For the first time since their happy wedding-day he looked coldly and sternly at his fair young bride. She had almost forgotten how those proud lips could curl, how that mobile face could express the lightning passions of his soul. She saw now what a dreadful mistake she had made.
"Oh, Beatrix, how I have deceived myself!" he cried. "Do you know what I thought just now when you burst into tears? I believed that all your grief was for my mother, because you loved her and were sorry for her. I never loved you so well as when I thought that you shared so wholly in my affection for my parent. And yet in the next breath you show me my mistake. Your pleasure, your comfort, ranks higher in your thoughts than my mother's welfare! Oh! child! are you, indeed, so selfish?"
The sadness and reproach in his voice tore her guilty heart like a knife. She flew to his arms—she would not be held at a distance.
"I am a wretch!" she cried, remorsefully. "Forgive me, St. Leon. I do love Mrs. Le Roy. I do grieve over her illness! It was only my abominable selfishness and thoughtlessness that made me so heartless. I have grown selfish, forgetting every one else and finding all my happiness in you. Forget it, if you can—at least, forgive it. I am ready to go home with you immediately. Nay, I am most anxious to go."
But her voice faltered, and she shed such hot tears upon his breast that they seemed to blister her cheeks. It seemed to her that she was declaring her own death-warrant.
He could do no less than forgive her. Indeed, her sorrow and repentance were so great that he felt that he had been too harsh and stern with her. He remembered that she was only a child, and she had been so pleased with her travels, it was no wonder that she had been disappointed when the end came upon her so suddenly.
"Besides, I could not in reason expect her to be as fond of my mother as I am," he said to himself, apologetically, and to ease the smart of his disappointment.
He kissed the fair young face until her tears were dried, and told her that she was forgiven for her momentary selfishness, and that next year they would come abroad again.
"To-morrow we must be upon the sea. I am very anxious to reach home," he said, little guessing that his words pierced her heart like the point of a deadly poisoned dagger.