[CHAPTER XX.]
Mr. Langton's favorite axiom: "Delays are dangerous," which he had quoted so effectively to Reine, would seem to have made less impression on his own mind. The new will, which was to have disinherited Maud Langton and made Vane Charteris and his wife his sole heirs, had been carelessly and fatally postponed. Beautiful Maud, but yesterday penniless, imprisoned, suspected, goes back to-day, free, joyous, triumphant, to her old home, the undisputed mistress of Langton Hall and her uncle's great wealth. Vane Charteris, in nowise disconcerted, and scarcely disappointed, returns to the musty little law office in Washington, from whence his old friend's letter had summoned him a few months before to marry his heiress.
It is a dull, prosaic life enough. Vane is young yet, and has not made his mark. Very few clients come to seek his assistance out of their difficulties. Some dreary days go by, and life does not look quite the same through his office windows as it did in the golden spring before he went to Langton Hall. It is autumn now. The leaves are turning red, and brown, and yellow, the petals are falling from the flowers. Not that Vane takes note of this. One flower that faded in the summer gone, is worth all the world to him. For a time ambition, energy, hope, seem to forsake him. Always before his eyes floats a vision of a fair, dead face with waving tresses, tangled with seaweed; always against his breast he feels the pressure of small hands pressing against him, pushing him from her in the mad resolve to die in his stead. For in his heart Vane feels that it was not alone for Maud's sake she died. She had meant to save him, whom she loved far more than life.
So the autumn days go by. By-and-by the gay, brilliant, beautiful city of Washington begins to fill up with its usual winter throng. Congress assembles, and the brilliant crowds that follow in its train. And one day there comes a delicate, perfumed note to Vane from one of the most fashionable avenues of the fashionable city.
"Dear Vane," it says, "I have come to Washington for the winter, but shall be very quiet, of course, being in deep mourning for my dear uncle. I have invited the Widow Baird and her daughter—unexceptionable people, you know—to stay with me. But I am very lonely, very repentant, and very sad. Will you let by-gones be by-gones, and come and see me?
"Maud Langton."
A delicate, dainty, seductive note. With a start, Vane remembers the elegant house on —— avenue, which had been Mr. Langton's property. Here it is that his heiress had pitched her tent, figuratively speaking, and opened the campaign, for she is determined not to lose the delights of the winter wholly, although in ostensible mourning.
Vane is roused to indignation at first. Why should she ask him to call? Does she take him for a simpleton? He has forgiven her for Reine's sake. That is enough.
He stays away, and in three days an elegant private carriage sets Maud down in front of his office. She rustles across the threshold in a costly costume, designed to represent slight second mourning—a black silk with jetted trimmings, white crepe lisse at throat and wrists, a jetted bonnet with white lisse strings, a dress that is marvelously becoming to the pearl-fair beauty, framed in soft waves of golden hair.