A Mad Love by Charlotte Mary Brame (online e book reading TXT) 📖

over her face and died away again.

"Lord Chandos," she said, "you will not be my debtor in generosity. You have asked me to pardon you; I have done so. Grant me one favor in return--tell me who influenced you to forsake me?"

He looked puzzled.

"I hardly know, Leone, I can hardly tell you."

"It was not the lady whom you have married," she continued, "of that I am sure. Who was it?"

"I think if any one influenced me it must have been my mother," he said, gently; "she was always violently opposed to it."

The beautiful lips paled and trembled.

"I thought it was your mother," she said, gravely, "No, I shall not forego my vengeance against her, although I know not when I may gain it."

"You will forget all that," he said. "You are too noble to care for vengeance."

"I am not too noble," she replied. "All that was best and noble in me died on the day you forsook me. And now, Lord Chandos, listen to me. Words of peace and pardon have passed between us. It has raised a heavy funeral pall from my life; it has, perhaps, raised a black cloud from yours. Lord Chandos, we must not meet again."

"You cannot be so cruel, Leone. Having found you, how can I lose you again?"

"You must, it is imperative," she said slowly.

"But, Leone, why should we not be friends?" he said, gently.

She laughed a hard, scornful laugh that struck him in the face like the sting of a sharp blade.

"Friends?" she repeated. "Could we who have been wedded lovers ever be friends? You do not know what words mean if you think that."

He stood before her with a stern, white face.

"Leone," he cried, "are you really going to be cruel enough to send me away out of your life again, I who have been mad with joy at finding you?"

"If I were cruel," she said, slowly, "now I would take my vengeance. I should say as you once left me so now I leave you, but I am not cruel, and that is my reason. My reason is a good and pure one; we could never remain friends, we love each other too much for that; we must live as strangers now; and remember, it is your fault, not mine."

"I cannot submit to it," he cried.

But she looked at him with a face stern, resolute, fixed as his own.

"Remember, Lord Chandos," she said, "that I am my own mistress. I can choose my friends and associates. I refuse to admit you among the number."

"You cannot prevent me from coming to see you, Leone."

"No; but I can, and shall, refuse to see you when you come," she replied; "and I shall do so."

"Oh, my love, my cruel, beautiful love," he cried.

The girl's face flushed with hot anger and indignation.

"Will you be silent?" she cried. "Shame on you, Lord Chandos, to use such words. You have a beautiful and beloved wife at home to whom all your love and fidelity belong. If you say one more such word to me I will never see you again."

"But, Leone, it seems so very hard; you might let me call at times and see you."

"No, I cannot, I cannot trust myself, even if I could trust you. I have had no other husband, no other love; you have married. I would not trust myself; my love is as great now as ever it was, but it shall not run away with me; it shall not be my master. I will master it. You must not come near me."

"But, surely, if I meet you in the street, you will not ask me to pass you by?" he said.

"No; if we meet quite by chance, quite by accident, I will always speak to you. Ah, Lance," she added, with a smile, "I know you so well, I know every look in your eyes; you are thinking to yourself you will often see me by accident. You must not; such honor as you have left me let me keep."

"If this is to be our last interview, for some time, at least," he continued, "tell me, Leone, how is it that you have become so famous?"

"Yes, I will tell you all about that; I am rather proud of my power. It is not a long story, and it dates from the day on which your mother sent me that letter."

She told him all her studies, her struggles, her perseverance, her success, finally her crowning by fame.

"It is like a romance," he said.

"Yes, only it is true," she replied.

He tried to prolong the interview, but she would close it; and he was compelled to leave her, when he would have given years of his life to have remained one hour longer.


CHAPTER XLI.


"LET US BE FRIENDS."

"Lance," said the sweet voice of Lady Marion, plaintively, "I am beginning to have a faint suspicion about you."

"Indeed. Your suspicions are not faint as a rule. What is this?"

"I am afraid that you are growing just a little tired of me," said the beautiful queen of blondes.

"What makes you think so?" he asked, trying to laugh, as he would have done a few weeks since at such an accusation.

"Several reasons. You are not so attentive to me as you used to be; you do not seem to listen when I speak; you have grown so absent-minded; and then you say such strange things in your sleep."

