CHAPTER XV
Some hints of autumn are in the soft, warm airs that blow through the smoke and heat of London. The fashionable season is over, and the gay butterflies of fashion have begun to seek "fresh fields and pastures new." Lady Clive begins to think of flitting with the rest.
It has been settled that the Countess of Fairvale shall remain with the Clives for the autumn and winter months at least. She is in mourning for her father, and is quite settled in her mind at first that she will go home to her ancestral castle and spend the period of retirement in strict seclusion with a proper chaperon. But the Clives will not hear of it. Lady Clive is afraid that she will mope herself to death.
"Besides, I shall be so lonely," she declares. "Philip is going back soon to his own home, and we shall have no young people with us at all if Lady Vera leaves us, too. My dear, do say that you will stay. We are not going to be very gay this season. Sir Harry and I want to take the children down to our country home, where they may roll in the grass to their hearts' content. Let us invite two or three sweet young girls, and as many young men, to go down with us, and we can have such a charming time, with picnics and lawn tennis, and simple country pleasures. Then, after awhile, we will go to Switzerland and climb the Alps. What say you, my little countess?"
Lady Vera, so ardently pressed, yields a gentle assent, and the party of "sweet, young girls" and eligible young men is immediately organized, Captain Lockhart promising to go down with them and remain a week before he returns to America.
So in the late summer they go down to Sunny Bank, as the Clives call the large, rambling, ornate pile of white buildings that is the sweetest home in all Devonshire.
The children go mad with delight over the fragrant grass and the autumnal flowers. The young people begin to pair off in couples, and one day Vera goes for a walk with the American soldier.
She is looking her fairest and sweetest. A dress of soft, rich, lusterless black drapes her slender figure superbly, and the round, white column of her throat rises lily-like from the thin, soft ruche of black around it, her face appearing like some rare flower beneath the shade of her wide, black Gainsborough hat. No wonder that Captain Lockhart's dark blue eyes return again and again to that delicately lovely face.
"It is no wonder," said the lords,
"She is more beautiful than day."
They walk slowly down the green, country lane, bordered with oak and holly. The flowers are beginning to fade, and the air is sweet with their pungent fragrance. The sky is deeply blue, with little, white, silvery clouds sailing softly over it. The sun is shining sweet and warm as if it were May. Little birds are singing blithely for joy as if the spring-time had come again.
"Do you know that this is the first time I have walked by your side since that day last spring, when you were so cruel to me?" he asks, breaking a long interval of silence that has been perilously sweet.
"Cruel?" she says, lifting to his the half-shy gaze of the dark and dreamy eyes.
"Yes, cruel, for you forbade me even to look at you," he answers, smiling now over that past pain in the eager elation of the present. "Ah, Lady Vera, you did not know then, perhaps, what a cross you laid upon me—that I loved you even then so dearly–"
"Hush!" she cries, in such a startled voice that he pauses and looks around to see what has frightened her.
"What is it, Lady Vera? Has anything alarmed you?" he asks her, anxiously.
"Nothing, but that I am tired. I will sit down here on this mossy log, and rest a moment," she answers, sinking wearily down, a sudden paleness chasing the roses from her cheeks. Captain Lockhart throws himself down on the short, velvety, green turf at her feet. There ensues a short silence, broken only by the hum of the busy insects, the song of the birds, and the soft rustle of a passing wind in the leaves overhead.
There is some embarrassment in their silence. Her cry of alarm has been so sharp and sudden that he does not know how to return to the interrupted subject. And yet his heart is so full of it.
He looks into the lovely, spirited young face, and he cannot keep the words back any longer.
He turns to her suddenly, and tells her the story of his love in burning words, whose eloquent fire brooks no check nor remonstrance. His face glows under its soldierly brown, his blue eyes darken with feeling, his voice trembles with passion, but when he pauses, Lady Vera, who has heard him through with tightly clenched hands and a strangely blanched face, can only falter:
"You love me, Captain Lockhart? I thought—that we were only friends."
The frightened, wondering voice falls like ice upon his heart.
"Only friends," he echoes, "when I have loved you since the first hour I saw you. Oh, Lady Vera, do not grow so pale! Is it strange that I should love you? Others have been as wild and presumptuous as I have. Others have come down before the fire of those dark eyes, slain by their beauty. I know you have been cold, indifferent to all, even to me at first. But when you thawed to me at last, when you were kindly and friendly–"
"Yes, that was all," she interrupts him, in a kind of frantic haste. "I was kind and friendly, that was all. I meant no more, believe me."
