“Yes, till death do us part,” she replied, wondering why there came such a tightness about her heart, as if a cold hand had clutched it.
He bade her good-bye that night, after dinner in one of the shadowy corners of the big hotel.
“Remember,” he said again, and raised her hand to his lips.
Through the leaves of a climbing vine the moonbeams filtered and fell upon her face which he would like to have kissed, but something restrained him, and afterward, when the awakening came, Connie thanked God that it was so.
“I will remember,” she said, withdrawing her hand, just as round the corner came the rustle of skirts and Mrs. Hart appeared in view, with Count Costello in attendance, smirking into her face just as he had smirked in Connie’s six weeks ago.
Something in their looks smote Connie like a blow, making her sick at heart, and she walked away and left them alone. The next morning, when the early stage left the hotel, a pair of soft, blue eyes looked eagerly up at a window from which a white hand was waving an adieu. Then the stage rolled away, and Connie was alone with the memory of what had been and was soon to be again in its full fruition, she believed. That morning her aunt had said to her: “I am glad he has gone. I never liked him, and I read people pretty well. I have no doubt you attracted him, but it was your money he wanted. Give him a plainer face with more money, and he would take it.”
“Money!” Connie repeated. “I am sick of the sound, and I certainly have not enough to make me an object for fortune-hunters. I wish you would manage to have people, and even him, think me poor; then I shall know who likes me for myself.”
Her aunt made no reply, but that afternoon she wrote a letter to Paris, which was to bear early fruit. Meanwhile the days passed with the usual round of nothings for Connie, who tired of them all. Old men and young plied her with attentions, which she received graciously, but coldly, biding her time and counting the days which must elapse before she heard from him, or he came back to claim her. But he neither came nor wrote, except a few lines from Paris, saying that he had reached there safely and was with his friends at the Grand. Mrs. Hart had not intended to stop much longer in Interlaken, but she kept lingering, declaring herself infatuated with the place and seemingly infatuated with Count Costello, who had transferred his attentions from the niece to the aunt. Every day Connie waited anxiously for the western mails, but only to be disappointed, and the bright color began to fade from her cheeks, and the lustre from her eyes. Twice she walked out to the boulder by the brook, and sitting down upon it, tried to recall every word he had said to her and what she had said to him. Once she knelt by the rock and prayed that he might come, but God, who knew better than she what was for her good, did not answer her prayer, and her eyes grew larger and more sunken, and her figure lost its symmetrical proportions, until her aunt awoke to the fact that her health was failing. Thinking heroic treatment the best, she one day said abruptly: “If you are pining for that young man, you may as well give him up. The Count has friends in Paris, who write that your friend is there, leading a gay life and very devoted to a young lady of the party.”
After that Connie drooped more and more, until by the time they left Interlaken for Geneva her life seemed to have gone from her, leaving her a pale, silent girl, with a hopeless look in her eyes pitiful to see in one so young. Absolutely true herself, and a child in many things, owing to her convent training, it was hard to imagine deception in any one whom she trusted, and doubly so in him who, if he were alive and well, had deceived her cruelly. She might write to him, for she knew his address, but she was too proud to do that. If he had ceased to care for her, she would make no sign and bear her pain as best she could. Geneva was a little diversion, as she was never tired of the beautiful lake, or of watching the lights and shadows of Mt. Blanc in the distance. She would like to have stayed there all the autumn, but her aunt said no,—her health required the balmy air of Genoa, where Costello had invited them to stop at his palace.
“Oh, Auntie,” Connie cried in dismay, “you surely will not go there!”