CHAPTER XXIII.

“No!”

The word came direct from her breaking heart, but, because of its very intensity, it was low and subdued.

Trafford started slightly, then smiled; he thought she was jesting; that, girl-like, she wanted him to ask the question again. He stood silent, and looking at her. Beauty unadorned is all very well, but beauty attired in a Worth dress of soft black lace, with diamonds glistening in its hair, gives the unadorned article very long odds. Esmeralda was a vision of loveliness as she stood in the light of the window; that light which is so trying to imperfect features and faulty complexions, but which only serves to accentuate the charms of a loveliness like Esmeralda’s. It fell upon the bronze-gold hair and lighted it up until it shone softly; it fell upon her olive-pale face and touched it with a warm tint, rose on ivory; and it revealed the depth and the color of the wonderful eyes shaded by the long lashes.

Trafford’s heart leaped as he told himself that this marvel of Nature was his bride, his very own, and that she loved him!

His emotion kept him silent for nearly a minute, then he said, with a smile:

“This is the first time I have heard you plead guilty to unhappiness, Esmeralda. I am glad it was only in jest; you—”

“It was not in jest,” she said; “I am very unhappy.”

[183]

The smile died slowly from his face, leaving his eyes last, as he looked at her.

“I don’t understand,” he said, gravely but gently. “Do you feel lonely—dull? I suppose a girl—just taken from her friends, and entering on a new life—must feel it. But, dearest, you are with me, with your husband—”

“Yes,” she said, almost inaudibly. “That is it.”

He stood and gazed at her with a presentiment of coming ill; and he noticed, for the first time, that her lips were compressed and her brows drawn straight, as they always were when she was serious or troubled about anything.

“Esmeralda!” he said, in amazement. “My dear one, you—you are not serious?” He took her hand and held it caressingly, soothingly. “Such words hurt me, though they are only in jest. You can not be serious. And yet—let me look at you!”

She did not resist as he drew her round slightly so that he could see the whole of her face, but she was passive only, and her eyes looked over his head and beyond him with a dull kind of resentment.

“Something has happened to trouble you,” he said, very gently—“something since we arrived. What is it? Don’t you like this place, the servants? What is it? We need only stay the night; we need not stay even so long if you would rather go. Tell me, Esmeralda.”

“The place is very well,” she said, and her voice came slowly, painfully. “I do not wish to go—unless—”

“Unless—what?” he asked. “Be frank with me, dearest. You should have no thought that I do not share. You say that you are unhappy. Great heavens! I can scarcely believe my ears.” He tried to smile. “You know that all my life is devoted to making you happy. Tell me what is wrong?”

“Do you wish me to tell you?” she asked.

His surprise grew at her tone and manner.

“I do wish it,” he said, gravely. “There should be no secret concealments between us, dearest.”

“You think that, you say that,” she said, with a kind of sad bitterness. “Would you answer me frankly, truthfully, if I were to ask you a question, Lord Trafford?”

“‘Lord Trafford!’” he said, raising his brows. “Why do you call me by my title, Esmeralda? For God’s sake, let us get to the bottom of this mystery at once, for it is a mystery to me. Of course I will answer you, and frankly and truthfully. I am not in the habit—” He checked himself and spoke more gently. “What is it, dear one?”

[184]

“Why did you marry me?”

The face opposite him was that of a girl, the voice that of a woman struggling with pain and misery. He started and dropped her hand, and the color flew to his face, then left it, and left it paler than before.

“That is a strange question,” he said in a low voice, and with a ghost of a smile. “A strange question from one’s bride and at such a time. Have you forgotten that we were married only a few hours ago?”

“I have not forgotten,” she said, and her voice was altogether sad now. “But answer me: you promised.”

He laughed, but with an undercurrent of uneasiness.

“I will, if you must have it. I married you because I love you.”

Her eyes flashed; the Three Star spirit flamed up within her.

“It is a lie!” she said, not loudly, but with terrible distinctness.

