Wife in Name Only, Charlotte Mary Brame [carter reed txt] 📗

mere nonsense; and I hope you have done the same. You are free as air--and so am I."

She made no answer, but, after a few minutes, when she had regained her self-possession, she said:

"The sun is warm on the water--I think we had better return;" and, as they went back, she spoke to him carelessly about the new rage for garden-parties.

"Does she care or not?" thought Lord Arleigh to himself. "Is she pleased or not? I cannot tell; the ways of women are inscrutable. Yet a strange idea haunts me--an uncomfortable suspicion."

As he watched her, there seemed to him no trace of anything but light-hearted mirth and happiness about her. She laughed and talked; she was the center of attraction, the life of the _fête_. When he spoke to her, she had a careless jest, a laughing word for him; yet he could not divest himself of the idea that there was something behind all this. Was it his fancy, or did the dark eyes wear every now and then an expression of anguish? Was it his fancy, or did it really happen that when she believed herself unobserved, the light died out of her face?

He was uncomfortable, without knowing why--haunted by a vague, miserable suspicion he could not explain, by a presentiment he could not understand--compelled against his will to watch her, yet unable to detect anything in her words and manner that justified his doing so. It had been arranged that after the _fête_ he should return to Verdun House with Lady Peters and Philippa. He had half promised to dine and spend the evening there, but now he wondered if that arrangement would be agreeable to Philippa. He felt that some degree of restraint had arisen between them.

He was thinking what excuse he could frame, when Philippa sent for him. He looked into the fresh young face; there was no cloud on it.

"Norman," she said, "I find that Lady Peters has asked Miss Byrton to join us at dinner--will you come now? It has been a charming day, but I must own that the warmth of the sun has tired me."

Her tone of voice was so calm, so unruffled, he could have laughed at himself for his suspicions, his fears.

"I am quite ready," he replied. "If you would like the carriage ordered, we will go at once."

He noticed her going home more particularly than he had ever done before. She was a trifle paler, and there was a languid expression in her dark eyes which might arise from fatigue, but she talked lightly as usual. If anything, she was even kinder to him than usual, never evincing the least consciousness of what had happened. Could it have been a dream? Never was man so puzzled as Lord Arleigh.

They talked after dinner about a grand fancy ball that Miss Byrton intended giving at her mansion in Grosvenor Square. She was one of those who believed implicitly in the engagement between Lord Arleigh and Miss L'Estrange.

"I have a Waverley quadrille already formed," said Miss Byrton--"that is _de rigueur_. There could not be a fancy ball without a Waverley quadrille. How I should like two Shakesperian ones! I thought of having one from 'As You Like It' and another from 'Romeo and Juliet;' and, Miss L'Estrange, I wish you would come as _Juliet_. It seems rude even to suggest a character to any one with such perfect taste as yours--still I should like a beautiful _Juliet--Juliet_ in white satin, and glimmer of pearls."

"I am quite willing," returned Philippa. "_Juliet_ is one of my favorite heroines. How many _Romeos_ will you have?"

"Only one, if I can so manage it," replied Miss Byrton--"and that will be Lord Arleigh."

She looked at him as she spoke; he shook his head, laughingly.

"No--I yield to no one in reverence for the creations of the great poet," he said; "but, to tell the truth, I do not remember that the character of _Romeo_ ever had any great charm for me."

"Why not?" asked Miss Byrton.

"I cannot tell you; I am very much afraid that I prefer _Othello_--the noble Moor. Perhaps it is because sentiment has not any great attraction for me. I do not think I could ever kill myself for love. I should make a sorry _Romeo_, Miss Byrton."

With a puzzled face she looked from him to Miss L'Estrange.

"You surprise me," she said, quickly. "I should have thought _Romeo_ a character above all others to please you."

Philippa has listened with a smile--nothing had escaped her. Looking up, she said, with a bright laugh:

"I cannot compliment you on being a good judge of character, Miss Byrton. It may be perhaps that you have not known Lord Arleigh well enough. But he is the last person in the world to make a good _Romeo._ I know but one character in Shakespeare's plays that would suit him."

"And that?" interrogated Lord Arleigh.

"That," replied Philippa, "is _Petruchio_;" and amidst a general laugh the conversation ended.

Miss Byrton was the first to take her departure. Lord Arleigh lingered for some little time--he was still unconvinced. The wretched, half-formed suspicion that there was something hidden beneath Philippa's manner still pursued him; he wanted to see if she was the same to him. There was indeed no perceptible difference. She leaned back in her favorite chair with an air of relief, as though she were tired of visitors.

