Molly Bawn Part 65

Philip, his face lit up with pa.s.sionate admiration, is gazing down into the lovely one so near him, that scarcely seems to shrink from his open homage. The merciless, cruel moon, betrays them all too surely.

Luttrell's pulses are throbbing wildly, while his heart has almost ceased to beat. Half a minute--that is a long hour--pa.s.ses thus; a few more words from Philip, an answer from Molly. Oh, that he could hear!

And then Shadwell stoops until, from where Luttrell stands, his face seems to grow to hers.

Tedcastle's teeth meet in his lip as he gazes spell-bound. A cold shiver runs through him, as when one learns that all one's dearest, most cherished hopes are trampled in the dust. A faint moisture stands on his brow. It is the bitterness of death!

Presently a drop of blood trickling slowly down--the sickly flavor of it in his mouth--rouses him. Instinctively he closes his eyes, as though too late to strive to shut out the torturing sight, and, with a deep curse, he presses his handkerchief to his lips and moves away as one suddenly awakened from a ghastly dream.

In the doorway he meets Marcia; she, too, has been a witness of the garden scene, and as he pa.s.ses her she glances up at him with a curious smile.

"If you wish to keep her you should look after her," she whispers, with white lips.

"If she needs looking after, I do _not_ wish for her," he answers, bitterly, and the next moment could kill himself, in that he has been so far wanting in loyalty to his most disloyal love.

With his mind quite made up, he waits through two dances silently, almost motionless, with his back against a friendly wall, hardly taking note of anything that is going on around him, until such time as he can claim another dance from Molly.

It comes at last: and, making his way through the throng of dancers, he reaches the spot where, breathless, smiling, she sits fanning herself, an adoring partner dropping little honeyed phrases into her willing ear.

"This is our dance," Luttrell says, in a hard tone, standing before her, with compressed lips and a pale face.

"Is it?" with a glance at her card.

"Never mind your card. I know it is ours," he says, and, offering her his arm, leads her, not to the ball-room, but on to a balcony, from which the garden can be reached by means of steps.

Before descending he says,--always in the same uncompromising tone:

"Are you cold? Shall I fetch you a shawl?"

And she answers:

"No, thank you. I think the night warm," being, for the moment, carried away by the strangeness and determination of his manner.

When they are in the garden, and still he has not spoken, she breaks the silence.

"What is it, Teddy?" she asks, lightly. "I am all curiosity. I never before saw you look so angry."

"'Angry'?--no,--I hardly think there is room for anger. I have brought you here to tell you--I will not keep to my engagement with you--an hour longer."

Silence follows this declaration,--a dead silence, broken only by the voices of the night and the faint, sweet, dreamy sound of one of Gungl's waltzes as it steals through the air to where they stand.

They have ceased to move, and are facing each other in the narrow pathway. A few beams from the illumined house fall across their feet; one, more adventurous than the rest, has lit on Molly's face, and lingers there, regardless of the envious moonbeams.

How changed it is! All the soft sweetness, the gladness of it, that characterized it a moment since, is gone. All the girlish happiness and excitement of a first ball have vanished. She is cold, rigid, as one turned to stone. Indignation lies within her lovely eyes.

"I admit you have taken me by surprise," she says, slowly. "It is customary--is it not?--for the one who breaks an engagement to a.s.sign some reason for so doing?"

"It is. You shall have my reason. Half an hour ago I stood at that window,"--pointing to it,--"and saw you in the shrubberies--with--Shadwell!"

"Yes? And then?"

"Then--then!" With a movement full of pa.s.sion he lays his hands upon her shoulders and turns her slightly, so that the ray which has wandered once more rests upon her face. "Let me look at you," he says; "let me see how bravely you can carry out your deception to its end.

Its _end_, mark you; for you shall never again deceive me. I have had enough of it. It is over. My love for you has died."

