CHAPTER XLIX.

When Ida re-entered the house, the guests were still assembled in the drawing-room.

Eugene Mallard was standing a little apart from the rest, looking thoughtfully into vacancy.

As she entered the room, he started, and, to her surprise, he crossed over to her.

[205]

"Ida," he said, "will you come out on the porch with me for a few moments? I wish to speak with you."

She looked at him in terror. Had he learned of the return of Royal Ainsley?

A great darkness seemed to suddenly envelop her, and it was by the greatest effort that she kept herself from swooning. But the fresh air revived her.

Eugene placed a chair for her, and as she was trembling violently, she was glad to sink into it. There was a seat near. Eugene did not take it, but, instead, stood leaning against one of the fluted columns of the porch. For a few moments he was silent, and those few moments seemed like long years to Ida.

"I have brought you out here to have an earnest talk with you," he said, huskily. "The time has now come when we should try to understand each other. Don't you think so?"

She looked up at him in affright. Was he going to send her away? Was he growing tired of the position in which they stood to each other?

"Yes," she answered; and it caused her a desperate effort to utter the word.

"I am going to take you into my confidence, Ida," he said. "Come under this swinging lamp. I want to read you this letter."

She followed him with faltering steps.

To her great surprise she saw him take from his breast-pocket the very letter which Miss Fernly had sent, and which she had slipped into his desk. But she dared not tell him that she knew what the letter contained.

"I will preface my remarks by saying that the news of your illness has spread far and wide, and that the report was repeated in different forms. Instead of[206] saying that you were ill, some of the papers had it that my young wife had died. Miss Fernly, whom you have good reason to remember, thereupon wrote me this letter."

She listened, her face white as death. He handed her the letter. Every word made a new wound in her heart. How well she remembered each and every sentence! Slowly she read the letter through. Then she folded and handed it back to him.

"Ida," he said, "I have been trying to forget the past as no man has ever tried before. All my time has been given up to it. I have drawn a curtain over my past, and shut out its brightness, its hopes, from my life. I have pulled the roots of a beautiful budding plant from my soul, and bid it grow there no more. I have tried to do my duty by you, and now I have come to this conclusion—you must help me bury the past. I have brought you out here to ask you to be my wife in fact as well as in name."

He did not tell her that during her illness he had discovered the secret of her life—that she loved him with all the passionate love of her nature, and that his indifference was eating out her life.

Ever since he had been turning the matter over in his mind, and asking himself what he should do, and at last he was brought face to face with the truth—he had no right to marry her unless he intended living with her.

So clearly had his duty become defined to him that the path of the future was now plain before him. He must forget his love for Hildegarde, and the only way to do that was to ask the wife he had wedded to help him.

"I ask you this after much calm deliberation," he said, slowly. "Be my wife in reality as well as in name, and[207] we may yet make good and useful lives out of what is left of them!"

He heard a cry escape from her lips, but he could not tell whether it was one of pleasure or pain.

"I do not ask you to give my answer at once, unless you choose to do so," he said, gently.

He bent over her and took her hand. He was startled at its icy coldness. He could feel that she trembled at his touch.

"I have startled you," he said, gently. "I would advise you to go to your room, instead of mingling with the guests to-night. There you can reflect upon what you wish to do. I will leave you here," he said. But before he turned away, he involuntarily stooped down, and kissed the white face raised so appealingly to his.

It was the first caress he had ever offered her, and that kiss burned her face for long hours afterward. It filled her to the very depth of her soul, to the very center of her heart.

Like one stricken suddenly blind, Ida groped her way to her room.

"Ah! if I could only die with the memory of that kiss burning my lips!" she cried.

She was like one stunned. What she had longed for, yearned for with all the intensity of her soul, was laid at her feet at last. But it was too late.

His love was offered her now, when she dared not claim it, dared not accept it.

Ida rose the next morning with a heavy heart. She had slept the sleep of exhaustion.

Eugene was surprised when she came down to the table, she looked so changed. There were heavy circles under her eyes, as though she had been weeping.

[208]

He could not understand her. He was quite sure she would meet him with a happy, blushing face and downcast eyes. Ida would be glad when she could escape his wondering eyes. An hour later she was standing at the window of the morning-room, which opened out on the terrace, her mind in a tumult, when she heard Eugene's voice at the other end of the room. She knew instinctively that he was looking for her. Only two days ago she would have waited there for him—would have eagerly sought the opportunity of a few words with him; but now she hastily unfastened the long French window, and fled out into the grounds.

Eugene saw the flutter of the white figure hurrying down the terrace.

"She wishes to escape an encounter with me," he thought; and he was puzzled.

Ida went to the further end of the garden, where the tall rose-bushes hid her from human eyes. She sat down upon a little rustic bench and tried to think. But her brain grew confused.

Only a short time ago she had cried out to Heaven to give her the love of Eugene Mallard. Now that it was laid at her feet, what should she do?

"Heaven direct me," she cried out; "I am so sorely tempted! I used to wonder what people meant when they talked of the agony of death. Now I know."

She was frightened at the vehemence of her emotion; the memory of that caress made her tremble. She dreaded the moment when she should see Eugene alone again, but, woman-like, hoped that it would be soon. Her heart was awakened at last. The sun of love shone in its glory upon her.

It had come to her, this woman's heritage, this dower[209] of passion and sorrow, called love, changing the world into a golden gleam.

How was she ever to calm the fever that burned in her veins? Yes, she loved him. She who had never, until she met Eugene Mallard, known what love meant; she, so young, beautiful, made so essentially for love, and yet whose life had been so joyless and hopeless, loved at last.

Eugene Mallard noticed her avoidance of him during the week that followed. She was trying to think out the problem in her own mind. Dare she drink of the cup of joy that he had pressed to her lips? In her simplicity, Ida thought that she had done much in denying herself a look at him.

If she had been the most accomplished of coquettes, she could not have chosen a method more calculating to awaken his interest than by avoiding him.

"She does not care for me as much as I thought," he told himself; and, man-like, he felt a trifle piqued.

He had fancied that all he would have to do would be to ask her, and she would come straight to his arms.

This was, indeed, a new phase of her character. Yet he could not help but admire her maidenly modesty.

He would give her her own time to think over the proposition that he had laid before her. He would not seek her, would not intrude upon her. He looked at her more during that day than he had during all the time she had been under his roof.

He had not known before that she was so beautiful, so sweet, so womanly. How careless he had been in letting her go about by herself, a prey for such rascals as Arthur Hollis!

[210]

Once he surprised her in the grounds. He had come up to her very quietly.

"Ida," he said, "have you forgotten that you have not so far answered the question I asked of you two weeks ago on the porch? Tell me, when am I to claim my wife?"

His wife! Great Heaven! Had she been mad, dreaming? What had she been doing? What had she done?

His wife! She was Royal Ainsley's wife, and she could not belong to any other man. She looked at him with the pallor of despair in her face, the shadow of death in her eyes.

What had she been doing to think of love in connection with Eugene Mallard, when she was bound by the heaviest of chains? The shock was terrible to her in those few minutes, and the wonder is that it did not kill her.

"I must have your answer here and now," Eugene said, a trifle impatiently.