It was a pity, too, that just at this time such a contrast should have been exhibited between his brilliant, beautiful and imperious cousin and his little, pale, drooping wife.
He would spend the evening with Anna at some fashionable assembly, where he saw her, in all the splendor of beauty and pride of place, the all-admired belle of the season, the reigning queen of society;—and then, full of the intoxication of her new charms, he would return home to find Drusilla, pale, weary and depressed, and he would start off to his own room to curse the fate that had so long blinded him to the transcendent attractions of his high-born cousin, and bound him for life to the insignificant daughter of his housekeeper. And the very bitterest element in his misery was the thought that, sooner or later, his old rival, Richard Hammond, must win the priceless treasure that he himself had so madly cast away.
It is to be feared that if at this time Alexander Lyon could possibly have devised any means of secretly and legally repudiating his young wife, he would not have hesitated to do so. As it was, he estranged himself from her, and passed more nights in his rooms at the hotel than in his home at Cedarwood. But he never gave the gentle creature a single harsh word or look; with all his madness—and his mood was little less than madness—he could not do either; he simply broke her spirit by coldness, neglect and avoidance.
And yet, notwithstanding all this, if he had but known it, in his heart of hearts it was Drusilla he loved and not Anna.
He had made no mistake in marrying this sweet girl; it had been a true inspiration that had drawn him towards her when he was a youth and she a child. She was the better half of his spirit, and the guardian angel of his life, as well as the true love of his youth. And once he knew all this to be true; but now he seemed to have forgotten.
Besides, Drusilla—soul and body, beyond all doubt or question—was his own; and therefore was she undervalued and despised as something of little worth; while Anna was unattainable by him, and likely to become the wife of his rival; and therefore was Anna over-rated as a pearl beyond price, and desired with passionate eagerness. But whatever this phrenzy was, for the girl whom he had known from his boyhood up, and in his thoughts rejected as a wife years before—it was not love; it was probably a hallucination made up of pride, jealousy, admiration, and the fascination of the unattainable. Alexander Lyon had fancied many a beauty in his life; but he had never once loved any other than the young, devoted wife whom he now so insanely wronged and grieved.
And ah! how severely she suffered in secret, how bitterly she wept over the ever-increasing estrangement; never blaming him, however, even in her thoughts; blaming herself, rather, for not being able to merit his love and make him happy; never losing faith in him, but losing faith in herself.
Her love was without a taint of selfishness; but it was not without sin, for it was idolatrous.
She seemed to herself to have no life but in him. Failing as she thought, to merit his love, and failing to make him happy, she was willing to die to set him free and give him peace.
“Poor Alick,” she said, in her heart, as she paced up and down her forsaken chamber floor, wringing her hands and weeping bitterly; “Poor Alick, it is not his fault that we are both so miserable, it is mine. I am not a fit wife for him; I never was; but I loved him so! I loved him so. Ah, but if I had loved him rightly I never would have let him shipwreck his life upon me—so unfit to be his mate. He married me out of pity, and I let him do it, and now I deserve to be wretched. But he is wretched too, though he don’t deserve to be so. Ah! what can I do to undo all this?”