Chapter XXII: Love’s Ovation

“You have the victory, my own!” he said at last, with a droll smile. “You have triumphed!”

“How triumphed?” inquired Lilith.

“You have drawn me to your side, you have brought me to retract, and yet you have not told me your secret!”

“No! I have not, indeed; but——”

“Nor has any one else told me, nor do I even surmise its nature; in a word, Lilith, I know no more of that mystery now than I knew on that dreadful day when it parted us! And yet I am here beside you, repudiating all my own injurious doubts and suspicions, taking you in perfect love and perfect trust.”

“Oh, thank Heaven that you can so take me!” exclaimed Lilith, fervently.

“And now I do not even ask you for your secret.”

“Oh, but I can tell you now! I am free to tell you now——”

“But I do not even care to hear it! I do not even ask you by

‘What conjuration and what mighty magic’

you, my little country girl, are here in Paris, arrayed and lodged in royal magnificence, and gracing more than any other lady in it the salon of Madame la Princesse Gherardini. I am so perfectly satisfied for the present just to have you by my side.”

“I bless you for your faith and your forbearance, Tudor! But—I can tell you the secret of Monsieur Ancillon’s correspondence with me in one single word. He is my—father!”

“Your father, Lilith! Ancillon your father!”

“Yes, though I never knew it until after we were married.”

“Ancillon your father! Incredible! Are you sure of that?”

“Quite sure.”

“How did you discover the fact? Did he tell you?”

“I first discovered it by the packet of old letters and papers put away in that trunk which was the sole legacy of my dear mother to me.”

“Ah! Ah! Ancillon himself, when he came to me once at Cloud Cliffs, referred me to those documents; but when I had the trunk broken open and searched, the papers were gone!”

“I had brought them away for safe keeping. They were too important to be left.”

“I understand now! I understand. But, Lilith! We all thought your parentage was so well known that there could be no mistake about it! Your father and mother lived at Seawood. Your father was drowned in saving my life. Your mother died of the shock the very day of your birth. How, then, is it possible that this man can claim to be your father?”

“Oh, Tudor, it is a long and sad story. There is no time to tell it to you now; but this much I can tell: Joseph Wyvil and Elizabeth, who lived such a secluded life at Seawood that their neighbors knew little or nothing of them except that they belonged to the village church, and led quiet, industrious and blameless lives—were not husband and wife as people took them to be—but a devoted brother and a most unfortunate young sister, who had lost her husband by a fate much worse than death. More than this I cannot tell you now. Both died too suddenly to confide the secret to any one. So I was registered as the child of Joseph and Elizabeth Wyvil, when in fact I was the child of Alphonzo and Elizabeth Zuniga!”

“Zuniga!”

“Yes.”

“Then Ancillon is a relative of that young Spaniard we met in Washington who looked so much like him?”

“He was the same. Ancillon and Zuniga were one. Ancillon was his professional name, Zuniga was his family name.”

“A very strange story, Lilith.”

“My father will give you every particular as soon as your convenience permits him to do so. And I shall furnish the documents that shall prove the truth of his story.”

“How is it, my child, that you could not at the very first have told me that Ancillon was your father? That you are now at liberty to tell that secret which cost you so much to keep a year ago?”

“Because I am now in possession of the sequel to the secret, without which I could never have told the secret. But you shall know all from my father. I think, also, I ought to tell you how I happen to be in Paris with the Princess Gherardini. I can do so in a very few words. When I left home I went to New York, found a home with a good Christian, motherly woman, the widow of a clergyman. After waiting many weeks to hear from you, without success, I answered a lady’s advertisement for a traveling companion, and was so fortunate as to be accepted and to enter the household of the Baroness Von Bruyin, now, since morning, the Princess Gherardini. I did not know that she was your first love. In telling me the story you had not told me any names. She grew to love me. I know not why——”

“Why does every one love you, child?”

“Ah, I don’t know that every one does! I don’t even think that many do. Madame Von Bruyin has always treated me with the distinction of an honored guest and the affection of a beloved sister. You saw me in her immediate circle to-day. That has always been my place.”

“She is a much nobler and more generous woman than I had ever supposed her to be.”

“Oh, she is indeed! But, Tudor! Tell me how you came to be here at this wedding reception, when I supposed you to be at the Court of ——?”

