"Bah! do you think, because we are virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
"Of course I do. I could sketch your future so easily. It will be so intensely respectable. You will become a model country squire. You will hunt a good deal, but never _ride_ any more. (You must sell the Axeine, you know.) You will go to magistrates" meetings regularly, and breed immense cattle; and you will grow very fat yourself. That"s the worst of all. I don"t like to fancy you stout and unwieldy, like Athelstan."
She ended, pensively. The languor of reaction seemed stealing over her, but it only made her more charming as she leaned still farther back on the soft cushions, watching the point of her tiny foot tracing the pattern of the carpet.
"What a brilliant horoscope!" said Guy; "and so benevolently sketched, too! Now your own, Improvisatrice."
"I shall marry too," she answered, gravely. "I ought to have done so long ago. Perhaps I shall make up my mind soon. Evil examples are so contagious."
"And who will draw the great prize?"
"I have not the faintest idea. I suppose some fine old English gentleman, who has a great estate."
"I only hope the said estate will be near Kerton," Livingstone suggested; and he drew closer to his companion.
"Ah! dear old Kerton," she said, sighing again, "I shall never go there any more."
"The reason?"
"Perhaps because my husband, whoever he may be, will not choose to bring me."
"Absurd!" Guy retorted, biting his lip hard. "As if that individual would have any will of his own. You want to provoke me, I see."
The answer came in so low a whisper that, though he bent his ear down, he had almost to guess at the words.
"No, I have never tried to do that, even during the last three months. I am not brave enough. Perhaps I should not come, because--I could not bear it."
They were silent. She was so near him now that her quick breath stirred his hair, and he could feel the pulse of her heart beating against his own side. The fiery Livingstone blood, heated seven-fold by wine and pa.s.sion, was surging through his veins like molten iron. Memory and foresight were both swept away like withered leaves by the strength of the terrible temptation.
His arm stole round her waist, and he drew her toward him--close--closer yet; then she looked up in his face. The cloud of thoughtful gravity has pa.s.sed away from hers, and the provocations of a myriad of coquettes and courtesans concentrated in her marvelous eyes.
He bent down his lofty head, and instantly their lips met, and were set together fast.
A kiss! Tibullus, Secundus, Moore, and a thousand other poets and poetasters, have rhymed on the word for centuries, decking it with the choicest and quaintest conceits. But, remember, it was with a kiss that the greatest of all criminals sealed the unpardonable sin--it was a kiss which brought on Francesca punishment so unutterably piteous that he swooned at the sight who endured to look on all other terrors of nine-circled h.e.l.l.
CHAPTER XXI.
"G.o.d help thee, then!
I"ll see thy face no more.
Like water spilled upon the plain, Not to be gathered up again, Is the old love I bore."
Before that long caress was ended, close behind them there broke forth a low, plaintive cry, such as might be wrung from the bravest of delicate women, in her extremity of pain, when stricken by a heavy brutal hand.
The hot blood ebbed back in Guy Livingstone"s veins, and froze at its fountain-head. His punishment had begun already. Before her face, white as the dress she wore, was revealed through a break in the dark green foliage of the camellias, he knew that he had trifled away his life"s happiness, and lost Constance Brandon.
She came forward slowly. With a valiant effort she had shaken off the first feeling of faintness that had crept over her, and there was scarcely a trace of emotion left on her features--calm and pale as the Angel of Death.
Guy had risen, and stood still, with his head bent down on his breast.
For the first time in his life he was unable to raise his eyes, weighed down by the heavy sense of bitter disgrace and forfeited honor.
But the bright flush on Flora"s cheek spoke more of exultation than of shame; the bouquet which she raised to her lips only half concealed a smile of triumph. She wreathed her slender neck haughtily while she met her rival"s glance without flinching. She thought that, if she had played for a heavy stake--no less than the jeopardy of her fair fame--this time, at least, the game was her own.
Constance spoke first, in a voice perfectly measured and composed. There was not a false note in the soft, musical tones. After once conquering her emotion, she would have dropped dead at Flora"s feet sooner than betray how she was wounded.
"When you have taken Miss Bellasys back, will you come to me for a moment, Mr. Livingstone? I will wait for you here."
Flora rose before Guy could answer. "Don"t trouble yourself," she said, gayly. "Here is my partner for the polka looking anxiously for me. I am ready, Captain Ravenswood."
She turned, before reaching the door, to fire a last shot.
"It is the next galop I am to keep for you, is it not?"
This was to Guy; but there was no answer. He stood in precisely the same att.i.tude, without a muscle of his face stirring or an eyelash quivering.
