CHAPTER XIV.

MISJUDGED.

Silence in the conservatory, where we left Senator Van Alstyne standing, red and angry, in the presence of the stranger who was also his guest.

The two men stood silently regarding each other. Van Alstyne’s ferret-like eyes glowed with a lurid light, an unpleasant sneer curled his sensual lip, half hidden by the long, carefully kept mustache.

Mrs. Vernon, still hanging on the senator’s arm, glanced from one to the other, and thoroughly enjoyed the situation.

Van Alstyne bowed coldly, stiffly.

“I beg your pardon, sir. There is some mistake, doubtless;” the irate senator spoke with ill-concealed disgust; “but I have not the--ahem!--honor of your acquaintance, Mr.--”

“Fayne, sir--Cyril Fayne,” with quite as cold a salute as the senator himself had bestowed, and upon his matchless face a look of utter contempt and scorn.

So this was the man who had bought Lenore Vane with his gold. This creature who possessed so little of the true refinement of a gentleman that he would not receive a guest who was unknown to him with the calm courtesy due from one gentleman to another under any circumstances. And that Cyril Fayne was a gentleman was as patent to the observer as that Van Van Alstyne was not.

Low under his breath Cyril Fayne was muttering softly:

“Heaven help her! Her burden has been hard to bear. Poor Lenore--poor heart-broken Lenore! Curses upon the man--the man whom I believed years ago to be my friend, and who is to blame for all this misery! All the sorrow and anguish of our parting, and the seventeen long, dark, bitter years which lie between that time and now. Curse him! Wherever he is, I shall find him if he is still above ground. All her happiness blighted; all the best of my life spoiled; all the woe and anguish that have been mine until now--though I am not old, for I have seen but forty years--I feel as if my whole life had come to an end!”

And while these thoughts were rushing through his brain, he was standing still as a statue, while Van Van Alstyne’s eyes were searching his face with an ill-bred stare which at last became more than Cyril Fayne could endure.

“Possibly Senator Van Alstyne recognizes an old acquaintance in me!” he suggested, mockingly.

Van Alstyne’s red face grew purple with rage.

“No, I do not!” he cried, vehemently; “and I must say that my wife shows deuced small respect for her husband--her protector--by Jove! her lord and master--to receive men at her reception who are not only strangers to me, but whom she does not trouble herself to present to me!”

“Your wife!”

The two words fell like stones from Fayne’s lips; and the moment they were spoken he realized that he had made a mistake.

Senator Van Alstyne stared for a moment, too astonished to utter a word; then bristling with rage, he drew a step nearer, and Heaven only knows what atrocity might have been perpetrated, but down came a tiny gloved hand upon his arm, and a sweet voice cried, gayly:

“Come, senator, you promised to show me the datura! Now, don’t stand here squabbling over nothing, I beg of you! Of course Lenore--Mrs. Van Alstyne--will make everything clear. Dear me! if Mr. Vernon should make such a fuss over every gentleman whom I invite to our house without consulting his royal highness, he would live in a tumult for sure. Van Van Alstyne, you are as jealous as a Turk. Now, if I were your wife--”

The fascinating Mrs. Vernon possessed more influence over the doughty senator than any other living creature. Fayne bowed coldly and stepped aside for them to pass. While down went the senator’s iron-gray head, and his thick lips touched the gloved hand resting upon his arm, while he whispered, softly:

“If you were my wife! Oh, Bessie, if you only were!”

And thus you will perceive that senators, and even married senators, are not quite impervious to a little flirtation with a pretty woman. And it is possible that, while they are so particular that their wives should be like Cæsar’s better half, “above suspicion,” the lives of many a public man are not beyond reproach. Van Van Alstyne’s creed was that a man can do as he feels inclined; a woman must conduct herself as she is directed. One creed for the man and another for the woman, and, of course, no equality. In this case the superiority was all upon one side, not the senator’s. And there are many men like Van Van Alstyne.

As soon as Cyril Fayne had disappeared, Mrs. Vernon lifted her great black velvety eyes with their belladonna brilliance and their delicately painted lids to the face of the man at her side with an affectation of child-like innocence.

“Where did dear Lenore disappear to?” she queried, sweetly. “Didn’t you see her when we entered the conservatory? No? Is it possible? Why, I saw her in close conversation with that delightful Mr. Fayne. I say, Van, he is delightful, isn’t he? No? Oh, you horrid creature! Of course, I don’t consider any man so nice as--as--you,” giggling like a school-girl. “There now, I am certain I see Lenore. Yes, to be sure. Nobody else wears white velvet, point lace, and such diamonds as Senator Van Alstyne’s lovely wife. And if there is not such a costume as I describe seated over yonder--there, by the banksia roses--then I’m a kitten, that’s all! Ah, Mrs. Van Alstyne,” as they suddenly appeared before Lenore, who glanced up with a swift start, “we have been looking for you everywhere. Why did you not present that handsome Mr. Fayne? You ought not to be so selfish as to keep him all to yourself, when half the ladies in the drawing-room yonder are just dying to know him. But the senator and I hunted him up and down, and Mr. Van Alstyne introduced himself, and we found that he is Mr. Cyril Fayne. So your pretty little mystery is a mystery no longer. Lenore! Mrs. Van Alstyne! you are ill--you are going to faint!”

