CHAPTER II.

Inside the elegant, ornate white villa all is confusion and excitement. The house is crowded with guests, and the preparations for the wedding are going blithely on.

In the dining-hall the long table glitters with plate of silver and gold, and all the luxuries of home and foreign countries are temptingly spread thereon. Flowers are lavishly arranged everywhere. Trained domestics hurry to and fro, bent on perfecting every arrangement, for the wedding of Mr. Langton's beautiful niece is a very grand occasion indeed, and every honor must be paid to the heiress, and the husband of her uncle's providing.

Mr. Langton himself was an old man, old and peculiar to the verge of whimsicality, as was proved by the fact of his adopting one orphan niece as the heiress to all his possessions, and leaving the other, a frail, weak girl, to fight her battle with the cold world alone.

Latterly Mr. Langton had become displeased with his favorite, Maud, because she had countenanced a suitor of whom he did not approve--a rascally fortune-hunter, he irascibly declared. The upshot of the whole matter was that he wrote to a clever young lawyer, the son of an old sweetheart long dead, and bade him come and marry Maud, to which the young man replied that he would marry her if she was pretty, and he fell in love with her, but not otherwise.

We have heard the result announced in the words of Vane Charteris to his betrothed. He was conquered at once by her peerless beauty. Mr. Langton privately confided to the young lady that she must marry the husband he had selected for her, or he would cut her off with a shilling. Maud acquiesced meekly, prudently banished her obnoxious lover, and Mr. Langton announced to his friends the near consummation of what he happily termed a love-match.

That it was a love-match on one side, the words of Vane Charteris have assured us. Whether it was the same on Maud's part remains to be seen.

* * * * *

"Can we assist you in any way?" asked the gay bevy of bride's-maids, coming into Maud's room _en masse_ as the dressing hour drew near.

The beautiful bride-elect sat in the midst of the bridal finery, loosely wrapped in a dainty dressing-gown, her beautiful golden hair unbound, and flowing over her shoulders. She was very pale, and her blue eyes glittered with excitement.

"Thanks, no," she answered, in her languid, well-trained voice. "My maid can do everything, and you will need all your time to beautify yourselves."

They laughed and protested, but lingered in the room, admiring the elegant white satin dress, with its frosting of seed-pearls, the beautiful Brussels veil, and the costly set of pearls, Mr. Langton's bridal gift to his well-beloved niece. Maud did not talk to them much, and Reine Langton's quick eyes saw that she was growing nervous and impatient.

"Come, girls, let us go," she said. "It is time to dress, and Maud wants a little time to herself. Remember that this is her last hour of 'maiden meditation, fancy free.'"

The gay, pretty troop ran away, nothing loth, to don their bridal finery. Reine went to her own airy chamber thoughtfully.

"How calmly and coolly my cousin takes it all," she thought, "while I--I would give my two ears, I know, to be in her place. Oh, Vane, Vane! how cruel you are to me, and how much you despise me. What a fool I am to love you so!"

And full of indignant self-scorn, she threw herself into a chair, and wept until her eyes were red, a calamity which necessitated a copious mopping with cologne water.

"My looks are spoiled for the evening, that's clear," she says to herself, ruefully. "I shall look a fright; no one will give me a second glance. But who will care for poor Reine Langton, anyway?"

But when the pretty bride's-maid dress, Mr. Langton's gift, is on, and the dark, curling tresses are looped back with pale rose-buds and some long, trailing sprays of feathery white, she is well worth looking at.

The mellow _brune_ tint of her skin is brightened by the vivid, yet changeful rose-flush on the round, dimpled cheeks; the dark eyes are none the less dazzling for the new touch of dreaminess that has come into their subtle depths beneath the drooping lashes, "like to rays of darkness."

Dressing has taken but a little time. It is a process over which Reine never lingers. She adjusts the last flower with one careless glance into the mirror, and goes to the window. The dim, mysterious twilight has fallen over everything. The silver sickle of a young moon hangs in the amethystine sky, the summer air is heavy with perfume and dew. Reine props her dimpled chin in the hollow of one small hand, and falls to musing.

To-morrow she goes back to the old dull life of care and labor, to the made-over dresses, the shabby boarding-house, the stupid, stubborn pupils of her village school.

These three weeks she has "fed on the roses, and lain in the lilies of life." Servants have waited on her, she has had her time at her own disposal, she has thoroughly enjoyed every hour of it in her eager, active fashion. This brief visit has been like a green oasis in a desert land. To-morrow she will step across its green borders, and journey on through the sandy reaches of a dreary, uncongenial life again.

"The same old, tiresome life," she says, yet even as she speaks she knows it will not be the same.

Something has come into her life these brief, bright summer days that she knew not of in the old days--even love.

"After to-morrow I shall never see him again," she says to herself with patient gravity, and there comes to her a shamed remembrance of his words that morning: "After to-morrow I shall be forever out of reach of your shrill voice and scolding tongue."

"Forever!" The word, never dwelt upon before, acquires a strange, terrible meaning in her thoughts. She realizes, with a gasp of terror, what Maud's lover really is to her. Though she has gibed him, teased him, pitilessly derided him, she has given him her whole, foolish, girlish heart. She flushes hotly with a passionate shame.

"I love him--when he will be Maud's husband in less than an hour!" she cries to herself. "For shame, Reine Langton. Shake off this disgraceful weakness, and be your own brave self again."

There is a tap at the door, unheeded and unheard in her preoccupation.

It opens, and the house-maid enters, flurried and excited.

Reine starts up in a panic and looks at the clock.

"Oh, dear, it is past the time," she cries. "How could I be so careless? Are they all waiting for me, Mary?"

"No, Miss Langton--leastways I don't think they need you."

"Not need me? What do you mean? Isn't the bride dressed yet?"

"No, miss--yes, miss--that is, I don't quite know. _She's_ run away," the girl stammers, blankly.

"Who has run away?" Reine demands, sharply.

"The bride--Miss Maud," is the startling reply.

"Where has she gone? What for?" Reine demands, inelegantly, in the shock of her great surprise.

"To marry her old lover, Mr. Clyde, that she loved, and she couldn't love Mr. Charteris, miss," said the house-maid, succinctly.

There is a moment's silence. Reine drops back into a chair, dazed with the suddenness of the news.

"You see she left a little note to her uncle, miss, to let him know where she'd gone, and the old gentleman's that mad, miss, he up and swore bad enough to lift the roof off!"

There is a quick, startling rap at the door. Mary runs to open it in a hurry, and Reine glances up with dark, anxious eyes.

The next instant she starts to her feet with a smothered cry.

On the threshold stands Vane Charteris, pale as death itself, but superbly handsome in the customary suit of solemn black that makes gentlemen appear like mourners on all festive occasions.