Guy's interest in Elaine. If she could not secure him for Bertha, she would be very pleased to have him for her elder daughter.
Bertha saw the bent of her mother's mind, and inwardly raged at it. Day and night her mind was filled with projects for diverting Guy's mind from the charms of her elder sister. On this particular state of her mind Elaine's announcement of leaving Bay View fell like healing balm.
Several days elapsed after her departure before Bertha communicated the fact to Mr. Kenmore in a brief, ambiguous note.
It was no part of her plan that he should become acquainted with their poverty, or with the reason of Elaine going.
So she wrote simply:
"Elaine convalesced more rapidly than was expected, and has left us in anger, declining to live with us longer, and making a mystery of her destination. Come down to Bay View and I will give you the particulars."
The note had the effect she anticipated of bringing Mr. Kenmore down to Bay View without delay.
Then Bertha told her story with well-acted grief and penitence.
"It was all my wretched fault," she sighed. "Elaine would not forgive me for giving way to my jealous passion that dreadful night, and betraying her shameful story. It was all in vain that I declared my penitence on my knees and implored her forgiveness. She would not hear me. She declared that she should hate me so long as she lived, and that the same roof could not shelter us both. So she went away from mamma and me, declaring that it was forever."
The arch deceiver here shed some quiet, natural-looking tears into her perfumed, black-bordered handkerchief.
"It was very hard, losing papa and Elaine, and poor little Irene, all, as it were, at one fatal stroke," she declared, sobbingly.
Mr. Kenmore was gravely, sadly silent. He did not think of doubting Bertha's clever tale. It seemed very natural that poor Elaine should resent her sister's cruel betrayal of the long-guarded secret of Irene's birth. He scarcely wondered that she had gone away desperately wounded and unforgiving, in the smart of her bitter pain.
"Oh, if you could know how bitterly I have repented all that I said that dreadful night," sighed Bertha, giving him a sidewise glance under her long, black lashes. "I must have been mad, I think. You know the great poet says, 'There's madness in the moon,' and that night Irene had fairly driven me wild. Oh, if I could only think you had forgotten the unkind things I said to you in my foolish passion!" she pursued, remorsefully.
Her pretty shame and penitence touched him.
"I wish that you could forget it as freely as I forgive it, Miss Brooke," he answered, kindly.
"Oh, thank you, thank you," she cried. "I have repented my folly in bitterness and tears. I let my own heart deceive me. I know now that a woman should not give her heart unasked, still less betray its tender throbbings to the cold and careless."
She hid her face in her hands as if she could not bear his kindly gaze. Guy, touched by her tears and sorrow, did not know what to say or do. He was intensely sorry for her, forgetting how much he had disliked her that night when she had shown herself in her true colors.
"Let us forget it all, Miss Brooke," he said, uneasily, anxious to dry up her springing tears.
The beautiful brunette gave him a swift, shy look of gratitude.
"Oh, how gladly I will do so!" she exclaimed, putting out her delicate, white hand to him. "Shall we be friends as we were before– that fatal night?"
"Yes," he replied, pressing her hand kindly, but lightly, for he had no mind to be drawn into the role of a lover again.
"And you will come down to Bay View sometimes? Mamma and I will be so lonely and sad now, after losing so many dear links from our family circle," said the dark-eyed beauty, following up her advantage.
"Sometimes—when I can find leisure," he replied ambiguously.
And with that Bertha was obliged to be content. She hoped great things from the concessions he had already made. Now that Irene was dead, and Elaine gone, she would have no rivals, and surely, surely her beauty, her fascination, her tenderness for him must win him even against his will.
She brought the whole battery of her charms and graces to bear upon him, but was obliged to confess to herself that she had never seen him so sad, so grave, so pale and so distrait.
"It cannot be that he is sorry over that child's death. He ought to be glad," she thought to herself. "It must be that he assumes this gravity in deference to my affliction."
Yet she was troubled and chagrined when he left her so indifferently and went down to the shore. She watched him from her window, standing quietly, with folded arms, a tall, dark shape, outlined against the brightness of the summer eve.
"Of what is he thinking?" she asked her heart, uneasily.
It would have seemed strange to her if she had known. It even seemed strange to himself.
He was standing there gazing with dark, heavy eyes at the rolling waves, much as if he had been gazing on a grave.
He was recalling to mind the winsome, changeful, perfect beauty, the fire, the soul, the passion of the girl he had so strangely wedded, the girl who had recklessly flung herself into the deep, relentless waves, leaving him only the memory of the few, brief hours in which she had flashed before him in the extremes of joy and despair– one moment a beautiful, spirited, happy child, the next a passionate, despairing, crushed and broken-hearted woman!
"Poor little Irene," he said to himself. "If she had lived, who knows"—then a sigh, deeper than he knew, finished the regretful words.
CHAPTER XVI
He stood there a long, long time, listening to the beat of the waves, and thinking of Irene and her mother. Bertha grew tired of watching him and stole away to try the effect of a new mourning bonnet that had just been sent home from the milliner. Guy had forgotten her. He was wrapped in other thoughts. New feelings had come to him since that night, when, indolent, blase, careless, he had come face to face with his fate. He was haunted by a voice, a face. Some sad words came to his mind:
"How could I tell I should love thee to-day,
Whom that day I held not dear?
How could I know I should love thee away
When I loved thee not anear?"
"Oh, that word Regret!
There have been nights and morns when we have sighed:
'Let us alone, Regret!'"
He turned away at last warned by the darkening twilight that fell like a pall over his lost bride's "vast and wandering grave."
"I must bid adieu to Mrs. Brooke and Bertha and return home to-night," was the thought in his mind.
Mrs. Brooke was in the parlor alone, Bertha being still absorbed in the new bonnet. A sudden impulse came to Guy Kenmore.
He sat down by the matron's side and gazed sympathetically into her still youthful-looking and handsome face.
"Miss Brooke left you no address when she went away, I presume?" he inquired in a tone of respectful anxiety.
Mrs. Brooke had received her cue from Bertha and answered accordingly:
"No. She has deserted us most heartlessly, and I fear, I fear"– she broke down and buried her face in her handkerchief.
"You do not suppose that she can have made away with herself?" he cried in low, awe-struck tones.
"No, no; worse, far worse," groaned the apparently deeply agitated woman. "Oh, Mr. Kenmore, pity the grief and shame of a heart-broken mother—I fear that Elaine has returned to her wicked deceiver."
"Impossible!" he exclaimed, in stern and startled tones.
"Would that I could think so," sighed the unjust mother. "But my heart is torn by cruel suspicions. Elaine has never ceased to love that wicked wretch, and to whom else can she have gone?"
To herself she said,