Trafford’s face went white, and he stood for a moment, breathing hard and looking at her as if he had not heard her aright.

“What—what is that you say, Esmeralda?” he asked, almost inaudibly.

“That is not true—and you know it!” she said. “Wait; I don’t want you to answer me, to talk to me as if I were a child, an ignorant girl. I—I should hate to have you lie to me. Besides, it is too late.”

He stood like a man bewildered by a sudden blow.

“Too late!” he echoed, mechanically.

“Yes,” she said, with a little catch in her voice. “Oh, if it were not—if it only were not! Lord Trafford, it—it is not my fault that we were married. I only knew the truth afterward—soon afterward; but it was afterward. I know now—now that it is too late—that you married me for—for—”

She paused; the shameful words threatened to choke her.

“Go on,” he said, with an awful calmness.

—“For my money!” she said in a whisper, and with downcast eyes, as if it were she who was guilty.

He did not start, but a hand seemed to grasp his heart. It was so true—and truth is often so ghastly, so all-powerful and insurmountable.

“How—who—”

“Ah, you admit it,” she said, sadly as if she had hoped, even against hope, that he would deny it, even in the face of[185] the truth. “I will not tell you how I learned it. But it is the truth; you can not deny it!”

She put her hand to her lips for a moment, as if to steady them, for they were quivering.

“It was not me, but—but the money you wanted,” she went on. “All the time you have—perhaps, hated me; have been laughing at me even while you—you have been saying—saying—”

Her voice broke. She remembered—it flashed upon her at that instant—how few loving, really loving, speeches he had made to her.

“I ought to have known,” she faltered. “But I did not. How should I? brought up in a diggers’ camp. And there was no one like you at Three Star, no one who thought of such things. I was just ignorant, and—and believed you.”

“My God!” he murmured, under his breath. He understood all she was feeling; and he shared her agony of shame and humiliation. Another man might have turned to her and lied to her, fluently declaring that he had loved her from the first; but Trafford could not do that. It would have seemed to him as if he were insulting her and mocking her misery.

“I believed you,” she went on, almost as if she were speaking to herself. “I thought you—you cared for me—”

“Esmeralda!” broke from him; then as he met her sorrowful gaze, he stopped and turned his head away.

“When you took me down to Belfayre, and they were all so good to me, I didn’t understand, I didn’t guess the truth. And the duke talked as if he were rich, as if money—money was not even thought of. And you—you seemed”—her voice broke—“as if you could not do or even think anything mean and— It is just that; I didn’t understand.”

Her bosom heaved, and her eyes, dry and burning, gazed vacantly at the sky, now reddening with the setting sun.

“But I know all now. Ever since I found out the truth I have been thinking—thinking until I thought I should go mad! All the way here, while you thought I was asleep, I was going over it all, and my eyes were opened, and I—I understood! It was the money you wanted; and not only you, but the duke, and Lord Selvaine, and Lilias—” Her voice grew thick.

“No—no!” he exclaimed, hoarsely. “Not Lilias!”

“Yes,” she said, sadly; “I blame her more than the rest, for she is a girl, a woman, and understood. She knew I was ignorant and didn’t know the ways of the world; but she is a[186] great lady, and she ought to have been above—above sacrificing me!”

The word stung him like the cut of a whip. His lips set tightly; but he said nothing. What could he say?

“You all thought of yourselves and your family pride, and—nothing of me!” she went on, after a pause. “I was only a nobody, something little more than the girls who work in the fields: why, I am little better!”

He spoke at last.

“Esmeralda—be just; I—no one of us but respected, admired—”

“I know,” she said, with a deep sigh. “My money made you forget what I was. Lady Wyndover used to say that it was no matter what I did. I didn’t understand that, among other things, but I do now. And I do not blame her for the part she has played.”

She spoke with a kind of calm, pitying contempt.

“She could not help doing what she did, being what she is. She thought that nothing mattered so that I was a marchioness, and would be a duchess some day. I do not blame her, though—though she has been as cruel as the rest of you!”

