He watched the wedded pair with musing, thoughtful eyes, while his mind went back over the long years to the time when he had been Camille de Vere’s adoring slave, and plotted treachery against the princely looking man yonder, whose face in repose showed in its gravity faint traces yet of the storm through which his soul had passed.
“There was more in him than I thought, dupe of Camille that I was!” he muttered. “She was only playing me off to make her value greater in his eyes, for she loved him, as I soon proved to my chagrin. Well, she was not worthy of either—certainly not of this man who has risen like a phenix from his ashes, and made himself a name that rings from one continent to another! I wonder if I dare resume the old acquaintance?”
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Lord Stuart was most anxious to approach Norman de Vere when he found out for certain that the beautiful young girl was his bride. If Camille was indeed dead, he wanted to pay her memory the only tribute he could under the circumstances—the assurance that her husband’s suspicions of her virtue were unfounded.
But they had been several days out before he had the slightest opportunity to carry out his desire, for Norman and his young bride were inseparable, and so entirely absorbed in each other that they seemed to have neither eyes nor ears for any one else. At length Thea was attacked by the fell demon of seasickness, and was forced to keep her state-room for twenty-four hours, and the first time that Norman came on deck alone the nobleman hastened to speak to him.
It was a most embarrassing moment. Lord Stuart, though he had plenty of nerve and sang-froid, never could recall to himself in exactly what words he had made his peace with the man he had sought to wrong in the long ago. He remembered that it had been uphill work at first, and that it was only when he had frankly told his story and sworn to Camille’s purity that the younger man had taken his hand and forgiven him.
“Camille has been dead two years,” he said. “She had many faults. I thank you for proving her innocent of one;” and he sighed as he thought of the beautiful, erring woman who had loved him so madly, and whose mysterious sin he had punished by putting her away from him forever.
He was half tempted for a moment to confess the truth to Lord Stuart, to tell him of Camille’s terrible sin, and to ask him if he knew what she had in common with Robert Lacy, his dead valet, that she should have murdered him; but a strange reluctance deterred him. Once he had loved Camille, and despite the persecution he had suffered at her hands, he could not bear to utter a harsh word against her now. Believing himself the only person alive who knew of her guilt, he could not betray her now, so he shut his lips over the unspoken words, and so passed the opportunity for a confidence between the two men that might have warded off the bitter sorrow that came to Norman later.
Lord Stuart gazed curiously at him, and the impulse to betray all that he knew of the dead woman passed from his mind.
“He does not suspect her. Why should I speak, now that she is dead and can do no more harm? Let him think as kindly of her as he can,” was his thought; and dismissing Camille from the conversation, he congratulated Norman on the wondrously beautiful bride he had won.