"Ah, yes! I remember. Is she here with the Howards, and as handsome as ever, no doubt?"
"Handsome, to my mind, with an uplifted and unapproachable sort of beauty. A fellow might as soon love some bright particular star, etc., as the fabulously wealthy heiress of all the Jocylns. She has no end of suitors--all the best men here bow at the shrine of the ice-cold Aileen, and all in vain."
"You among the rest, my friend?" with a light laugh.
"No, by Jove!" cried Mr. Mortimer; "that sort of thing--the marble style, you know--never was to my taste. I admire Miss Jocyln immensely--just as I do the moon up there, with no particular desire ever to be nearer."
"What was that story I heard once, five years ago, about a broken engagement? Wasn"t Thetford of that ilk the hero of the tale?--the romantic Thetford, who resigned his t.i.tle and estate to a mysteriously-found elder brother, you know. The story ran through the papers and the clubs at the time like wildfire, and set the whole country talking, I remember. She was engaged to him, wasn"t she, and broke off?"
"So goes the story--but who knows? I recollect that odd affair perfectly well; it was like the melodramas on the sunny side of the Thames. I know the "mysteriously-found elder brother," too--very fine fellow, Sir Guy Thetford, and married to the prettiest little wife the sun shines on. I must say Rupert Thetford behaved wonderfully well in that unpleasant business; very few men would do as he did--they would, at least, have made a fight for the t.i.tle and estates. By-the-way, I wonder whatever became of him?"
"I left him at Sorrento," said Stafford, coolly.
"The deuce you did! What was he doing there?"
"Raving in the fever; so the people told me with whom he stopped. I just discovered he was in the place as I was about to leave it. He had fallen very low, I fancy; his pictures didn"t sell, I suppose; he has been in the painting line since he ceased to be Sir Rupert, and the world has gone against him. Rather hard on him to lose fortune, t.i.tle, home, bride, and all at one fell swoop. Some women there are who would go with their plighted husbands to beggary; but I suppose the lovely Aileen is not one of them."
"And so you left him ill of the fever? Poor fellow!"
"Dangerously ill."
"And the people with whom he is will take very little care of him; he"s as good as dead. Let us go in--I want to have a look at the latest English papers."
The two men pa.s.sed in, out of the moonlight, off the piazza, all unconscious that they had had a listener. The pale watcher in the trailing black robes, scarcely heeding them at first, had grown more and more absorbed in the careless conversation. She caught her breath in quick, short gasps, the dark eyes dilated, the slender hands pressed themselves tight over the throbbing heart. As they went in off the balcony she slid from her seat and held up her clasped hands to the luminous night sky.
"Hear me, oh, G.o.d!" the white lips cried--"I, who have aided in wrecking a n.o.ble heart--hear me, and help me to keep my vow! I offer my whole life in atonement for the cruel and wicked past. If he dies, I shall go to my grave his unwedded widow. If he lives----"
Her voice faltered and died out, her face drooped forward on the window-sill, and the flashing moonlight fell like a benediction on the bowed young head.
CHAPTER XVI.
AT SORRENTO.
The low light in the western sky was dying out; the bay of Naples lay rosy in the haze of the dying day; and on this scene an invalid, looking from a window high up on the sea-washed cliff at Sorrento, gazed languidly.
For he was surely an invalid who sat in that window chair and gazed at the wondrous Italian sea and that lovely Italian sky; surely an invalid, with that pallid face, those spectral, hollow eyes, those sunken cheeks, those bloodless lips; surely an invalid, and one but lately risen from the very gates of death--a pale shadow, worn and weak as a child.
As he sits there, where he has sat for hours, lonely and alone, the door opens, and an English face looks in--the face of an Englishman of the lower cla.s.ses.
"A visitor for you, sir--just come, and a-foot; a lady, sir. She will not give her name, but wishes to see you most particular, if you please."
"A lady! To see me?"
The invalid opens his great, dark eyes in wonder as he speaks.
"Yes, sir; an English lady, sir, dressed in black, and a wearing of a thick veil. She asked for Mr. Rupert Thetford as soon as she see me, as plain, as plain, sir----"
The young man in the chair started, half rose, and then sank back--a wild, eager light lit in the hollow eyes.
"Let her come in; I will see her!"
The man disappeared; there was an instant"s pause, then a tall, slender figure, draped and veiled in black, entered alone.
The visitor stood still. Once more the invalid attempted to rise, once more his strength failed him. The lady threw back her veil with a sudden motion.
"My G.o.d, Aileen!"
"Rupert!"
She was on her knees before him, lifting her suppliant hands.
"Forgive me! Forgive me! I have seemed the most heartless and cruel of women! But I, too, have suffered. I am base and unworthy; but, oh!
forgive me, if you can!"
The old love, stronger than death, shone in her eyes, plead in her pa.s.sionate, sobbing voice, and went to his very heart.
"I have been so wretched, so wretched all these miserable years! Whilst my father lived I would not disobey his stern command that I was never to attempt to see or hear from you, and at his death I could not. You seemed lost to me and the world. Only by the merest accident I heard in Venice you were here, and ill--dying. I lost no time, I came hither at once, hoping against hope to find you alive. Thank G.o.d I did come! Oh, Rupert! Rupert! for the sake of the past forgive me!"
"Forgive you!" and he tried to raise her. "Aileen--darling!"
His weak arms encircled her, and the pale lips pressed pa.s.sionate kisses on the tear-wet face.
So, whilst the red glory of the sunset lay on the sea, and till the silver stars spangled the sky, the reunited lovers sat in the soft haze as Adam and Eve may have in the loveliness of Eden.
"How long since you left England?" Rupert asked at length.
"Two years ago; poor papa died in the south of France. You mustn"t blame him too much, Rupert."
"My dearest, we will talk of blaming no one. And Guy and May are married? I knew they would be."
"Did you? I was so surprised when I read it in the _Times_; for you know May and I never corresponded--she was frantically angry with me. Do they know you are here?"
"No; I rarely write, and I am constantly moving about; but I know Guy is very much beloved in St. Gosport. We will go back to England one of these days, my darling, and give them the greatest surprise they have received since Sir Guy Thetford learned who he really was."
He smiled as he said it--the old bright smile she remembered so well.
Tears of joy filled the beautiful, upturned eyes.
"And you will go back? Oh, Rupert! it needed but this to complete my happiness!"
He drew her closer, and then there was a long, delicious silence, whilst they watched together the late-rising moon climbing the misty hills above Castlemare.
CHAPTER XVII.