Chapter XXVI: Remorse

That night the pair experienced a feeling of estrangement such as neither of them had ever felt before.

Edris, while dressing for dinner, was suddenly seized by a fit of remorse, and throwing herself wildly upon her bed, gave way to a violent outburst of tears.

“Oh, why did I do it? I must have been mad!” she cried aloud between her sobs. “Why did I do it, when I love Seti so well? But I know his nature. He will never forgive me now that he has learned the depths of my deceit. Yes, I am base and worthless. I am unworthy of his great passion for me. What must he think? What must he think?” she cried in despair, as the tears flowed in torrents.

She remembered how Karl, with his craft and cunning, had fascinated her with those winning ways which he had so often practiced upon other women. She recalled his pretty speeches--how, by slow degrees, he had sought to possess her and poison her mind against the man she loved; how he had so constantly declared that he was too old for her, and the cruel and harsh things he had uttered concerning the man whom she held in such esteem and admiration. She admired Karl for his figure, for his physique, and for his own brave deeds which he related to her, little dreaming, even then, that her hero was only a pinchbeck one, and that his strong, manly figure was, after all, only stuffed with sawdust.

That evening, however, she began, by slow degrees, to gauge the man at his true worth. For the first time in her life she compared him with Seton, and at once realized the great difference in their characters. She began to wonder why she had ever become infatuated with Karl.

Then once again, in her bitter, tearful regret, she cried aloud: “Seti can never forgive me! He knows the truth! He will go--and will never meet me again. Oh, God!” she sobbed. “How can I convince him that I love him, and have loved him all along--that I still love him; that whatever I may have said--whatever I may have done--I am his, and his alone?”

A long, deep sigh escaped her, for she saw plainly that he would never believe that such was the real truth; that he would never believe in her honesty; that, alas! he would never trust her in future.

“Why did I become engaged to Karl?” she cried to herself, her heart bursting with grief and remorse. “Why did I tell him that I loved him when it was not true? I must have been mad--utterly mad that night. He fascinated me, just as a serpent fascinates a bird. I was helpless in his hands when, an hour before the train left, he compelled me to engage myself to him. He knew that I loved Seti, and I told him so. But he would not hear me. And he forced me to accept him. What I felt when, half an hour later, I faced Seti at the train--and I thought he would never know the truth!” the girl sobbed in her bitter anguish, and in her penitence she prayed earnestly for forgiveness and assistance.

At the same time Seton was standing in his room grief-stricken and heart-broken. Even now, when he knew everything, she was keeping up a hollow pretense of loving him. Why? he asked himself. Was it because of his popularity that she still sought to remain affianced to him, yet at the same time meeting her lover in secret? Her protests of love had sickened him.

“She is false--damnably false!” he cried in his sorrow--a pathetic figure, bowed and broken. He stood by his bed and leaned upon it, looking around him bewildered. “And I trusted her! I thought that at last I had found happiness; that I had found my soul’s affinity, the perfect woman!”

He choked down his sobs, and, going to the glass, tied his cravat and reluctantly descended the staircase to the pretty drawing-room, with its bowls of pink tulips, where Mrs. Temperley was sitting before the fire.

“Edris tells me she is going to London to-morrow, Mr. Darville,” said the General’s wife, a tall, well-preserved woman, who had been a great hostess in India before the retirement of her husband. “You will remain here with us, won’t you?”

“I fear that I must also go to London to-morrow,” replied the novelist. “I have an appointment in town to-morrow night. Besides, I can go up with Edris.”

“No, don’t. Remain with us. Do!” urged Edris’s mother.

But Seton made excuse that he was compelled to leave, and that moment Edris, in a plain black dinner-frock, entered the room.

When, later on, at about eleven o’clock, they were left alone together in the morning-room, Edris exclaimed, suddenly gripping his arm and looking into his face:

“I know, Seti, that you can have no further confidence in me, but I repeat what I have already said--that I love you, my wonderful lover, and you alone. Karl is coming to London, and to-morrow night I am meeting him at Victoria.”

