So Laurel remained alone and undisturbed in the elegant rooms, where she had spent such happy hours with the husband who now disowned and abandoned her. She stared out into the beautiful summer night with dark, inscrutable eyes, trying dimly to pierce the veil that hid the future from her aching sight.
St. Leon Le Roy remained in attendance on his mother. The poor lady, in her weak, enfeebled state, had sustained a terrible shock. She had fallen from one fainting spell to another, and the nurse and her son remained constantly by her side. At length she recovered her reason, and was given a composing draught. She fell into a light slumber, and St. Leon stole away and consummated that fatal interview with his wife, then returned to watch by the invalid's couch.
He did not intend to deny his wife an interview with his mother, though he did not think it would avail her anything, believing that she would take sides with himself against the wife who had so bitterly deceived him. He did not think it prudent to allow a meeting between them that night, so when Marie came he returned the curt message that swept the last hope from Laurel's heart, and, as it seemed, the last plank from between her and despair.
Mrs. Le Roy slumbered fitfully until midnight. St. Leon sent the nurse to the lounge in the dressing-room, and kept vigil himself by the sick-bed, looking more like a statue than a man, as he sat there in the shaded night-light, pale and moveless, as if carved in marble; his lips compressed sternly, a smoldering fire burning in his veiled, dark eyes. His mind was busy with thought and memory. He was going over, step by step, his acquaintance with the false Beatrix Gordon from the day when she had first stood, shy and frightened in the doorway of Eden, until to-night. He held the key now to many a subtle enigma that had puzzled him in those past days.
"So fair, so young, and seemingly so ignorant of the world, and yet so false," he said to himself. "False to her lover, Ross Powell, first, then doubly false in wedding me in borrowed plumes. There is no faith nor truth in woman. They are bad and mercenary to the core—all of them, except my honored mother. Yet my wife has the face of an angel. Who would have believed that the greed of gold could have tempted her to such a sin!"
Mrs. Le Roy stirred and opened her eyes. They rested wistfully on the stern, impassive face of her son.
"Your wife, St. Leon," she said, faintly. "Have you forgiven her?"
"Could there be any forgiveness for such falsity as hers, mother?" he asked, turning sternly toward her.
A sigh breathed over Mrs. Le Roy's lips.