Isabel Stewart felt that she could not bear the painful interview any longer, and was about to touch the electric button to summon her servant to show her visitor out, when he stayed her with a gesture of appeal.
"One moment more, Isabel, I implore," he exclaimed; "then I will go, never to trouble you again."
Her beautiful hand dropped by her side, and she turned again to him with a patient, inquiring glance.
"You have spoken of our—child," the man went on, eagerly, though a flush of shame dyed his face as he gave utterance to the pronoun denoting mutual possession. "Do you intend to continue your search for her?"
"Certainly; that will now be the one aim of my life. I could never take another moment of comfort knowing that my old friend and my child were destitute, as I have been led to believe they are."
"And if—you find her—shall—you tell her—your history?" faltered Gerald Goddard, as he nervously moistened his dry lips.
His companion bent her head in thought for a moment. At length she remarked:
[227]
"I shall, of course, be governed somewhat by circumstances in such a matter; if I find Edith still in ignorance of the fact that she is an adopted daughter, I think I shall never undeceive her, but strive to be content with such love as she can give me, as her mother's friend. If, on the other hand, I find that she has learned the truth—especially if she should happen to be alone in the world—I shall take her into my arms and tell her the whole story of my life, beg her to share my future, and let me try to win as much as possible of her love."
"If you should find her, pray, pray do not teach her to regard me as a monster of all that is evil," pleaded her companion, in a tone of agony that was pitiful. "Ah, Isabel, I believe I should have been a better man if I could have had the love of little children thrown about me as a safeguard."
Isabel Stewart's red lips curled with momentary scorn at this attempt to shift the responsibility of his wasted and misguided life upon any one or anything rather than himself.
"What a pity, then, that you did not realize the fact before you discarded the unhappy young mother and her innocent babe, so many years ago," she remarked, in a tone that pierced his heart like a knife.
"I did go back to Rome for the child—I did try to find her after—I had heard that—that you were gone," he faltered. "I was told that the infant had doubtless perished with you, though its body was never found; but I have mourned her—I have yearned for her all my life."
"And do you imagine, even if you should meet her some time in the future, that she would reciprocate this affection which, strangely enough, you manifest at this late day?"
"Perhaps not, if you should meet her first and tell her your story," the man returned, with a heavy sigh.
"Which I shall assuredly do," said Mrs. Stewart, resolutely; "that is, if, as I said before, I find her alone in the world; that much justification is my due—my child shall know the truth; then she shall be allowed to act according to the dictates of her own heart and judgment, regarding her future relationship toward both of us. I feel sure that she has been most carefully reared—that my old friend Edith would instill only precepts of truth and purity in her mind, and my heart tells me that she would be likely to shrink from one who had wronged her mother as you have wronged me."
"I see; you will keep her from me if you can," said Mr. Goddard, with intense bitterness.
"I am free to confess that I should prefer you[228] never to meet," said Mrs. Stewart, a look of pain sweeping over her beautiful face; "but Edith is twenty years of age, if she is living; and if, after learning my history, she desires to recognize the relationship between herself and you, I can, of course, but submit to her wish."
"It is very evident to me that you will teach her to hate her father," was the sullen retort.
"Her father?" the term was repeated with infinite scorn. "Pray in what respect have you shown yourself worthy to be so regarded?—you who even denied her legitimate birth, and turned your back upon her, totally indifferent to whether she starved or not."
"How hard you are upon me, Isabel!"
"I have told you only facts."
"I know—I know; but have some pity for me now, since, at last, I have come to my senses; for in my heart I have an insatiable longing for this daughter who, if she is living, must embody some of the virtues of her mother, who—God help me!—is lost, lost to me forever!"
The man's voice died away in a hoarse whisper, while a heart-broken sob burst from his lips.
"Go, Gerald," said Mrs. Stewart, in a low, but not unkindly imperative tone; "it is better that this interview should terminate. The past is past—nothing can change it; but the future will be what we make it. Go, and if I ever hear from you again, let me know that your present contrition has culminated in a better life."
She turned abruptly from him and disappeared within her chamber, quietly shutting the door after her, while Gerald Goddard arose to "go" as he had been bidden.
As, with tottering gait and a pale, despairing face, he crossed the room and parted the draperies between the two pretty parlors, he found himself suddenly confronted by a woman so wan and haggard that, for an instant, he failed to recognize her.
