"Yonder come the letters."
As he spoke, Mr. Chesley left the room, and soon after a servant entered with a letter addressed to Regina.
It was from Olga, dated Baden-baden; and the vein of subdued yet hopeless melancholy that wandered through its contents, now and then intertwined strangely with a thread of her old grim humour.
"Do you ever hear from that legal sphinx—Erle Palma? Mamma only now and then receives epistles fashioned after those once in vogue in Laconia. (I wonder if even the old toothless gossips in Sparta were ever laconic?) I am truly sorry for Erle Palma. That beautifully crystallized quartz heart of his is no doubt being ground between the upper and nether millstones of his love and his pride; and Hymen ought to charge him heavy mill-toll. My dear, have you seen Elliott Roscoe's little tinted-paper poem? Of course his apostrophe to 'violet eyes, overlaced with jet!' will sound quite Tennysonian to a certain little shy girl, now hiding at Como, and who 'inspired the strain.' But aside from the pleasant association that links you with the verses, they are—pardon me, dear—as thin and flavourless as—well, as the soup dished out at pauper restaurants. You are at liberty to consider me consumed by envy, green with jealousy, when I here spitefully record that Elliott's ambitious poem reminds me of M. de Bonald's biting criticism on Madame de Krüdener: 'I make bold to declare, with the Bible in my hand, that the poor we shall always have with us, were it only the poor in intellect.' Coke and Story will befriend poor Elliott much more effectually than the Muses, who have most ingloriously snubbed him. Are you really happy, little snowbird, nestling in the down of mother-love, which—like the veritable baby you are—you so pined for?
"Regina, I am going to tell you something. Bar the windows, lock the doors, shut it up for ever, close in your own heart. A few nights ago, I went with an English friend to the Conversationshaus. When we had leaned awhile against one of the columns, and watched the dancers in the magnificent saloon, he proposed to show me the grand gambling-room.
"As we walked slowly along, listening to the click of the gold that pattered down from trembling hands, I saw, sitting at a Roulette table, deeply immersed in the game (never tell it!) Belmont Eggleston. Not the same classic, god-like face that I would once have followed straight to Hades—not the man upon whom I wasted all the love that God gives a woman to glorify her life and home; but a flushed, bloated creature, as unlike the Belmont of my hopes and dreams as 'Hyperion to a Satyr!' I watched him till my very soul turned sick, and all Pandemonium seemed to have joined in a jeer at my former infatuation. Next day, I saw him reel from a saloon to the steps of his wife's carriage. Years ago, when Erle Palma told me that my darling drank and gambled, I denied it; and in return for the warning, emptied more wrath upon my informer than all the Apocalyptic vials held. Ah! for poor Belmont, I fought as fiercely as a tawny tigress, when her youngest cub is captured by the hunters. Ashes! Bitter ashes of love and trust! Truly 'there is no pardon for desecrated ideals.' I have lived to learn that—
'Man trusts in God;
He is eternal. Woman trusts in man,
And he is shifting sand.'"
"Regina!"
The girl looked up, and saw her uncle with an open letter in his hand.
"What is it? Some bad news!"