A Mad Love, Charlotte Mary Brame [read this if txt] 📗

of rival queens. Leone's face flushed, Lady Marion's grew deadly pale. Leone held out her hand; Lady Marion declined to see it. They looked at each other for a brief space of time, then Leone spoke.

"Lady Marion," she said, in a low, pained voice, "have I displeased you?"

"Yes, you have," was the brief reply.

"You will not touch my hand?" said Leone.

"No, I decline to touch your hand," said Lady Marion; "I decline to speak to you after this."

"Will you tell me why?" asked Leone.

Lady Marion's face flushed crimson.

"Since you ask me, I will tell you. You have been seeking my husband, and I do not approve of it. You spent a day with him on the river--he never told me about it. I am not a jealous wife, but I despise any woman who would seek to take the love of a husband from his wife."

Conscience, which makes cowards of us all, kept Leone silent.

Lady Chandos continued:

"What is there between my husband and you?"

"True friendship," answered Leone, trying to speak bravely.

"I do not believe it," said Lady Chandos; "true friendship does not hide itself, or make mystery of its actions. Madame Vanira, I loved you when I first saw you; I take my love and my liking both from you. Now that I find that you have acted treacherously I believe in you no more."

"Those are strong words, Lady Chandos," said Leone.

"They are true; henceforth we are strangers. My friends are honorable women, who would seek to steal my jewels rather than seek to steal from me my husband's love."

Leone could have retaliated; the temptation was strong; she could have said:

"He was my husband, as I believed, before he was yours; you stole him from me, not I from you."

The temptation was strong, the words leaped in a burning torrent from her heart to her lips; she repressed them for his sake and bore the crushing words without reply.

"I have always heard," she said, "that there was ample reason that singers, even though they be queens of song, should not be admitted into the heart of one's home; now I see the justice of it; they are not satisfied with legitimate triumphs. You, Madame Vanira, have not been contented with my liking and friendship, with the hospitality of my home, but you must seek to take my husband's interest, time, affection."

"Are you not judging me harshly, Lady Chandos?" asked the singer. "You bring all these accusations against me and give me no opportunity of clearing myself of them."

"You cannot," said Lady Chandos; "I have no wish to hear your defense, you can neither deny nor explain the fact that you spent a day with my husband on the river; all the sophistry in the world cannot deny that fact, and that fact condemns you."

"Would you say the same thing to any of your former friends?" asked Leone--"to Lady Caldwell or Lady Blake?"

"Neither of them would do such a thing," cried Lady Chandos. "Ladies of the class to which I belong do not spend whole days on the river with gentlemen unknown to their wives. Madame Vanira--you and I are strangers from this time."

"You are very hard on me," said Leone; "the day may come when you will admit that."

"The day will never come in which I will mistake good for evil, or right for wrong," said Lady Chandos. "Others may applaud you, you may continue your sway over the minds and hearts of men, but I shall protest against you, and all those like you, who would come between husbands and wives to separate them."

It was such a satire of fate, such a satire of her own life, that Leone's beautiful lips curled with a bitter smile. It was she who had been parted from her husband by a quibble of the law, and this fair, angry woman had taken him for herself.

Lady Chandos saw the smile and misunderstood it. She bowed, and would have passed, but Leone tried to stop her.

"Will you not say one kind word to me before you go, Lady Chandos?" she asked.

"I have not one kind word to say," was the brief reply.

She would have passed on, but fate again intervened in the person of Lord Chandos, who was walking with his hostess, the Countess of Easton. They stopped before the two ladies, and Lord Chandos saw at once that something was wrong. Madame Vanira, after exchanging a few words with the countess, went away, and as soon as he could, Lord Chandos rejoined his wife.

"Marion," he said, curtly, "you have had some disagreeable words with Madame Vanira. I know it by the expression of your face."

"You are right," she said; "I have told her that henceforth she and I shall be strangers."

"You have dared!" he cried, forgetting himself at the thought of Leone's face.

She turned her fair face proudly to him.

"I have dared," she replied; "I refuse to speak or see Madame Vanira again--she must not cross the threshold of my door again."

Lord Chandos grew deadly pale as he heard the words.

"And I say that you wrong a good and blameless woman, Marion, when you say such words."

"My lord, am I or am I not at liberty to choose my friends?" she asked, haughtily.

"Certainly you are at liberty to do just as you please in that respect," he replied.

"Then among them I decline to receive Madame Vanira," she said.

"As you refuse to see my friends, I must go to meet them," said Lord Chandos.

