Remorse throbbed at her bosom’s core. She had done wrong to forsake the dear old mother whose heart had been broken by her desertion.
“Alas, why was I not there to pray for her forgiveness? She was all I had to love me on earth! Those older brothers and sisters, they never cared for Berry. They always scolded and berated me because I was mamma’s pet; they said I was a spoiled child. None of them will ever care to see me again!”
She sobbed on brokenly, without noticing that the clock in the high tower had solemnly tolled out the midnight hour, when she was to meet the fortune teller and receive the charm that was to ward off her impending cruel doom.
She did not even notice, in her perturbation, the delicate odor of a fine cigar blending with the scent of the flowers close by, and she would have darted away in alarm had she dreamed that a young man was sitting on a rustic seat in a clump of shrubbery just back of her—so close indeed that she might have caught the sound of his quick breathing only that it was drowned by the tinkle of the fountain that, throwing its spray high in the air, fell back again like the low patter of rain upon the broad leaves of the lily-bordered pool.
But as for him, he had caught every word she uttered, and he knew every tone of the sweet voice, too, though he could not see her face as she clung there with her cheek against the rough bark of the tree.
It was Charley Bonair, sick at heart and troubled, who had hidden himself there in the solitude of the beautiful night to puzzle over the problem of his destiny.
He thought he had worked it all out before in the moonlight nights on the yacht, before he had landed from it at San Francisco. But that was when he had believed that Berenice Vining was surely dead, and that nothing remained but his duty to Rosalind.
Now it all rose again like a ghost that would not down—the struggle between his heart and his duty, for they did not agree.
His troth plight held him to Rosalind, his love belonged to Berry.
But the pure little cottage maiden would not accept the heart without the hand.