Chapter XXV: A Wretched Meeting

From that moment Maisie was on her guard lest they should meet face to face.

Wherever they went she wore a veil, explaining to her friends that March winds were bad for the complexion.

She dreaded every day to blunder upon Barrington and his bride, and she did not wish to shock them with her likeness to one they believed long dead.

True, it did not really matter to them whether she were living or dead. Either way it could have no effect on their lives or their happiness, but a bitter pride and jealousy made Maisie shrink from recognition.

In a few more days her haunting fear was realized--they met again.

This time it was in a famous art-gallery.

Tired of strolling about, the party sat down to rest in convenient seats before a noted picture.

Mrs. Warren nudged Maisie and whispered admiringly.

“What a handsome pair! On your right hand, in front of that portrait that looks so much like you!”

Maisie lifted her eyes and stifled the low cry that rose to her blanched lips.

She could have put out her hand and touched them, they stood so close--Josephine and Byrd Barrington--before the full-length portrait of a fair young girl, violet-eyed, golden-haired, and gowned in white.

As he answered some low remark of his companion his deep, musical voice thrilled Maisie’s heart with blended pain and ecstasy, so dear were its remembered accents.

“Yes, poor fellow, I am so sorry he was too sick to accompany us. I know how much he would have enjoyed this, he is so fond of art. He is not improving as fast as I would like to see. Are you going on? I will follow in a moment. Somehow I cannot tear myself away from this lovely portrait. It--it--reminds me of Maisie.”

“I do not see the least resemblance,” Josephine returned with a shrug of her shoulders that she had deftly caught from the gay Parisians.

She was looking beautiful in a costly French gown and big picture hat whose white plumes drooped picturesquely against the rich waves of her dark hair as she lifted her big brown eyes to the tall, handsome man with a jealous frown on her low white brow.

How Maisie’s heart had leaped at his tender words. So he remembered her yet. Oh, why had she not gone home a little sooner ere Josephine caught him in her toils? How tender his voice had sounded, how his eyes dwelt on the portrait! He must love her memory very dearly, else he had not dared speak of her to his jealous bride.

What if she should reveal herself to him now?

Would his heart leap to her as of old?

Would he regret that he had placed Josephine as a barrier between their hearts?

Would life become to him, as to her, an empty waste, where one walked listlessly in weariness of heart and silent despair?

For one wild moment she was tempted to put it to the test--to rise up in her seat and put out her hand to him, saying:

“I am Maisie! There was a mistake made when you thought I was dead! I can explain it all!”

She could fancy the gleam of joy in his dark-blue eyes, and the angry frown of Josephine, who would be furiously jealous because his old love had returned from the grave.

She half-started from her seat to obey the passionate impulse, then sank heavily back, crushed by the bitter thought:

“He is married! Married! What is the use of disturbing his peace, of becoming an element of discord between their wedded hearts? Nothing can undo what has been done, and I have my own folly to thank for all my misery!”

“If you two are rested enough, suppose we go? I feel like luncheon,” Mr. Warren remarked at this juncture.

Maisie rose quickly, and Barrington and his bride moved on also, without dreaming who had stood so near them, within reach of their very hands. As for him, he was oblivious of the crowd, his heart full of bitter memories evoked by the portrait with its subtle likeness to the loved and lost. The living women thronged about him like shadows. The dead alone was real.

Maisie could not resist looking furtively back presently, and she saw that the pair had stopped and were talking to a man who must have been an intimate acquaintance from the arch, coquettish look on her face. The girl started somewhat when she saw that it was her desperate lover, Burton Kingwood.

“If he should betray me!” she thought with sudden fear; then laughed at herself.

“How nervous I am growing! He knows me only as Violet Summers.”

The crowd closed in between them, and she turned her head away, murmuring half to herself:

“After all, I am tired of Paris!”

“To tell the truth, I am, too,” cried Mr. Warren, catching the plaintive murmur. “I am longing for Italy. One grows tired by and by of all this rush and glitter and gaiety. Besides, I am not at all sure but that ‘dear’ has too much excitement.”

