The Dantons had been three weeks in Paris, and were to leave in a day or two en route for Switzerland. The Doctor had taken them for a last drive through the Bois de Boulogne the sunny afternoon that was to be their last for some time in the French capital. Kate and Rose, looking very handsome, and beautifully dressed, lay back among the cushions, attracting more than one glance of admiration from those who pa.s.sed by.
Mrs. Danton was chatting gayly with her husband, and Rose, poising a dainty azure parasol, looked at the well-dressed Parisians around her.
Suddenly, the hand so daintily holding the parasol grasped it tight, the hot blood surged in a torrent to her face, and her eyes fixed and dilated on two equestrians slowly approaching. A lady and gentleman--the lady a Frenchwoman evidently, dark, rather good-looking, and not very young; the gentleman, tall, eminently handsome, and much more youthful than his fair companion, Rose Stanford and her false husband were face to face!
He had seen them, and grown more livid than death; his eyes fixed on Doctor Danton and his beautiful wife, talking and laughing with such infinitely happy faces.
One glance told him how matters stood--told him the girl he had forsaken was the happy wife of a better man. Then his glance met that of his wife, pretty, and blooming and bright as when he had first fallen in love with her; but those hazel eyes were flashing fire, and the pretty face was fierce with rage and scorn.
Then they were past; and Reginald Stanford and his wife had seen each other for the last time on earth.
The summer flew by. They visited Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and were back in Paris in October. About the middle of that month they sailed from Havre to New York, and reached that city after a delightful pa.s.sage. It being Rose"s first sight of the Empire City, they lingered a week to show her the lions, and early in November were on the first stage of their journey to Danton Hall.
CHAPTER XXV.
AT HOME.
Late in the afternoon of a dark November day our travellers reached St.
Croix, and found the carriage from the Hall awaiting them at the station. Rose leaned back in a corner, wrapped in a large shawl, and with a heart too full of mingled feelings to speak. How it all came back to her, with the bitterness of death, the last time her eyes had looked upon these familiar objects--how happy she had been then, how hopeful; how miserable she had been since, how hopeless now. The well-known objects flitted before her eyes, seen through a mist of tears, so well-known that it seemed only yesterday since she had last looked at them, and these dreary intervening months only a wretched dream. Ah! no dream, for there sat the English nurse with the baby in her arms, a living proof of their reality. One by one the old places spun by, the church, the presbytery, with Father Francis walking up and down the little garden, his soutane tucked up, and his breviary in his hand, all looking ghostly in the dim afternoon light. Now the village was pa.s.sed, they were flying through wide open gates, and under the shadow of the dear old trees. There was Danton Hall, not the dingy, weather-beaten Danton Hall she knew, but a much more modern, much more elegant mansion; and there on the gray stone steps stood her father, handsome and portly, and kindly as ever; and there was Grace beside him--dear, good Grace; and there was Eeny, dressed in pale pink with fluttering ribbons, fair and fragile, and looking like a rosebud. A little group of three persons behind, at sight of whom Kate uttered an exclamation of delight.
"Oh, Frank! there are Harry and Agnes! To think papa never told us! What a charming surprise!"
That was all Rose heard; then she was clasped in her father"s stalwart arms, and sobbing on his breast. They all cl.u.s.tered around her first--their restored prodigal--and Grace kissed her lovingly, and Eeny"s soft arms were around her neck. Then the group in the background came forward, and Rose saw a sunburned sailor"s face, and knew that it was her brother Harry who was kissing her, and her sister Agnes whose arms clung around her. Then she looked at the third person, still standing modestly in the background, and uttered a little cry.
"Jules! M. La Touche!"
He came forward, a smile on his face, and his hand frankly outstretched, while Eeny blushingly hovered aloof.
"I am very happy to see you again, Mrs. Stanford--very happy to see you looking so well!"
So they had met, and this was all! Then they were in the drawing-room--how, Rose could not tell--it was all like a dream to her, and Eeny had the babe in her arms, and was carrying it around to be kissed and admired. "The beauty! The darling! The pet!" Eeny could not find words enough to express her enthusiastic rapture at such a miracle of babydom, and kissed Master Reginald into an angry fit of crying.
They got up to their rooms at last. Rose broke down again in the seclusion of her chamber, and cried until her eyes were as sore as her heart. How happy they all looked, loving and beloved; and she, the deserted wife, was an object of pity. While she sat crying, there was a tap at the door. Hastily drying her eyes, she opened it, and admitted Grace.
"Have you been crying, Rose?" she said, tenderly taking both her hands, and sitting down beside her. "My poor dear, you must try and forget your troubles, and be happy with us. I know it is very sad, and we are all sorry for you; but the husband you have lost is not worth grieving for.
Were you not surprised," smiling, "to see Mr. La Touche here?"
"Hardly," said Rose, rather sulkily. "I suppose he is here in the character of Eeny"s suitor?"
"More than that, my dear. He is here in the character of Eeny"s affianced husband. They are to be married next month."
Rose uttered an exclamation--an exclamation of dismay. She certainly had never dreamed of this.
"The marriage would have taken place earlier, but was postponed in expectation of your and Kate"s arrival. That is why Harry and Agnes are here. M. La Touche has a perfect home prepared for his bride in Ottawa.
Come, she is in Kate"s room now. I will show you her trousseau."
