Chapter VII: Pure Gold and Gilded Dross

The half-brothers were indeed having high words in the library. They stood glaring at each other, both tall, strong, handsome--Byrd, blond and stately bearing his thirty-two years with grace--Delmar, younger, of slighter build, with his striking Italian-like beauty of raven hair and flashing dark eyes.

But blue eyes can blaze, too, and Byrd’s were alight with scorn as he demanded:

“Is it true as Josephine implied that you married Maisie for spite?”

Delmar, in his passionate excitement, writhing under the sense of his wrongs, answered recklessly:

“It is partly true, but I had two reasons--the other was to revenge myself on you. I knew that all your ill-gotten wealth could not console you for her loss.”

The shaft struck home, and Byrd quivered under it.

“You were right. Her love would have outweighed millions to me! And to think you won it, and did not prize it, oh, God!” he groaned.

Delmar, driven mad by his own wrongs, simply gloated over his brother’s misery.

“I have paid you back in your own coin. By poisoning my father’s mind against me so that he left me poor, you robbed me of Josephine’s love.”

Byrd answered sneeringly:

“Bah, it was not worth having! Contrast her fickle fancy with Maisie’s womanly faith and love, and you have pure gold and gilded dross! Besides, how easy it would be to retaliate by marrying Josephine myself! Do you not see that two can play at the same game?”

There was dogged recklessness in the other’s reply:

“Oh, yes, easily. Josephine told me herself last night that she would jump at an offer from you, and that Maisie was a little fool for not taking you!”

“I agree with Josephine--under the circumstances! Better be the adored wife of a rich husband than the deserted, unloved bride of one who married her for spite!” Byrd answered cuttingly, and again they glared at each other.

For once Delmar did not seem to know what to say, and his brother, drawing a long breath, added scathingly:

“You have done innocent little Maisie a dastardly wrong.”

The charge put Delmar on his mettle. He cried out eagerly, in self-defense:

“It is not for you to prate of wrongs, Byrd Barrington! You whose accursed influence with the dead, whose revenge for your rejection made her penniless! As for me I have only done her a kindness. I met her last night when I came away from my parting with Josephine stealing away from this house, a forlorn little soul going out into the cold world to earn her daily bread, she knew not how. I offered to marry her, and she accepted willingly, owning that she loved me. She is happy, believing that I love her, and by and by everything will come right. In my absence she will have what my father left to me--a home and a small income. When I return we will take up life together, and having by then gotten over the pain of losing Josephine, I am sure it will be easy to learn to love my pretty little Maisie.”

Was it only their fancy, or did a long quivering, stifled sigh seem to follow the young man’s excited speech?

They started and gazed, questioningly, at each other, but after a moment’s hesitation Byrd said reassuringly:

“How like a sigh that sounded! But we are quite alone. It was only the wind in the pines.”

“Now I must go and bid adieu to my bride, for time runs short,” said Delmar, with an air of relief that the whole farce would soon be over. “I am sure that Aunt Constance will take care of Maisie, and as for you, Byrd,” with a short, mirthless laugh, “if you do marry that little cat Josephine, don’t for Heaven’s sake send me wedding-cards! I shall not have money enough to send a bridal-gift, and I had as lief not know when the sale comes off, so, _adios_!” and with a mocking bow he strode from the room and the presence of his elder brother, the proud master of Castellane.

He was proud, indeed, and in many things he had been most successful, but as he was left alone and the mask of pride fell from his face he did not look like a happy man. How indeed could any one look happy on whom the weight of an oath of vengeance had rested heavily from childhood’s hours?

He had kept his promise to the dead; he had been faithful to his vow, but did it recoil heavily on his own heart?

It looked like it, as he flung himself down with a groan into his favorite chair, and wiped from his high white brow the cold sweat of excitement, muttering to himself:

“Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.”

His eyes closed, and he fell into a deep and painful reverie, so deep and absorbing that he did not see a slender white-gowned form gliding softly from the room with a single startled, backward glance, fearful of detection.

It was Maisie who had been hiding in a curtained alcove in plain hearing of every word.

Not that she had gone there purposely to eavesdrop, but only to hide herself and her misery from mocking eyes until Delmar should be gone.

Josephine’s sudden revelation of the truth had for the moment almost driven her mad with shame and pain and humiliation.

While Delmar’s startled eyes had been fixed on Josephine’s hurried exit with her mother, Maisie had also fled from the room observed only by Byrd and Mrs. French.

Naturally they thought she had gone to her own room, but feeling too well that she would be followed there, and too furious with rage and grief to endure human pity in this hour of humiliation, the girl blundered into the library and concealed herself in the curtained alcove where she felt sure no one would dream of looking.

Angrily and authoritatively Byrd had called his younger brother to account in the library, where Maisie, crouching in her unwisely chosen concealment, had heard every word, too crushed and wretched to interrupt and betray herself.

Heaven only knew what bitter thoughts passed through her tortured mind as she listened to their quarrel, but as Byrd sank with closed eyes into that most unhappy reverie she stole from the room with a startling purpose in her mind.