The shadow among the beeches stood stiller than stone. A long, low wind worried the trees, and the rain beat its melancholy drip, drip. Half an hour, an hour, two, passed, but the figure leaning against the iron-gate was as still as the iron itself. But slowly he stirred at last, became conscious he was dripping, and passed slowly out of the rainy gloom, and up the lamplit-avenue, and into the stately home, that, after to-night, would be his no more.
Another half-hour, and he was back in the glitter and dazzle and music of the brilliant suit of drawing-rooms, his wet garments changed, the fixed whiteness of his face telling but little of his sudden blow. He had not been missed; his radiant three months' bride shone there in diamonds, and laces, and roses resplendent—and who was to think of the rich Fletcher! "Only a clod," whom she had honored by marrying. Capt. Craymore was by her side, more fascinating than ever. How could she find time to think of any one so plebeian as the underbred rich man she had married, by his entrancing side?
But it was all over at last. The "lights were fled, the garlands dead," and Mrs. Fletcher up in her dressing-room, in the raw morning light, was under the hands of her maid. She lay back among the violet-velvet cushions, languid and lovely, being disrobed, and looked round with an irritated flush at the abrupt entrance of the master of the house. He did not often intrude; since the first few weeks of their marriage he had been a model husband, and kept his place. Therefore, Mrs. Fletcher looked surprised, as well as annoyed now.
"Do you wish to speak to me, Mr. Fletcher?" she asked, coldly; for after an evening with Capt. Craymore she was always less tolerant of her bourgeois husband.
"Yes—but alone. I will wait in your sitting-room until you dismiss your maid."
Something in his colorless face—something in the sound of his voice startled her; but he was gone while yet speaking, and the maid went on. "Hurry, Louise," her mistress said, briefly; and Louise coiled up the shining hair, arranged the white dressing-gown, and left her.
Marian Fletcher arose and swept into the next room. It was the daintiest bijou of boudoirs, all rose-silk, and silver, and filigree-work, and delicious Greuze paintings, smiling down from the fluted panels. A bright wood-fire burned on the hearth, and her husband stood against the low chimney-piece, whiter and colder than the marble itself.
"Well," she said, "what is it?"
He looked up. She stood before him in her beauty and her pride, jewels flashed on her fairy hands—a queen by right divine of her azure eyes and tinselled hair—his, yet not his; "so near, and yet so far." He loved her, how well his own wrung heart only knew.
"What is it?" she repeated, impatiently. "I am tired and sleepy. Tell me in a word."