The soldier's blue eyes look at her with a keen reproach before which her own glance wavers and falls.
"Lady Vera, you are no coquette," he exclaims, "and yet I could swear that you have given me encouragement to hope that you would love me. Do you remember the beautiful poems of love I have read to you, with my very heart on my lips? Do you remember the songs I have sung to you, and the dreamy twilights when we sat and talked together? Do you remember how you have worn the flowers I brought you? You have blushed and smiled for me as you did for no other, and you are no coquette. Oh, my darling, surely you will love me?"
As he talks to her, the color goes from white to red, and red to white in her beautiful face. Her lips quiver, the tears spring into her eyes.
"You are blaming me," she says, incoherently, "but you have no right. I know nothing of love. I thought we were only friends. I am so sorry."
"Do you mean to say you do not love me, that you did not know I loved you, and was seeking you for my wife, Lady Vera?" he asks, with forced calmness.
"Yes, I mean all these things," she answers, looking at him with such wide, frank, innocent eyes that he can find no room for doubt.
He is puzzled for a moment.
"I have deceived myself," he sighs, inly. "I thought she was learning to love me."
"Lady Vera, I have been too hopeful," he says, manfully. "I have been thinking of love while you dreamed only of friendship. But now that you know my heart, will you not suffer me to woo you for my bride? I love you so dearly I am sure I could make you happy."
Ah! the fathomless pain that comes into the dark eyes into which he gazes so tenderly. He cannot understand it.
"I shall never marry, Captain Lockhart," she answers, in a low, pained voice. "There is no use to woo me. I can never be yours."
"Never!" he echoes, with despair in his voice.
"I shall never marry anyone," she repeats, mournfully.
He looks at her with all his passionate heart in his eyes.
"Never is a terrible word, Lady Vera," he answers sadly. "Only think how I love you. I have never loved anyone before in all my life, and I shall never love anyone again. You are my first and last love. Only think how terrible it is, how cruelly hard, for me to give up the hopes of winning you for my own. You are so beautiful and noble, my dark-eyed love. I have dreamed of kissing your small, white hands, your fair, white brow, your golden hair, even your beautiful, crimson lips. I had thought to win you for my very own, and now you strike dead every hope by that cruel word, never. Oh, my darling, you are too young to say you will never wed. What can you know of the needs of your own heart? Let me teach you to love me."
"Ah, if he only knew the fatal truth," the tortured young heart moans to itself, in the silence of its great despair. "If he knew that I am already bound by a tie that I hate and loathe."
But she speaks no word, only to look up at him with pained, dark eyes, and reiterate:
"I am very sorry I have caused you pain, Captain Lockhart, but I shall never marry."
He rises and looks down at her with his handsome face grown strangely pale and grave, his blue eyes dim and heavy.
"So be it, Lady Vera," he answers, folding his arms across his broad breast. "You know what is best for you, but, ah, lovely one, if you could know how sweet were the hopes you have slain this hour you could not choose but weep over my saddened life."
She put up her white hand imploringly.
"Forbear, Captain Lockhart. You cannot guess what pangs are aching in my breast or you would spare me your reproaches. Be pitiful and leave me."
"Not here," he says, looking up and down the flowery lane. "Let me take you back to the house, Lady Vera. We cannot trust these autumnal skies. It may rain at any moment."
"As you will," she answers, wearily, and rising, retraces her steps by his side. But this time they speak no word to each other and the fair young countess flies up to her room, and flings herself down on her couch to weep such tears as have never rained from those lovely eyes before, for a great happiness and a great sorrow have come into her life, as it were, together.
"For I love him," she moans to herself. "I love him, but as Heaven sees me, I did not know it. It all came to me like a flash when he was telling me how he loved me. Oh, God, what happiness is possible to me, and yet beyond my reach."
She lies still weeping bitterly, and recalling in all its bitterness that midnight marriage by the side of her dying mother.
"Oh! what a blind mistake it was," she weeps. "But for Leslie Noble I might marry the man I love. I might go back to America with him. I might tell him the story of my oath of vengeance, and he would help me to find my enemy and punish her for her sin."