She was growing weary under the strain, and she leaned against the window, and for a moment let her head rest against it, but for a moment only.

“I suppose most girls would not mind. But I expect I’m different, having been brought up differently, and—and I can’t bear it.”

The words had a ring of anguish in them that found an echo in his heart and made him half turn to her. But her face, the look in her eyes, kept him back.

“I am married now, and—and it is too late; you can have the money—”

“My God! have some mercy, child!” broke from him, the sweat standing on his white brow.

“What mercy have you had on me?” she asked in a low voice. “Ah! why did you do it? Why did you not come to me and tell me what it was you wanted? You might have had the money—every penny of it!”

He wiped his face but said nothing.

“I would have given it to you gladly, gladly. For I—I—I cared for you!”

He turned to her with outstretched hand, but she did not move, nor did the steady regard of her sorrow-stricken eyes flinch or yield.

[187]

“It was no good to me. It has never been any good. All the things I have bought with it I never cared for. I hate it—I hate it now! It is the cause of all—of all my misery. I was happy at Three Star.” Then the longing of her heart broke from her in a despairing cry. “Oh, my God! why did I ever leave it?”

She sunk into a chair and covered her eyes with her hand. He stood for a moment motionless, then he went to her side, and looking down at her with pallid face, said, hoarsely and slowly, as if he were weighing every word:

“Esmeralda, listen to me; I understand now; I know all you feel. I will not ask you who told you—how you discovered the truth. It is the truth—partly. Esmeralda, it was the desire of the money—and I curse it now as you do—that led me to yield.”

“I know it,” she whispered, brokenly.

“Yes, there shall be no concealment, no evasion. It was the money. You say you can not understand how I could have been so—mean, so bad. You can not. You do not know the need that urged me on, the devil of family pride that thrust me forward. See, I speak to you now as to a woman—you can not call yourself ignorant any longer. I will speak—yes, as man to man—the truth and the whole truth. Esmeralda, we were nearly ruined; we stood on the brink of utter destruction; in a few months Belfayre would have been sold over our heads. There was only one person who could save it, only one way of saving it. It is a way that is common, all too common. Men—women—of the world think nothing of it; no one shrinks from it. I could save my people, the place, by marrying money, and—”

“You deceived, sacrificed me!” she said, slowly.

He made a gesture with his hand.

“I will deny nothing that is true,” he said. “I asked you to be my wife because you were rich—yes.”

She rose, her eyes fixed upon him, her breath coming fast, and he met her gaze steadily, almost calmly.

“At that time I did not love you.”

She put up her hand as if to still the heaving of her bosom.

“It is to be the truth between us,” he said. “I did not love you. I admired you; who could do less? I knew that you were good and sweet and pure; but”—his voice rang low—“but though I did not love you then, I love you now! Wait! Listen to me!”

He stood erect, his eyes flashing, his heart beating fast.

[188]

“If I ever doubted myself, I doubt no longer. I know, now that I am in danger of losing you, that I love you.”

Her eyes sought his; she seemed to be drawn toward him; she was yielding under the spell of his voice, his eyes, the magnetic power of his love. Then she called all her spirit and her pride to her aid, and faced him.

“It is not true,” she said—“it is not true!”

His hand fell upon the back of the chair beside him and gripped it, and his face went white again.

“Esmeralda,” he said, hoarsely, “you must believe me! I love you, dearest! For God’s sake, believe me! Do as you will by me; I yield myself, my future, to you. It is only right; but—but believe me—I love you!”

“It is false, false!” she said, almost inaudibly; for Lady Ada’s voice was ringing in her ears and drowning her own. “I do not believe you! I know that you do not love me! Nothing you could say could convince me—nothing, nothing!”

He stood for a moment or two with bowed head, his breath laboring, his face dark.

“There is no more to be said,” he said, at last, and his voice sounded harsh and strained. “I can not make you believe me if you will not. You must continue to think me a liar and a scoundrel. Some day you will know that I am speaking truly. God grant it!”