“I have been thinking so myself for several days, but Paris dazzles me so that I hate to tear myself away--but we will start for Italy to-morrow,” “dear” returned sweetly, and Maisie sighed thankfully to herself. It was wearing to her nerves, the torture of knowing that Byrd Barrington was breathing the same air as herself. She would have preferred the whole width of the world between herself and the lover she had lost.

In the concentration of her thoughts upon Byrd she almost forgot Delmar, the husband of an hour, the object of a girlish fancy, afterward more bitterly hated than he had been tenderly loved. It seemed to her now that all her passion for Delmar had been little more than girlish pique at his indifference, and that if Byrd had been harder to win she must have loved him from the first. He had petted and spoiled her too much, had let her see her power too plainly, so that she had turned away to sigh for the unattainable. When her love for Delmar died a violent death in the hour of her terrible humiliation, her heart had turned to Byrd with a constancy startling even to herself.

Poor Delmar, there was a shadow on his happiness, after all the gifts the gods had granted him--the shadow of weakness and illness.

Contrary to his hopes and belief, the marriage and journey into which Josephine had so artfully hurried him, had delayed instead of hastening his recovery.

The worry of travel wore on his nerves, and he was unable to enjoy any sightseeing save such as was taken from an open carriage.

But was Josephine a fond, devoted wife, remaining by his couch to soothe his pain the many days when the pain in his breast was too severe for him to leave his room? Ah, no, indeed. Aunt Constance, dear soul, was ever so much better a nurse than she was, and didn’t have to shop so much, and didn’t care to see the sights, so why wasn’t dear Del safe with her, while Byrd could pilot her around until she made other friends?

Delmar, growing very pale about the lips, assented to all her questions, and bade her go and enjoy herself--he would get on quite as well with Aunt Constance.

Josephine paid him in gay kisses for his patience, and proceeded to enjoy herself in the way that appealed to her most--scattering money like water in all the shops, loading herself with jewels and finery until Mrs. French asked her ironically why she didn’t buy out a whole shop at once and be done with it, instead of frittering away so many useful days.

“I enjoy it better buying piece by piece, and Del doesn’t care how much I spend--he has loads of money!” she replied with gay good nature, in her exquisite self-satisfaction.

She never seemed to see the wistful light in her husband’s hollow black eyes when she was leaving him; she paid no attention when he said one day regretfully:

“I am sorry we came away from home. I believe I should have gotten well sooner there. I needed rest and quiet, not bustle and excitement.”

“I am sure of it!” his aunt said quickly. “If I were you, Delmar, I should get out of this great dazzling city to a quieter place. You have been talking every day about Italy with its vine-clad hills and peaceful, sunny glens. Why don’t we go there?”

“Josephine is not ready yet,” he answered with a long sigh.

“Josephine is acting selfishly,” she replied tartly, glancing at the young wife, who was seated at the window, drawing on her pearl-gray kids before going out with some American friends whom she had met the day previous. She pouted prettily and answered:

“Dear auntie, I don’t mean to be selfish, but I fear I have been thoughtless. I’m just crazy over Paris, and I hate to leave it. So--so--if you were willing, Del, I would stay here a few weeks longer with my old friends from Boston while you go on to a quieter place with your aunt and brother.”

Her voice was honey-sweet, but she avoided his eye. She knew how it could flash with indignation.

He made no answer, and, fastening the last jeweled button on her glove, she fluttered toward him with a swish of silken draperies, murmuring:

“You don’t approve of my suggestion?”

He answered with latent sternness:

“Could you be satisfied here without me, Josephine?”

“Why, yes; of course, dearest, for who could be dull in Paris? Besides, I should have my old friends, the Bonners, and I could feel easy over you--in such good hands as auntie’s and Byrd’s.”

“Then stay!” he answered in a muffled tone of indescribable bitterness, and her heart leaped exultantly.

Her invalid husband was growing tiresome, and she was in the midst of a charming flirtation with a new acquaintance, handsome Burton Kingwood.