A Fair Mystery: The Story of a Coquette

CHAPTER LXX

THE PRICE OF A SECRET

He went one step nearer to her and looked at her with an evil smile; his heart was full of passion – half intense love, half furious anger.

"You thought to deceive me," he said, and the breath came like hot flame from his lips. "You thought to blind and dupe me, but I know you now – I have known you all along, though I could not believe the evidence of my own senses."

He never forgot the regal grace with which she drew her slight frame to its utmost height, the anger, the haughty pride that flashed from her eyes.

"I do not understand you," she replied; "and I repeat my question; when I gave orders that I should be denied to all visitors, how dare you enter here?"

"It is late, Lady Doris," he said, "too late for that kind of thing now, I repeat that I know you – to the rest of the world you may be Lady Doris Studleigh, to me you are simply the girl who lived with me and ran away from me."

She looked at him; if a glance from those proud eyes could have slain him, he would have lain that instant dead at her feet. He continued:

"You may deny it, you may continue to carry on the same concealment, the same deceit, but it will be all in vain; I know you, and I know you for what you are. You can say anything you please, if you think it advisable to waste words; I repeat that it will be in vain." She grew white, even to the lips, as she listened to the insolent words. "I felt sure – convinced of your identity from the very moment I saw you at the opera," he continued. "I watched you then; I have watched you ever since."

Her white lips opened, but all sound died away from them – he heard nothing.

"I have admired your talent for acting," he continued; "it is a grand one. It is ten thousand pities that you are not upon the stage; you would be its brightest ornament. I was not wholly, but half deceived, by your superb nonchalance; then I determined to find out the truth for myself. I have done so."

He waited to see if she would utter one word of denial, one word of explanation. She stood before him – pale, beautiful, silent as a marble statue.

"I have tracked you," he said, triumphantly. "I can tell you the whole story of your life; how you lived as a child at Brackenside; how you carried on a pretty little love affair with your poet and gentleman, until I saw you; how you went to Florence with me, in total ignorance of your true origin; how on the morning I left you by the river side, some one came from England, told you the true story of your birth, and brought you back here. I have been to Brackenside; I am not speaking without proof."

If she could have spoken, she would have told him that no one at Brackenside would ever betray her; she would have liked to cast his words back in his teeth, but the strength to speak was no longer hers.

"You thought then of being very clever. If you had never heard the true story of your birth, you would have been content to abide with me all the days of your life – you would have thought your lot a brilliant one. But you were too clever, Dora; you thought to escape and to live as though you had never heard of me. It could not be done. Did you speak?"

He might as well ask the question, for a sound that resembled no ordinary, no human sound, came from her lips. He went on:

"Why were you not frank and honest with me, Dora? – why did you not await my return, and tell me? – why did you not trust me? Do you know what I should have done if you had so trusted me? I should have said that my proposition to you had been made under a great mistake, not knowing your true name; and I should have released you then and them from all ties that bound you to me."

She saw her mistake then; saw what short-sighted, miserable policy hers had been; but it was all too late.

"Surely," he continued, "you had lived with me long enough to know that I had some semblance of a gentleman, some faint notions of honor. There is no need to sneer, my lady; men do not reckon honor when they deal with what you were then."

"I know it," she cried, with sudden bitterness, in a voice that had no resemblance to her own.

"Why did you not trust me! I cannot – I shall never forgive you for the way in which you deserted me. Had you left me one line – only one line – telling me your true parents had claimed you, Doris, it would have saved all this."

"I had not time."

"Because you did not wish to make it. Even suppose that, to avoid detection, you had hurried from Florence, you might surely have sent me a line from England; even if you could not trust me with your name and address, you might have done that."

"I see it now. I might, nay, I should have done it. Will that admission satisfy you?"

"There is nothing in it to satisfy me," he said, angrily; "you had no right to desert me as you did, to treat me as you did – none in the world. Do you know what you cost me? Do you know that I went mad over losing you? that I searched for you day after day, month after month, hating my life itself because you no longer formed part of it! Do you know that the loss of you changed me from a good-tempered man into a fiend? – can you realize that, Lady Doris Studleigh?"

"No," she replied, "I cannot."

"It is true. Fair, bright, frivolous women like you cannot realize a man's love – they cannot even estimate it! And strange – oh! strange to say – women like you win strong, passionate love, for which the pure and noble of your sex seek in vain."

Alas! that she had given him the right to speak thus to her – that she had placed herself in the power of such a man! Oh! fatal, foolish, and wicked sin! Yet true to herself, true to her own light, frivolous nature, it was not the bitter sin she repented so much as its discovery.

He drew nearer to her, and placed one hand on her arm.

"Do you know, Doris," he said, "that when you left me I had begun, even then, to love you with such a passionate love that every pulse of my heart was wrapped up in it."

She shook his hand from her as though there were contamination in his touch.

"I did not know it. I do not believe it. You never loved me – you have loved nothing on earth one half so dearly as you have loved yourself!"

His face grew dark with anger.

"Remembering how entirely you are in my power," he said, "I ask you, is it wise to anger me?"

"You never loved me," she repeated; "Earle loved me, and would have died any day to save my fair name! You never loved me, you loved yourself!"

"I repeat it, I loved you with a passion so terrible, so fierce, so violent, it frightened me! I loved you so, that I would have lost wealth, fortune, position – ah! life itself – for you!"

Her white lips smiled scornfully; that calm, proud, scorn drove him beside himself.

"You have been some time in discovering it," she said.

"That is your mistake," he replied; "do you know, Doris, I swear what I am saying is true. Do you know why I was so gay, so happy, so light of heart on the day you left me? It was because my love had beaten down my pride, and on that very evening I had resolved upon asking you to be my wife."

"I do not believe it," she cried.

"It is true; I swear it on the faith and honor of a gentleman. I swear it on the word of a man."

"I should need a stronger oath than that," she said.

"I swear it then by your own falseness, and by your own deceit; can any oath be stronger than that? On that very evening I had resolved upon asking you to be my wife. I was determined to make our union legal. I loved you so that I could not live without you."

She made no reply for one minute, but looked steadily at him: then she said:

"I do thank Heaven that I have been spared the degradation of becoming your wife."

"Yet you were content to be my companion," he said.

Her face flushed hotly at the words.

"I have lost you, how long, Dora, how many months? Do you think my love has grown less in that time? Do you think it has faded or grown cold. If you imagine so, you do no justice to your own marvelous beauty; you do no justice to your own fascination; a thousand times no! It is a burning torrent now that carries all before it: it is a tempest that will know no abatement – Dora, you had lost your usual shrewdness when you thought that absence would cure such love as mine."

"My name is Lady Studleigh, not Dora," she said proudly. "Once for all, Lord Vivianne, your love does not in the least interest me."

"You will have to take an interest in it," he replied; "I swear, for the future, you shall know no other love."