"Beyond all doubt it had an easy death," replies she, calmly. "There could never have been much life in it. But all this is beside the question. I have yet to learn my crime. I have yet to learn what awful iniquity lies in the fact of my being with Philip Shadwell."

"You are wonderfully innocent," with a sneer. "Do you think then that my sight failed me?"

"Still I do not understand," she says, drawing herself up, with a little proud gesture. "What is it to me whether you or all the world saw me with Philip? Explain yourself."

"I will." In a low voice, almost choked with pa.s.sion and despair. "You will understand when I tell you I saw him with his arms around you--you submitting--you---- And then--I saw him--kiss you. That I should live to say it of you!"

"_Did_ you see him kiss me?" still calmly. "Your eyesight is invaluable."

"Ah! you no longer deny it? In your inmost heart no doubt you are laughing at me, poor fool that I have been. How many other times have you kissed him, I wonder, when I was not by to see?"

"Whatever faults you may have had, I acquitted you of brutality," says she, in a low, carefully suppressed tone.

"You never loved me. In that one matter at least you were honest; you never professed affection. And yet I was mad enough to think that after a time I should gain the love of a flirt,--a coquette."

"You were mad to _care_ for the love of 'a flirt,--a coquette.'"

"I have been blind all these past weeks," goes on he, unheeding, "determined not to see (what all the rest of the world, no doubt, too plainly saw) what there was between you and Shadwell. But I am blind no longer. I am glad,--yes, thankful," cries the young man, throwing out one hand, as though desirous of proving by action the truth of his sad falsehood,--"thankful I have found you out at last,--before it was too late."

"I am thankful too; but for another reason. I feel grateful that your suspicions have caused you to break off our engagement. And now that it is broken,--irremediably so,--let me tell you that for once your priceless sight has played you false. I admit that Philip placed his arm around me (but not unrebuked, as you would have it); I admit he stooped to kiss me; but," cries Molly, with sudden pa.s.sion that leaves her pale as an early snow-drop, "I do _not_ admit he kissed me.

Deceitful, worthless, flirt, coquette, as you think me, I have not yet fallen so low as to let one man kiss me while professing to keep faith with another."

"You say this--after----"

"I do. And who is there shall dare give me the lie? Beware, Tedcastle; you have gone far enough already. Do not go too far. You have chosen to insult me. Be it so. I forgive you. But, for the future, let me see, and hear, and know as little of you as may be possible."

"Molly, if what you now----"

"Stand back, sir," cries she, with an air of majesty and with an imperious gesture, raising one white arm, that gleams like snow in the dark night, to wave him to one side.

"From henceforth remember, I am deaf when you address me!"

She sweeps past him into the house, without further glance or word, leaving him, half mad with doubt and self-reproach, to pace the gardens until far into the morning.

When he does re-enter the ball-room he finds it almost deserted. Nearly all the guests have taken their departure. Dancing is growing half-hearted; conversation is having greater sway with those that still remain.

The first person he sees--with Philip beside her--is Molly, radiant, sparkling, even more than usually gay. Two crimson spots burn upon either cheek, making her large eyes seem larger, and bright as gleaming stars.

Even as Luttrell, with concentrated bitterness, stands transfixed at some little distance from her, realizing how small a thing to her is this rupture between them, that is threatening to break his heart, she, looking up, sees him.

Turning to her companion, she whispers something to him in a low tone, and then she laughs,--a soft, rippling laugh, full of mirth and music.

"There go the chimes again," says Mr. Potts, who has just come up, alluding to Molly's little cruel outburst of merriment. "I never saw Miss Ma.s.sereene in such good form as she is in to-night. Oh!"--with a suppressed yawn--"'what a day we're 'aving!' I wish it were all to come over again."

"Plantagenet, you grow daily more dissipated," says Cecil Stafford, severely. "A little boy like you should be in your bed hours ago; instead of which you have been allowed to sit up until half-past four, and----"