Reader, if we could say farewell here and leave our lovely heroine to her happiness, her heart beating high with hope and love, and the orange-blossoms wreathing her innocent brow, how sweet the task.
But the pen that has tried to trace the story of her sweet young life to her marriage-day must falter not yet until the dark shadows that fell from a sky that was seemingly all sunshine have been recorded too on the page of romance.
When the steamer “City of New York” left her moorings, there leaned against the rail among the excited passengers two figures noticeable for manly grace and feminine beauty. Norman de Vere and his beautiful bride Thea in a lovely steamer costume of Russia blue, her gold curls streaming on the breeze like sunshine, her blue eyes beaming with shy happiness. No wonder that every eye rested on her with wonder and admiration, and that even the listless, haughty old Englishman, past sixty years old, started and moved nearer to the handsome pair, putting up his eyeglass to scan them the better.
“Jove! what an out-and-out beauty! A real English face, too—pink and white, with the loveliest shadings. Who can she be? Heavens!”
His eyes had wandered to her male companion.
Lord Stuart, for it was no other, had recognized in the darkly handsome, beardless face of Thea’s companion an old acquaintance, Norman de Vere.
With a grim smile the old nobleman watched the pair, drawing very correct conclusions.
“A wedding-tour! He has married again? Camille, then, that creature of ice and fire, of jealousy and treachery, of love and hate, must be dead at last. Peace to her wicked soul!”