Rose went with her step-mother from her chamber into Eeny"s dressing-room. There was spread out the bridal outfit. Silks, in rich stiffness, fit to stand alone; laces, jewels, bridal-veil, and wreath.
Rose looked with dazzled eyes, and a feeling of pa.s.sionate, jealous envy at her heart. It might have been hers, all this splendour--she might have been mistress of the palace at Ottawa, and the wife of a millionaire.
But she had given up all for love of a handsome face; and that handsome face smiled on another now, and was lost to her forever. She choked back the rebellious throbbing of her heart, and praised the costly wedding outfit, and was glad when she could escape and be alone again. It was all bitter as the waters of Marah, to poor, widowed Rose; their forgiveness, so ready and so generous, was heaping coals of fire on her head; and at home, surrounded by kind friends and every comfort so long a stranger to her, she felt even more desolate than she had ever done in the dreary London lodgings.
But while all were happy at Danton Hall, save Captain Danton"s second daughter, once the gayest among them, the days flew by, and Eveleen Danton"s wedding-day dawned. Such a lovely December day, brilliant, cloudless, warm--just the day for a wedding. The little village church was crowded with the rich and the poor, long before the carriages from the Hall arrived. Very lovely looked the young bride, in her silken robe of virgin white, her misty veil, and drooping, flower-crowned head. Very sweet, and fair, and innocent, and as pale as her snowy dress, the centre of all eyes, as she moved up the aisle, on her father"s arm.
There were four bride-maids; the Demoiselles La Touche came from Ottawa for the occasion. Miss Emily Howard, and Miss La Favre. The bride"s sisters shared with her the general admiration--Mrs. Dr. Danton; Mrs.
Stanford, all auburn ringlets, and golden brown silk, and no outward sign of the torments within; Mrs. Harry Danton, fair as a lily, clinging to her sailor-husband"s arm, like some spirit of the sea; and last, but not least, Captain Danton"s wife, very simply dressed, but looking so quietly happy and serene. Then it was all over, and the gaping spectators saw the wedding party flocking back into the carriages, and whirling away to the Hall.
Mr. and Mrs. La Touche were to make but a brief tour, and return in time for a Christmas house-warming. Doctor Frank and his wife went to their Montreal home, and Mrs. Stanford remained at St. Croix. The family were all to rea.s.semble at Ottawa, to spend New Year with Madame La Touche.
Rose found the intervening weeks very long and dreary at the Hall.
Captain Harry had gone back to his ship, and of course Agnes had gone with him. They had wanted her to stay at home this voyage, but Agnes had lifted such appealing eyes, and clung in so much alarm to Harry at the bare idea of his leaving her, that they had given it up at once. So Rose, with no companion except Grace, found it very dull, and sighed the slow hours away, like a modern Mariana in the Moated Grange.
But the merry New Year time came round at last; and all the Dantons were together once more in Eeny"s splendid home. It made Rose"s heart ache with envy to walk through those lovely rooms--long vistas of splendour and gorgeousness.
"It might have been mine!--It might have been mine!" that rebellious heart of hers kept crying out. "I might have been mistress of all this retinue of servants--these jewels and silks I might have worn! I might have reigned like a queen in this stately house if I had only done right!"
But it was too late, and Mrs. Stanford had to keep up appearances, and smiles, though the serpents of envy and regret gnawed at her vitals. It was very gay there! Life seemed all made up of music, and dancing, and feasting, and mirth, and skating, and sleighing, and dressing, and singing. Life went like a fairy spectacle, or an Eastern drama, or an Arcadian dream--with care, and trial, and trouble, monsters unknown even by name.
Mme. Jules La Touche played the role with charming grace--a little shy, as became her youth and inexperience, but only the more charming for that. They were very, very happy together, this quiet young pair--loving one another very dearly, as you could see, and looking forward hopefully to a future that was to be without a cloud.
Mrs. La Touche and Mrs. Stanford were very much admired in society, no doubt; but people went into raptures over Mrs. Frank Danton. Such eyes, such golden hair, such rare smiles, such queenly grace, such singing, such playing--surely nature had created this darling of hers in a gracious mood, and meted out to her a double portion of her favours. You might think other ladies--those younger sisters of hers included--beautiful until she came; and then that stately presence, that bewitching brightness and grace, eclipsed them as the sun eclipses stars.
"What a lucky fellow Danton is!" said the men. "One doesn"t see such a superb woman once in a century."
And Doctor Frank heard it, and smiled, as he smoked his meerschaum, and thought so too.
And so we leave them. Kate is happy; Eeny reigns right royally in her Ottawa home; and Rose--well, poor Rose has no home, and flits about between St. Croix, and Montreal, and Ottawa, all the year round. She calls Danton Hall home, but she spends most of her time with Kate. It is not so sumptuous, of course, as at Ottawa, in the rising young Doctor"s home; but she is not galled every moment of the day by the poignant regrets that lacerate her heart at Eeny"s. She hears of her husband occasionally, as he wanders through the Continent, and the chain that binds her to him galls her day and night. Little Reginald, able to trot about on his own st.u.r.dy legs now, accompanies her in her migratory flights, and is petted to death wherever he goes. He has come to grief quite recently, and takes it very hard that grandpa should have something else to nurse besides himself. This something else is a little atom of humanity named Gracie, and is Captain Danton"s youngest daughter.
THE END.