The day drags wearily. In the afternoon Vera goes down to the library in search of something to read. Gliding softly in she finds it tenanted by Captain Lockhart, who is busy over a fresh batch of papers from the United States. He glances up as she is about withdrawing, and springs to his feet with courteous grace.
"Pray do not let me frighten you, Lady Vera. I will take my budget of papers, and be off," he exclaims.
"No, I do not wish to disturb you," she answers. "I am in search of something to read myself."
"Pray take your choice from among my papers," he replies, gravely, but kindly, and half-listlessly Lady Vera turns them over and selects one at random.
Captain Lockhart places a chair for her and returns to his reading, thinking that the best way to place her at her ease. His heart yearns over the beautiful, pale, suffering face, but he does not dream of her sorrow, and he has no right to comfort her, so he turns his glance away, and, looking round again a little later, sees that Countess Vera has quietly swooned away in her chair, and that the American newspaper has slipped from her lap to the floor.
With a startled cry that brings Lady Clive rushing into the room, he springs to his feet. Lady Vera's swoon is a long and deep one, and they wonder much over its cause, but no one dreams that the American newspaper has caused it all. Yet the listless gaze of the unhappy girl roving over the list of deaths in a Philadelphia paper has found one line that struck dumb, for a moment, the sources of life in their fountains. It was only this:
"Died, at his residence on Arch street, on the 19th instant Leslie Noble."
CHAPTER XVI
Lady Vera waking from her long and death-like swoon, wakens also to a dream of happiness. The terrible incubus that weighed upon her so heavily is lifted from her heart. The loveless fetter that bound her is snapped asunder. Leslie Noble, whose very name has been a shuddering horror to her for more than two years, is dead, and she is free—free! What exquisite possibilities of happiness thrill her heart at the very thought!
She keeps her room that evening, pleading weariness as an excuse for not appearing at dinner. She wants time to think over the joyful change in her prospects before she meets Captain Lockhart again. She is scarcely herself now. Such a strange, tremulous, passionate happiness is thrilling through her heart as makes her nervous with its intensity. Little shafts of fire seem thrilling through her veins. Love, which she had thought never to experience, has taken up its dwelling in her heart, and every nerve thrills with its unspeakable rapture.
"And I was so blind, I thought it only friendship!" the fair young countess murmurs to herself, with a happy smile playing around her lips. "How happy he will be when I tell him that I love him, and that I will be his wife! It cannot be wrong for me to marry him. I am sure he will help me to my vengeance when I tell him of the oath I swore by my father's death-bed. Dear Philip, how grand and handsome he is! He is the noblest of men!"
Lady Clive, having privately questioned her brother as to Vera's fainting fit, and received no satisfaction, is at her wits' end! Why this terrible swoon, when she had deemed Lady Vera well and strong again?
She wonders even more when the young girl appears at breakfast the next morning. Never had the young countess appeared so enchantingly lovely. Clothed in a delicate, white morning dress, with purple pansies at her throat and waist, and all her glorious golden hair floating loosely about her perfect form, with a blush of happiness on her cheeks, and the shy light of tenderness in her splendid eyes, it seemed to all as if her peerless beauty had received a new dower of glory. All wondered, but none knew that the threatening cloud that had overshadowed her life so long had rolled away, and that it was the new light of hope that made her face so radiant.
"You look unusually well, my dear. There is no trace of your illness left this morning," Lady Clive exclaims, with her usual charming good nature, as Lady Vera glides into her seat.
A blush and smile of acknowledgement from the young girl. She glances shyly under her long lashes at Captain Lockhart, who is her vis-a-vis at table. But the handsome soldier, after one slight glance and a courtly bow, does not seem to see her. Miss Montgomery, who sits next him, absorbs his attention this morning. She is a belle and beauty, and has long angled for Captain Lockhart. Seeing Lady Vera so gay and smiling, he resolves not to damp her pleasure by a sight of his own grave, troubled face, so he lends himself assiduously to the coquette's efforts to amuse him, succeeding so well in his plan that she is completely blinded, and murmurs to herself with sudden bitterness:
"He is flirting with Miss Montgomery to show me how little he cares for my rejection. Ah, well, if he is satisfied, I am!"
So the first seeds of pride are sown in her heart by a coquette's petty arts.
"Alas! how slight a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!"