“My love, I received a pressing letter from the baroness, not only inviting but commanding, exhorting and entreating me to come; going through all the variations of the potential mood to compel me to come. In short, darling, it was such a letter as could not be gainsayed. I obeyed, thinking that the lady only wanted an opportunity to say—Hail! and Farewell! to an old friend. I came and found my lost treasure! And now I know her motive was to restore that treasure to my possession. And I thank and bless her for it.”

“Amen and amen!” breathed Lilith.

“But, dearest dear! She introduced you as Mrs. Wyvil! How was that?”

“Oh, Tudor, I dreamed that some one in a high, delirious fever had told me that I must never call myself by the name of Hereward again, and I was so foolish as to take the sick man at his word.”

“I remember! I remember! Oh, Lilith! How much you have to forgive!”

“I have nothing to forgive! nothing! I am just as happy as a lark!”

“My darling, since you entered Madame Von Bruyin’s family under the name of Wyvil, how could she have known or guessed that you were my wife?”

Lilith paused and reflected, and then she answered:

“I am not pledged to secrecy in this matter; yet, if you were not my husband, and if I were not fully resolved never to have a secret, either of my own or of any one else’s, from you, I should not tell you this; for women should not betray women, especially to the common enemy; but I know you are not vain, Tudor, and you are generous.”

“Now, if you object——”

“I do not object—I insist on telling you.”

“Go on, then.”

“You know she was your first love——”

“My first—and last—hallucination! You, Lilith, were my first and enduring love,” amended Hereward.

“Oh! thank Heaven!” breathed the young wife, almost inaudibly; then she said:

“You were not quite just to her, Tudor. The old baron whom she married was more of a father than a husband to her; he doted on her from her infancy. She was the only creature in the world that he loved—except her father.”

“She told me that.”

“He engaged himself to her that he might give her a title and leave her his fortune.”

“She did not need his fortune. She was the heiress of great wealth.”

“I know, but still he wished to leave his darling all he possessed.”

“He might have done that without marrying her.”

“Yes, but he wished also to give her his title; the title which—they said—he meant to ask of the emperor, in lieu of the payment of many millions loaned by him during the war. He wished to ennoble his pet.”

“Well, love? What has all this got to do with your telling the baroness your story?” inquired Hereward, with a smile.

“Everything! You shall hear. This old man, who loved without self-love, discovered that his fair betrothed was very unhappy, and pressed her for the reason. That she should have a sorrow that he could not comfort, with all his wealth and power, seemed as wonderful as it was insupportable! He pressed her for her confidence, and she gave it to him—told him—well, she told him, in effect, that she would rather marry Mr. Tudor Hereward than Herr Bruyin. And he released her from her engagement to himself, and promised to win over her father to consent to her marriage with you. When you returned to Washington, she sought you out and offered the hand that she had once refused. But you, being then married, could not accept it. Tudor! were you sorry?”

“I am not sorry now, dearest, at all events,” he answered, drawing the little figure closer to his side.

“Of course, sorrow, disappointment and humiliation preyed upon the spoiled beauty. Your marriage with me was announced, and Herr Bruyin, who was still watching over his darling, knew then the threefold cause of her anguish. He went to her and reminded her that their marriage had been announced some weeks before, and that the announcement had not been contradicted, and he proposed to her to let their betrothal stand; to marry at the appointed time; to go with him to Europe; and, in the grand tour and at the great capitals, where she would be welcomed and fêted, to forget the disappointments she had experienced here. She followed his counsel, and they were married and went abroad. I tell you this, Tudor, that you may be just to her; for now you see that she was not a double-dealer; she was not deceitful; she was perfectly frank with you and with her old betrothed, from first to last.”

“Then I have wronged her in my judgment. And it begins to seem to me that I am rather given to wronging people, eh, Lilith?”

“No, you are not. You have been misled by false appearances, which were nobody’s fault.”

“You, at least, are very charitable, Lilith. But go on, dear.”

“You know, I suppose, that Herr Bruyin received his title soon after his arrival in his native city, and that he survived the event but a few months, and that Herr Von Kirschberg died about the same time?”

“Yes, I heard that.”

“Madame Von Bruyin, bereft of husband and father, returned to New York early in April. In May she advertised for a companion. I applied for the situation, pleased madame, and was accepted, as I told you. She knew me only as Mrs. Wyvil and believed me to be a widow. She grew very fond of me——”

“Very naturally.”

“We were to sail by the Kron Prinz on the first of June.”

“Why, I sailed on the Kron Prinz, on the first of June!” Hereward interrupted.

