Chapter XXVII
It was a bleak December day and Central Park seemed the last place where one would wish to loiter. The sky hung lowering overhead, gray, cold, heavy with the weight of invisible snowflakes. The wind made a dull moaning sound, as it stirred the bare branches of the trees. The lake, where at another season you see children sailing in the swan-boats, was nearly covered with a thin coating of ice. But Elizabeth Van Vorst as she stood with eyes intently fixed upon the small space of water still visible, did not seem to notice either the cold or the dreariness of the scene. She was leaning against a tree, and looking at nothing but the lake, till at the sound of foot-steps on the path, she turned to face Paul Halleck.
"So you got my note," she said, speaking listlessly, without a sign of surprise or satisfaction. She did not give him her hand, which clasped the other tightly, in the warm shelter of her muff.
"Yes, I got it; but I could wish you had chosen a warmer meeting-place, my dear." The last months had changed him, and not for the better. His figure had grown stouter, his beauty coarser. She shrank away in invincible repugnance from the careless familiarity of his manner.
"It was the best place I could think of," she said, curtly. "At home, we are always interrupted; at your studio—it is impossible. I had to see you—somehow, somewhere." She sat down on a bench near by, and shivering drew her furs about her.
"You do me too much honor," Paul returned, lightly. He took the seat beside her, his eyes resting, in involuntary fascination, on the rounded outlines of her cheek, the soft waves of auburn hair beneath her small black hat. "It's a long time since you have wished to see me of your own accord, my dear," he said, in a tone in which resentment struggled with his old, instinctive admiration of her beauty.
She turned to him, suddenly, her eyes hard, her face very white and set. "You know the reason." "I had to see you, to—to talk things over. You assume a right to control me, you ask me for money, you try to frighten me with threats. There must be an end of it. I"—she paused for a moment, and drew her breath quickly, while she flushed a dull crimson. "I have promised—Mr. Gerard," she said "to—to marry him next month."
He interrupted her with a scornful laugh. "To marry him—next month," he repeated. "And how about that ceremony which we know of—you and I—in the church at Cranston?"