Chapter XI: Interview Between Adelaide and Lionne

Forgive me if the love once thine
Hath changed itself unsought to me!
I did not tempt it from thy breast,
I nothing knew of thee!
And soon perhaps ’twill be my lot
As thou art now to be.—_Philip Bailey._

Let us return to Adelaide and to the fateful evening when light and joyous as a bird, she flew up the stairs and opened her chamber door to meet that which was to change the whole tenor of her future life.

Carolling a lively ditty, she crossed the threshold of her room and suddenly paused in amazement.

There, in the centre of the chamber, facing the door, stood a tall, majestic girl, clad in a dark riding-habit, faded, dusty, and travel-stained. Her neglected hair, escaping from the round black jockey-cap, hung in jet black elf-locks down her shoulders and bosom. Her fine face was pale, thin, and haggard with fatigue, illness, and sorrow. Her intensely black eyes were burning fiercely with the fires of passion, or of madness.

All this Adelaide took in in one glance of mingled surprise and terror.

She was about to speak, and ask the motive of this presence, when the stranger interrupted her by saying—

“Stop! do not move! do not speak yet! I wish to look at you!”

“Ah, she is mad! she is some poor creature who has eluded her keepers and strayed into this house, and found her way to my chamber!” thought Adelaide, regarding the intruder with a look of compassion that rendered her beautiful face still more lovely.

The stranger gazed at her until the eyes of Adelaide fell beneath the fixed scrutiny.

“Maid or wife are you?” asked the intruder.

“Both—I believe,” said the fair girl, hesitating and blushing.

“Both? You are foolish! how can that be?”

“I do not know.”

With a dark frown gathering upon her haggard face, the stranger averted her head, as in the same calm, sepulchral tone, she inquired—

“What is your name?”

“Adelaide Deville.”

“Your husband’s name?”

“Orville Deville.”

Again the head of the dark girl was averted for a moment, as she said—

“And so you are wife as well as maid?”

“Yes.”

“Explain yourself!”

Now, had Lady Adelaide been proud, irascible and egotistical, she would not have deigned to answer these seemingly impertinent questions; but the Earl’s daughter, the heiress and the beauty, was humble, gentle and merciful. She never thought of attempting to overwhelm with her own dignity the poor wanderer and supposed lunatic before her. Not therefore from haughtiness, but from bashfulness, she hesitated.

“Explain!” again, and more authoritatively commanded the wild girl.

“Oh! it is very simple, though very strange. Mr. Deville and myself, when we were mere children, had the marriage-contract executed, and the marriage-rites solemnized between us, by the authority of our respective parents, at the death-bed of my father. Then we parted—he remaining at school at Eton, I returning with my mother-in-law to River-view. And we never met again until a few months ago.”

“_What_ month was that in which you met again?” suddenly demanded the stranger.

“It was in November, after his return from the fatal expedition,” replied Adelaide, wondering more and more at the behavior of this fancied maniac.

“Then, though his hand was bound, his heart was free when he met me,” murmured the stranger, in an almost inaudible voice. “But since! but since!” she added, vehemently. And raising her fierce, black eyes, she fixed them with a deep and threatening gaze upon the lovely face of Adelaide and demanded—

“Since his return you have lived together as a married pair?”

“Yes—no—indeed I do not know!” said Adelaide, ingeniously.

Doubt, scorn, irony,—all disfigured the fine face of the stranger as she gazed at the lovely girl, and mockingly inquired—

“Do you love him?”

“Love him?” repeated Adelaide, blushing and hesitating; “why, it is my duty to love my husband, is it not?”

“_Duty!_” exclaimed the stranger, now with undisguised scorn; “oh, _of course_ it is your duty! You love your mother-in-law also?”

“Oh yes!”

“And your servants?”

“Yes.”

“And your horse, and dog, and canary birds, and flowers?”

“Yes.”

“We should love _all_ creatures, should we not!” said the dark girl, ironically.

“So our religion teaches us.”

“And you find that easy.”

“It is natural and pleasant to me.”

“Well, dainty lady! baby girl! love all creatures in the heavens above! the earth beneath! and the waters under the earth, if you will! all creatures but—ONE!” exclaimed the wild creature, with a sudden and terrible change of manner, and stalking forward and laying her hand upon the shoulder of Adelaide, who gazed upon her in sorrow and fear.

