“Perfectly, for I know you will keep your word,” he replied, smiling to himself at the victory he had won over the haughty girl who scorned him even while she cringed beneath his power.
She inclined her head haughtily, drew down the thick veil again, and swept out of the house down to her waiting limousine, and so back to Mrs. Dalrymple’s, where, since her return from the hospital, she again made her home, the Van Dorns being indefinitely absent in Paris.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
“A BREAKING HEART,” SHE SAID.
Mrs. Dalrymple had never felt like a well woman since the day she kissed her daughter’s dead face and turned away from the old family vault, feeling that her last hope in life was gone.
Alone and lonely, though she had the whole world at command by the power of wealth, Verna Dalrymple, still a young woman, and a magnificently beautiful one, was as wretched as the veriest beggar starving in the streets.
Never since the moment she had turned from her angry young husband, doubting his love and hating his poverty, had Verna Dalrymple known a really happy hour.
Despite her pride and resentment that had driven them apart, she had loved Leon, her husband, with the passion of her life, and realized it too late.
The decree of divorce she had permitted her parents to secure for her fell like the trump of doom upon her heart, and the coming of her child had been her only consolation.
All these years she had fought down with resolution the passion of her heart, loving and hating alternately the man whose brief appearance on the stage of her life had been as fateful as a tragedy.
Yet she knew not if he were dead or living, for never since the moment of their parting had she gazed on his fair, handsome face.