A faint warmth of colour comes over it; the proud head, with its golden halo of hair, droops a little. "Yes," she says, "I have. Sometimes I think it was my own fault, after all I was too proud, too exacting. Shall I tell you the story? Would you care to hear?"
"Indeed, I would," said Lauraine, earnestly.
"He was a soldier," begins Lady Etwynde. "I was seventeen; romantic to my finger-tips. He, thirty years or more; bronzed, bold, stalwart, a king among men, I always thought. We met at my first season in London, loved, were engaged. He was of good family, but not rich. My parents objected strongly at first; but I was their only child, and they had never crossed whim or wish of mine. Of course I gained my point. Oh, how happy I was! It was like all the ecstasy of dreams, all the fancies of poets, all the purity and waking passion of first love steeping my life in golden glamour. I only lived, watched, thought for him, and he—all the time—he deceived me!"
Her voice breaks. The bitterness and anguish of that time seems present over again. The colour fades from her cheeks as she kneels there in the radiant moonlight.
"No man comes to thirty years of age without a 'past' of some sort," she resumes. "But I, in my childish ignorance, imagined him another Bayard. He had been so brave, his name was crowned with so many laurels. He seemed the very soul of honour, of truth, and I—I loved him so. And one night, oh, shall I ever forget that night? We had gone down to Richmond to dinner. We had been out on the river afterwards. It was a warm June night, so fair, so still, so fragrant, and he rowed the boat himself and the rest of the party left us far behind. Suddenly another boat passed us; there were two men in it, and a woman. I remember noticing she had something scarlet wrapped about her and was very dark; foreign-looking I fancied. They were rowing fast, their boat shot by. I heard a cry, the sound of a name—his name—and he was sitting before me, his face white as death, his eyes full of horror and doubt. 'Good God!' I heard him cry, 'and she is not dead?'
"My heart seemed to stand still. Then I grew very calm and cold. 'Who is that woman, Cyril?' He stared at me like one in a dream, and turned the boat back without a word and rowed me to the hotel. Then he led me up one of the quiet river walks, and standing there before me told me the whole sickening, miserable tale. There may have been extenuation in it. I saw none. I was young and ignorant of life and of men, and cruel, I suppose. He called me so. I could only cling to one fact—that she had been his wife. What mattered to me the folly, the caprice, the infatuation that had chained his hot youth and held him powerless now? What mattered to me anything, anything, save that he was lost to me, that my idol was shattered, my heart was broken. 'You told me you had loved no other woman as you loved me,' I said, scornfully; 'and all the time, all the time, you had given her the surest, truest proof of love a man can give. Pity! No, I have no pity! You made your choice, you must abide by it. If you were free this hour I would not marry you now. You have deceived me. Your love was a pretence; perhaps you call it also such names as you have called hers. Go to her, your wife; I never will voluntarily look upon your face again.' Oh, Lauraine, was I cruel, was I unjust; God knows. Oh, the bitterness, the agony, the shame of that night. I felt as if I hated him in the new sharp fever of jealousy that had come to my heart. I hated to think he had belonged to another, held her to his heart, kissed her, loved or seemed to love her. My whole nature seemed to change. I could only think he had deceived me, whether willingly, or mercifully did not matter. Love, youth, joy, hope, all seemed to die out of my heart. Nothing he said seemed to soften me. I would not listen, I would not yield, I would not pity. He left me, and I never saw him again. The next news I had was that he had gone abroad on foreign service. I had seen his name from time to time, but of his life, the life I once so fondly hoped to share, I know nothing!"
Lauraine touches the trembling hands. "You were hard on him, I think," she says gently. "I suppose he thought her dead—that he was free."
"He said so," answers Lady Etwynde. "Oh, yes, and doubtless he believed it. He could not have dared to offer such an insult to me, or my family. But what I resented was that he should have kept the story back, that he should have pretended that I was his first, his only love, and all the time she had been his wife. I could not forgive that!"
"But, my dear," says Lauraine, gently, "you may have had his first real love. The other was but a youthful folly, a hot-headed infatuation. Does any man come to us with his heart pure and free? Few, I think, if any. We cannot judge them by ourselves. That is how so many women wreck their lives. They expect too much. No man can ever be what a girl's dreams would make him. But it is so hard for her to believe that."
"I know it now," answers Lady Etwynde. "I have learnt my lesson in bitterness and grief. But I think it has done me good. I have forgiven him long ago. I shall never see him again to tell him so, I suppose; perhaps he would not care even to hear it. But I am happier since I could pardon and pity his weakness, only—my Bayard he could never be again!"