Leonard pushed back the empty coffee-cup from beside his plate.
“Then, by Heaven!—I beg your pardon, Miss Glyndon—what does he mean by writing such stuff to Violet—Miss Arleigh? I may as well tell you now as later that I fully expected to make her my wife!”
“He would not have dared to write poems to her if she did not encourage him!” cried Jessie, indignantly, with all a woman’s bitter judgment of her sister-woman whom she believes to have come between herself and happiness. “Of course Miss Arleigh was willing, or Will Venners would never have spent all the time necessary to write a poem—a lengthy one like that—to bestow upon her. You know how indolent he is. A man with great natural ability and talent, he requires an incentive—some deep motive to interest and urge him on. He must certainly have cared for, and believed that he had a right to care for, the woman for whom these lines were written!”
Ah, Jessie! quick-tempered, swift to judge, sensitive to a fault, you have spoken truly! The pretty lines were written for the woman whom Will Venners loved, but not for Violet Arleigh.
It was a sad mistake all around, as complete a game of cross-purposes as one would wish to see.
Miss Glyndon returned Will Venners’ unfortunate poem to Leonard Yorke, then with her head very erect and a round red spot burning like a flame upon each pale cheek, she left the breakfast-room and slowly ascended the great circular stair-case which led from the immense entrance hall up to regions above. A few moments later she opened the door of a pretty sleeping-room all in pale pink and white—her own sanctum—for here at Yorke Towers the hired companion was as well lodged and as kindly treated as an honored guest.
Miss Glyndon locked the door behind her, then she went straight over to an old-fashioned escritoire which stood beside an open window, and took from a small drawer a package of letters. Not many, nor were they very lengthy, but they had been carefully preserved, bound with the orthodox blue ribbon, and each letter bore the signature, “Yours, as ever, Will.”
Seating herself, she glanced over them. Not a word of love in any of them, oh, no! but there was a certain something in the tone, and an occasional word which his pen let slip, which betrayed strong inner feelings. Their perusal sent the red blood into the reader’s pale cheeks, and made the gray eyes grow misty. When the last one was read, she laid the package upon the escritoire, and going over to the mantel, took from a small silver easel a photograph of Will Venners. One long, long look. I am afraid to attempt to translate the hidden meaning of that eager, devouring gaze. She pressed the pictured face to her lips.
“Good-bye, fair sweet dream,” she whispered, “my dark-eyed Will, good-bye! Yet—no, he was not mine, he was never mine” (the gray eyes flashed wrathfully); “he has only been amusing himself with me, the poor dependent—Mrs. Yorke’s hired companion. He is an outrageous flirt, I have known it all the time, yet still—fool that I have been—I have allowed myself to dream, and to be led on and on, to believe him, to—to—oh, Will, Will, I wish I were dead and could forget you! I shall have to be dead before I can forget you, my beautiful, dark-eyed lover! So that dream is over.”
With trembling hands she placed the photograph with its bright smiling face and firm, sweet mouth upon the package of letters, a regular funeral pyre. Then with set lips and cold, shaking hands she placed the entire package in a large envelope, sealed it decisively, and addressed it in a plain hand to “Captain Will Venners, Southern Athletic Club, New Orleans, La.”