Self-scorn and self-pity struggled together in her heart. She felt with a great throb of bitter shame that she had given her love unsought, unvalued, and to another woman's lover. Maud Merivale's words rang in her ears:
"I shall win him back, and this time no one shall come between us."
"He belongs to Maud Merivale. What matter? He never could have been mine," she said, to the white-faced, dark-eyed girl gazing back at her from the mirror with the red roses dying on her breast.
Yesterday she had been reading in a book in the library some pretty verses written over just such a mad and foolish love as this of hers. A fancy seized her to read them again in the light of this new revelation that had flashed upon her heart.
"I will slip down to the library and bring the book," she said, gliding out into the hall and down the broad stairway, shrinkingly, like a little white ghost.
The library was deserted, but the shaded reading-lamp still burned over the center-table with its litter of books and magazines.
The marble busts and statuettes against the book-lined walls looked grimly down upon her, this fair, golden-haired girl with that look of tragic sorrow on her pale face.
"He has been here," she murmured, softly, noting the faint fragrance of cigar smoke that pervaded the air.
She sat down in the great cushioned reading-chair and then she saw another token of his presence—a knot of golden pansies he had worn in his button-hole that evening, and which now lay carelessly on the floor at her feet. She would never have guessed that he had thrown them there in passionate disdain because Maud Merivale's hand had pinned them on his breast.
Laurel picked up the poor dying flowers and held them tenderly.