decorum would have suggested Marguerite should return coldness for coldness, and should sweep past him without another word, only with a curt nod of her head: but womanly instinct suggested that she should remain-that keen instinct, which makes a beautiful woman conscious of her powers long to bring to her knees the one man who pays her no homage. She stretched out her hand to him.
'Nay, Sir Percy, why not? the present is not so glorious but that I should not wish to dwell a little in the past.'
He bent his tall figure, and taking hold of the extreme tip of the fingers which she still held out to him, he kissed them ceremoniously.
'I' faith, Madame,' he said, 'then you will pardon me, if my dull wits cannot accompany you there.'
Once again he attempted to go, once more her voice, sweet, childlike, almost tender, called him back.
'Sir Percy.'
'Your servant, Madame.'
'Is it possible that love can die?' she said with sudden, unreasoning vehemence. 'Methought that the passion which you once felt for me would outlast the span of human life. Is there nothing left of that love, Percy… which might help you… to bridge over that sad estrangement?'
His massive figure seemed, while she spoke thus to him, to stiffen still more, the strong mouth hardened, a look of relentless obstinacy crept into the habitually lazy blue eyes.
'With what object, I pray you, Madame?' he asked coldly.
'I do not understand you.'
'Yet 'tis simple enough,' he said with sudden bitterness, which seemed literally to surge through his words, though he was making visible efforts to suppress it, 'I humbly put the question to you, for my slow wits are unable to grasp the cause of this, your ladyship's sudden new mood. Is it that you have the taste to renew the devilish sport which you played so successfully last year? Do you wish to see me once more a love-sick suppliant at your feet, so that you might again have the pleasure of kicking me aside, like a troublesome lap-dog?'
She had succeeded in rousing him for the moment: and again she looked straight at him, for it was thus she remembered him a year ago.
'Percy! I entreat you!' she whispered, 'can we not bury the past?'
'Pardon me, Madame, but I understood you to say that your desire was to dwell in it.'
'Nay! I spoke not of THAT past, Percy!' she said, while a tone of tenderness crept into her voice. 'Rather did I speak of a time when you loved me still! and I… oh! I was vain and frivolous; your wealth and position allured me: I married you, hoping in my heart that your great love for me would beget in me a love for you… but, alas!…'
The moon had sunk low down behind a bank of clouds. In the east a soft grey light was beginning to chase away the heavy mantle of the night. He could only see her graceful outline now, the small queenly head, with its wealth of reddish golden curls, and the glittering gems forming the small, star-shaped, red flower which she wore as a diadem in her hair.
'Twenty-four hours after our marriage, Madame, the Marquis de St. Cyr and all his family perished on the guillotine, and the popular rumour reached me that it was the wife of Sir Percy Blakeney who helped to send them there.'
'Nay! I myself told you the truth of that odious tale.'
'Not till after it had been recounted to me by strangers, with all its horrible details.'
'And you believed them then and there,' she said with great vehemence, 'without a proof or question-you believed that I, whom you vowed you loved more than life, whom you professed you worshipped, that _I_ could do a thing so base as these STRANGERS chose to recount. You thought I meant to deceive you about it all-that I ought to have spoken before I married you: yet, had you listened, I would have told you that up to the very morning on which St. Cyr went to the guillotine, I was straining every nerve, using every influence I possessed, to save him and his family. But my pride sealed my lips, when your love seemed to perish, as if under the knife of that same guillotine. Yet I would have told you how I was duped! Aye! I, whom that same popular rumour had endowed with the sharpest wits in France! I was tricked into doing this thing, by men who knew how to play upon my love for an only brother, and my desire for revenge. Was it unnatural?'
