"Read—read—it is poetry—we can see that—give us the poetry!" broke merrily around him.
"Spare me," said Leicester, apparently annoyed; "but if the fair lady chooses to enlighten you, she has my consent."
Ada reached forth her hand for the paper. A strange sensation crept over her, with the first sight of it in the mock postman's hand, and it was with an effort that she conquered this feeling sufficiently to open the paper, with her usual careless ease.
She glanced at the first line. Her lips moved as if she were trying to speak; but they uttered no sound, and by slow degrees the red died out from them.
Leicester watched her closely with his half averted eyes, and those around him looked on in gay expectation; for no one else observed the change in her countenance. To the crowd, she seemed only gathering up the spirit of the lines, before she commenced reading them aloud. The paper contained a wild, impulsive appeal to him, after the first jealous outbreak that had disturbed their married life. As usual, when a warm heart has either done or suffered wrong, it matters little which, she had been the first to make concessions, and lavish in self-blame, poured forth her passionate regret, as if all the fault had been hers. In her first jealous indignation, she had demanded a tress of hair, for which he had importuned her one night at the old homestead.
He rendered it coldly back without a word. Wild with affright, lest this was the seal of eternal separation, she had sent back the tress of hair now grasped in Leicester's hand, with the lines which, with the plotting genius of a fiend, he had placed in her hand.
Poor Ada, she was unconscious of the crowd. The days of her youth came back—the old homestead—the pangs and joys of her first married life. While she seemed to read, a life-time of memories swept through her brain, which ached with the sudden rush of thought.
Leicester stood regarding her with apparent unconcern; but it was as the spider watches the fly in his net.
"She cannot read it aloud—I thought so," he said inly, "let her struggle—while her lips pale in that fashion she is mine; I knew it would smite her to the heart. Let the fools clamor, she is struck dumb with old memories."
Unconsciously a cold smile of triumph crept over his lips, as these thoughts gained strength from Ada's continued silence. With her eyes on the paper, she still seemed to read.