He left her then, and she rose from the sofa to prepare for dinner and the gayeties of the evening.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE HOUSE IS EMPTY.
All within is dark as night,
In the windows is no light,
And no murmur at the door,
So frequent on its hinge before.
And in the mean time what was she doing, the object of all this solicitude, the unconscious origin of so many storms of feeling?
We left her on the sea-shore, the wide ocean before her, the cool sands around her, with a white face and quivering nerves, and a heart that was sick with aching. For the interview had tried her sorely, and it left behind it no luminous trail, but rather a deep shadow that seemed for the moment to kill even the faint hope which her spirit had cherished through all its woe.
What she looked upon as her own miserable weakness terrified her—filled her with a certain vague fear of such depths of darkness before her as hitherto she had never known. Pitfalls seemed yawning on every side. She was to herself like one who was drifting on alone, unprotected—not even shielded by her woman's weakness—to meet some terrible fate. Sitting there, her head buried in her hands, she shivered and moaned, for the remembrance of that moment of weakness, when, as it seemed, only a trifle had saved her from listening to the honeyed words of the tempter, and putting herself partially, at least, in his power, filled her with the bitterest humiliation.
Another remembrance agitated her cruelly as she cast her thoughts over the interview. His last words had implied a mystery which her tortured brain strove in vain to fathom.
Her husband, Laura's father! had the child's instinct been true? Could he be near them? and if so, what did the threat mean? Could he, her Maurice, have sought her with any but a friendly object? Yet this was what her tormentor had foreshadowed in his mysterious words. She could not cast them aside as unmeaning, the poison thrown out in the anger of disappointment, for she knew L'Estrange. He never spoke meaninglessly, and therefore his words had weight. Besides, he was one who understood his kind—who could trace with the keen eye of a master the purposes of those with whom he came into contact.