“Ay!” continued she, sending the glance of her fierce dark eyes like a flaming two-edged sword into the very soul of her rival, “love all creatures but one! as, should that one prove false to me——in life and in death, through time and black eternity, I should hate but that one!”

“And that one, who doubtless turned your brain, poor girl, who was he?”

“MY HUSBAND, ORVILLE DEVILLE!” said Lionne, firmly meeting the eyes of Adelaide.

“Poor thing, she is very, very mad!” thought Adelaide, gazing in deep pity upon the speaker.

With the certainty of unerring instinct, the latter divined her thought, and answered—

“Mad, am I?—no, little lady! the time for madness has not come! my work is not done! the issue is not yet! I have to try and to judge a man! And for this task my spirit masters every passion of my heart and every faculty of my brain, and holds them in readiness to work its will. Listen! Oh, you will find ‘strange method in my madness!’ Are you listening?”

“Poor girl! Yes, I am attending to every word you say, if that will be any consolation to you. But while you talk, sit down and let me get you something. You look dreadfully worn out,” said Adelaide, compassionately, drawing forward her easiest lounging-chair and then moving towards the door, when Lionne recalled her—

“Stop, Lady Adelaide! I want no food and no seat! I cannot eat or rest! It is you calm ones, who live for _duty_, that can do that! I have a story to tell to which you must listen! Come back!”

Adelaide complied, returned, and stood with her elbow resting on the corner of the toilet-table, while the stranger, standing before her with folded arms, commenced her communication.

“Lady Adelaide Lorne—for you have no right to the name of Deville—you shall soon know whether the wretch who stands before you, claiming the name that you bear, be either mad or false! Mad women wander from their theme, or stick to one point with crazy pertinacity. And false ones bring no irresistible proof of what they advance. Ah! you are listening!”

“To every syllable!” exclaimed Adelaide, upon whom the stranger’s impressive manner was beginning to produce a painful effect.

“Lady Adelaide Lorne, it was upon the afternoon of the twentieth of last September, that being caught out in a thunderstorm on the mountains, I first met Orville Deville, faint from recent illness, lost with his servant in the wilderness, and in search of shelter. I took him to my father’s house, where he was rested, refreshed, and, in due time, restored to health——”

“Go on! Go on! Why do you pause!” exclaimed Adelaide, growing pale and leaning upon the dressing-table.

“Little lady, we loved each other! not as _you_ love who love from _duty_! _we_ loved _despite_ of duty! yes! at the first mutual meeting flash of our eyes that electric spark of love was lighted! it kindled into a blaze! it spread into a conflagration that consumed every obstacle between us! Six weeks passed in a burning dream, in which you, his mother, his home, his duty, his _all_ of heaven and earth was forgotten—IN ME! And _I_! I was so happy as it is seldom given to a human being to be in time or in eternity! on earth or in heaven!”

“But, merciful Lord, girl, you were not his wife!” exclaimed Adelaide, gazing now in horror upon the speaker.

Lionne smiled in bitter disdain, and replied—

“_I was._ We were married by special license, by the Episcopal clergyman at Winchester, on the thirtieth of last October. Do you know this ring?” and drawing a mourning-ring from her finger, she laid it on the dressing-table under the eyes of Lady Adelaide, who immediately recognized it as a family relic. “Farther proof would you have, young lady?—Read this, then!” and she laid before her tortured auditor a certificate of the marriage of Leonora Delaforêt with Orville Deville, duly signed and witnessed.

Adelaide glanced over the paper, saw its purport, and silently acknowledged its importance; and then, as if no longer able to stand, moved from her position before the dressing-table and sank down in a sitting posture on the lounge, beside it.

“Oh, go on! Go on!” was all that she found strength to say.

“A few days passed! We were awakened from our dream of love! A letter came to him from his home, with news of his mother’s extreme illness. With expressions of the deepest regret, with professions of the most devoted affection, with promises of undying fidelity, sealed by the most solemn vows, he took leave of me and departed. In due time I received his first letter, written the day after his arrival at River-view. Do you know his handwriting?—Look at this, lady!” and she placed Orville’s letter before Adelaide, who threw a hasty glance at the superscription, recognized the familiar handwriting, and covered her eyes with her hands.

“Open and read it, young lady! I would have you to know all! Open and read.”

“No, no, I cannot; it was not intended for my eyes,” said Lady Adelaide with gentle dignity, yet with a voice so full of despair that the wild girl started and gazed at her in consternation. But Adelaide lowered her head until her pale gold ringlets fell forward and veiled her white face from the eyes of the stranger, as she said—

“Have you any thing more to say to me?”