“Yes,” he said brokenly, “I know. You have as him to come to London.”

Edris flushed up. “I do not deny it. I have done it in order to test my love for you!” she said very seriously, her little hands trembling upon his shoulders as she tried to bring her face up to his.

“How curious!” he remarked coldly. “You are engaged to me, and yet you are compelled to test your love for me, eh? I really cannot understand you,” he added, with a hard expression on his face.

“I know how base and cruel you must think me, Seti,” she cried in her distress. “I--I can’t ask--I dare not ask you to forgive me. But if I could only explain, you would, I know, think better of me--perhaps, indeed, have pity for me.”

“Pity one who has acted as you have acted?” he said with withering scorn. “You thought me in ignorance of it all--that I was a dotard, and that I was one to be gulled and tricked. Instead, I am a man strong in intelligence and health, with faculties more acute, perhaps, than those of your straw-stuffed lover. No!” cried Darville in his anger. “Go and meet him. You are longing for the hour, as you wrote to him in your last letter four days ago.”

Edris did not answer. She knew that it was true that he had more fear and jealousy of Karl Weiss than of any other man living.

The color mounted to her face and burnt there, but she did not draw her hands away. His very words conjured up hatred and things she did not want to think about, and which she resolutely put away at their first appearance, now that Karl was on his way to London.

“I love you, Seti,” she said after a time, tired and heartsick as she was. “I know that you have thrown me over because of my despicable behavior. But I tell you that I will never marry anyone but you, if that’s any consolation to you.”

He winced.

“Thank you,” he said very coldly.

She hesitated. Then, at last, summoning courage, she said with tears in her eyes:

“Seti--my darling--can you ever believe, after all that has passed, after my foolish infatuation, my abominable deceit and lies, that I still love no other man but yourself?”

“No, Edris,” was his harsh reply, for his heart was now turned to stone. “I regret I cannot. You are very young, and, the difference in our ages being so great, perhaps it is, after all, best as it is. At least, your lover says so!” he added bitterly.

Edris wondered fully what had torn the scales from his eyes so roughly.

“Don’t you think I love you, Seti?” she cried in desperation. “You shouldn’t talk like this.”

He put out his hand as though to touch hers, but stopped in time.

“Will you never forgive me?” She caught hold of him. “Seti, kiss me!”

But the man turned his head away. He had become sickened by her treachery, her falsehoods, and her pretense of love.

Then her pent-up emotions found vent, and she opened the floodgates of her soul and poured out the truth to him in short, quick sentences--how the flirtation, begun by the kiss beneath the mistletoe, had ended in a mutual attraction, and how Karl had forced a profession of love from her lips, and a promise to marry him, just before they had parted at Interlaken.

Edris, with tears streaming from her great, gray eyes, told him the truth. On her knees she implored forgiveness, covering his hands with passionate kisses.

Alas! it all left him quite cold. She saw that he had become a changed man.

Next morning he accepted Mrs. Temperley’s pressing invitation to remain until Edris returned from meeting Karl. He did not wish to intrude upon their meeting, and, besides, the trap was set for his enemy by the lucrative appointment awaiting him. It was Wednesday. She said that she would return to Stagsden on Saturday.

So he went to the station with her. They uttered few words, both being full of their own thoughts. Edris was going to meet his enemy in order to see whether she preferred him to Seton Darville! When she entered the compartment, her companion suddenly whispered to her:

“Do not forget that I await you!”

She turned quickly to him as she stood upon the footboard, and replied:

“No, Seti, I shall not forget.”

And the train went off, leaving him alone. He saw her smiling face at the window. She was expectant and happy. Then he turned, and, with tears standing in his eyes, walked back to the car.

She had gone to meet his false friend, the traitor who had extinguished the sun of his life.