Rosa Campbell Praed

“ Her features were rigid, her frame tense as though she were concentrating all her force in one superhuman effort of will. It only lasted for a second, and Beatrice's eyes, large, blank, cowed, were drawn as by a magnet into that terrible compelling gaze. The girl trembled and yet looked fascinated, like a helpless victim before the snake makes its fatal spring. Countess Adrian went nearer. She spoke with a low, intense utterance words that burned like fire into Lendon's heart.
"You are going to be his wife," she said. "To you is given all that has been denied to me. ”

“ She bowed her head.
"Surely," he added, "that need not end because the portrait is finished?"
"I think it will," she answered. "There are more ways than one of ending a friendship. Are you sorry the portrait is finished?" she asked suddenly.
"Yes," he answered unhesitatingly. There was in his mind no shadow of falsity to Beatrice. If some faint doubt of Countess Adrian's feeling for himself had ever glanced across it, he had dismissed the fancy with a smile at his own vanity. ”

“ To-night it seemed to him that Beatrice was finer than usual. The interest had risen to enthusiasm. Stalls and boxes were full, and the pit and galleries were densely packed. The curtain was raised several times at the end of each act; and at the close of the performance the calls and shouts of "Brava!" were deafening, till Beatrice appeared once more before the curtain, and, pale and overwrought, bowed her acknowledgments of the applause. Lendon went round to the stage entrance and waited till the actress came out. ”

“ It was to him a foretaste of almost unrealizable bliss to watch this beautiful creature as she thrilled with the emotion of her part, and to know that he alone had a lover's right to the exquisite lips, that for his own secret delight were reserved all those graces of womanhood, and that for his ear was destined love-talk tenderly intimate and heavenly sweet as, in those short days of wedded bliss, the ill-fated Duchess whispered in the ears of Antonio. ”

“ Bernard answered, no less agitated than she herself. "If, while admiring her above all women, valuing her friendship, honouring her for her noble frankness, he were yet unable to give back the love she offered him, and which under other conditions would have made his happiness—if this were so—became his heart had been given before he knew her, and another woman claimed all his devotion——"
She interrupted him with a little inarticulate cry; but only the more closely did she cling to him, "Love me, Bernard," she murmured, and all the passion of her being seemed concentrated in the appeal. ”

“ Let the other woman go. She does not love you as I love you. She cannot charm you as I would charm you. She cannot give you what I could give you." As Countess Adrian spoke she raised herself closer to him. Her arm stole round his neck, her palpitating form pressed against his, and her lips met his in an impassioned kiss. ”

“ For a moment he gave himself up to the intoxication of the contact—of her perfumed breath, of her warm soft lips. He would have been more than man had he kept his senses. "Agnes," he whispered, as he strained her closer. Then with a sudden shock of revulsion came the thought of Beatrice and of her pure love. It steeled him and gave him new strength. He rose from the divan and put Agnes gently from him. She seemed instinctively to realise that his mood had changed ”

“ Lendon remembered, as he drove along, that Countess Adrian had that morning laughingly engaged him to dance the first waltz after midnight. She had insisted upon his coming up to her, no matter with whom she might be talking, exactly as the clock struck. "It will be the first time that I shall have danced," she said, "for five years." ”

“ Suppose that for the first time in my life——I——love."
"To suppose that, Countess," he said, with a forced lightness that seemed to him at the moment a mockery of himself, "is to suppose that at least there is one happy man in the world." ”

“ He liked her; she interested him intensely, speaking in the abstract, in her way, perhaps, quite as much as Beatrice. He delighted in her beauty, her curious grace, the charm of her conversation, and the frank audacity with which she laid herself bare before him. But love! That belonged to a secret inner chamber of which Countess Adrian could never possess the key.
"I have had a pleasant task, Countess," he went on. "To watch you, to paint you would have been almost pleasure enough to an artist ”