“My own life’s darling still! Oh, Maude! if you must grieve, it shall be on my breast. If you have erred, so, too, have I—so have we all often. I will forget all but that you have promised my arms shall be your home forever!”
“And you forgive and love me still? Oh, Lord Ernest!” He kissed away her tears as she wept aloud.
“One thing more, dearest. Who was my Maude’s first love!”
He felt a convulsive shiver run through the delicate form he held. He felt her breast heave and throb as if the name was struggling to leave it, and could not.
“Tell me, Maude, for I must know.”
“Oh, saints in heaven! how can I? Oh, Lord Ernest! this humiliation is more than I can endure.”
“Speak, Lady Maude! for I must know.”
She lifted her eyes to his, full of unspeakable anguish, and then dropped her head heavily again; for in that fixed, grave, noble face, full of love and pity as it was, there was no yielding now.
“Tell me, Maude, who was the husband of your childhood?”
From the pale, quivering lip, in a dying whisper, dropped the words: “Reginald Germaine, the gipsy!”
There was a moment’s death-like silence. The handsome face of Lord Ernest Villiers seemed turned to marble, and still motionless as if expiring, she lay in the arms that clasped her still in a close embrace. At last:
“Heaven be merciful to the dead! Look up, my precious Maude; for nothing on earth shall ever come between us more!”
Calm and clear, on the troubled wave of her tempest-tossed soul, the low words fell; but only her deep, convulsive sobs were his answer.
“Maude!—my own dear Maude!” he cried, at last, alarmed by her passion of grief, “cease this wild weeping. Forget the troubled past, dear love; for there are many happy days in store for us yet.”
But still she wept on—wildly, vehemently, at first—until her strong passion of grief had passed away. He let her sob on in quiet now, with no attempt to check her grief, except by his silent caresses.
She lifted her head and looked up, at last, thanking him by a radiant look, and the soft, thrilling clasp of her white arms.
“I will not ask you to explain now, sweet Maude,” he softly whispered. “Some other time, when you are more composed, you shall tell me all.”
“No—no; better now—far better now; and then, while life lasts, neither you nor I, Ernest, will ever breathe one word of the dark sorrowful story again. Oh, Ernest! can all the fondest love of a lifetime suffice to repay you for the forgiveness you have shown me to-day?”
“I am more than repaid now, dear love. Speak of that no more. But now that the worst is over, will my Maude tell me all?”
“I have not much to tell, Ernest; but you shall hear it. Nearly three years before you and I met, when a child of fourteen, I was on a visit to my uncle Everly’s. My cousin Hubert, home from college, brought with him a fellow-student to spend the vacation, who was presented to me as Count Germaine. What Reginald Germaine was then, you, who have seen him, do not need to know. Handsome, dashing, fascinating, he took every heart by storm, winning love by his gay, careless generosity, and respect by his talents and well-known daring. I was a dreamy, romantic school-girl; and in this bold, reckless boy, handsome as an angel, I saw the living embodiment of my most glorious ideal. From morning till night we were together; and, Ernest, can you understand that wild dream? How I loved him then, words are weak to express, how I loathed and despised him after no words can ever tell. Ernest, he persuaded me to elope with him one night; and we were married. I never stopped to think of the consequences then. I only knew I would have given up my hopes of heaven for him! Three weeks longer he remained at Everly Hall; and then papa sent me back to school, and he went to London.
“No one was in our secret, and we met frequently, unsuspected; though papa, thinking he was too presuming, had forbidden me to associate with him. One day we went out driving; the carriage was upset; I fainted; and for a long time I remembered nothing more.
“When reason returned, I was in a little cottage, nursed by an old woman; while he hovered by my bedside night and day. Then I learned that I had given birth to a child—dead now and buried. I could recollect myself as people recollect things in a confused dream—of hearing for a time the feeble cries of an infant, and seeing a baby face, with the large, black, beautiful eyes of Reginald Germaine. I turned my face to the wall and wept, at first, in childish grief; but he caressed and soothed me, and I soon grew calm. I thought, at the time, a strange, unaccountable change had come over him; though I could not tell what. When I was well again I learned. Standing before me, one morning, he calmly and quietly told me how he had deceived me—that, instead of being a French count, he was the son of a strolling gipsy; but that, having repented of what he had done, he was willing to give me up.
“The very life seemed stricken out of my heart as I listened. Then my pride—the aroused pride of my race—arose; and, oh! words are weak to tell how I loathed myself and him. That I, a Percy—the daughter of a race that had mated with royalty hitherto—had fallen so low as to wed a gipsy! I shrunk, in horror unspeakable, from the black, bottomless quagmire into which I had sunk. All my love in that instant turned to bitterest scorn, and I passionately bade him leave me, and never dare to come near me again, or breathe a word of the past. He obeyed; and from that day I never beheld him more.
“After that, I met you, Lord Ernest, and I loved you as I never loved him. For him, I cherished a blind, mad passion; for you, I felt the strong, earnest love of womanhood. You loved me; but I shrunk from the affection my very soul was crying out for, knowing I dared not love you without guilt. Now you know the secret of my coldness and mysterious melancholy.
“I heard often of Germaine; and his name was like a spear-thrust to my heart. When I was told of his arrest, trial and condemnation for grand larceny, you perhaps may imagine, but I can never tell, exactly what I felt. His name was the theme of every tongue; and day after day I was forced to listen to the agonizing details, knowing—low as he had fallen, guilty as he might be—he was my husband still. Thank God! through all his ignominy, he had honor enough never to reveal our dark secret. Then came the news of his death; and Heaven forgive me if my heart bounded as I heard it!
“Oh, Lord Ernest! you were my first thought. I felt I could dare to love you now as you deserved to be loved, without sinning. I determined to tell you all, and to love you still, even though you spurned me from you forever. Oh, Ernest! my noble-hearted! may God forever bless you for forgiving me as you have done, and loving me still!”
Her voice ceased, but the dark, eloquent eyes were full of untold love—of love that could never die for all time.
“My own!—my own! never so well beloved as now! My Maude!—my bride!—my wife! blot out from the leaves of your life that dark page—that year of passion, of error, of sorrow and shame. We will never speak or think of it more, sweet Maude. Germaine has gone to answer for what he has done; if he has sinned while living, so also he has deeply suffered and sorrow-atoned for all. Fiery, passionate and impulsive, if he has wronged others, so also has he been deeply wronged. May God forgive him!”
“Amen,” was the solemn response.
“And now, Maude, what need of further delay? When shall this dear hand be mine?”
“Whenever you claim it, dear Ernest. I shall have no will but yours now,” she answered, with all a woman’s devotion in her deep eyes, “I am yours—yours through life, and beyond death, if I may.”
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