The woman rose up in her heart at last. She laid upon his arm her gloved and jewelled hand.
“You will be faithful and kind to me, and always love me, St. Allborne?” she faltered; yet the words were uttered with anxious earnestness.
“Love you, my pwecious little wogue,” he responded, with nervous excitement, though he had no ultimate intention of keeping his promise, “why I adaw you now, and when you weveal to me the disintawested chawacter of youaw love faw me by living with me until the distwessing hut wigowous impediments to ouaw mawiage aw wemoved, what can I do but waw-ship you. Come, let us be off befaw we aw missed from the ball-woom.”
He folded her shawl tightly round her trembling frame, and, placing his arms close about her waist, he drew her to the same spot from whence Hugh Riversdale had conveyed her sister Helen away.
They stood upon the brink of the winding stream, so charming in its ornamental character, so facile for mischief. At a signal from the Duke, a boat swiftly appeared. A boat-cloak was handed up by the man in charge of the boat, and Margaret was closely muffled in it; she was then lifted into the small vessel, and the Duke stepped lightly in after her—one moment more, and the boat glided silently but swiftly away.
The lights streamed brilliantly from the windows of the villa mansion. Strains of joyous music issued from the crowded saloons, and in noisy hilarity the dancers whirled with rapid steps round the gorgeously decorated apartments. All within their scope seemed to be instinct with joy and happiness.
When the boat disappeared, there came from the shadow of the trees in the garden the figure of a man.
It was Mr. Grahame. He had wandered as in a dream from the heated rooms thronged with gay visitors, not one of whom he cared for or who cared for him, and while leaning thoughtfully, brooding over his desperate position, against a tree, he had witnessed the meeting of the Duke and his daughter Margaret.
He cared not to interrupt them, but glided back into his house like a thief; no one observed him enter. He slunk to his dressing-room; his valet was not there. He hastily divested himself of his full-dress habiliments, and put on some plain clothing. When thus attired he crept down the servants’ staircase, darted through the basement passage, and passed unobserved, by the servants’ entrance, into the front of his mansion, and made his way through the throng of carriages assembled there.
He went on through the Regent’s Park up towards Hampstead, passed over its dreary heath—the earth and shrubs looking black beneath the gloomy sky.