CHAPTER X.
The guests were beginning to take leave. Already their gay farewells floated out upon the air of the night where Norman de Vere had been walking alone since the detective had left him.
He went back to the house, deathly pale, but calm.
When the last good-night had been uttered, when the echo of the carriage wheels had died away in the distance, the young man turned back into the house.
His mother and his wife were going up the broad stairway to their rooms. He called them back.
“I wish to speak with you in the library,” he said.
His face was so white, his eyes so stern that they followed him in awe-struck silence. He locked the door and placed chairs for both.
Beautiful Camille began to grow a little frightened. She cried out, half defiantly:
“I wish you would wait till morning, Norman. I am tired and sleepy.”
She flung herself indolently back in her chair, with her white arms upraised over her head, yawning lazily.
Her husband paid no attention to her complaint. He had fallen on one knee before his mother. He lifted her soft, white hand to his lips.
“Mother, I have deeply wronged you. Forgive me!” he exclaimed.
“My son,” she faltered.
“I am ashamed to confess it; but perhaps you have suspected—I feared—nay, believed—that you, out of sympathy with Camille, had hidden Little Sweetheart away from me.”
Yes, she had suspected—had guessed his thought—had grieved in silence over his proud coldness to her, his mother. She could not answer now save by a low, pained sob.
Still on his knees before the gentle mother he had wronged, he turned his face toward Camille.
“I was base enough to confide my suspicions to you,” he said, bitterly. “You, Camille, fostered and encouraged them. To save yourself you turned traitor to her who was your mother’s dearest friend, and who for that at least shouldhave been sacred from your treachery. What have you to say for yourself?”
“That I am no worse than you. You first suggested it to me. It—it seemed plausible!” Camille replied, with a defiant face.
A low groan broke from him, and he gazed at her for a moment in steady scorn; then he turned back to the agitated elderly woman.
“Mother, I wronged you,” he said again, in a voice of deep contrition. “Can you forgive me?”
“Freely, Norman,” she replied, tenderly.
“If this was all you wanted, it might have waited until to-morrow. Unlock that door; I am going,” Camille said, sharply, eager to escape, for she began to fear that his suspicions were now directed against herself.
He did not obey her haughty command, but rising, stood looking at her, his arms folded over his breast, a gleam of fierce anger in his eyes.
“You will wait a moment,” he said. “I have news for you. The missing child is found.”
“Really!” she sneered; but an icy shudder shook her from head to foot, and a silent malediction against Finette’s bungling trembled on her lips.
“Yes, she is found, Camille,” he said. “And, oh, Camille, Camille, imagine my feelings when I found that you had deceived me—that you were the guilty party!”
“How dare you accuse me?” she stormed, springing to her feet, wrathfully beautiful, determined to brave it out to the end; but he answered her with that smile that was half sorrow, half scorn:
“Denials are useless. You worked through Finette, your diabolical French maid. She took the child from my mother’s arms while she slept. She went on horseback with her captive to one of the worst quarters of Jacksonville, where she gave her to a miserable, brutal old rag-picker, who has half starved that innocent little angel, beaten her till she is covered with stripes, and forced her to stand in the streets and beg for her food! Oh, my wife! how little I dreamed that you could be capable of such cruelty!”
While he spoke the guilty woman stood her ground, facing him defiantly, her white face twitching with sneers, her jeweled hands clinching and unclinching themselves in impotent wrath, as the young man went on, scathingly:
“It is no wonder you will not part with your clever maid.She is too useful to you. But her time has come now. She shall go!”
“Norman!” cried his mother, beseechingly; but neither of them heeded her. Camille was crying passionately:
“Who is my accuser?”
“The detective whom I employed to unravel the mysterious affair. He dragged it out of the miserable old rag picker with whom Finette made her bargain.”
She stood still a moment, looking at the white set face of the man she loved with such jealous passion, and a feeling like death stole over her at the thought of losing him.
