Part 29 (2/2)
”But surely you can rely on my secrecy?” he said. ”Do I not love you?”
”Yes, but you would hate me if you knew the truth,” she whispered hoa.r.s.ely. ”Therefore I cannot tell you.”
”Your secret cannot be of such a nature as to cause that, Liane,” he said quietly.
”It is. Even if I told you everything your help would not avail me.
Indeed, it would only bring to me greater pain and unhappiness,” she answered quickly.
”Our days of bliss have pa.s.sed and gone, and with them all hope has vanished. They were full of a perfect, peaceful happiness, because you loved me with the whole strength of your soul, and I idolised you in return. Hour by hour the remembrance of those never-to-be-forgotten hours spent by your side comes back to me. I remember how quiet and peaceful the English village seemed after the noise, rattle and incessant chatter of a gay Continental town, how from the first moment we met, I, already world-weary, commenced a new life. But it is all past--all gone, and I have now only before me a world of bitterness and despair.” And she turned her pale face from his to hide the tears which welled in her eyes.
”You say you were world-weary,” he observed in a low tone. ”I do not wonder at it now that I know of your past.”
”My past!” she gasped quickly. ”What do you know of my past?”
”I know that your father was a gambler,” he answered. ”Ah! what a life of worry and privation yours must have been, dearest. Yet you told me nothing of it!”
She looked at him, but her gaze wavered beneath his.
”I told you nothing because I feared that you would not choose the daughter of an adventurer for a wife,” she faltered.
”It would have made no difference,” he a.s.sured her. ”I loved you.”
”Yes,” she sighed; ”but there is a natural prejudice against women who have lived in the undesirable set that I have.”
”Quite so,” he admitted. ”Nevertheless, knowing how pure and n.o.ble you are, dearest, this fact does not trouble me in the least. I am still ready, nay, anxious, to make you my wife.”
She shook her head gravely. Her hand holding her sunshade trembled as she retraced the semicircle in the dust.
”No,” she exclaimed at last. ”If you would be generous, George, leave me and return to London. In future I must bear my burden myself; therefore, it is best that I should begin now. To remain here is useless, for each time I see you only increases my sadness; each time we meet brings back to me all the memories I am striving so hard to forget.”
”But I cannot leave you, Liane,” he declared decisively. ”You shall not throw yourself helplessly into the hands of this unscrupulous man without my making some effort to save you.”
”It is beyond your power--entirely beyond your power,” she cried, dejectedly. ”I would rather kill myself than marry him; yet I am compelled to obey his will, for if I took my life in order to escape, others must bear the penalty which I feared to face. No, if you love me you will depart, and leave me to bear my sorrow alone.”
”I refuse to obey you,” he answered, firmly. ”Already you know that because I loved you so well I have borne without regret my father's action in leaving me almost penniless. Since that day I have worked and striven with you always as my pole-star because you had promised to be mine. Your photograph looked down at me always from the mantelshelf of my dull, smoke-begrimed room. It smiled when I smiled, and was melancholy when I was sad. And the roses and violets you have sent from here made my room look so gay, and their perfume was so fresh that they seemed to breathe the same sweet odour that your chiffons always exhale.
Your letters were a little cold, it is true; but I attributed that to the fact that in Nice the distractions are so many that correspondence is always sadly neglected. Picture to yourself what a blow it was to me when, on the terrace at Monte Carlo, you told me that you had another lover, and that you intended to marry him. I felt--”
”Ah!” she cried, putting up her little hand to arrest the flow of his words, ”I know, I know. But I cannot help it. I love you still--I shall love you always. But our marriage is not to be.”
He paused in deep reflection. There was one matter upon which he had never spoken to her, and he was wondering whether he should mention it, or let it remain a secret within him. In a few moments, however, he decided.
”I have already told you the cause which led my father to treat me so unjustly, Liane,” he said, looking at her seriously, ”but there is one other fact of which I have never spoken. My father left me a considerable sum of money on condition that I married a woman whom I had never seen.”
”A woman you had never seen!” she exclaimed, at first surprised, then laughing at the absurdity of such an idea.
”Yes. It was his revenge. I would not promise to renounce all thought of you, therefore, in addition to leaving me practically a pauper, he made a tantalising provision that if I chose to marry this mysterious woman, of whom none of my family knew anything, I was to receive a certain sum. This woman must, according to the will, be offered a large sum as bribe to accept me as husband, therefore ever since my father's death his solicitors have been endeavouring to discover her.”
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