A Bitter Reckoning: Violet Arleigh
9781465677242
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Rosamond Arleigh read the telegram over and over—once, twice, thrice, and her face grew pale as death, while into her dark eyes there crept a look of desperation. She glanced across the crowd of happy faces before her—the merry, care-free throng that filled her brilliant drawing-rooms to overflowing, and her pale face was convulsed with pain, and she set her white teeth into her red under lip until the blood started. “I had nearly forgotten!” she muttered. “Heaven help me, I had almost allowed myself to forget! The time will soon be up—the hour will soon be here when he will come to extort a bitter penalty for that mad mistake of the past. I am brought to bay at last; there is no escape! May Heaven show me mercy, for I need expect none from man!” She stood there, pale and queenly, her head, its dark locks just touched with silver, resting against the door-casing, as she watched the gleaming kaleidoscope of dancers floating dreamily away to the sweet, sensuous waltz-music. Her dark eyes rested long and lovingly upon a sweet face among the dancers—a fair face lighted up by great dark eyes, the small head crowned by a mass of waving golden hair; a girlish, graceful figure in white silk trimmed with fern leaves. Some subtile instinct made the beautiful eyes of the girl turn in the direction of that watching figure with a swift start of pleasure, and a look of fond affection passed between the two. Stifling a sigh, Rosamond Arleigh turned away and went out upon the broad gallery which ran in front of the rambling old house—a real Southern country home. Once there, she sunk wearily into a low lounging chair. There was the sound of light footsteps, the soft frou-frou of silken skirts; then a tiny white-gloved hand came down lightly upon Mrs. Arleigh’s shoulder and rested there like a snow-flake, while a gay, girlish voice cried, lightly: “Mamma! You dear little humbug! you said you would not be able to come down-stairs to-night, and, lo! here you are. All my pleasure has been spoiled until now; the sight of you cheers me once more! Aunt Constance is doing her level best to make my ball a success; but dear as she is, auntie isn’t you! And I——” “You are enjoying yourself, Violet?” her mother asked, in an anxious tone. “You are satisfied? Do you like your ball?” “Like it? Mamma, it is divine! There never was another such ball—never in the whole world, I am sure! I ought to be very happy to-night, mamma; I have so much to be thankful for. My beautiful home, and you, and—and all those who are so good to me. And it is my eighteenth birthday, and this is my very first ball!” She has summed it all up in those last words. In all the years to come there will never be anything like this in her life—never again. She may be surfeited with pleasures, may revel in wealth, and (natural sequence) count her friends by the score; but never again will she taste of the pure, unalloyed delight, the innocent rapture of her first ball—her eighteenth birthday.