And then between husband and wife began one of those scenes which leave a mark on both their lives--cruel, hard, unjust and bitter words--hard and cruel thoughts.

Then Lady Chandos had her carriage called and went home.


CHAPTER LIV.


A MOTHER'S APPEAL.

"She would not bear it--she could not bear it," this was Lady Marion's conclusion in the morning, when the sunbeams peeping in her room told her it was time to rise. She turned her face to the wall and said it would be easier to die--her life was spoiled, nothing could give her back her faith and trust in her husband or her love for him.

Life held nothing for her now. It was noon before she rose, and then she went to her boudoir. Lord Chandos had gone out, leaving no message for her. She sat there thinking, brooding over her sorrow, wondering what she was to do, when the Countess of Lanswell was announced.

Lady Marion looked up. It was as though an inspiration from Heaven had come to her; she would tell Lady Lanswell, and hear what she had to say.

"You have been crying," said the countess, as she bent over her daughter-in-law. "Crying, and how ill you look--what is the matter?"

"There is something very wrong the matter," said Lady Marion. "Something that I cannot bear--something that will kill me if it is not stopped."

"My dearest Marion," said the countess, "what is wrong? I have never seen you so distressed before. Where is Lance?"

"I never know where he is now," she said. "Oh, Lady Lanswell, I am so miserable, so unhappy that I wish I were dead."

This outbreak from Lady Marion, who was always so calm, so high-bred, so reticent in expressing her feelings, alarmed Lady Lanswell. She took the cold, trembling hands in her own.

"Marion," she said, "you must calm yourself; you must tell me what is the matter and let me help you."

Lady Chandos told her all, and the countess listened in wondering amaze.

"Are you quite sure?" she said. "Lady Ilfield exaggerates sometimes when she repeats those gossiping stories."

"It must be true, since my husband acknowledged it himself, and yet refused to give me any explanation of it. Some time since, I found that he passed so much of his time away from home I asked you if he had any friends with whom he was especially intimate, and you thought not. Now I know that it was Madame Vanira he went to see. She lives at Highgate, and he goes there every day."

"I should not think much of it, my dear, if I were you," said the countess. "Madame Vanira is very beautiful and very accomplished--all gentlemen like to be amused."

"I cannot argue," said Lady Chandos; "I can only say that my own instinct and my own heart tell me there is something wrong, that there is some tie between them. I know nothing of it--I cannot tell why I feel this certain conviction, but I do feel it."

"It is not true, I am sure, Marion," said the countess, gravely. "I know Lance better than any one else; I know his strength, his weakness, his virtues, his failings. Love of intrigue is not one, neither is lightness of love."

"Then if he cares nothing for Madame Vanira, and sees me unhappy over her, why will he not give her up?"

"He will if you ask him," said Lady Lanswell.

"He will _not_. I have asked him. I have told him that the pain of it is wearing my life away; but he will not. I am very unhappy, for I love my husband."

"And he loves you," said the countess.

"I do not think so. I believe--my instinct tells me--that he loves Madame Vanira."

"Marion, it is wicked to say such things," said the countess, severely. "Because your husband, like every other man of the world, pays some attention to the most gifted woman of her day, you suspect him of infidelity, want of love and want of truth. I wonder at you."

Lady Marion raised her fair, tear-stained face.

"I cannot make you understand," she said slowly, "nor do I understand myself. I only know what I feel, what my instinct tells me, and that is that between my husband and Madame Vanira there is something more than I know. I feel that there is a tie between them. He looks at her with different eyes; he speaks to her with a different voice; when he sung with her it was as though their souls floated away together."

"Marion," interrupted the countess, "my dear child, I begin to see what is the matter with you--you are jealous."

"Yes, I am jealous," said the unhappy wife, "and not without cause--you must own that. Ah, Lady Lanswell, you would be sorry for me if you knew all. See, it is wearing me away; my heart beats, my hands tremble, and they burn like fire. Oh, my God, how I suffer!"

The Countess of Lanswell, in her superb dress of black velvet, sat by in silence; for the first time in her life she was baffled; for the first time in her life she was face to face with a human passion. Hitherto, in her cold, proud presence all passion had veiled itself; this unhappy wife laid hers bare, and my lady was at a loss what to say. In her calm, proud life there had been no room for jealousy; she had never known it, she did not even understand the pain.

If her husband had gone out for a day with the most beautiful woman on earth, she would either have completely ignored the fact, or, with a smiling satire, have passed it by. She did not love the earl well enough to be jealous of