!” she answered, lifting her head proudly, and stifling her sobs, although she still clung tightly to his arm, as if she could not let him go. “No; I will not go in yet. Having said so much, I must say more. You are right. I am not responsible for the words which I have spoken. I did not mean to speak them—they escaped me unawares; but since I have spoken them, I cannot recall them, and my secret is mine no longer. Oh!” she continued, with a heart-breaking sob, “pity me, have compassion on me, forgive me!”

“I have nothing to forgive,” he said, kindly; “and, believe me, I am very sorry that your nerves should have been so overtaxed to-night; but,” and his face flushed, “perhaps it will be better for both of us if I tell you that, however much I may esteem you, my heart could never respond to the wish you have expressed; it has long been given to another. I thought you knew this; I thought your knew that—I loved your cousin, Miss Gladstone.”

Her hands dropped from his arm as if they had been burned, while keen, quivering pains shot all over her body at this avowal.

Her head came up with a haughty gesture, her eyes blazed with sudden anger, her red lips curled with bitter scorn. She had humiliated herself—she had bowed her proud spirit to the dust to win him, and now he dared to tell her this—dared to tell her that he loved the girl whom she hated, whom she had triple cause to hate in that she was far her superior in every way—she had won the heart of the only man whom she had ever loved, and had laid her under an obligation which she could never repay.

“I believe I have been mad!” she whispered, fiercely, through her tightly shut teeth, which shone like lovely pearls in the moonlight. “Yes, I must have been mad,” she went on; “some spirit of evil must have possessed me to make me tell you what I have; for—hear me, Lord Carrol—I do not love you; I hate you! If I ever had any love for you, it has turned to hate now, and I detest the girl whom you profess to love, and for whom you have dared to confess your affection, knowing how I hate her.”

She pressed her hands wildly to her temples, with a low moan. It was not so easy as she thought to hate where she had loved so passionately.

“Do you think it is a light thing,” she asked, hotly, “for a girl to reveal the secrets of her heart, as I have revealed mine to-night? Do you think there has been no sacrifice of pride or modesty on my part to tell you what I have told you? My heart has been burning to ashes while standing here by your side, and you have pitilessly tortured me still further by telling me that you love Star Gladstone—that girl who has only crossed my path to mar my every prospect in life. I thought half an hour ago, when I stood beside you during that mock ceremony and spoke those sacred words, that if they could only have been real—if I could indeed have been made your lawful wife, it would have been like the happiness of heaven for me. If you could have but called me by that fond name only once—if you had looked tenderly into my eyes and owned me yours, I could have asked no greater bliss in life. But, heavens! when I break every barrier down, when I forget my womanhood and modesty and tell you how I idolize you, you coolly inform me that you love the girl I hate. Beware! you have made me an eternal enemy to you both, and I will ruin both your lives, as you have ruined mine, if I can.”

She would have dashed wildly by him after uttering those last fierce, revengeful words, but he placed himself directly in her path and would not let her pass.

He saw now that all his sympathy and kindly feeling had been worse than wasted. He had read her character aright from the first; she was totally selfish, and her love—if an unreasoning passion like hers could be called love—would have made any true man miserable, for her ambition would never be satisfied.

He did not wonder now that he had not had more faith in her, and his sympathy and sorrow for her were at once turned into contempt.

“Miss Richards,” he began, in a stern, cold voice, and looking down into her angry, blazing eyes with a glance which cowed her in spite of her passion, “what respect I may have entertained for you heretofore, what pity or compassion I may have experienced for your apparent suffering to-night, and the only emotion which ever made you appear really womanly or gentle in my eyes, has wholly vanished during those last vindictive words of yours. I had begun to hope that you had learned lessons of charity and kindness during the past year—that you had come to realize there was something more required in life than a continual seeking after pleasure and the gratification of pride and ambitious desires; but I perceive that I was mistaken, and I am sorry, for you will be the greatest sufferer. Your declaration of hatred, and your threat that you will ruin Miss Gladstone’s and my life, are but idle words; for our love is something that malice can never touch, and a month hence I shall be on my way to America to make her my wife.”

Josephine uttered a cry of mingled pain and anger at this, and made another effort to leave him, but he would not let her go even yet.

“I have not quite finished what I wish to say, Miss Richards,” he continued, “and we may as well come to a full understanding at once. I have been told of the change in Miss Gladstone’s fortunes. I have, indeed, learned much regarding her life while she was with you that has both pained and surprised me. I know, too, of some things which occurred this year, when you were both visitors at the same fashionable resort. You are, it appears, to remain a resident of England, and we may meet occasionally in society; but let me tell you I shall never allow any such indignity to be heaped upon the future Lady Carrol as that of which you were guilty this summer at Newport.”

He saw her start as he said this.

“What do you mean?” she demanded, haughtily.

“I do not think you are so ignorant of my meaning as you appear,” he returned, his handsome lips curling with scorn; “but if you wish to be reminded of the fact that you publicly twitted Miss Gladstone last summer of having once performed the duties of a chambermaid in your family, I can do so. But do not let it ever happen again, or I shall feel it my duty to make all the facts of the case public.”

“Who has told you all this?” she demanded, angrily.

“That does not matter,” he replied, coldly; “it is sufficient that I know it.”

“Ralph Meredith has told you!” she cried.

“Mr. Meredith is my friend—but that is a point we need not discuss, I think,” he answered, quietly.

She beat the air frantically with her hands. She felt how little, how contemptible she must appear in his sight.

“Perhaps you do not know that he played the role of devoted lover to Miss Gladstone this summer,” she sneered, hoping to make him jealous.

Lord Carrol flushed.

He had mistrusted something of this from what Ralph had told him. He did not believe that Star would have confessed what she had to him, except to convince him that she could never entertain feelings of affection toward any one save the man who, as she supposed, had wronged her.

“Miss Gladstone is my affianced wife,” he replied, proudly feeling that he had a perfect right to regard and speak of her as such, knowing that she still loved him, and that his explanations to her would re-establish their former relations. “But,” he added, as he stepped aside now to allow her to pass, “it is useless to prolong this interview; only let me caution you, Miss Richards, to remember that while you show proper respect for me and mine, I shall also tender you the respect belonging to a lady.”

She was as white as her spotless dress now. He could see by the moonlight that she had grown perfectly ghastly, but there was a wild, fearful light in her eyes.

“My hate will follow you both,” she said, hoarsely, “and I tell you I will ruin your lives if I can.”

She dashed by him with the speed of a fawn and disappeared from his sight, leaving him standing there wonder-stricken that a creature so beautiful to look upon could possess so depraved a nature.