In certain hearts love may refuse to die, and yet breed there a kind of hate. That was the way with Aubrey Stayne. His love was natural enough, and his hate could not be called unreasonable. An American by birth, he had lived many years abroad. Rich, handsome, notably intelligent, he had made in Paris the acquaintance of a woman who reigned as one of the social queens of Europe. Mme. d'Autreville was a widow, and yet scarcely past four-and-twenty when Stayne first met her. This meeting took place at a ball given by the English ambassador. It was a very brilliant affair, and the young Duchesse d'Autreville shone there amid the homage of hundreds. In spirit, Stayne found himself almost instantly at her feet. He was a great deal of an artist by temperament, and her face and figure, with their sculptural repose, enchanted him. Of course she was cold, he assured himself—glacially so. One feature alone seemed to indicate otherwise—her large eyes of drowsy brown, brooding below the lustrous curves of their lashes. But, after talking with her and feeling certain that he had wrought upon her a distinct impression, he told himself that this very coldness was an added charm. When all was said, did not this type of woman pique and fascinate him more than any other? She was proud, overbearing, even insolent, if you pleased; but did not these aggressive traits combine with the snowy loveliness of her beauty to make her winsome beyond all words? "I'm proud myself, for that matter," reflected Stayne, who was really quite the reverse, all things considered, for he came of a family distinguished three or four generations ago, and had fallen heir to a property of several million dollars. In his own country he occupied an almost exalted position, while abroad his reputed and magnified wealth was certainly no drawback. On general principles he soon found himself shrinking from the idea of marrying a woman with a title. It would be called a snobbish and cold-blooded thing by everybody who knew him. But then, on the other hand, there was the woman behind the title. And when she married him, she would change "Madame la Duchesse" into simply "Mrs. Aubrey Stayne."
But on further investigating the subject, Stayne received the bitter tidings that this lady would make no such matrimonial change whatever. The blow to him proved a fearful one. Not that she had mercilessly fooled him, or anything of that treacherous sort. Her fault was more subtle; she had refrained from showing him her real self.
They had spent a whole month together in Nice, and he had accompanied her into the most exclusive society there. Afterward they met in Rome, and finally, just as the chestnut-trees on the Champs Elysées had begun to whiten with their pearly springtide flowerage, Paris received them both. Madame owned a magnificent hotel on the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. She chose to give two sumptuous balls that season, and her dinners, as usual, were the delight of the gilded cliques. People had begun to wonder if her engagement to the young American millionaire, seen so often in her train, would not soon publicly transpire.
It was after one of those costly banquets of hers that Stayne, on a certain evening, managed to linger later than all the other guests. He remembered so perfectly, in future reflections, the small white and gold room, with its tapestries of rose-colored velvet, where this woman whom he worshipped heard his first real declaration of passion. She was leaning back in a great arm-chair, indolently fanning herself. He had thought her almost maddeningly fair that night, in her robe of black tulle, with not a single jewel on her milky arms or neck, and a long, straggling spray at her breast of eglantine in diamonds. The dinner had not been very large, but some great people had attended it, and now they had all gone away—the Russian ambassador and the Austrian princess and the English duke—and he was seated on a sort of low little divan at her side, looking up into the marble beauty of her face and telling her how it had become the dream of his life to make her his own. She hardly seemed, at times, as if she listened to him. And yet he knew that she did listen. This was her way. Perhaps in a few more moments all that splendid apathy would vanish; perhaps flame would flash out, as it were, below the melting ice of her personality.