Lenore lifted her heavy eyes, and passed one hand over her brow as though to relieve the dull pain which was throbbing in her temples.

“Ill? No, no!” she gasped, feebly. “What were you saying, Mrs. Vernon, about--about some gentleman--Mr.--”

“Cyril Fayne,” supplemented Mrs. Vernon, promptly; “at least, so he introduced himself. Your husband has made his acquaintance, after a fashion. I do not imagine that they love each other very dearly, however. Certainly not a case of love at first sight.”

“Hardly!” growled the senator. “Why, the fellow actually sneered when I spoke of you, Lenore, as my wife! There! Bessie, she has fainted.”

Lenore had started to her feet, and then, with a long, quivering sigh, had fallen back into the chair once more, pale and still.

“Hush!” commanded Van Alstyne, as his companion evinced signs of excitement. “Be still, will you? I don’t want the whole crowd out yonder to gather in here--and the story would go the rounds of the newspapers to-morrow, with some infernal lie tacked on to it. Just hold her head, Bessie, while I get some water from the fountain yonder and bathe her head. Chafe her wrists a little. Gently--there!”

He hastened to the tiny fountain splashing dreamily into a marble basin, and soon returned with a silver cup full of its perfumed water. As he approached the recumbent form of his wife, Mrs. Vernon dropped something which she had been holding in her hand, with a hasty glance in his direction--and Van Van Alstyne did not know that the appearance of haste was assumed on purpose to excite his curiosity. He stepped swiftly to her side.

“What is it, Bessie?” he asked, cautiously.

She smiled.

“Oh, nothing that you have not seen before, I dare say,” she returned. “Only a medallion that Lenore wears about her neck.”

His red face flushed a deeper crimson.

“A medallion! I never gave it to her,” he panted. “Let me see it, Mrs. Vernon.”

And before Bessie Vernon could stop him--if she had wished to--he drew forth from its hiding-place about Lenore’s white throat, a black onyx locket in the shape of a medallion. An instant later he pressed the spring and the lid flew open. One glance, and with a hoarse cry of rage and jealous wrath too deep for articulate expression, Van Van Alstyne dropped into the nearest seat, and sat staring helplessly into Mrs. Vernon’s face. She laughed lightly.

“Ah! so you see that your cold, white marble women are not always as immaculate as they appear!” she sneered. “Lenore Van Alstyne is so good, so awfully, fearfully good! She will never flirt, or do anything just a little ‘off;’ she preaches domestic felicity--a regular Darby and Joan sort of existence; she frowns severely upon poor me because I like to flirt and am gay and full of life; and all the time, night and day, she wears about her neck, hidden from view, the portrait of a man who is not her husband. Do you see, Van Van Alstyne? This little thin chain to which the medallion is attached is riveted on. And do you recognize the face of the portrait? It is the face of Mr. Cyril Fayne.”

Silence--perfect silence. An awful tempest was raging within the man’s soul. He stood still as death. There was no sign of life save the slow rising and falling of his chest. His face was ghastly white; his under lip bleeding from the ferocity with which he had gnawed it; his hands were clinched fiercely together. He took a step in Lenore’s direction, where she still lay, white and unconscious, rigid as though life were extinct. He lifted his strong right hand as though to strike her in all her helplessness. Swiftly the hand was uplifted, slowly it fell to his side once more. A strange expression crept over his face; an awful resolution settled down upon it like a mask. He turned, and his eyes met Bessie Vernon’s. He smiled. It was bad to see that cold, cruel smile.

“I will not touch her!” he muttered, hoarsely. “Put the trinket back where you found it, under the lace at her throat, Bessie; and keep your tongue still over this unpleasant scene, or--or I will make you sorry for it. We will let Mrs. Lenore Van Alstyne go on in her own road and say nothing at present. But the day will come--the day will surely come when she will wish that she had died to-night--here--now.”

He turned upon his heel and left the conservatory, Mrs. Vernon, with a scared look upon her pretty face, following closely in his wake. She felt like a child who has been playing with fire which suddenly burst forth into a conflagration which nothing could subdue.

And poor Lenore--poor wronged Lenore! who was innocent of sin, if only he had known or would have believed it, lay there still unconscious, like one dead. Better for her if she had been!