"Idiot!" hissed Anna Correlli, through her pallid, tightly-drawn lips; "traitor! coward! viper!"[229]
She was forced to pause simply because she was exhausted from the venom which she had expended in the utterance of those four expletives.
Then she sank, weak and faint, upon a chair, but with her eyes glittering like points of flame, fastened in a look of malignant hatred upon the astonished man.
"Anna! how came you here?—how long have you been here?" he finally found voice to say.
"Long enough to learn of the contemptible perfidy and meanness of the man whom, for twenty years, I have trusted," she panted, but the tone was so hollow he never would have known who was speaking had he not seen her.
He opened his dry lips to make some reply; but no sound came from them.
He put out his hand to support himself by the back of her chair, for all his strength and sense seemed on the point of failing him; while for the moment he felt as if he could almost have been grateful to any one who would slay him where he stood, and thus put him out of his misery—benumb his sense of degradation and the remorse which he experienced for his wasted life, and the wrongs of which he had been guilty.
But, by a powerful effort, he soon mastered himself, for he was anxious to escape from the house before the presence of his wife should be discovered.
"Come, Anna," he said; "let us go home, where we can talk over this matter by ourselves, without the fear of being overheard."
He attempted to assist her to rise, but she shrank away from him with a gesture of aversion, at the same time flashing a look up at him that almost seemed to curdle his blood, and sent a shudder of dread over him.
"Do not dare to touch me!" she cried, hoarsely. "Go—call a carriage; I am not able to walk. Go; I will follow you."
Without a word, he turned to obey her, and passed quickly out of the suite without encountering any one, she following, but with a gait so unsteady that any[230] one watching her would have been tempted to believe her under the influence of some intoxicant.
Mr. Goddard found a carriage standing near the entrance to the hotel, and they were soon on their way home.
Not a word was spoken by either during the ride, and it would have been impossible to have found two more utterly wretched people in all that great city.
Upon entering their house, they found Emil Correlli in a state bordering on frenzy, occasioned by the escape of Edith, and this circumstance served for a few moments to distract their thoughts from their own troubles.
Mr. Goddard was intensely relieved by the intelligence, and plainly betrayed it in his manner.
When angrily called to account for it by his brother-in-law, he at once replied, with an air of reckless defiance:
"Yes, I am glad of it—I would even have helped the girl to get away; indeed, I was planning to do so, for such a dastardly fraud as you perpetrated upon her should never be allowed to prosper."
He was rewarded for this speech, so loyal to Edith, only by an angry oath, to which, however, he paid no attention.
Strangely enough, Anna Correlli, after the first emotion of surprise and dismay had passed, paid no heed to the exciting conversation; she had sunk into a chair by the window, where she sat pale and silent, and absolutely motionless, save for the wild restlessness of her fiery black eyes.
Mr. Goddard, finding the atmosphere so disagreeable, finally left the room, and, mounting the stairs, shut himself in his own chamber, while the enraged lover dashed out of the house to the nearest telegraph office to send the message that caused the policeman to intercept Edith upon her arrival in New York.
A few moments later, Mrs. Goddard—as we will, from courtesy, still call her—crept wearily up to her room, where, tottering to a couch, she threw herself[231] prone upon her face, moaning and shivering with the agony she could no longer control.
The blow, which for twenty years she had been dreading, had fallen at last; but it was far more crushing and bitter than she had ever dreamed it could be.
She had come at last to the dregs of the cup which once had seemed so sweet and alluring to her senses, and they had poisoned her soul unto death.
She knew that never again while she lived would she be able to face the world and hide her misery beneath a mask of smiles; and the bitterest drop of all, the sharpest thorn in her lacerated heart, was the fact that the little insignificant girl who had once been her hated rival in Rome, should have developed into the peerlessly beautiful woman, whom all men admired and reverenced, and whom Gerald Goddard now idolized.
An hour passed, during which she lay where she had fallen and almost benumbed by her misery.
Then there came a knock upon her door, which was immediately opened, and Mr. Goddard entered the room.
He was still very pale, but grave and self-contained.
The woman started to a sitting posture, exclaiming, in an unnatural voice:
"What do you want here?"
"I have come, Anna, to talk over with you the events of the morning—to ask you to try to control yourself, and look at our peculiar situation with calmness and practical common sense," he calmly replied.
