"I'm going," said Finetta, biting her lips. "Good-by, Miss Leslie. I'm sorry—well, good-by."
Leslie sat motionless and with averted face until the graceful figure of the dancing girl of the Diadem had disappeared below the hill; then with a cry she rose, her arms above her head, and fell full length upon the turf.
CHAPTER XXII.
"FAME HAS COME TO ME AT LAST."
Leslie lay unconscious while the sun sank below the horizon, and the delicious summer gloaming came softly upon the moor; lay like a flower struck down by some rude hand, and the evening star shone pale in the sky before she came back to life and her great sorrow.
For a while it seemed to her that the whole scene through which she had passed was a hideous dream, and when its reality came crushing down upon her she uttered a low cry and shivered as if with cold. The sudden destruction of her joy and happiness left her stunned and bewildered. A few short hours ago and she and Yorke had been sitting hand in hand, heart to heart, talking of their marriage, and now——. Now he was hers no longer. In a sense he had never been hers, but all the time he had been wooing her, forcing her to love him, he had been in honor bound to this other woman.
As she thought of her, this Finetta, this woman with the bold eyes, a feeling of shame and humiliation was added to the misery of Leslie's loss. That he, Yorke, her idol, her king, should ever have stooped to love such a woman seemed to her unspeakably base and terrible. She had set him on so lofty a pedestal, had regarded him as so noble and high-minded, that the knowledge of his falseness—to both of them!—hurt her like a physical blow.
She sat for some time, waiting for strength to enable her to reach home; and as she sat and looked round it seemed as if something had gone out of her life, as if a weight which no power nor time could lift had fallen upon her heart.
Before her she saw stretching in a dull grey, hopeless vista, the many years she would probably have to live; the long life without Yorke, and haunted by the memory of these few happy days.