With a sudden gesture of loathing she threw off his hand, struck her palms together, and he started at the expression that seemed literally to blaze in her eyes, so vivid, so withering was the light that rayed out.
"Yes, the truth escaped my lips. The honourable name of Laurance is talismanic, and offers much to Odille Orme; yet I will stain my soul with no dissimulation. With love and romance, I finished long, long ago; and to-day I have not patience to trifle even with its phraseology. I am thirty-three, and in my early girlhood the one love dream of all my life was rudely broken, leaving me no more capacity to indulge a second, than belongs to those marbles in the Musée Bourbonique. For my dear young husband I felt the only intense, idolatrous, yes, blindly worshipping devotion, that my nature could yield to any human being. When I lost him, I lost my heart also; became doubly widowed, because my grief bereft me of the power of properly loving even our little baby. For years I have given my body and soul to the accomplishment of one purpose, the elevation of my social status, and that of my child. Had my husband been spared to me, we would not have remained obscure and poor, but after my widowhood the struggle devolved upon me. I have not had leisure to think of love, have toiled solely for maintenance and position; and have sternly held myself aloof from the world that dared to believe my profession rendered me easy of access. Titles have been laid at my feet, but their glitter seemed fictitious, did not allure me; and no other name save yours has ever for an instant tempted me. To-day you are here to plead my acceptance of that name, and frankly, I tell you, sir, it dazzles me. As an American I know all that it represents, all that it would confer on me, all that it would prove for my child, and I would rather wear the name of Laurance than a coronet! I confess I have but one ambition, to lift my daughter into that high social plane, from which fate excluded her mother; and this eminence I covet for her, marriage with you promises me. I have no heart to bring you; mine died with all my wifely hopes when I lost my husband. If I consent to give you my hand, and nominally the claim of a husband, in exchange for the privilege of merging Orme in Laurance, it must be upon certain solemn conditions, to the fulfilment of which your traditional honour is pledged. Is a Laurance safely bound by vows?"
Her voice had grown strangely metallic, losing all its liquid sweetness, and as her gaze searched his face, the striking resemblance she traced in his eyes and mouth to those of Cuthbert and Regina seemed to stab her heart.
To the man who listened and watched with breathless anxiety her hardening, whitening features, she merely recalled the memory of her own tragic "Medea" confronting "Jason" at Athens.
"Only accept my vows at the altar, and I challenge the world to breathe an imputation upon their sanctity. René Laurance never broke a promise, never forfeited a pledge; and to keep his name unsullied, his honour stainless, is his sole religion. Odille, my Queen——"
She rose and waved him back.
"Spare me rapsodies that accord neither with your years nor my sentiments. Understand, it is a mere bargain and a sale, and I am carefully arranging the conditions. For myself I ask little; but as you are aware, my daughter is grown, is now in her seventeenth year, and the man whom the world regards as my husband must share his name and fortune with my child. Doubtless you deem me calculating and mercenary, and for her dear sake I am forced to do so; for all the tenderness that remains in my nature is centred in my little girl. She has been reared as carefully as a princess, is accomplished and very beautiful, and when you see her I think you will scarcely refuse the tribute of your admiration and affection."
For an instant a grey pallor spread from lip to brow, and the unhappy woman shuddered; but rallying, she moved across the floor to her writing desk, and the infatuated man followed, whispering:
"If she resembles her mother, can you doubt her perfect and prompt adoption into my heart?"
"My daughter is unlike me; is so entirely the image of her lost father, that the sight of her beauty sometimes overwhelms me with torturing memories. Here. General Laurance is a carefully written paper, which I submit for your examination and mature reflection. When in the presence of proper witnesses you sign that contract, you will have purchased the right to claim my hand—mark you, only my hand—at the altar."