Lady Clarice was perfectly willing, nothing could have pleased her better, for there was no time of her life during which she had not been more or less jealous of Lady Hermione.
CHAPTER XXII.
IN HOLME WOODS.
So during all the wedding festivities with which the whole country rang the Lorristons were away; there was not even the civility of a letter exchanged between them. People did not quite know what the difference was about; but a quiet understanding soon came about that the Lorristons and the Aldens should never be invited together.
For Sir Ronald the second phase of his life began when, as the husband of another woman, it was more than ever his duty to trample under foot the passion that marred his life. Then, in sober earnest, he had to take up the duties of life and make the best of them.
He was kind and attentive to his beautiful young wife; he was careful in the fulfillment of his duties; but in the silent depths of his own heart there was no moment, night or day, in which he did not, with the most bitter words, curse his own fate. So the remainder of that summer passed. Winter brought its usual round of country gayeties. In this season Sir Ronald and Lady Clarice went to London, where her beauty and fascination created a perfect furore. There, for the first time, he heard that the Lorristons had not come to town because Lady Hermione had been long out of health. She was not ill—that is, not ill enough to alarm her friends, but she was unfit to encounter the fatigues of a London season.
When it was over Sir Ronald and his wife returned to Aldenmere.
One day toward the end of the month of June, Sir Ronald went out into the Holme Woods. The morning was fine, the sun shining, and the air filled with the fragrance of wild flowers. Holme Woods had never looked so beautiful. The trees wore their richest foliage, great sheets of blue hyacinths spread out far and wide, bright-winged butterflies hovered over them, bees hummed for very joy at the rich feast spread before them. Sir Ronald had not noticed the path he was taking. The faint, wild perfume of the harebells was grateful to him. Body, mind, heart and soul, he was tired, and he had come to the woods, loving the solitude he found there.
You know, reader, what face was before him. Imagine his surprise when his thoughts suddenly seemed embodied; for there, seated on a bank, with the pretty harebells nodding around her, was Lady Hermione Lorriston.
He would have turned and fled, but the manhood within him rebelled against flight. He stood looking helplessly at her, too bewildered for words. When he was capable of coherent thought he saw how white her face grew. She rose and stood before him, like some bright, strange, frightened bird, dreading to stay, yet dreading to go.
And then the past months, with their untold agony, faded from him. He remembered nothing save that it was summer time and he loved her—save that for him it was heaven where she was, and a dreary blank where she was not.