To love and to be loved—life has nothing else so sweet to give.
The girl whose love from its very beginning had been almost tragical in its strength and intensity, gave herself up heart and soul, with a very rapture of bliss, to her intoxicating love dream.
She would not think, she would not look behind her into that fatal past that would have marred the sweetness of the present. She drank with thirsty pleasure from the full cup of joy pressed to her lips, seeming to have but one thought:
“Come what may, I have been blessed.”
She knew without a word from his lips that he loved her. He knew without the least unmaidenliness on her part that she cared for him. The two souls had sprung to meet each other. It was fate.
Augustus Frayne and several others who adored her were in despair. Every one could see where matters were tending.
To make matters worse for all her other lovers, Bayard Lorraine had discovered that he was very slightly related to the Howards.
“A distant cousinship, on your husband’s side, Mrs. Howard,” he said, and she did not deny it.
So, on the strength of the relationship, Bayard Lorraine assumed a familiar footing, glad to take advantage of anything that brought him into closer relations with the pretty girl who had carried his heart by storm.
When he had come to London, he had meant to begin a new book almost immediately, but the work did not prosper. He could not stay away long enough from the spot that held his fair cousin.