In all the Rifle Brigade there was not a more reckless dare-devil than Harry Ravenswood, nor one who adhered more devoutly to the convenient creed, "All is fair in war or love." But he saw that something had happened quite out of his line; and he did not venture on a single allusion to it as he led his partner back to the dancing-room, with a perplexed expression on his cheery face, which amused Flora intensely when she remarked it. When the subject came on for discussion afterward in the smoking-room at his club, he thus expressed himself, in language terse and elegantly allegorical.
"You see, Livingstone is a very heavy weight; a good deal better than most in the ring. When I saw him so floored as not to be able to come to time, I knew there had been some hard hitting going on thereabouts, so I kept clear."
The two who were left alone in the conservatory remained silent for a few seconds. Then Guy roused himself, and offered his arm to his companion with an impulse of courtesy that was simply mechanical. She took it without remark, and they pa.s.sed out through the door which led into the garden.
There Constance left his side; and, for the first time, their eyes met as they stood face to face under the bright moon. Guy read his sentence instantly--a sentence from which there was no appeal. The very hopelessness of his situation restored its elasticity to the somewhat sullen pride which was the mainspring of his character. He stood, waiting for her to speak; and his eyes were not cast down now, but riveted on her face--gloomily defiant.
"I hope you will believe," Miss Brandon said, "that it was quite involuntarily I became a spy on your actions. I did not overhear one word; and my partner had that moment left me, when I saw--" Not all her self-command could check the shudder that ran through every limb, and the choking in her throat that would interrupt her.
"I have very little to add," she went on, more steadily. "After what I witnessed, I need hardly say that we only meet again as the merest strangers. You might think meanly of me, indeed, if I ever allowed your lips to touch my cheek or my hand again. Remember, I told you from the first we were not suited to each other; perhaps I deserve all I have met with for allowing myself to be overruled. You can not contradict a word of this, or say that it is unjust or severe."
Did she pause in the expectation or the hope of an excuse, or an appeal from her hearer? Only the hoa.r.s.e answer came,
"I have forfeited the right to defend myself or to gainsay you."
"You would find it difficult to do either," Constance rejoined, rather more haughtily; perhaps she was disappointed in the tone of his reply.
"One word more: if my name is ever called in question, I am sure no one will defend it more readily than yourself. My voice will never be heard against you; and if, hereafter, you shall desire my forgiveness more than you now do; remember, I have given it unasked and freely."
Guy"s tone was pregnant with cold, cruel irony as he answered,
"I congratulate you on your position, Miss Brandon; it is quite una.s.sailable. You are in the right now, as you always have been. You were right, of course, in always doling out the tokens of your love in such scanty measure as your pride and your priests would allow. They ought to canonize you--those holy men! I doubt if they have another disciple so superior to all human weaknesses. It must be very gratifying to so eminent a Christian to be able to forgive plenarily, without danger of the favor being returned. I have nothing to urge against your decision--that we part forever. You will have no difficulty in forgetting me, whom you ought never to have stooped to. Yet I will give you one caution. I am not romantic, as you know, and I generally mean what I say. If you should think hereafter of bestowing yourself on some worthier object, hesitate a little for _his_ sake, or wait till I am dead; otherwise, the day that makes his happiness certain may bring him very near his grave."
His voice had changed during the last words into a growl of savage menace, and his forehead was black and furrowed with pa.s.sion.
It might have been his own excited fancy, or the pa.s.sing just then of a light cloud over the moon; but, for an instant, he thought he saw her steady lip quiver and tremble. If so, be very sure it was not fear which caused the emotion, though even that the circ.u.mstances might have excused; rather, I think, it was a pang of self-reproach--a consciousness of having acted unwisely, though for the best; perhaps, too, the stubbornness of the heart she had ruled once--so strong and proud even in its abas.e.m.e.nt--was congenial to her own besetting sin: she liked the fierce threat better than the cool sarcasm. At any rate, she answered more gently than she had yet spoken.
"I believe you. But you know me better than to think a threat would influence me. Yet you need not fear my ever again trusting this world with my happiness. You will be very sorry hereafter for some things you have said to-night. Ask yourself--if I had loved you, as you seem to have expected, better than my own soul, would the result have been different? It is too late now to say any thing but--farewell. Will you not say it, as I do, kindly, or at least not in anger--Guy?"
She paused between the two last words, and their imploring accent was almost piteous. There must have been a strange fascination about Livingstone, for, saint as she was, no other living creature would have won such a concession from the Christian charity of Constance Brandon.