"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. G.o.d 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 pet.i.tion 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 a.s.sured 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. G.o.d 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 surpa.s.s. 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, G.o.d 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 n.o.ble, 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, a.n.a.lysis, 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.ds; profaning the altar, where other images should have stood. The banker's daughter, and the Laurance heiress she bore you, are ent.i.tled 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 chastis.e.m.e.nts 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 l.u.s.trous 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 x.x.xV.

From the window of one of those beautiful villas that encrust the sh.o.r.es 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 l.u.s.tre 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 c.u.mbered 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 pa.s.sengers 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?