"What time did you get home last night?" demanded Mrs. Stanford, with flashing eyes.
"It wasn"t last night, my dear," replied Mr. Stanford, serenely, b.u.t.tering his roll; "it was sometime this morning, I believe."
"And of course you were drunk as usual!"
"My love, pray don"t speak so loudly; they"ll hear you down stairs,"
remonstrated the gentleman. "Really, I believe I had been imbibing a little too freely. I hope I did not disturb you. I made as little noise as possible on purpose, I a.s.sure you. I even slept in my boots, not being in a condition to take them off. Wash your face, my dear, and comb your hair--they both need it very much--and come take some breakfast. If that baby of yours won"t hold its tongue, please to throw it out of the window."
Mrs. Stanford"s reply was to sink into the rocking-chair and burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.
"Don"t, pray!" remonstrated Mr. Stanford; "one"s enough to cry at a time. Do come and have some breakfast. You"re hysterical this morning, that is evident, and a cup of tea will do you good."
"I wish I were dead!" burst out Rose, pa.s.sionately. "I wish I had been dead before I ever saw your face!"
"I dare say, my love. I can understand your feelings, and sympathize with them perfectly."
"Oh, what a fool I was!" cried Rose, rocking violently backward and forward; "to leave my happy home, my indulgent father, my true and devoted lover, for you! To leave wealth and happiness for poverty, and privation, and neglect, and misery! Oh, fool! fool! fool! that I was!"
"Very true, my dear," murmured Mr. Stanford sympathetically. "I don"t mind confessing that I was a fool myself. You cannot regret your marriage any more than I do mine."
This was a little too much. Rose sprang up, flinging the baby into the cradle, and faced her lord and master with cheeks of flame and eyes of fire.
"You villain!" she cried. "You cruel, cold-blooded villain, I hate you!
Do you hear, Reginald Stanford, I hate you! You have deceived me as shamefully as ever man deceived woman! Do you think I don"t know where you were last night, or whom you were with? Don"t I know it was with that miserable, degraded Frenchwoman--that disgusting Madame Millefleur--whom I would have whipped through the streets of London, if I could."
"I don"t doubt it, my dear," murmured Mr. Stanford, still unruffled by his wife"s storm of pa.s.sion. "Your gentle s.e.x are famous for the mercy they always show to their fairer sisters. Your penetration does you infinite credit, Mrs. Stanford. I was with Madame Millefleur."
Rose stood glaring at him, white and panting with rage too intense for words. Reginald Stanford stood up, meeting her fierce regards with wonderful coolness.
"You"re not going to tear my hair out, are you, Rose? You see the way of it was this: Coming from the office where I have the honour to be clerk--thanks to my marriage--I met Madame Millefleur, that most bewitching and wealthy of French widows. She is in love with me, my dear. It may seem unaccountable to you how any one can be in love with me, but the fact is so. She is in love with me almost as much as pretty Rose Danton was once upon a time, and gave me an invitation to accompany her to the opera last night. Of course I was enchanted. The opera is a rare luxury now, and la Millefleur is all the fashion. I had the happiness of bending over her chair all the evening--don"t glare so, my love, it makes you quite hideous--and accepted a seat beside her in the carriage when it was all over. A delicious _pet.i.t souper_ awaited us in Madame"s bijou of a boudoir; and I don"t mind owning I was a little disguised by sparkling Moselle when I came home. Open confessions are good for the soul--there is one for you, my dear."
Her face was livid as she listened, and he smiled up at her with a smile that nearly drove her mad.
"I hate you, Reginald Stanford!" was all she could say. "I hate you! I hate you!"
"Quite likely, my love; but I dare say I shall survive that. You would rather I didn"t come here any more, I suppose, Mrs. Stanford?"
"I never want to see your hateful, wicked face again. I wish I had been dead before I ever saw it."
"And I wish whatever you wish, dearest and best," he said, with a sneering laugh; "if you ever see my wicked, hateful face again, it shall be no fault of mine. Perhaps you had better go back to Canada. M. La Touche was very much in love with you last year, and may overlook this little episode in your life, and take you to his bosom yet. Good morning, Mrs. Stanford. I am going to call on Madame Millefleur."
He took his hat and left the room, and Rose dropped down in her chair and covered her face with her hands.
If Kate Danton and Jules La Touche ever wished for revenge, they should have seen the woman who so cruelly wronged them at that moment.
Vengeance more bitter, more terrible than her worst enemy could wish, had overtaken and crushed her to the earth.
How that long, miserable day pa.s.sed, the poor child never knew. It came to an end, and the longer, more miserable night followed. Another morning, another day of unutterable wretchedness, and a second night of tears and sleeplessness. The third day came and pa.s.sed, and still Reginald Stanford never returned. The evening of the third day brought her a letter, with Napoleon"s head on the corner.
"Hotel Du Louvre, Paris, April 10.
