“To Reuel!” gasped Dianthe, and set the glass down empty. Once more Aubrey led his bride of three months back to the door of her room. Once more before her chamber door he paused; and once again, but now in mockery, he stooped and kissed her hand.

“Farewell, my love,” he said. “When we meet, ’twill be—”

“In judgment, Aubrey; and may God have mercy on our guilty souls!”

CHAPTER XXIII

’TWAS a cold gray morning; the dawn of such a day as seems to wrap itself within the shroud of night, hiding the warm sun in its stony bosom, and to creep through time arrayed in mourning garments for the departed stars. Aubrey was up by the earliest glimpse of dawn. Uncertain what to do or where to go, he made a pretence of eating, sitting in solemn state in the lonely breakfast room, where the servants glided about in ghostly silence, which was too suggestive for the overwrought nerves of the master of all that magnificence. Fifty times he asked the maid for Mrs. Livingston. The woman told him she was ill,—not alarmingly so; no physician’s services were needed, neither his own nor another’s. He did not ask to see her, yet with a strange and morbid curiosity, he kept on questioning how she was, and why she kept her chamber, until the knowing laugh and sly joke about the anxiety of bridegrooms over the welfare of brides made the servants’ quarters ring with hilarity. At length, tired of his aimless wandering, he said he’d go. His valet asked him where. He could not tell. “Pack up some things.”

“For how long a time, sir?”

“I cannot tell, James.”

“Shall I order the carriage?”

“Anything, something! A horse; yes. I’ll have the swiftest one in the stable. A valise—no more; no, you need not come. I must be alone.”

In Dianthe’s room the attendants tread noiselessly, and finally leave her to enjoy her feigned slumber. She waits but the closing of the door, to spring from her couch with all the seeming energy of life and health. First she went to the window and flung wide the hangings, letting in a flood of light upon the pale, worn face reflected in the mirror. What a wondrous change was there! The long white drapery of her morning robe fell about her like a shroud, yet, white as it was, contrasted painfully with the livid ash-hue of her skin. Her arms were thin and blue, her hands transparent; her sunny hair hung in long dishevelled, waving masses, the picture of neglect; the sunken, wan brow, and livid lips, the heavy eyes with deep, black halos round them—all these made up a mined temple.