A Mad Love

by Charlotte M. Brame

No words could do justice to the state of mind in which Lord Chandos found himself after that interview at Cawdor. He rushed back to London. Of the three previous days remaining he spent one in hunting after the shrewdest lawyers in town. Each and all laughed at him—there was the law, plain enough, so plain that a child could read and understand it. They smiled at his words, and said, half-contemptuously, they could not have imagined any one so ignorant of the law. They sympathized with him when he spoke of his young wife, but as for help, there was none.

The only bright side to it was this, he could remarry her on the day he came of age. Of that there was and could be no doubt, he said, but he was bent on finding some loop-hole, and marrying her at once, if it were really needful for the ceremony to be performed again. It could not be, and there was nothing for it but to resign himself to the inevitable. He did not know that Leone had heard the terrible sentence, and he dreaded having to tell her. He was worn out with sorrow and emotion. In what words was he to tell her that she was not his wife in the eyes of the law, and that if they wished to preserve her character unspotted and unstained she must leave him at once?

He understood his mother's character too well to dare any delay. He was sure that if Leone remained even one day under his roof, when the time came that he should introduce her to the world as his wife, his mother would bring the fact against her, and so prevent her from even knowing people.

There was no help for it—he must tell her. He wrote a letter telling her he would be at River View for luncheon on the following day; he knew that he must leave that same evening for the Continent.

He would have given the world to have been able to renounce the royal favor, of which he had felt so proud, but he could not. To have done so would have been to have deprived him not only of all position, but to have incurred disgrace. To have refused a favor so royally bestowed would have been an act of ingratitude which would have deprived him of court favor for life.

He must go; and when the first pain was over, he said to himself it was, perhaps, the best thing that could have happened. He could not have borne to know that Leone was near him, yet not see or speak to her.

It was all for the best, painful as it was. If for these long months they must be parted, it was better for him to be abroad—he dare not have trusted himself at home. He loved Leone so well that he knew his love would have broken down the barriers which the law had placed between them. He would go to River View, and, let it pain him as it would, he would tell her all, he would leave her as happy as was possible under the circumstances. He would stay away until the time was over; then, the very day he came of age, he would return and remarry her. He laughed to scorn his mother's prophecy. He prove untrue to his darling! The heavens must fall first. Not for him the mill-wheel story—not for him the broken ring.

How happy they would be, then, when the time had passed, and he could introduce Leone as his beloved wife to the whole world. He would try and think of that time without dwelling more than he could help on the wretched present. He went home to River View, but the first glance at Leone's face told him that she knew all.

It was not so much that the beauty had gone from it, that the beautiful eyes were dim with long, passionate weeping, or that the lips trembled as she tried to smile. Her whole face had changed so completely; its tragic intensity, the power of its despair, overmastered him.

Lord Chandos clasped her in his arms, and covered the sad young face with kisses and tears.