“I—well, enough. If blamelessness of life, an unspotted name, could have atoned for other sins, even you, mother, must have granted her absolution. Enough. She was compelled to believe that she had made a most fearful mistake—she was like a tiger who—— My mother, it had been well for us—for many others—if that revelation could have come an hour before, instead of an hour after, our ill-starred union. The scene I never can forget. Sometimes in the dead hours of the night I am startled awake by the fancy that I am again going through it. I wonder, after the successive shocks of those few weeks, that I now live to give you the miserable recital.”
Again he paced to and fro, as if in almost uncontrollable emotion. This time, on again pausing, he sank into the chair as if almost exhausted.
His mother made no sign. The bitterness of her anger and disappointment exceeded, if that were possible, his darkest forebodings.
She continued to tap her foot on the carpet, and her jeweled fingers twined and twisted in one another as if they must snap. This time she addressed no inquiry to him, but sat a silent image of despair and mortified anger.
“Let me make an end of my story as quickly as I can,” Paul said, in subdued tones. He heartily wished now he had let it still remain untold until such a time as he might be driven to confess it. “La Lucia, after storming and raging, registered a mighty oath never to see my face again if she could help herself, never to carry into effect the vows she had made at the altar—to hold herself free as if she had never seen me. I can hardly tell you what she said. She ironically thanked me for having helped her to escape from one kind of slavery, though she found herself trammeled in another, and for my care of her during the journey, and for the consideration and delicate courtesy I had shown her in her unprotected state, and then swept out of the room. The next thing I heard of my lady wife was that she had carried herself and all her belongings off from the hotel. I never heard of her again until Europe was ringing with her name and fame.”
“Her name?” repeated Mrs. Desfrayne mechanically.
“The name I had first known her under.”
“And that was?”
“Lucia Guiscardini.”
Mrs. Desfrayne sprang from her seat, and began pacing to and fro in her turn.