That jasper cup was the last thing which her husband had given her, not long before his emigration. But money could not buy what Valentine de Trélan wanted then. Gouthière, when he designed and mounted the goblet, had not done ill in placing the little snake underneath. Valentine had thought so at the time, and had almost disliked the precious thing—symbol, so it sometimes seemed to her, of her life and Gaston’s, that might have been so different if they had not been born to such idle greatness, a cup too richly set to drink out of.
She gazed at it now with compressed lips, aware that vine and laurel leaves were becoming blurred by the slow, hot tears that were rising to her eyes. Suddenly she turned away from it, and walking at last to the young man over the console looked up at him.
Yes, he had been like that! Yes, he had had that expression—once! “How could I have kept your heart, Gaston?” she asked, gazing at the smiling eyes. For he had a heart as undoubtedly as he had charm and distinction and courage and wit . . . as well as riches and a great name and Mirabel. Yet one thing was lacking always—and after all these years it was hard to be sure what it was.
Or—as she had often and often thought—was it not rather she who lacked? Yet what could she have given him that she had not? That other men in those days of universal gallantry had been so ready to call her cold and heartless, was that a reason for reproach? If she could have the past again, what would she have done differently?—till that last fatal taunt. She did not know. Had it all been inevitable tragedy then, fixed for them before ever they met, from the moment they had been born?
It was double tragedy too. Gaston’s indifference to her love was his wife’s private sorrow, and not his fault, for how could love come at bidding? But his lifelong indifference to the claims of ambition—of duty even—how was that to be condoned or explained? No, he was like some tall ship, gallantly furnished and manned, that had never made the great voyage for which it had been built, but had drifted always with light airs, till drifting was no longer possible . . . at least on a summer sea. Where was it now?
She could not take her eyes from the picture, though the glance the canvas gave her back was like a blade in a wound. But Gaston could not be like that now—nor like the Gaston who had left her presence so mortally insulted. Yet if he knew exile and material loss he had not known the hard discipline of prison and contumely. He, she was sure, had never been reduced to earning his bread. What was he doing—if he lived? Married again, perhaps, to some rich lady, as the Deputy had suggested, for if he had taken the trouble to make enquiries about his wife’s fate he must indubitably, like all her world, believe her dead.