Her voice became choked with tears. She paused for a moment or two, trying to regain some sort of composure. She looked appealingly at him, almost as if he were her judge. He had allowed her to speak on in her own vehement, impassioned way, offering no comment, no word of sympathy: and now, while she paused, trying to swallow down the hot tears that gushed to her eyes, he waited, impassive and still. The dim, grey light of early dawn seemed to make his tall form look taller and more rigid. The lazy, good-natured face looked strangely altered. Marguerite, excited, as she was, could see that the eyes were no longer languid, the mouth no longer good- humoured and inane. A curious look of intense passion seemed to glow from beneath his drooping lids, the mouth was tightly closed, the lips compressed, as if the will alone held that surging passion in check.
Marguerite Blakeney was, above all, a woman, with all a woman's fascinating foibles, all a woman's most lovable sins. She knew in a moment that for the past few months she had been mistaken: that this man who stood here before her, cold as a statue, when her musical voice struck upon his ear, loved her, as he had loved her a year ago: that his passion might have been dormant, but that it was there, as strong, as intense, as overwhelming, as when first her lips met his in one long, maddening kiss. Pride had kept him from her, and, woman-like, she meant to win back that conquest which had been hers before. Suddenly it seemed to her that the only happiness life could every hold for her again would be in feeling that man's kiss once more upon her lips.
'Listen to the tale, Sir Percy,' she said, and her voice was low, sweet, infinitely tender. 'Armand was all in all to me! We had no parents, and brought one another up. He was my little father, and I, his tiny mother; we loved one another so. Then one day-do you mind me, Sir Percy? the Marquis de St. Cyr had my brother Armand thrashed- thrashed by his lacqueys-that brother whom I loved better than all the world! And his offence? That he, a plebeian, had dared to love the daughter of the aristocrat; for that he was waylaid and thrashed… thrashed like a dog within an inch of his life! Oh, how I suffered! his humiliation had eaten into my very soul! When the opportunity occurred, and I was able to take my revenge, I took it. But I only thought to bring that proud marquis to trouble and humiliation. He plotted with Austria against his own country. Chance gave me knowledge of this; I spoke of it, but I did not know-how could I guess?-they trapped and duped me. When I realised what I had done, it was too late.'
'It is perhaps a little difficult, Madame,' said Sir Percy, after a moment of silence between them, 'to go back over the past. I have confessed to you that my memory is short, but the thought certainly lingered in my mind that, at the time of the Marquis' death, I entreated you for an explanation of those same noisome popular rumours. If that same memory does not, even now, play me a trick, I fancy that you refused me ALL explanation then, and demanded of my love a humiliating allegiance it was not prepared to give.'
'I wished to test your love for me, and it did not bear the test. You used to tell me that you drew the very breath of life but for me, and for love of me.'
'And to probe that love, you demanded that I should forfeit mine honour,' he said, whilst gradually his impassiveness seemed to leave him, his rigidity to relax; 'that I should accept without murmur or question, as a dumb and submissive slave, every action of my mistress. My heart overflowing with love and passion, I ASKED for no explanation-I WAITED for one, not doubting-only hoping. Had you spoken but one word, from you I would have accepted any explanation and believed it. But you left me without a word, beyond a bald confession of the actual horrible facts; proudly you returned to your brother's house, and left me alone… for weeks… not knowing, now, in whom to believe, since the shrine, which contained my one illusion, lay shattered to earth at my feet.'
She need not complain now that he was cold and impassive; his very voice shook with an intensity of passion, which he was making superhuman efforts to keep in check.
'Aye! the madness of my pride!' she said sadly. 'Hardly had I gone, already I had repented. But when I returned, I found you, oh, so altered! wearing already that mask of somnolent indifference which you have never laid aside until… until now.'
She was so close to him that her soft, loose hair was wafted against his cheek; her eyes, glowing with tears, maddened him, the music in her voice sent fire through his veins. But he would not yield to the magic charm of this woman whom he had so deeply loved, and at whose hands his pride had suffered so bitterly. He closed his eyes to shut out the dainty vision of that sweet face, of that snow-white neck and graceful figure, round which the faint rosy light of dawn was just beginning to hover playfully.
'Nay, Madame, it is no mask,' he said icily; 'I swore to you… once, that my life was yours. For months now it
