Part 3 (1/2)
”You intend to leave me?” she asked huskily.
”It is the only way,” he replied with a catch in his voice. ”We have courted scandal sufficiently.”
”But you cannot cast me off, Dudley?” she cried, suddenly springing towards him and wildly flinging her beautiful arms about his neck. ”You shall never leave me, because I love you. Are you blind? Don't you understand? Don't you see that I love you, Dudley?”
”You loved me once, in those old days at Winchester,” he said, slowly disengaging himself from her embrace. ”But not now.”
”I do!” she cried. ”I swear that I do! You are jealous of all those men who flatter me and hang about me wherever I go; but I care nothing for the whole crowd of them. You know me,” she went on; ”you know that I live only for you--for you.” Her words did not correspond with the sentiments she expressed to the woman who had accompanied her to his chambers. He reflected for a moment; then he said:
”Admiration I have for you, Claudia, as the most beautiful woman in London, but I think in this discussion we may both omit the word `love'
as entirely superfluous. We are children no longer. Let us face the truth. Our acquaintances.h.i.+p ripened into love while we were yet in our teens. Then in maturer years it faded out completely, the acquaintances.h.i.+p being renewed only when, on the death of your husband, you wanted a friend--and found one in me.”
”And now?” she asked.
”Now you have other friends--many others.”
”Ah! you are jealous! I knew you were!” she exclaimed in a reproachful tone of voice, her glorious eyes flas.h.i.+ng. ”You believe that I don't love you! You believe me capable of lying to you--to you, of all men!”
Chisholm remained silent.
CHAPTER FOUR.
REVEALS A PECCANT Pa.s.sION.
The brilliant woman, ignorant of his meaning, but comprehending only that he deemed her inconstant and unworthy, stood with tears in her eyes--tears which sprang partly from sorrow, partly from offence. She knew within herself that she was heartless and wrong; but, none the less, she felt herself aggrieved.
”Claudia,” he said at last, looking straight at her, ”our mutual protestations of love ended long ago. We have been friends--close friends; but as for love, well, when a woman really loves a man she does not bestow her smiles upon a score of other admirers.”
”Ah! you reproach me for being smart,” she cried. ”I am a woman, and may surely be forgiven any little _caprices de coeur_.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
”Your attachment to me was one of your caprices, Claudia.”
”Then you don't believe that I really have within my heart one atom of real affection for you?” she asked seriously.
”Your love for me is dead,” he answered gravely. ”It died long ago.
Since then you have made other conquests, and to-day half London is at your feet. I, Dudley Chisholm, am a man who has had an unwelcome popularity thrust upon him, and it is only in the natural order of things that I should follow in your train. But, as my place in your heart has long ago been usurped, why should we, intimate friends as we are, make a hollow pretence that it still exists?”
His voice remained calm and unbroken during his speech, yet there was an accent in it that thrilled through her heart. As she listened, stirred at heart by a strange emotion, her truer nature told her that she had by her caprice and folly fallen in his esteem. She had left the greatness that was pure and lofty for the greatness which was nothing better than tinsel.
”Once, Claudia, I loved you. In those days, before your marriage, you were my ideal--my all in all. You wedded d.i.c.k, and I--well, I can honestly say that during those two years of your married life I never entered your house. We met, here and there, at various functions, but I avoided you when I could, and never accepted your invitations. Why, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Because I loved you.”
Her head was bowed; a stifled sob escaped her.
”When you were free,” he went on, ”it was different. In your grief you wrote to me, and I at once came to you. At first you were mournful in your retirement; then of a sudden, after a few short months, you were seized by an overweening ambition to become a queen of society. I watched you; I saw your indiscretions; I spoke to you, and your answer was an open defiance. Then it was that my sympathy with you gradually diminished. You had become a smart woman, and had developed that irremediable disorder which every smart woman nowadays is bound sooner or later to develop--a callous heart. The crowd of men about you became as so many puppets ready to execute your imperious will, and soon, as I expected, the fiery breath of scandal seared your good name. You laughed, knowing well that the very fact of your being talked about added l.u.s.tre to your popularity as a smart hostess. I regretted all this, because my belief in your honesty--that belief which had first come to me long ago in the green meadows round about Winchester--was utterly shattered. The naked truth become exposed--you were deceiving me.”
”No, Dudley!” the woman wailed beseechingly. ”Spare me these reproaches! I cannot bear them--and least of all from you. I have been foolish--very foolish, I admit. Had you been my husband I should have been a different woman, leading a quiet and happy life, but as I am now--I--” She burst into a torrent of tears without finis.h.i.+ng her confession.
”If you acknowledge what I have said to be the truth, Claudia, we are agreed, and more need not be said,” he observed, when, a few moments later, she had grown calm again.