“Will you come out on the lawn, the morning is perfect?” Lord Delaval says to Zai, when they make a move from the table, and she, who has determined to love him and obey him, turns up a fair sweet face, and smiling, runs away for her hat.
He looks after her slender figure with visible admiration in his eyes. Zai is his beau ideal, pro tem. of womankind.
“Don’t be long away,” he calls, softly; and he longs to have her with him, where, sending the convenances au diable, he can gaze his fill on her beauty, and kiss her to his heart’s content.
He starts and stammers as he asks:
“For me?”
And, as he takes the sealed missive in his hand, a sort of foreboding makes him pale and shrink from opening it.
He even forgets to wait for Zai, but walks out of the house, and down towards the far end of the grounds, before he breaks the seal.
“When you read this, Delaval, I shall be dead. ‘What folly!’ I hear you say. But folly or not, it is the truth. Oh, Delaval, I wonder I did not die yesterday! when you killed me with your hard words and looks. I cannot, I say, live and know that the love and caresses that are all the world to me are given to another woman. I have no home, no friends, no money. What then is left to me but death! Good-bye! my love! my love! My last prayer will be that some day you will say to yourself, ‘She loved me best of all.’ Good-bye!”
“Gabrielle.”