“Never!” she breathed, Ada’s voice still in her ears.

He looked at her—a long, yearning, despairing look—then he turned his eyes away, as one turns away from a treasure that has slipped from one’s hand forever.

“I have been guilty; I have pleaded guilty to your accusation, Esmeralda,” he said, at last. “What do you wish me to do—to have done? I will do anything; I owe it to you.”

She tried to think.

“If I could only get away—back to Three Star!” she said, rather to herself than to him.

He winced.

“I do not think you could do that,” he said, hoarsely.

She drew a long sigh.

“No, I know. I am not so ignorant as you think me. I have learned a great deal since the night you came up to me at Lady Blankyre’s.”

“For God’s sake, spare me!” he pleaded.

“I know that I am your wife, the Marchioness of Trafford, one of your family, and that I must think of you and them. I can’t go away.” She remembered the lake at Belfayre and[189] the duke’s words. “The wife of the Marquis of Belfayre can’t do that. It would be better for me to kill myself.”

He uttered not a word.

“But do not be afraid. That would bring scandal, would it not? and I will not do that. I—I care for them—the duke and Lilias—too much, and I will think of them—though they did not think of me.”

He put out his hand imploringly, then let it fall to his side.

“I will go,” he said in a whisper.

Her head drooped.

“Yes; thank you.”

The simple words tortured him more keenly than anything she had as yet said.

“I will go presently—in a day or two,” he said. “I would go at once—for that is what you most ardently desire—but scandal— You have spoken of it, not I.”

“Yes,” she assented, dully. “I am to blame for being so ignorant—more than all the rest—and I do not want to make everybody unhappy and bring disgrace on—on the duke and Lilias.”

He bit his lip. She did not think of him; it was “the duke and Lilias.”

“I understand,” he said in as dull and dead a voice as her own. “You—you do not wish any one—the servants, the family—any one to know of this—this division between us?”

“No,” she said.

“No one need discover it,” he said. “We will remain here for a time—a few days—as long as you like—then I can go away. I can even stay, if you wish it; everything shall be arranged as you wish. We can be friends—in outward seeming, at any rate.”

“Yes,” she assented, mechanically.

She was weary to the point of exhaustion. If he had gone up to her and taken her in his arms, and held her against his heart in spite of herself, her heart would have yielded, and all would have been well.

But he did not do so. He thought that love was slain in her heart, and that to touch her—to utter a word of love—would but insult her and harden her. Men are always fools where the woman they love are concerned.

“The money”—he moistened his lips—“the money shall be made over to you again.”

She rose and shook her head.

“No,” she said in a low and firm voice; “I will not have it. The—bargain is made, and I will stand by it.”

[190]

“I can not consent to that,” he said, grimly.

“You must,” she said, simply. “If you were to do it—give it back to me—I should refuse it, the whole truth would come out, and I should go back to Three Star.”

He breathed hard.

“You have no mercy,” he said, brokenly. “You exact your revenge and force me into the very dust.”

“I don’t mean to do that,” she said in a low voice; “but the money must stop where it is.”

“For the present,” he said. “If you knew me you would realize how bitterly you make me suffer.”

“I, too, suffer!” she said, turning away her head. “Only hide the truth, and let people think that there is no trouble.”

“I will try to do so,” he said. “You may trust me. Never by word or look will I ever remind you that we are husband and wife. That I can promise you.”

Her lips moved—they were very white at this moment—but all he could hear was:

“Thank you. I—I trust you.”

“You may do so,” he said, as simply as she had spoken.

There was a silence. The night had fallen suddenly, unnoticed by them. They stood motionless—as if a chasm had suddenly opened and gaped between them.

Then he seemed to awaken from a spell.

“I—I will go out,” he said. “Will you have the lights?”

The commonplace question struck hideously. She shook her head.

He walked to the door, then paused, and looked back at her. She stood quite motionless, gazing vacantly into the night. He sighed—it was very nearly a groan—and then, like an idiot, went out and left her.