Mrs. Laudersdale looked up slowly and met his earnest glance.
"Must I leave you?" she exclaimed, with a wild terror in her tone. "Do you mean that I shall go away? Oh, you need not care for me,—you need never love me,—you may always be cold,—but I must serve you, live with you, die with you!" And she sprang forward with outstretched arms.
He caught her before her foot became entangled in the long folds of her skirt, drew her to himself, and held her. What he murmured was inaudible to the others; but a tint redder than roses are swam to her cheek, and a smile broke over her face like a reflection in rippling water. She held his arm tightly in her hand, and erect and proud, as it were with a new life, bent toward Roger Raleigh.
"You see!" said she. "My husband loves me. And I,—it seems at this moment that I have never loved any other than him!"
There came a quick step along the matting, the handle of the door turned in Marguerite's resisting grasp, and Mrs. Purcell's light muslins swept through. Mr. Raleigh advanced to meet her,—a singular light upon his face, a strange accent of happiness in his voice.
"Since you seem to be a part of the affair," she said in a low tone, while her lip quivered with anger and scorn, "concerning which I have this moment been informed, pray, take to Mr. Lauderdale my brother's request to enter the house of Day, Knight, and Company, from this day."
"Has he made such a request?" asked Mr. Raleigh.
"He shall make it!" she murmured swiftly, and was gone.
That night a telegram flashed over the wires, and thenceforth, on the great financial tide, the ship Day, Knight, and Company lowered its peak to none.
The day crept through until evening, deepening into genuine heat, and Marguerite sat waiting for Mr. Raleigh to come and bid her farewell. It seemed that his plans were altered, or possibly he was gone, and at sunset she went out alone. The cardinals that here and there showed their red caps above the bank, the wild roses that still lined the way, the grapes that blossomed and reddened and ripened year after year ungathered, did not once lift her eyes. She sat down, at last, on an old fallen trunk cushioned with moss, half of it forever wet in the brook that babbled to the lake, and waited for the day to quench itself in coolness and darkness.
"Ah!" said Mr. Raleigh, leaping from the other side of the brook to the mossy trunk, "is it you? I have been seeking you, and what sprite sends you to me?"
"I thought you were going away," she said, abruptly.
"That is a broken paving-stone," he answered, seating himself beside her, and throwing his hat on the grass.
"You asked me, yesterday, if I confessed to being a myth," she said, after a time. "If I should go back to Martinique, I should become one in your remembrance,—should I not? You would think of me just as you would have thought of the Dryad yesterday, if she had stepped from the tree and stepped back again?"
"Are you going to Martinique?" he asked, with a total change of face and manner.
"I don't know. I am tired of this; and I cannot live on an ice-field. I had such life at the South! It is 'as if a rose should shut and be a bud again.' I need my native weather, heat and sea."
"How can you go to Martinique?"
"Oh, I forgot!"
Mr. Raleigh did not reply, and they both sat listening to the faint night-side noises of the world.
"You are very quiet," he said at last, ceasing to fling waifs upon the stream.
"And you could be very gay, I believe."
"Yes. I am full of exuberant spirits. Do you know what day it is?"
"It is my birthday."
"It is my birthday!"
"How strange! The Jews would tell you that this sweet first of August was the birthday of the world.
"''Tis like the birthday of the world,
When earth was born in bloom,'"—
she sang, but paused before her voice should become hoarse in tears.
"Do you know what you promised me on my birthday? I am going to claim it."
"The present. You shall have a cast which I had made from one of my mother's fancies or bas-reliefs,—she only does the front of anything,—a group of fleurs-de-lis whose outlines make a child's face, my face."
"It is more than any likeness in stone or pencil that I shall ask of you."
"What then?"
"You cannot imagine?"
"Monsieur" she whispered, turning toward him, and blushing in the twilight, "est ce que c'est moi?"
There came out the low west-wind singing to itself through the leaves, the drone of a late-carousing honey-bee, the lapping of the water on the shore, the song of the wood-thrush replete with the sweetness of its half-melody; and ever and anon the pensive cry of the whippoorwill fluted across the deepening silence that summoned all these murmurs into hearing. A rustle like the breeze in the birches passed, and Mrs. Purcell retarded her rapid step to survey the woods-people who rose out of the shade and now went on together with her. It seemed as if the loons and whippoorwills grew wild with sorrow that night, and after a while Mrs. Purcell ceased her lively soliloquy, and as they walked they listened. Suddenly Mr. Raleigh turned. Mrs. Purcell was not beside him. They had been walking on the brook-edge; the path was full of gaps and cuts. With a fierce shudder and misgiving, he hurriedly retraced his steps, and searched and called; then, with the same haste, rejoining Marguerite, gained the house, for lanterns and assistance. Mrs. Purcell sat at the drawing-room window.
"Comment?" cried Marguerite, breathlessly.
"Oh, I had no idea of walking in fog up to my chin," said Mrs. Purcell; "so I took the short cut."
"You give me credit for the tragic element," she continued, under her breath, as Mr. Raleigh quietly passed her. "That is old style. To be sure, I might as well die there as in the swamps of Florida. Purcell is ordered to Florida. Of course, I am ordered too!" And she whirled him the letter which she held.
Other letters had been received with the evening-mail, and one that made Mr. Raleigh's return in September imperative occasioned some discussion in the House of Laudersdale. The result that that gentleman secured one more than he had intended in the spring; and if you ever watch the shipping-list, the arrival of the Spray-Plough at Calcutta, with Mr. and Mrs. Raleigh among the passengers, will be seen by you as soon as me.
Later in the evening of this same eventful day, as Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite sat together in the moonlight that flooded the great window, Mrs. Laudersdale passed them and went down the garden to the lake. She wore some white garment, as in her youth, and there was a dreamy sweetness in her eye and an unspoken joy about her lips. Mr. Raleigh could not help thinking it was a singular happiness, this that opened before her; it seemed to be like a fruit plucked from the stem and left to mature in the sunshine by itself, late and lingering, never sound at heart. She floated on, with the light in her dusky eyes and the seldom rose on her cheek,—floated on from moonbeam to moonbeam,—and the lovers brought back their glances and gave them to each other. For one, life opened a labyrinth of warmth and light and joy; for the other, youth was passed, destiny not to be appeased: if his affection enriched her, the best he could do was to bestow it; in his love there would yet be silent reservations.
"Mr. Raleigh," said Marguerite, "did you ever love my mother?"
"Once I thought I did."
"And now?"
"Whereas I was blind, now I see."
"Listen! Mrs. Purcell is singing in the drawing-room."
"Through lonely summers, where the roses blow
Unsought, and shed their tangled sweets,
I sit and hark, or in the starry dark,
Or when the night-rain on the hill-side beats.
"Alone!