Half maddened by her words, he ground his teeth over a fierce and bitter oath, and shaking her hand from his arm, strode out of the room with "the fires of hell" in his heart.
[CHAPTER LXIII.]
Mr. Le Roy and Laurel had indeed gone out upon the shore. He had invited her to do so, and she had complied, for she was full of half-angry wonder as to what had brought him there. She was frightened too, when she found herself surrounded by all those people who belonged to her past. She asked herself if it could have happened by simple chance. She was frightened. She felt like some hunted creature brought to bay.
She tried to shake off her feelings of mingled terror and annoyance, bravely assuring herself that there existed no cause for them.
"I have done nothing—these people have naught to do with me. I am foolish to feel afraid when I see them all around me," she repeated to herself.
When she tried to analyze her feelings, she found that it was only Ross Powell who inspired her with such terror. She was not afraid of Mrs. Merivale. She simply despised her; and, secure in her fancied incognito, she did not feel apprehensive concerning the desire of the jealous woman to work her ill. It was only Powell of whom she felt afraid. His evil, exultant glance had assured her that he knew her, and she had already had evidence of his willingness to destroy every hope of her life so far as lay in his power. It was wholly through dread of his haunting glance that she accepted Mr. Le Roy's invitation to leave the crowded ball-room and go out upon the shore; and once away from the baleful presence of the enemy she feared and dreaded, she dismissed him wholly from her thoughts, and gave herself up to the secret, trembling joy of St. Leon's presence. Her heart was a traitor to her will. It exulted in his nearness despite her reason, that told her they were better apart if she meant to carry out her vow of pride and scorn.
She leaned upon his arm, and they walked silently through the lovely moonlight down to the wave-washed shore. Laurel's heart beat quick and fast against her husband's arm. The beauty of the moonlight and the sea, the mellow notes of the dance-music, all had their own effect upon her. Mrs. Merivale had rightly estimated each as a softening influence. It was such a night as Emma Alice Browne describes in her sweet poem, "The Bal-Masque."
"Before us, bathed in pearly light,
A reach of ocean heaved and rolled,
Girt with the purple zone of night,
And clasped with one pale glint of gold.
"Behind us, in the gay saloon,
The flutes wailed out their sweet despair;
The passionate viols sobbed in tune,
The horns exulted, and the air
Pulsed with the low, mellifluous beat
Of dimpling waves and dancing feet."