Despite all her caprices, all her taunts, all her jealous madness, she knew that Norman de Vere had loved her well and truly in their two stormy years of wedded life, and she, ah! she—she adored him in her wild, strange fashion. To lose his love were to lose heaven, she thought, impiously.
Yet in the dark, burning eyes that he fixed on her face, in the curl of his beautiful lips she read something that she feared and dreaded—the dawning of that hour when, goaded by her injustice, her jealousy, her cruelty, he should throw off the fetters of love that bound him, and regret the fatal hour that made their two lives one.
As white as death she stood facing him, wondering how she should extricate herself from her terrible strait, how escape from the web of fate her own reckless hands had spun, for escape she must, or bear his stinging contempt to her life’s end.
The passionate, undisciplined creature flung her jeweled hands up to her face, and her slender, graceful figure shook for a moment like a leaf in a storm, then as suddenly she withdrew them, and, with a gesture of infinite pathos, fixed her blazing eyes upon the face of the angry man.
“This from you, Norman—this from you? Oh, Heaven, it is too cruel!” she cried out in accents of reproach and pain.
He did not answer; he stood staring at her dumbly, while she continued:
“Poor indeed must be the quality of your love for me if you can credit such a charge against my honor!”
“There is proof,” he answered, icily.
“There is no proof! There can not be, for I am not guilty of this thing!” she cried out, wildly. “Oh, send for Finette! Surely there is some horrible mistake.”
He crossed to the door and said something to a servant in the hall.
In a few moments Finette made her appearance among them, and the door was again shut and locked.
“Oh, miladi, are you ill again?” cried the deceitful French woman, pretending the liveliest anxiety.
She went eagerly forward to Mrs. de Vere, and a swift, telegraphic glance passed between the two unnoticed by the others.
“No, Finette, I am not ill. It is worse—far worse! My honor is assailed! We are charged—you and I—with being the parties who abducted that child from Verelands a week ago!”
“Oh, miladi!” recoiling in amazement.
“Do you not understand, Finette? My husband employed a detective to find the child. He succeeded in doing so, and now declares that you were the abductor, and that you were doing my bidding. Speak, Finette; tell our accusers that we are innocent.”
Her burning hazel eyes seemed to shoot red lights of indignation and fury, and clever Finette caught the clew at once.
“Oh, my mistress! who has dared accuse you?” she exclaimed, calculating rapidly that if she cleared her mistress from this charge, unlimited opportunities of blackmail lay before her in the future. She assumed an appearance of virtuous indignation, and went on: “I will confess all, miladi! I took the child away, indeed, but I swear it was not done at your bidding. You suspected nothing; but Finette, in her devotion to her mistress, took on herself the responsibility of the abduction. Alas! it has failed, and I amdésolé. You will never forgive me—you will drive me from you!”
“Yes, Finette, I will send you away to-morrow. Your sin is too great for me to pardon. Oh! how could you think to please me by so vile a deed?” Camille exclaimed, angrily.
“Miladi, I beg ten thousand pardons! It was a mistake. I thought to serve you, but I erred. I will go to-night. But, sir”—turning to her master—“Mrs. de Vere had nothing to do with that—I swear it. Punish me, but not her; she is innocent.”
He turned to Camille, and saw tears standing thick in her lovely eyes.
“You wronged me,” she said, sadly, reproachfully. He stood undecided, doubting, and she went on, in the same sad voice: “I am innocent, Norman. To prove it, I bid you bring the child back here to Verelands, and no mother could be kinder to her child than I will be to your pretty little protégée.I was mad with jealousy that night, and scarce knew what I said. Whatever wild words I uttered, I take them all back and crave your pardon.”
Her sweet humility, her tender yielding, did what all her defiance had failed in—they melted the ice about his heart. One moment he gazed in silence, then, springing to her side, clasped her closely to his breast, exclaiming, gladly:
“Forgive me, darling, for my unjust suspicions! I will atone for them by deeper devotion than in the past.”