“Yes! I answered that letter; but received no second one! I waited and _hoped_—no letter! I waited and _doubted_—yet no letter! I waited and _feared_—still no letter! At last, when I no longer waited, but resolved to write and find out the cause of his silence, came unexpected news of him! A young girl, Kate Kyte—do you know her?”

“Yes, yes, I know her!”

“She came to our lodge, with her boy-brother, asking and receiving hospitality for the night. In the course of our conversation that evening, it fell out that Kate Kyte lived at Bush Creek Mill, adjoining River-view, the seat of Mr. Orville Deville, who, she told me, was married to the loveliest lady in the land!”

“Oh, Father in heaven, have pity on us!” wailed Adelaide, in a voice full of woe, yet so low-toned that its sound failed to reach the ears of the wild forest-girl, who continued—

“Young lady, I forgot the sacred rites of hospitality! I forgot my own womanhood! I forgot all things else in my rising passion! I sprang upon that girl as a tigress upon her prey! I told her she lied! lied in her throat! that she had been bribed to make mischief between two hearts that loved! I called upon her to retract her words or perish under my hands! I shook, and tossed, and worried her as a terrier might a kitten, until my strength utterly failed, and I dropped her! Then she had her revenge! Knowing that _my_ greatest punishment and _her_ greatest vindication lay in the words she had spoken, she told me that she forgave my violence, and that I could easily satisfy myself of the truth or falsehood of her statement by simply coming to see. I came! I am here!”

“Oh, is there any thing else? Is there any thing else?” cried Adelaide, in tones of such anguish that they seemed to burst from a breaking heart.

“Yes, Lady Adelaide. I told you—_you_ who bear his _name_—that _I_ was his _wife_! I _am_ his wife by stronger ties than the benediction pronounced at the instance of guardians by a mercenary magistrate over two unconscious children! I am his wife by mutual love, and knowledge, and vows breathed earnestly before high heaven and sealed by God’s minister! I am his wife and—the mother of his unborn child.”

“Help me! oh, help me, merciful Lord!” moaned Adelaide, in the utter weakness of anguish, as she slipped down upon the carpet and buried her face in the cushions of the lounge.

Lionne gazed upon her distress with the pitiless triumph with which a jealous wife might gaze upon her crushed rival.

“Help me! help me! Saviour of the world!” still wept and wailed Adelaide.

And while she still lay there upon the carpet, with her head and arms cast upon the lounge, in the utter prostration of anguish, there was heard a gentle rap at the door. It was repeated and reiterated before it attracted the rapt senses of the two absorbed girls. At length Lionne went up to Adelaide and shaking her gently, said:

“Some one knocks.”

Then starting up, Adelaide drew her disheveled hair from her pale face, listened, and sought to collect her scattered faculties.

The knock was repeated the third time.

She arose, and smoothing her disordered dress, went to the door and asked:

“Who is there?”

“Me, Miss Adely! Marse Awful say, how de horses is waitin’ dis half hour, and now, is you gwine to take your ride?” spoke the voice of Keziah, outside.

Without answering, and with an expression of extreme terror on her lovely face, Adelaide hurried from the door, and walked several times up and down the room, wringing her hands and crying:

“Oh, Saviour of the lost! help me! help me!”

A louder knock and the voice of Keziah inquiring:

“What shall I tell Marse Awful, honey?” recalled Adelaide to her senses. Still pale, trembling and embarrassed, she hurried to the door.

“Tell him—he must excuse me! I—am not well! I cannot ride—with him to-day! Go!” she said in weak, faltering, and hesitating tones. “I shall never, never ride with him again!” added the poor girl, in a low, despairing voice, as she left the door.

Keziah was heard retreating along the passage.

“Saviour of the lost, help or I perish!” prayed Adelaide, walking wildly up and down the floor, and distractedly wringing her hands.

Lionne stood gazing pitilessly on her grief.

Presently was heard a man’s ringing footstep along the hall, approaching the room.

Adelaide paused in a panic.

Lionne, started out of her stony stillness, stood bending forward, every faculty merged in that of listening.

The steps stopped at the door and there was a sharp rap.

Adelaide glanced in terror towards Lionne.

