He was standing with one knee upon a sofa.Unconsciously he had moved round to the side of Celia; and as he caught the effect of her face now in profile, memory-pictures began at once building themselves in his brain--pictures of her standing in the darkened room of the cottage of death, declaiming the CONFITEOR; of her seated at the piano, under the pure, mellowed candle-light; of her leaning her chin on her hands, and gazing meditatively at the leafy background of the woods they were in; of her lying back, indolently content, in the deck-chair on the yacht of his fancy--that yacht which a few hours before had seemed so brilliantly and bewitchingly real to him, and now--now--!
He sank in a heap upon the couch, and, burying his face among its cushions, wept and groaned aloud.His collapse was absolute.He sobbed with the abandonment of one who, in the veritable presence of death, lets go all sense of relation to life.
Presently some one was touching him on the shoulder--an incisive, pointed touch--and he checked himself, and lifted his face.
"You will have to get up, and present some sort of an appearance, and go away at once," Celia said to him in low, rapid tones."Some gentlemen are at the door, whom I have been waiting for."As he stupidly sat up and tried to collect his faculties, Celia had opened the door and admitted two visitors.
The foremost was Father Forbes; and he, with some whispered, smiling words, presented to her his companion, a tall, robust, florid man of middle-age, with a frock-coat and a gray mustache, sharply waxed.The three spoke for a moment together.Then the priest's wandering eye suddenly lighted upon the figure on the sofa.He stared, knitted his brows, and then lifted them in inquiry as he turned to Celia.