They reach Wales. The sun is setting redly over mountains and sea. The carriage is awaiting them; she enters, and lies back wearily with closed eyes. She is dead tired and depressed; she is beginning to feel the want of last night's sleep, and in a weary way is glad when the Carnarvon cottage is reached. Sir Victor's man, my lady's maid, and two Welch servants came forth to meet them; and on Sir Victor's arm she enters the house.
She goes at once to her dressing-room, to rest, to bathe her face, and remove her wraps, performing those duties herself, and dismissing her maid. As she and Sir Victor separate, he mutters some half-incoherent words—he will take a walk and smoke a cigar before dinner, while she is resting. He is gone even while he says it, and she is alone.
She removes her gloves, hat, and jacket, bathes her face, and descends to the little cottage drawing-room. It is quite deserted—sleepy silence everywhere reigns. She throws herself into an easy-chair beside the open window, and looks listlessly out. Ruby, and purple, and golden, the sun is setting in a radiant sky—the yellow sea creeps up on silver sands—old Carnarvon Castle gleams and glows in the rainbow light like a fairy palace. It is unutterably beautiful, unutterably drowsy and dull. And, while she thinks it; her heavy eyelids sway and fall, her head sinks back, and Edith falls fast asleep.
Fast asleep; and a mile away, Sir Victor Catheron paces up and down a strip of tawny sand, the sea lapping softly at his feet, the birds singing in the branches, not a human soul far or near. He is not smoking that before-dinner cigar—he is striding up and down more like an escaped Bedlamite than anything else. His hat is drawn over his eyes, his brows are knit, his lips set tight, his hands are clenched. Presently he pauses, leans against a tree, and looks, with eyes full of some haggard, horrible despair, out over the red light on sea and sky. And, as he looks, he falls down suddenly, as though some inspiration had seized him, upon his knees, and lifts his clasped hands to that radiant sky. A prayer, that seems frenzied in its agonized intensity, bursts from his lips—the sleeping sea, the twittering birds, the rustling leaves, and He who has made them, alone are to hear. Then he falls forward on his face, and lies like a stone.
Is he mad? Surely no sane man ever acted, or looked, or spoke like this. He lies so—prostrate, motionless—for upward of an hour, then slowly and heavily he rises. His face is calmer now; it is the face of a man who has fought some desperate fight, and gained some desperate victory—one of those victories more cruel than death.
He turns and goes hence. He crashes through the tall, dewy grass, his white face set in a look of iron resolution. He is ghastly beyond all telling; dead and in his coffin he will hardly look more death like. He reaches the cottage, and the first sight upon which his eyes rest is his bride, peacefully asleep in the chair by the still open window. She looks lovely in her slumber, and peaceful as a little child—no very terrible sight surely. But as his eyes fall upon her, he recoils in some great horror, as a man may who has received a blinding blow.
"Asleep!" his pale lips whisper; "asleep—as she was!"
He stands spell-bound for a moment—then he breaks away headlong. He makes his way to the dining-room. The table, all bright with damask, silver, crystal, and cut flowers, stands spread for dinner. He takes from his pocket a note-book and pencil, and, still standing, writes rapidly down one page. Without reading, he folds and seals the sheet, and slowly and with dragging steps returns to the room where Edith sleeps. On the threshold he lingers—he seems afraid—afraid to approach. But he does approach at last. He places the note he has written on a table, he draws near his sleeping bride, he kneels down and kisses her hands, her dress, her hair. His haggard eyes burn on her face, their mesmeric light disturbs her. She murmurs and moves restlessly in her sleep. In an instant he is on his feet; in another, he is out of the room and the house; in another, the deepening twilight takes him, and he is gone.
A train an hour later passes through Carnarvon on its way to London. One passenger alone awaits it at the station—one passenger who enters an empty first-class compartment and disappears. Then it goes shrieking on its way, bearing with it to London the bridegroom, Sir Victor Catheron.