"I had meant to win him back to my side," she thinks, with a sudden sigh. "I would not have told him so in so many words, but I thought to let him see that I repented after all, and that—I love him! I fear me I am too late after all. Oh, that he had not spoken yesterday. If only he had waited until to-day!"
After breakfast they organized a riding-party. Captain Lockhart rides by Miss Montgomery's side, the countess goes with Lord Gordon—poor Lord Gordon, who has long been waiting for this chance to put his fate
"To the test,
And win or lose it all."
How lovely she was in her sable habit and streaming feather. Though Captain Lockhart rode attentive by Miss Montgomery's side, he could not help seeing her beauty and repeating to himself Tennyson's exquisite lines:
"As she fled fast through sun and shade,
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid,
She looked so lovely as she swayed
The rein with dainty finger tips,
A man had given all other bliss,
And all his worldly wealth for this;
To waste his whole heart in one kiss
Upon her perfect lips."
"And yet after all, in her quiet, proud way, she must be a flirt," he thinks to himself, with subdued bitterness. "How bright and gay she appeared this morning, as if careless of my sorrow, and almost exulting in it. I thought she had more feeling. And, indeed, she appeared to smile on my suit, though she was coy and cold at first. See now how charming she is with Lord Gordon. Poor fellow, he has long been seeking a chance to propose to her. Well, he will find it to-day, and she will ruthlessly trample his heart as she did mine yesterday."
Sweet, innocent Vera, how fast the springing hopes of last night and this morning are turning to dead sea fruit upon thy lips.
Lord Gordon speaks and receives his answer. Lady Vera is very sorry to pain him, but she has no heart to give.
Captain Lockhart sees the shadow on the fair, English face of the young lord, and is secretly conscious of a savage satisfaction.
She has refused him, too. She is too cold and proud to love any one, he tells himself.
"Are you really going to-morrow, Lockhart?" Lord Gordon asks him in the drawing-room, that evening.
"Yes, I am really going," he answers, and never dreams of the wild throb Lady Vera's heart gives beneath its silken bodice.
"Why don't you ask me to go with you?" Lord Gordon continues, good-naturedly. "I have long contemplated a tour of the United States. I am ennuyed to death. I should like a taste of a different life."
"I shall be glad of your company, and you will be quite likely to have a taste of something different if you go with me," laughs Captain Lockhart. "Father writes me that my regiment may be ordered out on the plains to fight the Indians next month."
"Ugh! those horrid savages!" the ladies cry, all but Lady Vera.
She raises the black satin fan a little higher before her face, and leans back in her chair, indifferent, to all appearance, but, oh, with such a deadly pain tearing at her heart-strings.
"To lose him like this," she moans to herself, "it is too dreadful. Oh, if I had even ten minutes alone with him, I would make him understand the truth. He should not leave me!"
But Captain Lockhart, stealing a furtive glance at the beautiful face in its high-bred repose, tells himself sadly:
"She is utterly indifferent to what fate I meet. Beautiful as she is, she must be utterly heartless."
"Then if you like to have me I will be ready to go with you to-morrow, Lockhart," Lord Gordon announces, and gives Lady Vera one gloomy glance and heavy sigh.
It is for her sake he is going. Since she is not for him he means to try and forget her.
But Lady Vera, in the keen smart of her own pain is oblivious to his.
She rises and slips through the low, French window out upon the balcony, and sits down in the darkness not heavier than her thoughts.
Presently low voices float out to her from the curtained recesses of the window—Captain Lockhart's and Lord Gordon's.
"Rather a sudden resolution, isn't it, this trip across the water?" in Lockhart's clear, full voice.
"Well, yes," in Gordon's voice. "I'm running away from myself, you understand. I fancy we are sailing in the same boat, eh, old fellow?"
"Yes," Captain Lockhart answers, quietly.
"I thought so. Saw that you were hard hit. What are you going to do about it?"
"Nothing," Captain Lockhart answers, with grim pleasantry. "I am a soldier. I look for wounds upon the field of battle."
"Has she really a heart, do you think?" Lord Gordon pursues. "The fellows raved about her last season in London. She refused Greyhurst and a score of others as eligible. She must be very cold."
"I fancy so," Captain Lockhart answers, dryly. "A beautiful iceberg."
"Few women would have refused you, Lockhart. There was the beautiful Clarendon year before last, and now the charming Montgomery ready to fling herself at your head."
