He came out to them, his handsome dark head bare in the moonlight, a smile in his eyes and on his lips—subtly sweet and dangerous as he sometimes willed it to be.
"Miss Gordon, will you go into the house with the count and my mother?" he said, looking straight into the girl's dark eyes. "I will find the roses 'all sweet with moonlight and dew.'"
Laurel bowed silently and turned away. She did not turn her head, but she knew that the widow had taken St. Leon's arm and was walking across the velvety greensward with him. The echo of firm tones and happy laughter floated back to her.
She did not go back to the count and Mrs. Le Roy as she had been bidden at once. She sat down at the foot of the marble steps and laid her hot brow wearily down on the cold white stone.
"Their words hurt me here," she murmured, pressing her small hand on her beating heart. "But I cannot understand why it should be so. Why should their love pain me? I care nothing for either of them. They are nothing to me. But, oh! this terrible pain at my heart—what does it mean?"
The slight form shivered and trembled, the beautiful face was deathly white in the moonlight. She rested there silently a long time, looking down with sharpened mental vision into her own heart.
And suddenly a moan of intense self-scorn and bitter despair trembled over the beautiful girlish lips.
"I have been willfully blind; I have not understood till now," she moaned. "But, by the flash of jealousy and grief, I have seen my heart. Clarice was right, and I spoke falsely when I denied her. I love him—that haughty, handsome man, who has never given me one thought—who belongs to Maud Merivale. That is why I risked all to remain at Eden! Oh, God! how hard it is to read my own heart first by its jealousy and aching!"
And the night winds and the river echoed her faint, despairing moan.