Part 15 (1/2)

”Good-night, _Petruchio_,” she said. ”I am pleased at the name I have found for you.”

”I am not so sure that it is appropriate,” he rejoined. ”I think on the whole I would rather love a _Juliet_ than tame a shrew.”

”It may be in the book of fate that you will do both,” she observed; and they parted, laughing at the idea.

To the last the light shone in her eyes, and the scarlet lips were wreathed in smiles; but, when the door had closed behind him and she was alone, the haggard, terrible change that fell over the young face was painful to see. The light, the youth, the beauty seemed all to fade from it; it grew white, stricken, as though the pain of death were upon her.

She clasped her hands as one who had lost all hope.

”How am I to bear it?” she cried. ”What am I to do?” She looked round her with the bewildered air of one who had lost her way--with the dazed appearance of one from beneath whose feet the plank of safety had been withdrawn. It was all over--life was all over; the love that had been her life was suddenly taken from her. Hope was dead--the past in which she had lived was all a plank--he did not love her.

She said the words over and over again to herself. He did not love her, this man to whom she had given the pa.s.sionate love of her whole heart and soul--he did not love her, and never intended to ask her to be his wife.

Why, she had lived for this! This love, lying now in ruins around her, had been her existence. Standing there, in the first full pain of her despair, she realized what that love had been--her life, her hope, her world. She had lived in it; she had known no other wish, no other desire. It had been her all and now it was less than nothing.

”How am I to live and bear it?” she asked herself again; and the only answer that came to her was the dull echo of her own despair.

That night, while the sweet flowers slept under the light of the stars, and the little birds rested in the deep shade of the trees--while the night wind whispered low, and the moon sailed in the sky--Philippa L'Estrange, the belle of the season, one of the most beautiful women in London, one of the wealthiest heiresses in England, wept through the long hours--wept for the overthrow of her hope and her love, wept for the life that lay in ruins around her.

She was of dauntless courage--she knew no fear; but she did tremble and quail before the future stretching out before her--the future that was to have no love, and was to be spent without him.

How was she to bear it? She had known no other hope in life, no other dream. What had been childish nonsense to him had been to her a serious and exquisite reality. He had either forgotten it, or had thought of it only with annoyance; she had made it the very corner-stone of her life.

It was not only a blow of the keenest and cruelest kind to her affections, but it was the cruelest blow her vanity could have possibly received. To think that she, who had more admirers at her feet than any other woman in London, should have tried so hard to win this one, and have failed--that her beauty, her grace, her wit, her talent, should all have been lavished in vain.

Why did she fail so completely? Why had she not won his love? It was given to no other--at least she had the consolation of knowing that. He had talked about his ideal, but he had not found it; he had his own ideal of womanhood, but he had not met with it.

”Are other women fairer, more lovable than I am?” she asked herself.

”Why should another win where I have failed?”

So through the long hours of the starlit night she lamented the love and the wreck of her life, she mourned for the hope that could never live again, while her name was on the lips of men who praised her as the queen of beauty, and fair women envied her as one who had but to will and to win.

She would have given her whole fortune to win his love--not once, but a hundred times over.

It seemed to her a cruel mockery of fate that she who had everything the world could give--beauty, health, wealth, fortune--should ask but this one gift, and that it should be refused her.

She watched the stars until they faded from the skies and then she buried her face in the pillow and sobbed herself to sleep.

Chapter XII.

It was when the sun, s.h.i.+ning into her room, reached her that an idea occurred to Philippa which was like the up-springing of new life to her.

All was not yet lost. He did not love her--he had not thought of making her his wife; but it did not follow that he would never do so. What had not patience and perseverance accomplished before now? What had not love won?

He had acknowledged that she was beautiful; he had owned to her often how much he admired her. So much granted, was it impossible that he should learn to love her? She told herself that she would take courage--that she would persevere--that her great love must in time prevail, and that she would devote her life unweariedly to it.

She would carefully hide all traces of pique or annoyance. She would never let him find her dull or unhappy. Men liked to be amused. She would do her best to entertain him; he would never have a moment's vacancy in her society. She would find sparkling anecdotes, repartees, witty, humorous stories, to amuse him. He liked her singing; she would cultivate it more and more. She would study him, dress for him, live for him, and him alone; she would have no other end, aim, thought, or desire. She would herself be the source of all his amus.e.m.e.nt, so that he should look for the every-day pleasures of his life to her--and, such being the case, she would win him; she felt sure of it. Why had she been so hopeless, so despairing? There was no real cause for it. Perhaps, after all, he had looked upon the whole affair, not as a solemn engagement, but as a childish farce. Perhaps he had never really thought of her as his wife; but there would be an end to that thoughtlessness now. What had pa.s.sed on the previous day would arouse his attention, he could never know the same indifference again.

So she rose with renewed hope. She shrank from the look of her face in the gla.s.s. ”Cold water and fresh air,” she said to herself, with a smile, ”will soon remedy such paleness.” And thus on that very day began for her the new life--the life in which, no longer sure of her love, she was to try to win it.