The Tiger Lily Part 31

"Poor Cornel!" muttered Dale as he turned away. "Fallen so low as this!

If you only knew!"

"Please, Mr. Dale, sir, have I done very wrong?" she whimpered.

"No; go down now."

"Keren--Hap--puch!"

"Comin', mum," cried the girl, thrusting her head out of the door, and then turning back "Oh, thankye, sir. I don't mind now."

Dale fastened the door after her; and as he turned back, that of the inner room opened, and Valentina came out with her eyes flas.h.i.+ng and a joyful look upon her face, as she took his arm and nestled to him.

"We must never forget that poor, brave little drudge, dear," she whispered fondly. "Don't look so serious. All that is nothing to us."

"Nothing?" he said, as he bent down, fascinated by the beautiful eyes which gazed so tenderly into his.

"Nothing. I am glad they came, to show you how little cause for compunction you have. You see what she is--what the wretched woman is who gives me her sickly kisses and calls me her friend." She clung to him, and pa.s.sed her soft white hand over his brow as she looked into his eyes, her voice growing gentle like the cooing of some dove, as she almost whispered--

"I am going now for awhile, but when I am gone don't think of me as a mad, reckless woman, abandoned to her pa.s.sion, false to her husband and her oaths. I never loved but you, Armstrong: I shall never love another. Try and think of me as one who was forced into a marriage with that despicable wretch who in one week taught me to loathe him; and till I saw you I was the wretched being whose life was void, a kind of gilded doll upon which he hung his jewels, and whom he paraded before his guests, while in private my life was a mockery. Wife? By law, yes, till we can break the tie, and then you will take me to your heart, dear, away from all that black despairing life, to a new one all delight and joy. For I shall be with you, my brave, n.o.ble--husband! May I call you husband then?"

She sank upon her knees, clasped her arms about him, and laid her cheeks against his hands, murmuring softly--

"If you will take me for your wife, dearest. If not, I should be always happy as your slave."

He would have been more than man if he had not raised the beautiful appealing woman to his breast, and held her tightly there.

"I love you--I love you!" she murmured, as her soft, swimming eyes gazed in his, "and it is misery to leave you now. But there is all that new joy in my heart to keep me waiting and hopeful till I come again."

"But the risk--for you?" he said.

"Risk?" she laughed softly. "You will protect me. I must go now, and you will wait till your poor Italian model is here once more--she whom you love so well."

He clasped her to his heart, and held her till she faintly struggled to be free, and then laughingly covered her face with the thick veil her husband had thrown down.

"There," she said merrily. "Now I must go. Back to my faithful Jaggs."

"What!"

"He is my slave--`The Emperor,' he says you call him. He has been my slave from the first day you sent him to the house. He told me everything about you in answer to my questions regarding the portrait you had painted from memory, and then--`Armstrong does love me with all his heart' I said to myself, and I was ready to risk everything to win that love."

"And did he suggest that you should be my model?" said Dale.

"No; that was my idea, when he told me how hard you were pressed. He helped me, and I came. And now, once more, I must go. It will not be like life until I am here again."

She gave him her white hands, which he held pa.s.sionately to his lips.

Then, covering them hastily with her common gloves, she drew her cloak about her.

"One moment," he whispered. "The address? Where are you now--for this?"

"Always in your heart," she said, in a pa.s.sionate whisper. Then, "A rivederla," she said aloud, and was gone.

"Poor Cornel!" sighed Dale, as he sank into a chair. "Forgive me, dear.

She is right; a boy and girl's pure gentle love, of which I am not worthy. It is fate, dear, and this is really love--a love for which a man might sacrifice honour--even sell his very soul."

So he said, for it has been written of old--"Love is blind."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

A LAST EFFORT.

"Corny, I've no patience with you," cried Dr. Thorpe, as they sat at dinner in their hotel with a guest that evening--Joe Pacey.

"Not to-night, dear," she said, with a quiet, grave smile.--"He has very little patience with me when he comes home tired from the hospitals,"

she continued, turning to Pacey. "He works too hard."

"Yes: he does seem a glutton over work; but we must work hard nowadays to succeed."

"Hah, you are right," said the young doctor. "It was all very well a hundred years ago. Plenty of medical men went through life then without half the knowledge I possess, while I'm a perfect baby to your big doctors."

"No, you are not, dear," said Cornel quietly. "You know that you stand first among our young medical men."

"Humph! not saying much that; but this is begging the question. I shall want to stay in England another three months, and, as I was saying, the Hudsons go back by the next boat. I've been to the office: you can have a cabin, so you had better accompany them."

"No, dear, I shall stay and go back with you."

Thorpe pushed his chair away from the table impatiently.

"My dear sister, where is your pride?"

"My dear brother, where is your sympathy?"

"How can I have sympathy for a girl who is so blind to her own dignity!

Now, my dear Pacey, do you not agree with me that my sister is behaving very foolishly?"

"No," said Pacey, holding his gla.s.s of wine to the light, shutting one eye and scowling at it with the other--"no, sir, I don't."

"Thank you, Mr. Pacey," said Cornel, laying her hand upon the table, so that he could take it in his and press it warmly.

"Can't kiss it before company," he said, in his abrupt way. "Please take it as being done--or owing."

"You are as bad over the scamp as she is," cried Thorpe sharply.

"Come, come, doctor," cried Pacey; "you are too hard. If Armstrong were suffering from a bodily disease, you would stand by him."

"Of course. But this--"

"Is a mental disease," cried Pacey, "so why blame your sister for standing by the patient?"

"Bah! Don't talk like that. I haven't patience with her. I thought her firm, self-reliant, and proud of her position as a woman."