Alexander Fraser - Daughters of Belgravia; vol 3 of 3

But, just for once, he is taken rather aback. Shoals of women have loved him, and reproached him, but never like this. It is the first time he has evoked such a fierce tornado, and for a moment it staggers him. Then he becomes conscious of a feeling of thankfulness that this woman, beautiful and adoring, is not going to be his wife !

“I can do nothing but regret!” he says gently. “My faith is pledged to your sister, and – and – forgive me if I say that I do not wish to recall it! It is kinder to you, and kinder to myself, to speak openly!”

After this, nothing can be said, she feels.

She rises slowly from her knees, and stands a little apart. After all, she is not bad, she is not lost to shame; and it dyes her cheek crimson, while her lids droop over the fire in her eyes, and her mouth trembles – as much perhaps with wrath as sorrow.

What man can look utterly unmoved on such a spectacle as this?

“I feel so much for you,” he says quite softly, “but Fate has decreed our paths to divide, and who can act against Fate? My faith, as I said, is pledged to Zai; but there is no reason that you and I, Gabrielle, should be foes. I shall always care for you, always take an interest in you, always be glad to be a brother to you!”

“A brother !” she mutters. “I am no hypocrite! I could never feel like a sister towards you, and I will not pretend it! But we’ll part in peace! Only – only – !”

She flings her arms round him, and lifts up wild wet eyes, their fire and wrath all quenched in the passion that floods her whole being, “Say that you have loved me, if you do not love me now!”

It takes not only a perfect man, but a strong one, to reject a pleading woman, especially if her prayer is for Love, and the lips with which she utters it are fresh and tempting; and Lord Delaval is an imperfect man, assuredly.

So he stoops; and while her flushed stormy face lies against his breast, he kisses her, but only on the cheek, with the comfortable conviction that he has preserved his loyalty to Zai intact by avoiding Gabrielle’s lips. Most men now a-days are so addicted to splitting hairs!

“Good-bye!” she whispers, “I cannot stay here and see you and her together!”

She says it so tragically, that he half smiles. He has always thought her an excellent actress, but now she excels herself.

“Nonsense, Gabrielle!” he answers carelessly. “For God’s sake don’t make a scandal whatever you do! If we have made love – how many men and women do the same – without one or the other bringing the house down about their ears. You are not the only girl I have kissed and vowed all sorts of things to, but no one else has made me repent my folly as you have done. Come, kiss me – a kiss of peace – and forget that a kiss of love has ever been exchanged between us. We must all bow to the inevitable, and you cannot expect to be exempt.”

“But the inevitable in this case does not come from the hand of Providence, but from the hand of the man who ought to be the last to hurt me!” she says, passionately. “I will kiss you – ay, kiss you a dozen times; but, Delaval, they will be the kisses that one gives to the man one loves best, and upon whom one will never look again!”

She kisses him as she speaks – kisses him on his brow, and eyes, and lips, wildly, fiercely; then she almost pushes him from her.

“Good-bye!”

“Good-bye!” he answers quietly, “since you will have it so; and when we meet again – ”

“We shall never meet again!” she says, abruptly.

“What folly!” he exclaims, impatiently. “I hope we never shall, until you have regained your senses, and don’t act like a mad woman.”

“If I am a mad woman, you are the man who has made me so!” she retorts, impetuously.

“God forgive you for it, for I cannot!” and turning on her heel, she is soon out of view.

He shrugs his shoulders, and forgetting all about her, saunters back to the house whistling an opera bouffe air.

But though the opera bouffe air runs in his head, in his mind there is an unpleasant conviction that Gabrielle will make a scandal of some sort.

“These hot-headed, hot-hearted women are the very devil,” he mutters angrily to himself; “and I should not be surprised if she goes and peaches to old Beranger and her Ladyship – but no matter – a coronet, and a good-looking fellow like myself, to say nothing of the tin my dear miserly old dad hoarded up, are proof against any back-biters, and I’ll marry Zai yet, dear little thing. I do believe she is beginning to love me!”

But even with this comforting reflection, he gives a little start at luncheon when he sees one chair empty, and hears Trixy whisper to her sister, “Gabrielle is so queer to-day, queerer than usual. I really think she’s going off her head.”

Later on, at dinner, come Miss Beranger’s excuses.

“Gabrielle is not very well, and cannot come down,” Lady Beranger remarks indifferently, going on with her potage à la Reine , and Lord Delaval makes a tolerable meal – drinks a little more than usual, but not too much (wine bibbing is not one of his faults), laughs and talks a little nervously, and even is slightly distrait , while Zai sings in her fresh sweet soprano a bit of Swinburne, set to pathetic music —

He seems to look past her dainty chesnut-crowned head, as he listens to these words, at Gabrielle – Gabrielle, with her wild wet eyes, her white passion-tossed features, her clinging arms and bitter reproach.

All night long, through his sleep, they come back to him, and will not be thrust away.

Once more, at breakfast, the empty chair faces him, and in spite of himself he says to his hostess, “I hope Miss Beranger is better to-day?”

“Yes! I think so,” Lady Beranger answers; “at any rate, well enough to travel. Gabrielle went off by the early train to Southampton, I believe, didn’t she, Trixy?”

“I think so, mamma; at least, Fanchette told me. She has gone, but she never said good-bye.”

“Ah! just like her,” Lady Beranger observes, carelessly. “Gabrielle is so queer, so bizarre , you know.” And she takes another help of fillet de sole , and gives no further thought to her stepdaughter.

“Will you come out on the lawn, the morning is perfect?” Lord Delaval says to Zai, when they make a move from the table, and she, who has determined to love him and obey him, turns up a fair sweet face, and smiling, runs away for her hat.

He looks after her slender figure with visible admiration in his eyes. Zai is his beau ideal, pro tem. of womankind.

“Don’t be long away,” he calls, softly; and he longs to have her with him, where, sending the convenances au diable , he can gaze his fill on her beauty, and kiss her to his heart’s content.

“A letter for you! my lord.”

He starts and stammers as he asks:

“For me?”

And, as he takes the sealed missive in his hand, a sort of foreboding makes him pale and shrink from opening it.

He even forgets to wait for Zai, but walks out of the house, and down towards the far end of the grounds, before he breaks the seal.

“When you read this, Delaval, I shall be dead. ‘What folly!’ I hear you say. But folly or not, it is the truth. Oh, Delaval, I wonder I did not die yesterday! when you killed me with your hard words and looks. I cannot, I say, live and know that the love and caresses that are all the world to me are given to another woman. I have no home, no friends, no money. What then is left to me but death! Good-bye! my love! my love! My last prayer will be that some day you will say to yourself, ‘She loved me best of all.’ Good-bye!”