Sorely disappointed, she acquiesced in his decision, knowing that there was no appeal from his firm will.
[CHAPTER LVIII.]
Laurel had left Belle Vue in a sudden panic of fear and dread. She was afraid that her bold denial of her identity would irritate the Le Roys into an attempt to prove their charges and claim her child. She determined to put a wide distance between herself and her husband, regretting in her new-born terror that she had ever exposed herself to the danger of being recognized by him.
She did not confide to her uncle the fact that she had been charged with her identity by her husband and his mother. She knew that Mr. Ford sympathized with the Le Roys in their repentance and sorrow, and she knew what his advice would be. She had not confided to him the reason of her sudden flitting. She knew that he was the loving slave of her imperious will, and that she need but express a wish to have it gratified. So the grand home on the Hudson was deserted, and they sought "fresh fields and pastures new," according to Laurel's capricious fancy. If Mr. Ford wondered at her fickleness, he kept it to himself. Perhaps he was not altogether sorry that Laurel was not to leave him yet. His heartstrings were very closely entwined around her and her beautiful child. He would have been lonely indeed without them.
They went to a noted summer resort by the seashore, and Laurel declared that she meant to labor diligently here on a new book she had commenced to write that summer. But the new novel did not grow very fast. The brilliant author was restless and ill at ease. Some days she would devote to her task with a feverish energy and persistence, often writing far into the night. Again there would be days and days when the manuscript remained locked in her desk neglected and untouched, while Laurel threw herself into the whirl of social pleasure with a zest born of the desire to forget. But neither in work nor pleasure did she find that lethean draught for which her lips thirsted. She was haunted by a voice, a face. She could not choose but remember.
Even if it had been possible for her to forget, little Laurence would not have allowed her to do so. Strange to say, the child had taken a wondrous fancy to the Le Roys, both mother and son. He prattled of them often in his pretty childish fashion, regretting that he could not see them again, and every word was like a dagger in the mother's heart. She knew that it was nature and instinct clamoring for its own in the boy's heart. Sometimes she was almost melted, sometimes she felt keenly the wrong she had done the child in depriving him of his father's love. But her hard, bitter pride was always stronger than her pity and her love.
Little Laurence found a congenial playmate at last, and his regrets for Belle Vue and Eden grew daily less and less. It was a little golden-haired girl of six years old, called Trixy by her nurse, who brought her to play on the sands daily with her little toy spade and bucket. In Laurie's shell-gathering expeditions with his own nurse, the two children became acquainted and were soon inseparable companions and friends. Laurence did not rest until he had made his mother acquainted with the little beauty.
"I cannot understand my feelings when I look at little Trixy," Mrs. Lynn said to her uncle, with a pretty, puzzled air. "The child's face haunts me. In some inexplicable manner she recalls the past. And yet I cannot remember whom she is like."
She was not fated to remain long in ignorance of the resemblance that haunted her so strangely.