"Spare my modesty, Lord Gordon. You are calling in the aid of your imagination now. Cannot we have some music to beguile the moments of our last evening at Sunny Bank?"
They pass away to another portion of the room.
Lady Vera sits silent, brooding over the words she has heard.
"How coolly they discussed their rejection," she thinks. "Lord Gordon wondered if I had a heart. Captain Lockhart called me a beautiful iceberg. Perhaps he does not care much. How carelessly he said that he was a soldier and expected wounds upon the field of battle. Perhaps he does not mind it, now that it is over. I remember that one of the poets has written:
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."
The moon comes out and shines upon her, sitting sad and lonely, with her white hands folded across her black dress. Two quiet tears tremble upon her lashes, and fall upon her cheeks.
"If I were a fatalist," she thinks, "I should believe that my life is destined to lie always in the shadow. I have never known an hour of perfect happiness."
No one seems to miss her. In the drawing-room they are singing. Miss Montgomery's pretty soprano blends softly with the soldier's superb tenor.
The pretty, sentimental song dies away into silence presently.
There is some careless talk and laughter. Again the piano keys thrill under the firm touches of a man, and this time Captain Lockhart sings alone, sings with such passion and fervor as Lady Vera has never heard before, sings with his whole heart trembling on his lips, and she feels within her heart that it is his farewell to her:
"I love thee, I love thee,
Far better than wine;
But the curse is above,
Thou'lt never be mine.
"As the blade wears the scabbard,
The billow the shore,
So sorrow doth fret me
Forevermore.
"Fair beauty, I leave thee
To conquer my heart;
I'll see thee, I'll bless thee,
And then depart.
"Let me take, ere I vanish,
One look of thine eyes—
One smile for remembrance,
For life soon flies.
"And now for the fortune
That hangeth above,
And to bury in battle
My dreams of love."
"Does he know that I am here?" she asks herself. "Perhaps he meant me to hear what he said just now. A beautiful iceberg, that is what he thinks me."
Someone misses Lady Vera, perhaps the significance of the soldier's song recalls her to mind; they go out to seek her, the giddy girls, who cannot guess how she has stolen out to bear her pain alone.
"Here she is, hiding from us," they cry. "Come, Lady Vera, it is your turn now to sing."
"I—cannot," she murmurs, faintly.
"No such obstinacy can be tolerated," they reply. "Lord Gordon and Captain Lockhart leave us to-morrow and everyone must contribute to their entertainment to-night. Only one song, Lady Vera, then we will excuse you."
She hesitates for a moment. Then a thought flashes over her mind.
"He sang to me," she thinks. "Why cannot I sing to him? Surely he must understand me then."
She suffers them to persuade her, and Lord Gordon comes forward to turn the leaves of the music. She shakes her head.
"I will sing some simple thing from memory," she says, and then he takes her fan and retains his place near her on that small pretext. His eyes linger on her beauty, the proud throat and fair face rising lily-like from the somber black dress.
She touches the white keys softly with her slim, white fingers. A plaintive melody rises, a mournful, minor chord; she sings with sudden, passionate fervor, some simple, pathetic words:
"I strove to tear thee from my heart,
The effort was in vain,
The spell was ever on my life,
And I am here again.
"Oh, I have ranged in countries strange,
And vowed no more to meet,
But power was in thy parting glance
To bring me to thy feet.
"We cannot go against love's will
When he has bound us fast;
Forgive the thought that did thee wrong
And be my own at last!"
She glances up. If she can point the words by even one deep glance into her lover's eyes, all may yet be well. But Miss Montgomery, as if in malice prepense, has suddenly risen and leaned against the piano just before the singer's eyes. Captain Lockhart, standing with folded arms across the room, is out of the range of her vision. Lady Vera rises in despair. Her innocent little plan has failed. All hope dies in her breast.
She sits down in a quiet corner, and Lord Gordon insists on fanning her, and showing her a new portfolio of engravings. This is his last evening with her, and like the reckless moth that he is, he singes his wings in the flame of her beauty.
Someone calls him away at last, and the girl's heart gives a great, muffled throb of relief. She is alone for the moment, in the quiet alcove, half hidden by the white lace curtain. Will Captain Lockhart come to her now? she asks herself, with a wildly-beating heart.
