Part 42 (2/2)
Stewart, on the evening of the ball at Wyoming--remembering her beauty and grace, and the elegance of her costume, madam's heart sank within her, and she seemed to age with every pa.s.sing moment.
”Oh, to think of it!--to think of it, after all these years! I will not believe it!” she murmured, with white, trembling lips, as she arose and nervously paced the room.
Presently the sound of m.u.f.fled voices in a room beyond attracted her attention.
She started and bent her ear to listen.
She could catch no word that was spoken, although she could distinguish now a man's and then a woman's tones.
With stealthy movements she glided into the next room, which was even more luxuriously furnished than the one she had left, when she observed that the portieres, draping an arch leading into still another apartment, were closely drawn.
And now, although she could not hear what was being said, she suddenly recognized, with a pang of agony that made her gasp for breath, the voice of her husband in earnest conversation with the woman who had been her guest two nights previous.
As noiselessly as a cat creeps after her prey, Anna G.o.ddard stole across that s.p.a.cious apartment and concealed herself among the voluminous folds of the draperies, where she found that she could easily hear all that was said.
”You are very hard, Isabel,” she heard Gerald G.o.ddard remark, in a reproachful voice.
”I grant you that,” responded the liquid tones of his companion, ”as far as you and--that woman are concerned, I have no more feeling than a stone.”
At those words, ”that woman,” spoken in accents of supreme contempt, the eyes of Anna G.o.ddard began to blaze with a baneful gleam.
”And you will never forgive me for the wrong I did you so long ago?”
pleaded the man, with a sigh.
”What do you mean by that word 'forgive?'” coldly inquired Mrs.
Stewart.
”Pardon, remission--as Shakespeare has it, 'forgive and quite forget old faults,'” returned Gerald G.o.ddard, in a voice tremulous with repressed emotion.
”Forget!” repeated the beautiful woman, in a wondering tone.
”Ah, if you could,” eagerly cried her visitor; then, as if he could control himself no longer, he went on, with pa.s.sionate vehemence: ”Oh, Isabel! when you burst upon me, so like a radiant star, the other night, and I realized that you were still in the flesh, instead of lying in that lonely grave in far-off-Italy--when I saw you so grandly beautiful--saw how wonderfully you had developed in every way, all the old love came back to me, and I realized my foolish mistake of that by-gone time as I had never realized it before.”
Ah! if the man could have seen the white, set face concealed among the draperies so near him--if he could have caught the deadly gleam that shone with tiger-like fury in Anna G.o.ddard's dusky eyes--he never would have dared to face her again after giving utterance to those maddening words.
”It strikes me, Mr. G.o.ddard, that it is rather late--after twenty years--to make such an acknowledgment to me,” Isabel Stewart retorted, with quiet irony.
”I know it--I feel it now,” he responded, in accents of despair. ”I know that I forfeited both your love and respect when I began to yield to the charms and flatteries of Anna Correlli. She was handsome, as you know; she began to be fond of me from the moment of our introduction; and when, in an unguarded moment, I revealed the--the fact that you were not my wife, she resolved that she would supplant you--”
”Yes, 'the woman--she gavest me and I did eat,'” interposed his companion, with a scathing ring of scorn in the words. ”That is always the cry of cowards like you, when they find themselves worsted by their own folly,” she went on, indignantly. ”Woman must always bear the scorpion lash of blame from her betrayer while the world also awards her only shame and ostracism from society, if she yields to the persuasive voice of her charmer, admiring and believing in him and allowing him to go unsmirched by the venomous breath of scandal. It is only his victim--his innocent victim oftentimes, as in my case--who suffers; he is greeted everywhere with open arms and flattering smiles, even though he repeats his offenses again and again.”
”Isabel! spare me!”
”No, I will not spare you,” she continued, sternly. ”You know, Gerald G.o.ddard, that I was a pure and innocent girl when you tempted me to leave my father's house and flee with you to Italy. You were older than I, by eight years; you had seen much of the world, and you knew your power. You cunningly planned that secret marriage, which you intended from the first should be only a farce, but which, I have learned since, was in every respect a legal ceremony--”
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