The Viking's Skull

by John R. Carling

"Ten months ago. Secretly. At Nice."

"To—to——?"

But he knew the name before she pronounced it.

"To Lord Walden—yes."

The earth that afternoon was roofed with a sky of deep delicious azure: the soft breeze rippled the leaves of the woodland, and at each breath the air became alive with the white blossoms of the trees. Nothing could be sweeter or fairer than this summer day, but its charm was not for Idris. With the knowledge that Lorelie could never be his, there passed away a glory from the earth.

Mechanically he turned his eyes towards Ravenhall. Lorelie followed the direction of his glance. Through a vista in the trees they could see the castellated pile, set with mullioned casements, and fronted with ivied terraces ascended by stately flights of stone steps. She knew—and bitter was the knowledge—that Idris was thinking that there was the prize for which she had sold herself.

He wronged her, however, by this thought.

When Lorelie, eighteen months before, had listened to the vows of Viscount Walden she had honestly believed herself to be in love with him. Idris' avowal had shown her the hollowness of that belief. Vivid as fire on a dark night there suddenly flashed upon her trembling mind the overwhelming revelation that her feeling for her husband was as nothing compared with her feeling for Idris. If all the happiness she had previously known had been suddenly sublimated and concentrated into one single intense sensation of a moment's duration it would not have equalled the rapture evoked by Idris' avowal. But in a moment the feeling had gone, giving place to the dull lethargy of despair. Though realizing but too plainly that she had married the wrong man, the knowledge of the fact did not diminish the loyalty due to her husband. Faithful she would ever remain, but it was not her fault if the love that she could henceforth give him would be scarcely deserving of the name.

She would have died rather than have given utterance to this confession, but Idris had read the secret in her eyes: she knew that he had read it, and the knowledge added to her confusion and made her unable to meet his glance.

There was a long silence between them. What was there to talk about? Their mutual love? That was of necessity a forbidden subject; and to talk of anything less than this seemed a mockery of the deep feelings within them.