He looked grave for half a minute, then laughed carelessly.

"Do I? Then I ought to be ashamed of myself. Men talk enough in their waking hours without talking in their sleep. What do I say, Marion?"

He asked the question carelessly enough, but there was an anxious look in his dark eyes.

"I cannot tell; I hardly remember," said Lady Chandos; "but you are always asking some one to forgive you and see you. Have you ever offended any one very much, Lance?"

"I hope not," he replied. "Dreams are so strange, and I do not think they are often true reflections of our lives. Have you any further reason for saying I am growing tired of you? It is a vexed question, and we may as well settle it now as renew the argument."

"No, I have no other reason. Lance, you are not cross with me, dear?"

"No, I am not cross; but, at the same time, I must say frankly I do not like the idea of a jealous wife; it is very distasteful to me."

Lady Marion raised her eyes in wonder.

"Jealous, Lance?" she repeated. "I am not jealous. Of whom could I be jealous? I never see you pay the least attention to any one."

"Jealous wives, as a rule, begin by accusing their husbands of cooling love, want of attention, and all that kind of thing."

"But, Lance," continued the beautiful woman, "are you quite sure that there is no truth in what I say?"

He looked at her with a dreamy gaze in his dark eyes.

"I am quite sure," he replied. "I love you, Marion, as much as ever I did, and I have not noticed in the least that I have failed in any attention toward you; if I have I will amend my ways."

He kissed the fair face bent so lovingly over him; and his wife laid her fair arms round his neck.

"I should not like to be jealous," she said; "but I must have your whole heart, Lance; I could not be content with a share of it."

"Who could share it with you?" he asked, evasively.

"I do not know, I only know that it must be all or none for me," she answered. "It is all--is it not, Lance?"

He kissed her and would fain have said yes, but it came home to him with a sharp conviction that his heart had been given to one woman, and one only--no other could ever possess it.

A few days afterward, when Lord Chandos expressed a wish to go to the opera again, his wife looked at him in wonder.

"Again?" she said. "Why, Lance, it is only two nights since you were there, and it is the same opera; you will grow tired of it."

"The only amusement I really care for is the opera," he said. "I am growing too lazy for balls, but I never tire of music."

He said to himself, that if for the future he wished to go to the opera he would not mention the fact, but would go without her.

They went out that evening: the opera was "Norma." Lord Chandos heard nothing and saw nothing but the wondrous face of Norma; every note of that music went home to his heart--the love, the trust, the reproaches. When she sang them in her grandly pathetic voice, it was as though each one were addressed to himself. Three times did Lady Chandos address him without any response, a thing which in her eyes was little less than a crime.

"How you watch La Vanira," she said. "I am sure you admire her very much."

He looked at her with eyes that were dazed--that saw nothing; the eyes of a man more than half mad.

"And now look," she said. "Why, Lance, La Vanira is looking at me. What eyes she has. They stir my very heart and trouble me. They are saying something to me."

"Marion, hush! What are you talking about?" he cried.

"La Vanira's eyes--she is looking at me, Lance."

"Nonsense!" he said, and the one word was so abruptly pronounced that Lady Chandos felt sure it was nonsense and said no more.

But after that evening he said no more about going to the opera. If he felt any wish to go, he would go; it would be quite easy for him to make some excuse to her.

And those evenings grew more and more frequent. He did not dare to disobey Leone; he did not dare to go to her house, or to offer to see her in the opera house. He tried hard to meet her accidentally, but that happy accident never occurred; yet he could not rest, he must see her; something that was stronger than himself drew him near her.

He was weak of purpose; he never resolutely took himself in hand and said:

"I am married now. I have a wife at home. Leone's beauty, Leone's talents, are all less than nothing to me. I will be true to my wife."

He never said that; he never braced his will, or his energies to the task of forgetting her; he dallied with the temptation as he had done before; he allowed himself to be tempted as he had done before; the result was that he fell as he had fallen before.

Every day his first thought was how he could possibly get away that evening without drawing particular attention to his movements; and he went so often that people began to laugh and to tease him and to wonder why he was always there.

Leone always saw him. If any one had been shrewd and quick enough to follow her, they would have seen that she played to one person; that her eyes turned to him continually;