Chapter XXVIII

“THIS HOUR, IN WHICH I SEE MY REVENGE AT HAND, IS THE SWEETEST OF MY LIFE.”

“Revenge! revenge! Timotheous cries,
See the furies arise:
See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in the air!”

Somehow, after Eve’s visit to her, Vivian finds it wearisome to go back to her writing. Old thoughts and memories crowd upon her mind. She locks her manuscript into her desk, and sits down in the sunny door-way, trying to lose herself in the chatter of the little child. A great longing overwhelms her to take her little one and fly away to some distant spot, out of reach of the cruel world--just to hide herself with her restless heart, with its numb sense of pain and pride.

Pride! Yes, for Eve’s careless words had set her sensitive nerves all aquiver.

“Doctor Verne is coming home.” Those words beat dreary time in her brain, repeating themselves over and over.

“He is nothing to me, nothing,” she sighs to herself. “But I cannot bear to have him come back here, where he will hear the story of my poverty and Earle’s disgraceful career. Alas, that he should see me like this--I, who scorned him because he dared refuse the poisoned draught that has wrought me such irredeemable woe.”

Earle Essex, who had been West on a rather mysterious business trip, came home the day before the wedding. He had been on business for Orne, he said, and as soon as Vivian met his eyes she saw that he had been drinking again, that he had broken his pledge. To her passionate reproaches he answered, sullenly:

“I could not get away from Orne without drinking with him. I won’t let him tempt me again, Viva, but I could not resist him, he was so jubilant.”

“Over his approaching marriage, I suppose,” she sneered bitterly, for she hated the wily Frenchman who had wrought her husband’s ruin.

“His marriage?” Essex exclaimed, staring at her blankly.

Viva goes to her desk, comes back without speaking, and puts a large square white envelope in his hand. He draws out the wedding cards, his eyes dilating with surprise.

“Married--and to Eve Kingsley! Well, and I am invited to the wedding. Oh, now I understand why he was so displeased at my return two days earlier than he expected. I was to be kept out of the way.”

A smile that was demoniac in its intensity came over Earle Essex’s dark, dissipated face, and turning to his wife he exclaimed:

“Viva, Monsieur Orne has been my evil genius from first to last, and I hate him so that this hour, in which I see my revenge at hand, is the sweetest hour of my life.”

“What would you do?” she exclaimed, in alarm at his strange manner.

“Nothing criminal. Do not be alarmed, Viva. I am going to do something that will make you very happy, dear, but I must go out of town now. Good-by, Viva, dear. I will return in time for Monsieur Orne’s wedding--ha, ha!” and with a wild laugh Earle Essex hurried from the room, and the house, leaving Vivian in a whirl of wonder and perplexity.