The face of that wild, dark girl was a study. Her form was drawn up to its proudest height; her head erect and thrust forward; her face deadly pale, except where in each cheek burned a dark-red hectic spot, that went in and out like the glow of a living coal of fire; her lips were rigidly compressed until every drop of blood had left them colorless; her eyes were strained, fixed, and blazing; her whole expression of countenance exhibited curiosity, jealousy, suspicion, hatred, and malice, in one terrible combination of unscrupulous purpose, immutable will, and irresistible power!

Adelaide looked, and shuddered through every nerve.

The knock was repeated, and accompanied by the voice of Orville Deville, calling in affectionate tones.

“Adelaide! Adelaide!”

With an adjuring gesture to Lionne, whose ears and heart had been thrilled by hearing again the sound of that once loved voice, Adelaide hurried to the door, unable to utter but the one single syllable—

“Well?”

“Adelaide, my dear, what is the matter?” he asked, in a low voice.

Before answering, Adelaide turned a deprecating look towards Lionne, whose brows had gathered darkly over her flashing eyes. With a beseeching gesture to her rival, the fair girl turned once more to the door, and replied—

“I am not very well; I—have a slight headache.”

“The ride this lovely afternoon would do you good.”

“No; I feel certain that it would make me worse.”

“As you will, then, sweet cousin. But can I not do something for you?”

“No, I thank you.”

“Nor send any one to you?”

“Oh, no! I only need quiet, Mr. Deville.”

“Well, lie down and sleep, love! You will be better by tea-time.”

“Oh, yes!”

“And join us, as usual, at the table.”

“Oh, yes!” said Adelaide, with such an air and tone of distraction that Mr. Deville, believing she really had a nervous headache, took leave, saying—

“Good-by, sweet Adelaide! I leave you to your repose, in the hope of seeing you restored by tea-time!”

The last echo of his steps had scarcely died away in the distance before Lionne strode to the side of Adelaide, and laying her hand heavily upon the shoulder of the girl, and gazing threateningly in her pale face, asked—

“Do you know how much I have suffered standing here, hearing his voice, feeling his presence, and knowing what I know?”

“I am sure that you did, and do suffer,” said Adelaide gently; “but there are several things that should comfort you. First of all, your conscience is clear of offence. You knew nothing of me when you gave your free hand and heart to a man whom you deemed as free to wed as yourself.”

“That is as true as heaven!”

“And secondly, you must see by what has just passed, that myself and my cousin are not lovers. He speaks to me as to a little sister. He knocks at my door, but does not enter. He calls me pet names. I call him Mr. Deville. That is always our manner towards each other.”

As Adelaide said these words, she walked wearily across the room, and dropped into her easy chair, where she sat silent and thoughtful for a short time. Then looking up, and seeing the forest girl still standing in the middle of the floor, where she had left her, she said—

“I must again entreat you to be seated.”

“I thank you, no! I am about to bid you adieu,” said Lionne, coldly.

“Not yet! I have something important to say to you.”

“Say on, then, and pray be brief.”

“But I beg you will sit while I speak.”

Lionne, with a haughty air, shook her head, and remained standing.

“Well, I think I know why you refuse to take a seat under this roof; but you are wrong, as I shall soon show you.”

Lionne’s lip curled with angry scorn.

“Well, at least I must beg you to excuse me if I, through exhaustion, keep my seat.”

Lionne bowed her head, and waved her hand excitedly.

“And now, as I listened patiently to your story,” (every word of which stabbed me to the heart, she _thought_, but did not say,) “I must beg you to listen patiently to mine.”

“I wait here for no other purpose,” said Lionne, curtly.

“In the first place, then, do not too severely blame Orville Deville. Oh!” suddenly exclaimed Adelaide, with a retrospective shudder of horror, “while you stood looking towards that door when he was talking behind it, there was murder in your eyes!”

“Murder? never! A poor, stupid, vulgar vengeance for _any_ injury and for such as MINE!”

“There is murder in your eyes now! or, worse than murder, if such could be!” cried Adelaide, appalled.

Lionne laughed horribly.

“You must not! oh, you must not! It is because you are maddened with wrongs that you do it, I know; but you must not! You must listen to me! I do not wish to defend him beyond what is right. He has sinned grievously, I know; but not so grievously as you think. You will say so when you know all.”

“Girl, how _dare_ you take upon yourself to measure the extent of _his_ sin and _my_ wrongs?” broke forth Lionne, in a voice of thunder.

“Oh, be patient. Hear me out. I say you will judge less harshly when you know all.”

