He retired to his study, and his valet kept watch at the door. He feared that Sir Harold meant to end his life.
CHAPTER IV.
COLONEL GREYSON’S MISSION.
“She is heartless, soulless!” groaned Sir Harold. “Oh, Elaine, why should you be so fair and fickle?”
He paced the floor like a man distraught. His eyes were bloodshot, his face ashy pale. This misery was more bitter than death.
He had given the one great love of his life; he had tasted the most ecstatic bliss that had ever fallen to mortal man. But, after all, he had only been reveling in a fool’s paradise. He had believed that the earl’s daughter loved him beyond all earthly things; that this was no idyllic dream, but the meeting of two sympathetic twin souls—a beautiful reality.
When the first storm of his misery had nearly subsided, he sank into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.
The Earl of Seabright had warned him to deal gently with Lady Elaine. She was so young, so willful, so utterly spoiled.
“These sudden engagements are apt to be as quickly broken,” my lord had said, and now his words rang like the knell of doom in Sir Harold’s ears. Was all at an end between them? Was their quarrel to be the subject of a nine days’ wonder? The society papers would enlarge upon it. Innumerable five-o’clock teas would be enlivened by it, and then it would be forgotten by everybody but Sir Harold.
Thus he reasoned, and he felt that his heart would be broken, that it would be forever dead.