Lady Chesney looked at her, then laughed.

"My dear, you look transformed. Was that--but of course it was! Well?

But one need not ask any questions. Your face tells its own tale."

Luce laughed, and touched her lips with her handkerchief.

"Yes, it was Drake," she said. "What luck! what luck! And they say there is no Providence!"

"And--and it is all right?" asked Lady Chesney, anxiously.

Lady Luce laughed softly.

"Oh, yes! Didn't I tell you that if I could have him to myself for ten minutes----And we have been longer, haven't we? You see, he was fond of me, and----Oh! have you brought a cigarette? I am simply dying for one now!"

Lady Chesney held one out to her.

"Here it is. But hadn't you better go in? They will miss you----"

Lady Luce shrugged her shoulders as she struck a match from the gold box Drake had given her.

"What does it matter what these people think?" she retorted. "Nothing matters now. I have got Drake back, and----All the same, we will get out of sight of the window, lest we shock these simple folk. Yes, I am a lucky young woman."

They pa.s.sed along the terrace, and Nell, as if released from a spell, fell into the seat and covered her face with her hands.

CHAPTER XVII.

Presently she let them fall slowly and looked vacantly with her brows drawn--as if waiting for the return of some sharp pain--in the direction of Shorne Mills. The lights had gone out; so also had died the light of her young life.

She tried to realize what this was that had happened to her; but it was so difficult--so difficult! Only a little while ago she had been happy in the possession of Drake's love. He had been hers--was her sweetheart, her very own; he was to have been her husband; she was to have been his wife.

And now--what had happened? Was she dead--had she done some evil thing which had turned his love for her to hate and driven him from her?

Slowly the numbed sensation, the feeling of stupor pa.s.sed, and the truth, as she thought of it, came upon her with a rush and made her press her hand to her heart as if a knife had stabbed it.

Drake loved her no longer. He had never loved her. The woman he had loved was the most beautiful of G.o.d's creatures, and Drake had only turned to her--Nell--in a moment of pique. And this woman with the perfect face, and soft, lingering voice; this woman whose every movement was grace itself, who carried herself like an empress--an empress in the first flush of her beauty and power--had changed her mind and called him back to her. And he had gone.

The fact caused such intense misery as to leave no room for resentment.

At that moment there was not one spark of anger, one drop of bitterness in Nell's emotion; only misery so acute, so agonizing, as to be like a physical pain.

It seemed to her so natural, so reasonable, that he should desert her when this siren with the melting eyes, the caressing laugh, should beckon him; for who could have resisted her? Not any man who had once loved her.

Nell's head moved slowly from side to side, like that of an animal stricken to death. Her throat had grown tight, her eyes were hot and burning, the sound, as of the plash of waves, sang in her ears; but she could not cry. It seemed to her that she would never be able to cry again. She looked vaguely at the other women as they walked at the far end of the terrace, and she shivered as if with bodily fear. There was something terrible, Circe-like, to her in the face, the movements, the very voice of this woman who had taken Drake from her.

Presently the two exquisitely dressed figures pa.s.sed into the house, and Nell rose, steadying herself by the pedestal. As she did so, she looked up. A streak of light shot right across the statue, and the cruel face with its leering eyes seemed to smile down upon her mockingly, jeeringly, and she actually shrank, as if she dreaded to hear the satyr lips shoot some evil gibe at her.

And all the while the music, a waltz of Waldteufel's, soft and ravishing and seductive, floated out to her, and mocked her with the memory of the happiness that had been hers but an hour--half an hour ago. She staggered to the edge of the terrace and leaned her head on her hands, and, closing her eyes, tried hard to persuade herself that it was only a dream; just a dream, from which she should wake shuddering at the unreal misery one moment, then laughing at its unreality the next.

But it was true. The dream had been the happiness of the last few weeks, and this was the awakening.

Before her mental vision pa.s.sed, like a panorama, the days which the G.o.ds had given her--that they might punish her all the more cruelly for daring to be so happy.

Yes; how often had she asked herself what right she, Nell of Shorne Mills, had to so much joy? What had she done to deserve it?

She remembered now how, sometimes, she had been terrified by the intensity of her joy. That day Drake had told her that he loved her; the morning he had taken her in his arms and kissed her; the night he had looked down into her eyes and sworn that no man in all the world loved any woman as he loved her. She had not deserved it, had no right to it, and G.o.d had punished her for her presumption in daring to be so happy.

But now what was she to do?

She asked the question with a kind of despair.

It never for one moment occurred to her that she should accuse Drake of his faithlessness, much less that she should upbraid him. Indeed, what would be the use? Could she--she, an ignorant, half-taught girl, just Nell of Shorne Mills--contend against such a woman as this Lady Luce?

Luce! Luce! She remembered--for the first time that night, strangely enough--how he had murmured the name in his delirium. She had forgotten that, she had not thought of it, and had not asked who the woman was whose visage haunted him in his fever.

If she had only done so! He would have told her--yes, for Drake was honest; he would have told her--and she would not have allowed herself to fall in love with him. Even as it was, she had fought against it; but her struggle had been of no avail. She had loved him almost from the first moment.

And now she had lost him forever!

"Drake, Drake, Drake!" her heart called to him, though her lips were mute.

What should she do?

No; she would not upbraid him. There should be no "scene." She knew instinctively how much he would loathe a scene. She would just tell him--what? That--that--it had all been a mistake; that--she did not love him, and--and ask him to give her back her freedom.

That was all. Not one word of Lady Luce would she say. He would go--go without a word; she knew that.

And now she must go back to the ballroom, and try and look and behave as if nothing had happened.

Was she very white? she wondered dully. She felt as if she had died, and was buried out of reach of any pain, beyond all possibility of further joy. Her life was indeed at an end. That kiss of Drake's--to her it had appeared as if indeed it had been his, and not Luce's only, stolen from him unawares--that kiss had killed her.

Let Ibsen be a great poet and dramatist, or a literary fraud, there are one or two things which he says which strike men with the force of a revelation; and when he speaks of the love-life which is given to every man and woman, and calls him and her a murderer who kills it, he speaks truly, and as one inspired.

Nell's love-life lay dead at her feet, and Drake, though all unconsciously, had slain it.

She wiped her lips, though they were dry and parched, and with trembling hands smoothed her hair--the lips and the hair Drake had kissed so often, with such rapture--and slowly, fighting for strength and self-possession, pa.s.sed into the ballroom.

The brilliant light, the music, the dancers, acted upon her overstrained nerves as a dash of cold water upon a swooning man. For the first time since the blow had fallen pride awoke in her. She had lost Drake forever; but she would make no moan; other women before her had lost their lovers and their husbands by death, and they had to bear their bereavements; she must learn to bear hers.

A young fellow hurried up to her with a mingled expression of relief and complaint.

"Oh, Miss Lorton; this is ours!" he said. "I have been looking for you everywhere, everywhere, on my honor, and I was nearly distracted!"

Nell moistened her lips and forced a smile.

"I have been out on the terrace; it--it was hot."