She sang it, her eyes alight, her cheeks flushing, thrilling spirit and life in the merry words. Sir Victor stood beside her, drinking in until he was intoxicated by the spell of her subtle witchery.
"And Charley he's my darling—
My darling, my darling!"
Edith's contralto tones rang out. She had never looked so really beautiful, perhaps, before in her life—suppressed excitement lent her such sparkle and color. She finished her song and arose. And presently the evening was over, and it was half-past eleven, and one by one they were taking their candles, and straggling off to bed.
Edith Darrell did not go to bed. She put the lights away on the toilet-table in the dressing-room, wrapped something around her and sat down by the window to think it out.
Should she marry Sir Victor Catheron, or should she not?
She cared nothing for him—nothing whatever—very likely she never would. She loved Charley Stuart with all the power of her heart, and just at present it seemed to her she always must. That was how the problem stood.
If she married Sir Victor, rank and wealth beyond all her dreams would be hers, a life of luxury, all the joys and delights great wealth can bring. She liked pleasure, luxury, beauty, rank. For love—well, Sir Victor loved her, and for a woman it is always better, safer, to be loved than to love.
That was one phase of the case. Here was the other: She might go to Charley and say. "Look here—I care for you so much, that life without you, isn't worth the living. I will marry you, Charley, whenever you like." He would make her his wife. Alone in darkness, her heart thrilled as she thought of it—and the intensest joy of life would be hers for a while. For a while. They would be poor—his father would cast him off—he must, for the first time in his life, begin to work—the old story of pinching and poverty, of darning and mending, would commence over again for her, poor food, poor clothes, all the untold ugliness and misery of penury. Love is a very good and pleasant thing, but not when bought at the price of all the glory and pleasure of the world.
She turned from the life she pictured with a shudder of abhorrence. And Charley was not of the stuff the toilers of the earth are made. She would never spoil his life for him as well as her own—not if her heart broke in giving him up. But it would not break—who breaks her heart in these days? She would say "Yes" to-morrow to Sir Victor Catheron.
Then for a moment the thread of thought broke, and she sat looking blankly out at the soft spring night.