The angel of prudence faded from her presence as she answered, "Yes." Knowing how she loved him, hearing the old love story in his voice, reading it in his face, she would have done better had she died there in the splendor of her beauty and the pain of her love than have said, "Yes." So it was arranged.
"It will be a beautiful day," said Lord Chandos. "I am a capital rower, Leone, as you will remember. I will take you as far as Medmersham Abbey: we will land there and spend an hour in the ruins; but you will have to rise early and drive down to the river side. You will not mind that."
"I shall mind nothing that brings me to you," she said, with a vivid blush, and so it was settled.
They forgot the dictates of honor; he forgot his duty to his wife at home, and she forgot prudence and justice.
The morning dawned. She had eagerly watched for it through the long hours of the night; it wakes her with the song of the birds and the shine of the sun; it wakes her with a mingled sense of pain and happiness, of pleasure and regret. She was to spend a whole day with him, but the background to that happiness was that he was leaving a wife at home who had all claims to his time and attention.
"One happy day before I die," she said to herself.
But will it be happy? The sun will shine brightly, yet there will be a background; yet it shall be happy because it will be with him.
It was yet early in the morning when she drove to the appointed place at the river side. The sun shone in the skies, the birds sang in the trees, the beautiful river flashed and glowed in the light, the waters seemed to dance and the green leaves to thrill.
Ah, if she were but back by the mill-stream, if she were but Leone Noel once again, with her life all unspoiled before her; if she were anything on earth except a woman possessed by a mad love. If she could but exchange these burning ashes of a burning love for the light, bright heart of her girlhood, when the world had been full of beauty which spoke to her in an unknown tongue.
God had been so good to her; he had given to her the beauty of a queen, genius that was immortal, wit, everything life holds most fair, and they were all lost to her because of her mad love. Ah, well, never mind, the sun was shining, the river dancing far away in the sun, and she was to spend the day with him. She had dressed herself to perfection in a close-fitting dress of dark-gray velvet, relieved by ribbons of rose pink; she wore a hat with a dark-gray plume, under the shade of which her beautiful face looked doubly bewitching; the little hands, which by their royal gestures swayed multitudes, were cased in dark gray. Lord Chandos looked at her in undisguised admiration.