He sees her sitting there in her black dress and lily-white beauty, the light shining down on her golden head and star-like face. Some impulse stronger than his pride moves him to cross the room to her side. She glances up with a smile so dazzling in its joy, that Tennyson's lines rush into his mind:
"What if with her sunny hair,
And smile as sunny as cold,
She meant to weave me a snare
Of some coquettish deceit,
Cleopatra-like, as of old,
To entangle me when we met,
To have her lion roll in a silken net,
And fawn at a victor's feet?"
He sits down in Lord Gordon's vacant chair, the little stand with the portfolio of new engravings and a vase of roses just between them. The countess takes one of the crimson roses and plays with it to hide her nervousness. She does not think how beautiful her slender, white hands look playing with the red leaves of the rose.
The handsome soldier is for once embarrassed. That smile which she had thought would tell him all has only puzzled him.
"Is she only a coquette, after all?" he asks himself. "Is she trying to draw me into the toils again that she may see how great is her power?"
With that thought he grows cold and hard toward her.
"Lady Vera, do you know that you are very cruel to that poor rose?" he asks.
"Am I? I did not mean to be," she answers, gently, looking down at the torn petals strewing her lap. "I did not really think what I was doing."
"You had better give it to me, I will care for it more tenderly," he pursues.
"Not this, but a sweeter one," she answers, with a beating heart.
Her white hands flutter over the vase a moment, and she selects a lovely scarlet one just opening into perfect bloom.
Bending her head with regal grace, she touches the rose to the crimson flower of her lips and holds it toward him.
Something in the strange significance of the action strikes him oddly. An eager, impetuous speech springs to his lips, but Miss Montgomery, who has seen the rose given, comes hastily up to them, interrupting him.
"Lord Gordon has been telling me of those beautiful new engravings. May I look at them, Lady Vera, if I do not interrupt your tete-a-tete?" she asks with sweet unconsciousness.
"Certainly. Pray take my seat," Lady Vera answers with icy coldness, moving away.
Captain Lockhart is about to follow her when the fair marplot claims his assistance in adjusting the stereoscope to the right focus.
Before she releases him the attention of Lady Vera is claimed by Sir Roger Mansfield, who admires her immensely.
She leans back in her chair listening to his lively sallies of wit and humor with a languid smile, in apparent forgetfulness of the episode of the roses.
"It was only a bit of careless coquetry. I was a fool to think she meant anything by it," the captain tells himself, angrily, turning away.
Fifteen minutes later they are all separating for the night, and Captain Lockhart and Lord Gordon make their adieux to the ladies because they must take the early train for London in the morning before the household is astir.
Lady Vera stands quietly waiting her turn. She has wished Lord Gordon farewell and bon voyage with a smile, and she summons all her pride to bear her up in her parting with Captain Lockhart.
He has left her for the last one, perhaps with some care that hers shall be the last hand he clasps, the last eyes he looks into on leaving England.
"Lady Vera, I have to thank you at parting that you have helped to make my stay in England very pleasant," he says, offering his hand, with his soldierly grace.
No reproaches for the pain she has caused him, the wrecked heart he carries away from the field whereon he was vanquished.
Only the brave, soldierly smile, and the courtly words. He wears the scarlet rose proudly on his breast, though he feels it to be a token of defeat.
Lady Vera lays her hand on his and tries to say something very calm and friendly, but the words die on her white lips.
She is very pale; he cannot help from seeing that. Her voice is very gentle, but so low he fails to catch the words.
She does not look up at him; that is what pains him most. How is he to know that the lowered lids veil the terrible pain in the dark eyes she cannot lift to meet his yearning glance.
Others are looking on, and Vera, Countess of Fairvale, is too proud to wear her heart on her sleeve. The message of the rose has failed, and there is now no other sign to tell him that she loves him and would fain take back the denial of yesterday.
So he goes, wounded by the coldness of her parting, yet wondering a little why the hand that lay a moment in his own had felt so icy cold.
Ah, if he only had guessed the truth. But nothing was further from Captain Lockhart's thoughts than that Lady Vera loved him and longed to let him know the truth.
He carried back with him to his native land the memory of a fair face and a heart that seemed colder than the beautiful iceberg to which he had likened her in the bitterness of his pain.
For Lady Vera, she glides from the room, calm and cold to all outward seeming, but filled with the bitterness of a great despair.
The long night passes in a weary vigil, and the handsome soldier never dreams whose dark eyes watch his departure next morning while the words of his song echo through her heart and brain.