"Well?" was all the response vouchsafed, as he paused an instant.
"I have not come to offer any excuses for myself, or for what you overheard this morning," he thoughtfully resumed; "indeed, I have none to offer—my whole life, I own, has, as Isabel rightly said, been a failure thus far, and no one save myself is to blame for the fact. Do not sneer, Anna," he interposed, as her lips curled back from her dazzling teeth, which he saw were tightly locked with the effort she was making at self-control. "I have been thoroughly humiliated[232] for the first time in my life—I have been made to see myself as I am, and I have reached a point where I am willing to make an effort to atone, as far as may be, for some of the wrongs of which I have been guilty. Will you help me, Anna?"
Again he paused, but this time his companion did not deign to avail herself of the opportunity to reply, if, indeed, she was able to do so.
She had not once removed her glittering eyes from his face, and her steady, inscrutable look gave him an uncanny sensation that was anything but agreeable.
"I have come to propose that we avail ourselves of the only remedy that seems practicable to relieve our peculiar situation," he continued, seeing she was waiting for him to go on. "I will apply to have the tie which binds me to Isabel annulled, with all possible secrecy—it can be done in the West without any notoriety; then I will make you my legal wife, as you have so often asked me to do, and we will go abroad again, where we will try to live out the remainder of our lives to some better purpose than we have done heretofore. I ask you again, will you try to help me? It is not going to be an easy thing at first; but if each will try, for the sake of the other, I believe we can yet attain comparative content, if not positive happiness."
"Content! happiness!"
The words were hissed out with a fierceness of passion that startled him, and caused him to regard her anxiously.
"Happiness!" she repeated. "Ha! ha! What mockery in the sound of that word from your lips, after what has occurred to-day!"
"I know that you have cause to be both grieved and angry, Anna," said Gerald Goddard, humbly; "but let us both put the past behind us—let us wipe out all old scores, and from this day begin a new life."
"'Begin a new life' upon a heap of ashes, without one spark among them to ignite the smallest flame!" was the mocking rejoinder. Then, with a burst of agony, she continued: "Oh, God! if you had taken[233] a dagger and stabbed me to death in that room to-day, you could not have slain me more effectually than by the words you have uttered. Begin a new life with you, after your confessions, your pleadings and protestations to Isabel Stewart? Heaven! Never! I hate you! hate you; hate you! with all the strength of my Italian blood, and warn you—beware! And now, begone!"
The woman looked like a maniac as she poured this wild torrent upon him, and the man saw that she was in no mood to be reasoned with or to consider any subject; that it would be wiser to wait until the fierceness of her anger had spent itself.
He had broached the matter of their future relations, thus giving her something to think of, and now he would leave her to meditate upon it by herself; perhaps, in a few days, she would be in a more reasonable frame of mind, and look at the subject from a different point of view.
"Very well, Anna," he said, as he arose, "I will obey you. I do not pretend to claim that I have not given you cause to feel aggrieved in many respects; but, as I have already said, that is past. I simply ask you to do what I also will do—put all the old life behind us, and begin over again. I realize that we cannot discuss the question to any purpose now—we are both too wrought up to think or talk calmly, so I will leave you to rest, and we will speak of this at another time. Can I do anything for you before I go?—or perhaps you would like your maid sent to you?"
"No," she said, briefly, and not once having removed her wild eyes from his face while he was speaking.
He bowed, and passed out of the room, softly shutting the door after him, then walked slowly down the hall to his own apartment.
The moment he was gone Anna Goddard sprang like a cat to her feet.
Going to her writing-desk, she dashed off a few lines, which she hastily folded and slipped into an envelope, which she sealed and addressed.[234]
She then touched the electric button above her desk to summon her maid, after which she sat motionless with the missive clasped in her hands until the girl appeared.
"Dress yourself for the street, Mary, and take this note to Mr. Clayton's office. Be quick about it, for it is a matter of importance," she commanded, while she forced herself to speak with outward calmness.
But Mary regarded her mistress with wonder, for, in all her "tantrums," as she termed them, she had never seen the awful look upon her face which was stamped upon it at that moment.
But she took the note without comment, and hastened away upon her errand, while Mrs. Goddard, throwing herself back in her chair, sat there waiting with an air of expectation that betrayed she was looking for the appearance of some one.
Half an hour later a gentleman was admitted to the house, and was shown directly up to my lady's boudoir.