Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/36

30 really never should get over. And then there was a slow crackling in the underbrush as of a masculine tread, and Mrs. Conroy, picking up her terrible parasol, shaded the cold fires of her gray eyes with it, and sat calm and expectant.

A figure came slowly and listlessly up the hill. When within a dozen yards of her, she saw it was not Victor. But when it approached nearer she suddenly started to her feet with pallid cheeks and an exclamation upon her lips. It was the Spanish translator of Pacific street. She would have flown, but on the instant he turned and recognized her with a cry, a start, and a tremor equal to her own. For a moment they stood glaring at each other, breathless but silent!

"Devarges!" said Mrs. Conroy in a voice that was scarcely audible. "Good God!" The stranger uttered a bitter laugh. "Yes! Devarges!—the man who ran away with you—Devarges the traitor! Devarges the betrayer of your husband. Look at me! You know me—Henry Devarges! Your husband's brother!—your old accomplice—your lover—your dupe!" "Hush," she said imploringly, glancing around through the dim woods, "for God's sake, hush!" "And who are you?" he went on without heeding her; "which of the Mesdames Devarges is it now? Or have you taken the name of the young sprig of an officer for whom you deserted me, and may be in turn married? Or did he refuse you even that excuse for your perfidy? Or is it the wife and accomplice of this feeble-minded Conroy? What name shall I call you? Tell me quick! Oh, I have much to say, but I wish to be polite, madame; tell me to whom I am to speak!" Despite the evident reality of his passion and fury there was something so unreal and grotesque in his appearance—in his antique foppery, in his dyed hair, in his false teeth, in his padded coat, in his thin strapped legs, that this relentless woman cowered before him in very shame, not of her crime, but of her accomplice!

"Hush," she said, "call me your friend; I am always your friend, Henry! Call me anything, but let me go from here. In God's name, do you hear? not so loud! Another time and another place I will listen," and she drew slowly back, until, scarce knowing what he did, she had led him away from the place of rendezvous toward the ruined cabin. Here she felt she was at least safe from the interruption of Victor. "How came you here? how did you find what had become of me? where have you been these long years?" she asked hastily.

Within the last few moments she had regained partially the strange power that she had always exerted over all men except Gabriel Conroy. The stranger hesitated and then answered in a voice that had more of hopelessness than bitterness in its quality, "I came here six years ago, a broken, ruined and disgraced man. I had no ambition but to hide myself from all who had known me,—from that brother whose wife I had stolen, and whose home I had broken up—from you—you, Julie!—you and your last lover—from the recollection of your double treachery!" He had raised his voice here, but was checked by the unflinching eye and cautionary gesture of the woman before him. "When you abandoned me in St. Louis, I had no choice but death or a second exile. I could not return to Switzerland, I could not live in the sickening shadow of my crime and its bitter punishment. I came here. My education, my knowledge of the languages stood me in good stead; I might have been a rich man, I might have been an influential one, but I only used my opportunities for the bare necessaries of life and the means to forget my trouble in dissipation. I became a drudge by day, a gambler by night. I was always a gentleman. Men thought me crazy, an enthusiast, but they learned to respect me. Traitor as I was in a larger trust, no one doubted my honor or dared to approach my integrity. But bah! what is this to you? You?" He would have turned from her again in very bitterness, but in the act he caught her eye, and saw in it, if not sympathy, at least a certain critical admiration, that again brought him to her feet. For despicable as this woman was, she was pleased at this pride in the man she had betrayed, was gratified at the sentiment that lifted him above his dyed hair and his pitiable foppery, and felt a certain honorable satisfaction in the fact, that even after the lapse of years, he had proved true to her own intuitions of him.

"I had been growing out of my despair, Julie," he went on sadly, "I was, or believed I was, forgetting my fault, forgetting even you—when there came to me the news of my brother's death—by starvation. Listen to me, Julie! One day there came to me