“Exactly. And that was the very reason why we did not. And now comes the crisis of my story—the reason why I was compelled to discover my real name and position to Madame the Baroness. She had seen the account of your appointment as Secretary of Legation, coupled with the theory that you had accepted the post mainly for the sake of serving the country in a place far removed from the spot associated with the tragic death of your wife——”

“‘Young and lovely wife,’ I think they put it, Lilith,” said Hereward, with a droll smile. “Well, it was true, so far as I know. My health had broken down under the heavy blow of your loss and your supposed death, Lilith. And when I was convalescent I eagerly snatched at the opportunity of leaving a home that had become hateful to me, and of seeking distraction, not consolation, not forgetfulness, in new scenes and new duties. And madame saw my name in the published list of passengers, I suppose?”

“Yes; curiosity, a very natural curiosity, led her to read the list of cabin passengers by the Kron Prinz, to see who were to be our fellow-passengers, and she saw your name there. In another part of the paper she had seen the account of your voyage and its causes, of which I have just told you. But, Tudor, she did not tell me all this until we were out at sea. On that day when she sent for me she gave me, as I said, only an outline of her reasons. She told me that there was a party going out by the Kron Prinz with whom she did not choose to travel.”

“A very proper decision, under the very peculiar circumstances. But what has that got to do——”

“I am rapidly coming to that, Tudor. After we had sailed, when the pilot left us and we were far out of sight of land, Madame Von Bruyin gave me her whole confidence. She told me the story of her early betrothal with an old millionaire; and of her first love—or fancied love—into which her inexperienced heart had betrayed her. She told me everything just as I have told it to you.”

“And as I had told you, months before,” put in Hereward.

“Yes; but you gave me the facts from your point of view, and she gave them to me from her own. And hers was the true view, Tudor.”

“Yes, I acknowledge that.”

“She said that in her position and in yours—both so recently bereaved—she could not possibly think of crossing the ocean in the same ship with you. And then, Tudor, she added an explanation that made my hair stand on end—so to speak.”

“Ah! what was that which could have straightened these pretty, rippling locks and made them stand erect ‘like quills upon the fretful porcupine?’” gayly inquired Hereward, as he passed his hand fondly over her little curly black head.

“She told me that in a few months you (she and yourself) would probably meet in ——. And, in short, that—both being free to form new ties—the old interest in each other would be revived; that after the year of mourning had been past, you two would, of course, marry, and that she should do everything in her power to atone to you for all the disappointment she had caused you, and to make your life happy! Was not that enough to make my hair bristle up on end—to hear another woman tell me to my face that she was going to marry my husband and live happy all the rest of their lives?”

Hereward broke into a merry laugh.

“You know, I could not let her go on dreaming that dream. I told her she must not think of such a thing. And when, being very much astonished at my assurance, she asked me why she must not, I told her because it would be a deadly sin, for that Mr. Hereward’s wife was still living. And when she pressed to know why I thought so, I had to tell her, because I myself was that wife, supposed to be dead. Well, then, of course, it was necessary to tell her the cause of our parting—that it was a bitter misunderstanding growing out of circumstances which placed me in a false light. I spoke only in general terms; and because I could not go into details I offered to cancel our contract and leave her as soon as we should land at Havre.”

“And what would you have done, then, as ‘a stranger in a strange land,’ Lilith? Would you have come on to me?” inquired Hereward.

“Uncalled, and after all that had passed? Oh, no! I could not have done that. I should have taken the first steamer back to New York and returned to Aunt Sophie.”

“Aunt Sophie?”

“Mrs. Downie, the clergyman’s widow, with whom I had lived in New York. But Madame Von Bruyin would not consent to cancel our contract. She insisted that I should remain with her. She was very good about it all. Indeed, she treated me with more than even her usual kindness, and from that hour I became to her as a beloved and cherished sister. I think she got over her sentimental fancy for you, for I think it was nothing more than that.”

“Probably not,” said Hereward, with a smile.

“And when the ‘Fairy Prince’ appeared in the form of Gherardini, I think the beauteous lady discovered that she had never really been in love in all her life before,” added Lilith, archly.

“I am very glad to hear it. No heartier congratulations were ever offered to any bride than were mine to the newly married princess to-day,” said Hereward.

“And, by the way,” suggested Lilith, “the bridal pair are to leave for Marseilles, en route for Rome, at five o’clock, and it must be near that hour now. Will you return to the drawing-room or remain and await me here?”

“I will go with you,” said Hereward, as he arose and offered Lilith his arm.