My Dear Mrs. Stanford:--For you have still the unhappiness of bearing that odious name, although I have no doubt Captain Danton will shortly take the proper steps to relieve you of it.
According to promise, I have rid you of my hateful presence, and forever. You see I am in brilliant Paris, in a palatial hotel, enjoying all the luxuries wealth can procure, and Madame Millefleur is my companion. The contrast between my life this week and my life last is somewhat striking. The frowning countenance of Mrs.
Stanford is replaced by the ever-smiling face of my dark-eyed Adele, and the shabby lodgings in Crown street, Strand, are exchanged for this chamber of Eastern gorgeousness. I am happy, and so, no doubt, are you. Go back to Canada, my dear Mrs. Stanford.
Papa will receive his little runaway with open arms, and kill the fatted calf to welcome her. The dear Jules may still be faithful, and you may yet be thrice blessed as Madame La Touche. Ah, I forget--you belong to the Church, and so does he, that does not believe in divorce. What a pity!
"I beg you will feel no uneasiness upon pecuniary matters, my dear Rose. I write by this post to our good landlady, inclosing the next six months" rent, and in this you will find a check for all present wants.
"I believe this is all I have to say, and Adele is waiting for me to escort her on a shopping expedition. Adieu, my Rose; believe me, with the best wishes for your future happiness, to be Ever your friend,
"Reginald Reinecourt Stanford."
CHAPTER XXIV.
COALS OF FIRE.
One afternoon, about a fortnight after the receipt of that letter from France, Rose Stanford sat alone once more in the shabby little parlour of the London lodging-house. It was late in April, but a fire burned feebly in the little grate, and she sat cowering over it wrapped in a large shawl. She had changed terribly during these two weeks; she had grown old, and hollow-eyed, a haggard, worn, wretched woman.
It was her third day up, this April afternoon, for a low, miserable fever had confined her to her bed, and worn her to the pallid shadow she was now. She had just finished writing a letter, a long, sad letter, and it lay in her lap while she sat shivering over the fire. It was a letter to her father, a tardy prayer for forgiveness, and a confession of all her misdoings and wrongs--of Reginald Stanford"s rather, for, of course, all the blame was thrown upon him, though, if Rose had told the truth, she would have found herself the more in fault of the two.
"I am sick, and poor, and broken-hearted," wrote Mrs. Stanford; "and I want to go home and die. I have been very wicked, papa, but I have suffered so much, that even those I have wronged most might forgive me.
Write to me at once, and say I may go home; I only want to go and die in peace. I feel that I am dying now."
She folded the letter with a weary sigh and a hand that shook like an old woman"s, and rising, rang the bell. The brisk young woman answered the summons at once with a smile on her face, and Mrs. Stanford"s baby crowing in her arms. They had been very kind to the poor young mother and the fatherless babe during this time of trial; but Mrs. Stanford was too ill and broken down to think about it, or feel grateful.
"Here, Jane," said Mrs. Stanford, holding out the letter, "give me the baby, and post this letter."
Jane obeyed; and Rose, with the infant in her lap, sat staring gloomily at the red coals.
"Two weeks before it will reach them, two weeks more before an answer can arrive, and another two weeks before I can be with them. Oh, dear me! dear me! how shall I drag out life during these interminable weeks.
If I could only die at once and end it all."
Tears of unutterable wretchedness and loneliness and misery coursed down her pale, thin cheeks. Surely no one ever paid more dearly for love"s short madness than this unfortunate little Rose.
"Marry in haste and repent at leisure," she thought, with unspeakable bitterness. "Oh, how happy I might have been to-day if I had only done right last year. But I was mad and treacherous and false, and I dare-say it serves me right. How can I ever look them in the face when I go home?"
The weary weeks dragged on, how wearily and miserably only Rose knew.
She never went out; she sat all day long in that shabby parlour, and stared blankly at the pa.s.sers-by in the street, waiting, waiting.
The good-natured landlady and her daughter took charge of the baby during those wretched weeks of expectation, or Mrs. Reginald Stanford"s only son would have been sadly neglected.
April was gone; May came in, bringing the anniversary of Rose"s ill-starred marriage and finding her in that worst widowhood, a day of ceaseless tears and regrets to the unhappy, deserted wife. The bright May days went by, one after another, pa.s.sing as wretched days and more wretched nights do pa.s.s somehow; and June had taken its place. In all this long, long time, no letter had come for Rose. How she watched and waited for it; how she had strained her eyes day after day to catch sight of the postman; how her heart leaped up and throbbed when she saw him approach, and sank down in her breast like lead as he went by, only those can know who have watched and waited like her. A sickening sense of despair stole over her at last. They had forgotten her; they hated and despised her, and left her to her fate. There was nothing for it but to go to the alms-house and die, like any other pauper.
She had been mad when she fancied they could forgive her. Her sins had been too great. All the world had deserted her, and the sooner she was dead and out of the way the better.