Oh, how she longed to yield and allow him to win her back; how she longed to let him take her into his strong arms, and hear him murmur again those tender words such as he had spoken to her so recently; but, remembering his attentions to Josephine last night, her looks of affection and pride, her bright face and happy laugh—remembering what she had heard regarding his devotion to her at Long Branch, and the reason that had been given for his coming there to her home, she could not.
He had played the role of rich lover to the proud heiress; he had acted that of a poor sweetheart with her; for had he not told her he was an artist, but hoped to be able to take care of her, so that she need never know the meaning of the words poor and dependent again; and now, with all this evidence before her, how could she help believing him false to the core—to have simply amused himself at her expense?
“You can have no defense to offer me, and I will hear nothing,” she returned, coldly. “You have deceived me most cruelly; you came to me as Archibald Sherbrooke; you used all your powers of fascination to make me love you as a poor artist, while you had already played the part of a rich lover in a different character at a fashionable watering-place. I congratulate you upon your marvelous success as an actor, my lord,” she concluded, with scathing sarcasm.
A deep sigh broke from him; her words hurt him keenly, for he was very proud.
But he saw how she was suffering, and he tried to be patient with her, feeling sure that if he could only make her listen to him all would be well.
“My dear,” he said, gently, “you do not understand. Pray, let me tell you all about it. I swear that I am both——”
“You need not swear; I know enough already. Go back to my more fortunate cousin, Miss Richards, whom the whole household expects you intend to make Lady Carrol. She, I own, is better fitted to be the bride of a peer of England than the poor alien who is a burden upon her bounty. She will grace your proud home and name with her beauty; she will add to your riches with her wealth. But let me tell you”—and Star had no idea how superbly beautiful she was as she stood so proudly before him and uttered this prophetic sentence—“that the girl whom she has despised and insulted, whom you have deceived, and whose life you have blighted by your treachery, will yet rise to a position that shall shame and humiliate you both. Go back to her, I say, and—ask her for the cameo which you gave me. I told you that I had lost it. I put it that way because I did not like to tell you how badly I had been used by those who should have given me only sympathy and love; but she—the girl whom you have come to win for your wife—stole it from me, my one little treasure, the only ornament I had which I could wear in my humble position, and which I prized more than anything else in the world. But let her keep it; I relinquish it freely, now that I have discovered the baseness of the giver. My Lord Carrol, of Carrolton, alias Archibald Sherbrooke, the artist, I despise you, and I bid you farewell!”
She was gone before he could hardly realize that she had ceased speaking; she had sped down the avenue with the lightness and swiftness of a fawn, leaving him dazed, bewildered, almost paralyzed from the wild words, the terrible denunciation which she had uttered.
CHAPTER XVIII.
EXPLANATIONS.
“Star! Star! my dear love, come back and let me undeceive you,” he called aloud, as soon as he could recover his senses sufficiently to speak.