CHAPTER XLIX.

THE WOUND IN HER HEART.

If Leone had been wiser after that one evening, she would have avoided Lord Chandos as she would have shunned the flames of fire; that one evening showed her that she stood on the edge of a precipice. Looking in her own heart, she knew by its pa.s.sionate anguish and pa.s.sionate pain that the love in her had never been conquered. She said to herself, when the evening was over and she drove away, leaving them together, that she would never expose herself to that pain again.

It was so strange, so unnatural for her--she who believed herself his wife, who had spent so many evenings with him--to go away and leave him with this beautiful woman who was really his wife. She looked up at the silent stars as she drove home; surely their pale, golden eyes must shine down in dearest pity on her. She clinched her white, soft hands until the rings made great red dents; she exhausted herself with great tearless sobs; yet no tears came from her burning eyes.

Was ever woman so foully, so cruelly wronged? had ever woman been so cruelly tortured?

"I will not see him again," she cried to herself; "I cannot bear it."

Long after the stars had set, and the crimson flush of dawn stirred the pearly tints of the sky, she lay, sobbing, with pa.s.sionate tears, feeling that she could not bear it--she must die.

It would have been well if that had frightened her, but when morning dawned she said to herself that hers had always been a mad love, and would be so until the end. She made one desperate resolve, one desperate effort; she wrote to Lord Chandos, and sent the letter to his club--a little, pathetic note, with a heart-break in every line of it--to say that they who had been wedded lovers were foolish to think of being friends; that it was not possible, and that she thought they had better part; the pain was too great for her, she could not bear it.

The letter was blotted with tears, and as he read it for whom it was written, other tears fell on it. Before two hours had pa.s.sed, he was standing before her, with outstretched hands, the ring of pa.s.sion in his voice, the fire of pa.s.sion in his face.

"Leone," he said, "do you mean this--must we part?"

They forgot in that moment all the restraints by which they had surrounded themselves; once more they were Lance and Leone, as in the old days.

"Must we part?" he repeated, and her face paled as she raised it to his.

"I cannot bear the pain, Lance," she said, wearily. "It would be better for us never to meet than for me to suffer as I did last evening."

He drew nearer to her.

"Did you suffer so much, Leone?" he asked, gently.

"Yes, more almost than I can bear. It is not many years since I believed that I was your wife, and now I have to see another woman in my place.

I--I saw you kiss her--I had to go away and leave you together. No, I cannot bear it, Lance!"

The beautiful head drooped wearily, the beautiful voice trembled and died away in a wail that was pitiful to hear; all her beauty, her genius, her talent--what did it avail her?

Lord Chandos had suffered much, but his pain had never been so keen as now at this moment, when this beautiful queenly woman wailed out her sorrow to him.

"What shall I do, Leone? I would give my life to undo what I have done; but it is useless--I cannot. Do you mean that we must part?"

The eyes she raised to his face were haggard and weary with pain.

"There is nothing for it but parting, Lance," she said. "I thought we could be friends, but it is not possible; we have loved each other too well."

"We need not part now," he said; "let us think it over; life is very long; it will be hard to live without the sunlight of your presence, Leone, now that I have lived in it so long. Let us think it over. Do you know what I wanted to ask you last evening?"

"No," she replied, "what was it?"

"A good that you may still grant me," he said. "We may part, if you wish it, Leone. Leone, let us have one happy day before the time comes.

Leone, you see how fair the summer is, I want you to spend one day with me on the river. The chestnuts are all in flower--the whole world is full of beauty, and song, and fragrance; the great boughs are dipping into the stream, and the water-lilies lie on the river's breast. My dear love and lost love, come with me for one day. We may be parted all the rest of our lives, come with me for one day."

Her face brightened with the thought. Surely for one day they might be happy; long years would have to pa.s.s, and they would never meet. Oh, for one day, away on the river, in the world of clear waters, green boughs and violet banks--one day away from the world which had trammeled them and fettered them.

"You tempt me," she said, slowly. "A day with you on the river. Ah, for such a pleasure as that I would give twenty years of my life."

He did not answer her, because he dared not. He waited until his heart was calm and at rest again, then he said:

"Let us go to-morrow, Leone, no one knows what twenty-four hours may bring forth. Let us go to-morrow, Leone. Rise early. How often we have gone out together while the dew lay upon the flowers and gra.s.s. Shall it be so?"

The angel of prudence faded from her presence as she answered, "Yes."

Knowing how she loved him, hearing the old love story in his voice, reading it in his face, she would have done better had she died there in the splendor of her beauty and the pain of her love than have said, "Yes." So it was arranged.

"It will be a beautiful day," said Lord Chandos. "I am a capital rower, Leone, as you will remember. I will take you as far as Medmersham Abbey: we will land there and spend an hour in the ruins; but you will have to rise early and drive down to the river side. You will not mind that."

"I shall mind nothing that brings me to you," she said, with a vivid blush, and so it was settled.

They forgot the dictates of honor; he forgot his duty to his wife at home, and she forgot prudence and justice.

The morning dawned. She had eagerly watched for it through the long hours of the night; it wakes her with the song of the birds and the shine of the sun; it wakes her with a mingled sense of pain and happiness, of pleasure and regret. She was to spend a whole day with him, but the background to that happiness was that he was leaving a wife at home who had all claims to his time and attention.

"One happy day before I die," she said to herself.

But will it be happy? The sun will shine brightly, yet there will be a background; yet it shall be happy because it will be with him.

It was yet early in the morning when she drove to the appointed place at the river side. The sun shone in the skies, the birds sang in the trees, the beautiful river flashed and glowed in the light, the waters seemed to dance and the green leaves to thrill.

Ah, if she were but back by the mill-stream, if she were but Leone Noel once again, with her life all unspoiled before her; if she were anything on earth except a woman possessed by a mad love. If she could but exchange these burning ashes of a burning love for the light, bright heart of her girlhood, when the world had been full of beauty which spoke to her in an unknown tongue.

G.o.d had been so good to her; he had given to her the beauty of a queen, genius that was immortal, wit, everything life holds most fair, and they were all lost to her because of her mad love. Ah, well, never mind, the sun was shining, the river dancing far away in the sun, and she was to spend the day with him. She had dressed herself to perfection in a close-fitting dress of dark-gray velvet, relieved by ribbons of rose pink; she wore a hat with a dark-gray plume, under the shade of which her beautiful face looked doubly bewitching; the little hands, which by their royal gestures swayed mult.i.tudes, were cased in dark gray. Lord Chandos looked at her in undisguised admiration.

"The day seems to have been made on purpose for us," he said, as he helped her in the boat.

Leone laughed, but there was just the least tinge of bitterness in that laugh.

"A day made for us would have gray skies, cold rains, and bleak, bitter winds," she said.

And then the pretty pleasure boat floated away on the broad, beautiful stream.

It was a day on which to dream of heaven; there was hardly a ripple on the beautiful Thames; the air was balmy, sweet, filled with the scent of hay from the meadows; of flowers from the banks; it was as though they had floated away into Paradise.

Lord Chandos bent forward to see that the rugs were properly disposed; he opened her sunshade, but she would not use it.

"Let me see the beautiful river, the banks and the yews, while I may,"

she said, "the sun will not hurt me."

There was no sound save that of the oars cleaving the bright waters.

Leone watched the river with loving eyes; since she had left River View--and she had loved it with something like pa.s.sion--it seemed like part of that married life which had ended so abruptly. They pa.s.sed by a thicket, where the birds were singing after a mad fashion of their own.

"Stop and listen," she said, holding up her hand.