Part 47 (2/2)

”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--G.o.d help me!--is lost, lost to me forever!”

The man's voice died away in a hoa.r.s.e 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 G.o.ddard 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!”

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 a.s.sist her to rise, but she shrank away from him with a gesture of aversion, at the same time flas.h.i.+ng 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, hoa.r.s.ely. ”Go--call a carriage; I am not able to walk. Go; I will follow you.”

Without a word, he turned to obey her, and pa.s.sed quickly out of the suite without encountering any one, she following, but with a gait so unsteady that any one watching her would have been tempted to believe her under the influence of some intoxicant.

Mr. G.o.ddard 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 circ.u.mstance served for a few moments to distract their thoughts from their own troubles.

Mr. G.o.ddard was intensely relieved by the intelligence, and plainly betrayed it in his manner.

<script>