Lionne threw up her head with a gesture of fierce scorn.

Patiently Adelaide continued:

“Orville Deville is no more responsible for the marriage ceremony that took place between us when we were children than I am. It was the act of our parents, while we were yet too young to understand, far less to protest against, their doings. Immediately after that form we were separated to pursue our diverse ways. And thus we grew up apart, until, doubtless, he ceased to remember even the face of the little child to whom he had been so rashly bound.”

“And you forgot him as well,” said Lionne, mockingly.

“No. I lived with his mother, who had no other son but _him_, and to whom _I_ filled the place of an only daughter; therefore I could not forget him, you know.”

Lionne’s lip curled.

Adelaide paused, sighed, nerved her heart, and continued:

“Without ever having set eyes upon me again he met you, under circumstances the most interesting. You were beautiful, and he loved you. And then, because he considered the marriage-form read over two unconscious children five years before, a mere imposed betrothal at best, he used his supposed liberty and married you. There was nothing so heinously sinful in that, was there, Lionne?”

The forest girl did not speak, but looked intently at her fair rival.

“And so, Lionne, _you_ became, in every sense of the word, his _true_ wife, and not his wife only in name, as I had been.”

“You admit this!” exclaimed Lionne, in the utmost astonishment.

“Assuredly I admit the truth, wherever I recognize it as such.”

“You—you are one in ten thousand,” exclaimed Lionne, in growing wonder.

But without heeding or even hearing her interruption, Adelaide went on.

“Alas, I cannot so easily explain the strangeness of his course since his return home.”

Again the face of Lionne darkened.

“Yet,” continued Adelaide, “something may be said in palliation of what seems so wrong. He came hither, you know, summoned to the sick-bed of his mother. He found her and every one else expecting him to take as his wife the little girl who had been read over to him five years ago. He had not the nerve at once to acknowledge his recent marriage, disappoint his friends, and grieve his ailing mother, who had so long looked upon _me_ as her daughter-in-law.”

“Well?”

“And so he did what many older and wiser men often do—he temporized and waited, doubtless abiding a favorable opportunity for defining his real position.” Here Adelaide dropped her head upon her breast and paused so long that Lionne impatiently recalled her by saying—

“Well! well! what then?”

“_He never loved me!_ and of course he never gave me the slightest reason to suppose that he did or could. He has treated me with no more affection than a kind-hearted young man might naturally feel for his young cousin, who is also his mother’s guest.”

“Ha!” sad Lionne, with an ironical smile.

“But I assure you he has not!” persisted the gentle Adelaide—“and now, Lionne, _I must save you both_!”

“You, Lady Adelaide!”

“Yes, I! Take courage, Lionne! for you and for him all shall be well!”

“You! you! Lady Adelaide!”

“Yes! believe in me!”

“You promise me this. Tell me, do you love him?”

“That is a question which you have no right to ask nor I to answer,” replied Lady Adelaide, with gentle dignity.

“But, young lady, you overwhelm me with astonishment; for well do I know that though mine is the true marriage, yet yours, though only nominal, being the _prior_, is consequently the _legal_ one. Do _you_ not know this?”

“Yes, I know it! I know that though our marriage was nothing but a form, yet that it was a form so binding that by law it is indissoluble except through death or crime!” replied Adelaide, solemnly.

“And death has not released either party, and yet the marriage has been broken! a crime has therefore been committed! A crime by him and against you! I understand your plan now, Lady Adelaide! You will apply for a divorce, which will readily be granted you, and thus you will release him and leave him free to return to the woman of his choice!”

“What! apply for a divorce and cover with dishonor the head that I have loved! Oh, how little you know of my heart!” thought the gentle girl, in silence.

“Is not that your purpose, Lady Adelaide?” asked Lionne.

“No! that is not my purpose! My plan is a much quicker solution of the difficulty.”

“May I ask you what it is, then?”

“Not yet! it is not quite matured, even in my own brain! I must have a little time for reflection. Excuse me: do you lodge in this neighborhood?”

“I am the guest of Kate Kyte.”

“Return to her then to-night. And early to-morrow morning you shall hear from me.”

“Be it so! but I wish to withdraw as I came, without seeing any one.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I entered while you were all at dinner.”

“Then remain here until we are all at supper, when the coast will be clear and you can retire unobserved.”

Almost as she spoke, the supper-bell rung, and with a parting promise to communicate with Lionne on the following morning, Adelaide went to the dining-room.