Wife in Name Only

by Charlotte M. Brame

"I do not like to leave you sitting there," she said, "the servants will think it strange."

"Their thoughts do not concern me," she returned, haughtily. "Good-night, Lady Peters; do not interrupt me again, if you please."

And the good-tempered chaperon went away, thinking to herself that perhaps she had done wrong in interrupting the tete-a-tete.

"Still I did it for the best," she said to herself; "and servants will talk."

Philippa L'Estrange did not move. Lady Peters thought she spoke in a calm, proud voice. She would have been surprised could she have seen the beautiful face all wet with tears; for, Philippa had laid her head on the cold stone, and was weeping such tears as women weep but once in life. She sat there not striving to subdue the tempest of emotion that shook her, giving full vent to her passion of grief, stretching out her hands and crying to her lost love.

It was all over now. She had stepped down from the proud height of her glorious womanhood to ask for his love, and he had told her that he had none to give her. She had thrown aside her pride, her delicacy. She had let him read the guarded secret of her heart, only to hear his reply--that she was not his ideal of womanhood. She had asked for bread--he had given her a stone. She had lavished her love at his feet--he had coolly stepped aside. She had lowered her pride, humiliated herself, all in vain.

"No woman," she said to herself, "would ever pardon such a slight or forgive such a wrong."

At first she wept as though her heart would break--tears fell like rain from her eyes, tears that seemed to burn as they fell; then after a time pride rose and gained the ascendancy. She, the courted, beautiful woman, to be so humiliated, so slighted! She, for whose smile the noblest in the land asked in vain, to have her almost offered love so coldly refused! She, the very queen of love and beauty, to be so spurned!

When the passion of grief had subsided, when the hot angry glow of wounded pride died away, she raised her face to the night-skies.

"I swear," she said, "that I will be revenged--that I will take such vengeance on him as will bring his pride down far lower than he has brought mine. I will never forgive him. I have loved him with a devotion passing the love of woman. I will hate more than I have loved him. I would have given my life to make him happy. I now consecrate it to vengeance. I swear to take such revenge on him as shall bring the name of Arleigh low indeed."