"Now let us talk about the _fête_, Norman," she said. "You are the only one I care to talk with about my neighbors."

So for half an hour they discussed the _fête_, the dresses, the music, the different flirtations--Philippa in her usual bright, laughing, half-sarcastic fashion, with the keen sense of humor that was peculiar to her. Lord Arleigh could not see that there was any effort in her conversation; he could not see the least shadow on her brightness; and at heart he was thankful.

When he was going away, she asked him about riding on the morrow just as usual. He could not see the slightest difference in her manner. That unpleasant little conversation on the lake might never have taken place for all the remembrance of it that seemed to trouble her. Then, when he rose to take his leave, she held out her hand with a bright, amused expression.

"Good-night, _Petruchio_," she said. "I am pleased at the name I have found for you."

"I am not so sure that it is appropriate," he rejoined. "I think on the whole I would rather love a _Juliet_ than tame a shrew."

"It may be in the book of fate that you will do both," she observed; and they parted, laughing at the idea.

To the last the light shone in her eyes, and the scarlet lips were wreathed in smiles; but, when the door had closed behind him and she was alone, the haggard, terrible change that fell over the young face was painful to see. The light, the youth, the beauty seemed all to fade from it; it grew white, stricken, as though the pain of death were upon her. She clasped her hands as one who had lost all hope.

"How am I to bear it?" she cried. "What am I to do?" She looked round her with the bewildered air of one who had lost her way--with the dazed appearance of one from beneath whose feet the plank of safety had been withdrawn. It was all over--life was all over; the love that had been her life was suddenly taken from her. Hope was dead--the past in which she had lived was all a plank--he did not love her.

She said the words over and over again to herself. He did not love her, this man to whom she had given the passionate love of her whole heart and soul--he did not love her, and never intended to ask her to be his wife.

Why, she had lived for this! This love, lying now in ruins around her, had been her existence. Standing there, in the first full pain of her despair, she realized what that love had been--her life, her hope, her world. She had lived in it; she had known no other wish, no other desire. It had been her all and now it was less than nothing.

"How am I to live and bear it?" she asked herself again; and the only answer that came to her was the dull echo of her own despair.

That night, while the sweet flowers slept under the light of the stars, and the little birds rested in the deep shade of the trees--while the night wind whispered low, and the moon sailed in the sky--Philippa L'Estrange, the belle of the season, one of the most beautiful women in London, one of the wealthiest heiresses in England, wept through the long hours--wept for the overthrow of her hope and her love, wept for the life that lay in ruins around her.

She was of dauntless courage--she knew no fear; but she did tremble and quail before the future stretching out before her--the future that was to have no love, and was to be spent without him.

How was she to bear it? She had known no other hope in life, no other dream. What had been childish nonsense to him had been to her a serious and exquisite reality. He had either forgotten it, or had thought of it only with annoyance; she had made it the very corner-stone of her life.

It was not only a blow of the keenest and cruelest kind to her affections, but it was the cruelest blow her vanity could have possibly received. To think that she, who had more admirers at her feet than any other woman in London, should have tried so hard to win this one, and have failed--that her beauty, her grace, her wit, her talent, should all have been lavished in vain.

Why did she fail so completely? Why had she not won his love? It was given to no other--at least she had the consolation of knowing that. He had talked about his ideal, but he had not found it; he had his own ideal of womanhood, but he had not met with it.

"Are other women fairer, more lovable than I am?" she asked herself. "Why should another win where I have failed?"

So through the long hours of the starlit night she lamented the love and the wreck of her life, she mourned for the hope that could never live again, while her name was on the lips of men who praised her as the queen of beauty, and fair women envied her as one who had but to will and to win.

She would have given her whole fortune to win his love--not once, but a hundred times over.

It seemed to her a cruel mockery of fate that she who had everything the world could give--beauty, health, wealth, fortune--should ask but this one gift, and that it should be refused her.

She watched the stars until they faded from the skies and then she buried her face in the pillow and sobbed herself to sleep.


Chapter XII.


It was when the sun, shining into her room, reached her that an idea occurred to Philippa which was like the up-springing of new life to her. All was not yet lost. He did not love her--he had not thought of making her his wife; but it did not follow that he would never do so. What had not patience and perseverance accomplished before now?