[CHAPTER LII.]
Mr. Le Roy led his beautiful guest to the library, and placed a chair beside the table where he usually sat to read. Laurel sat silently a moment with averted face. She was fighting down her heart, thrusting back the memories that would arise like pallid ghosts from the dead past. Here in this room, nay, in this very chair where she was sitting, St. Leon had wooed her for his wife. She could be cold and proud in the grand drawing-room. It was there that he had put her away from him, there that he had spoken the cruel, angry words that sundered their hearts and lives forever. The memory of that night and that scene hardened her heart to her unforgiving husband, and helped her to be cold and careless. Here it was all different. This quiet retreat was hallowed by some of the sweetest moments of her life.
That hour which had lifted her from dumb, jealous misery and despair to the heights of bliss had come to her here.
The memory of her year of wedded happiness rushed over her with all the love and joy that had been crowded into it.
She trembled, she recalled all the horror and despair that had followed after, and for a moment it seemed to her that all was a hideous dream from which she would awaken presently. She longed to cry out aloud, to rush from this haunted room, to do anything that would free her from the gaze of those sad, dark eyes, whose burning glances as they sought her face seemed to read her secret and to plead with her for love and reconciliation. A smothered gasp, and she shook off the dangerous, luring spell, and became herself again, calm, indifferent, yet gracious, the woman that slighted and scorned love had made "icily splendid," fatally fair, as many a man had owned to his cost.
She looked about for something to divert her attention, and saw just at her hand lying on the table a volume elegantly bound in crimson and gold. She took it in her hand and read aloud the gold-lettered title on the back: "Laurel Blossoms."
"Laurel Blossoms," she repeated, and turned to the title-page. With widening eyes and a swift color that went and came from white to red and from red to white she read: "By Louis Vane."
St. Leon had drawn a chair near her. He spoke to her now in a calm, carefully modulated voice that went far toward restoring her shattered equanimity.