"He is dead, yet I cannot realize it," the girl-widow said to herself, trying to fancy those laughing brown eyes drowned in the salty waves of old ocean—those languid, musical tones hushed in its everlasting roar. It was in vain the effort. It was in life, rather than death that he dwelt in her thoughts.
"He is dead, but no more dead to me than he was in life," she repeated over and over to herself, "for I should never have seen him again."
And suddenly, like an Arctic wave coldly sweeping over her, came the remembrance of Julius Revington.
"I am free now," she repeated to herself, with a shiver of horror. "Nothing lies between my mother and happiness but my own unconquerable repugnance to the man who holds the secret of my mother's wrongs."
Remorseful memory pictured that beautiful mother sad, lonely, bereaved, wasting her heart in unavailing sighs and tears.
"Oh, mother, I was hard, cold, cruel to you that night in my madness," she cried. "I, who shadowed your life with an ever-present memory of shame for sixteen years, now owe you reparation and atonement even to the sacrifice of my poor life."
And in the solemn, mystical midnight hours the great battle was fought between self-pity and mother-love.
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
It was late when Irene came down to breakfast the next morning.