The guests had not yet begun to assemble; and standing by himself, wrapt in gloomy thought, the earl gazed darkly out into the deepening night. You would scarcely have known him, so changed had he grown by the blighting influence of that horrible incubus. Thin and haggard, with sunken eyes, projecting brows, snow-white hair and care-worn look, he stood the very shadow of his former self—a stricken, bowed, gloomy old man.
Through the inky darkness the rays from the street-lamp sent long lines of light and shade across the pavement. That very night, two years before, a face, white with woman’s utmost woe, had gleamed upon him in that very light, as he stood in that self-same spot. He thought of it now with a convulsive shudder; and the flickering light seemed like a finger of blood-red flame pointing up to heaven, and invoking its wrath upon him. With an inward presentiment he looked through the darkness as if expecting that same dark, unearthly face to appear; and, lo! while he gazed, as if she had sprung up through the earth, a tall, shadowy figure emerged from the darkness, and that awful spectral face, he dreaded more than that of the arch fiend himself, gleamed white and awful through the gloom. She beheld him there in the light, and again that long, bony arm was raised, and that flickering finger pointed up to the lowering sky above, in darkest, voiceless menace. Then, flitting away in the darkness, to which she seemed to belong, the ghastly vision was gone, and Earl De Courcy stood frozen with horror to the spot, unable to speak or move.
At that same hour, a far pleasanter scene was going on in one of the rooms above.
It was the dressing-room of Lady Maude, into which we once before introduced the reader. Once again she stood before the mirror while her maid assisted at her toilet, and chatted with the little Duchess of B., who, magnificent in white velvet and emeralds, sat (or rather lay) half-buried in the downy depths of a lounge—having taken advantage of her girlhood’s intimacy with Lady Maude to come early, and indulge in what she phrased the “sweetest of talks,” before she should descend to the drawing-room, and begin her nightly occupation of breaking masculine hearts.
Very fair, very sweet, very lovely looked Lady Maude, as she stood there with a soft smile on her gentle lips, and a calm, deep joy welling from the brooding depths of her soft dark eyes.
Her dress was white, even as it had been that night—white blonde over white satin—with her favorite jewels (pale oriental pearls) wreathing her shining ringlets of jet, and fluttering and shimmering in sparks of subdued fire on her white arms and bosom. The lovely young face looking out from those silky curls was sweeter and fairer now in her gentle maturity than it had ever been in the brilliant beauty of her girlhood. Scarcely twenty, her form had not attained the roundness of perfect womanhood, but was slight and slender as a girl of fourteen, yet perfect in its elegant contour.
“And the baby is well?” the duchess was languidly saying, as she played with a beautiful little water-spaniel.
“Quite well, thank you,” replied the low, sweet voice of Lady Maude, with her soft, musing smile.
“I need not ask for his lordship, for I saw him last night at the bal masque of Madame la Comtesse De St. Rimy!” said the duchess, with some animation. “He was looking quite kingly as ‘Leicester.’ By the way, Lady Maude, why were you not there?”
“Erminie seemed slightly indisposed, I fancied, and I would not leave her,” answered the young mother.