"Your music breaks my heart," she said; but she did not know the reason why.
CHAPTER XLIX.
THE WOUND IN HER HEART.
If Leone had been wiser after that one evening, she would have avoided Lord Chandos as she would have shunned the flames of fire; that one evening showed her that she stood on the edge of a precipice. Looking in her own heart, she knew by its passionate anguish and passionate pain that the love in her had never been conquered. She said to herself, when the evening was over and she drove away, leaving them together, that she would never expose herself to that pain again.
It was so strange, so unnatural for her—she who believed herself his wife, who had spent so many evenings with him—to go away and leave him with this beautiful woman who was really his wife. She looked up at the silent stars as she drove home; surely their pale, golden eyes must shine down in dearest pity on her. She clinched her white, soft hands until the rings made great red dents; she exhausted herself with great tearless sobs; yet no tears came from her burning eyes.
Was ever woman so foully, so cruelly wronged? had ever woman been so cruelly tortured?
"I will not see him again," she cried to herself; "I cannot bear it."
Long after the stars had set, and the crimson flush of dawn stirred the pearly tints of the sky, she lay, sobbing, with passionate tears, feeling that she could not bear it—she must die.
It would have been well if that had frightened her, but when morning dawned she said to herself that hers had always been a mad love, and would be so until the end. She made one desperate resolve, one desperate effort; she wrote to Lord Chandos, and sent the letter to his club—a little, pathetic note, with a heart-break in every line of it—to say that they who had been wedded lovers were foolish to think of being friends; that it was not possible, and that she thought they had better part; the pain was too great for her, she could not bear it.