Christabel heard every word of this conversation, heard and understood for the first time that her renunciation of her lover had been useless—that the reparation she had deemed it his duty to make, was past making—that the woman to whose wounded character she had sacrificed her own happiness was false and unworthy. She had been fooled—betrayed by her own generous instincts—her own emotional impulses. It would have been better for her and for Angus if she had been more worldly-minded—less innocent of the knowledge of evil. She had blighted her own life, and perhaps his, for an imaginary good. Nothing had been gained to any one living by her sacrifice.
"I thought I was doing my duty," she told herself helplessly, as she sat looking out at the dark water, above which the moon was rising in the cloudless purple of a southern night. "Oh! how wicked that woman was to hide the truth from me—to let me sacrifice my love and my lover—knowing her own falsehood all the time. And now she is the wife of another man! How she must have laughed at my folly! I thought it was Angus who had deserted her, and that if I gave him up, his own honourable feeling would lead him to atone for that past wrong. And now I know that no good has been done—only infinite evil."
She thought of Angus, a lonely wanderer on the face of the earth; jilted by the first woman he had loved, renounced by the second, with no close ties of kindred—uncared for and alone. It was hard for her to think of this, whose dearest hope had once been to devote her life to caring for him and cherishing him—prolonging that frail existence by the tender ministrations of a boundless love. She pictured him in his loneliness, careless of his health, wasting his brief remnant of life—reckless, hopeless, indifferent.
"God grant he may fall in love with some good woman, who will cherish him as I would have done," was her unselfish prayer; for she knew that domestic affection is the only spell that can prolong a fragile life.
It was a weak thing no doubt next morning, when she was passing through the hall of the hotel, to stop at the desk on which the visitors' book was kept, and to look back through the signatures of the last three weeks for that one familiar autograph which she had such faint chance of ever seeing again in the future. How boldly that one name seemed to stand out from the page; and even coming upon it after a deliberate search, what a thrill it sent through her veins! The signature was as firm as of old. She tried to think that this was an indication of health and strength—but later in the same day, when she was alone in her sitting-room, and her tea was brought to her by a German waiter—one of those superior men whom it is hard to think of as a menial—she ventured to ask a question.
"There was an English gentleman staying here about three weeks ago: a Mr. Hamleigh. Do you remember him?" she asked.
The waiter interrogated himself silently for half a minute, and then replied in the affirmative.
"Was he an invalid?"
"Not quite an invalid, Madame. He went out a little—but he did not seem robust. He never went to the opera—or to any public entertainment. He rode a little—and drove a little—and read a great deal. He was much fonder of books than most English gentlemen."
"Do you know where he went when he left here?"