"'Mrs. Blake has gone, sir, I could not keep her.'
CHAPTER XIII
A MAN'S HEART
"That was the last time my eyes ever I rested upon my wife. Whither
she went or what refuge she gained, I never knew. My father who had
received in this scene a great shock, began to fail so rapidly, he
demanded my constant care; and though from time to time as I
ministered to him and noted with what a yearning persistency he would
eye the door and then turn and meet my gaze with a look I could not
understand, I caught myself asking whether I had done a deed destined
to hang forever about me like a pall; it was not till after his death
that the despairing image of the bright young creature to whom I had
given my name, returned with any startling distinctness to my mind, or
that I allowed myself to ask whether the heavy gloom which I now felt
settling upon me was owing to the sense of shame that overpowered me
at the remembrance of the past, or to the possible loss I had
sustained in the departure of my young unloved bride.
"The announcement at this time of the engagement between Evelyn Blake
and the Count De Mirac may have had something to do with this. Though
I had never in the most passionate hours of my love for her, lost
sight of that side of her nature which demanded as her right the
luxury of great wealth; and though in my tacit abandonment of her and
secret marriage with another I had certainly lost the right to
complain of her actions whatever they might be, this manifest
surrendering of herself to the power of wealth and show at the price
of all that women are believed to hold dear, was an undoubted blow to
my pride and the confidence I had till now unconsciously reposed in
her inherent womanliness and affection.
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