VOLUME 1, CHAPTER XXVI.
REMORSE
The atmosphere at Stagsden Hall that evening was one of leaden, suffocating gloom. A feeling of estrangement had settled over Seton Darville and Edris Temperley, so profound and absolute that it seemed to chill the very air of the grand manor. The cozy warmth of their previous intimacy had been replaced by a clinical, terrifying distance. They moved through the corridors like ghosts in a house that no longer belonged to them, each trapped in a private hell of their own making.
Edris, while dressing for dinner, was suddenly seized by a fit of such violent remorse that she could no longer maintain her poise. The weight of her own duplicity crashed down upon her with the force of an avalanche. Throwing herself wildly upon her bed, she gave way to a frantic, soul-shattering outburst of tears. The silk of her gown crinkled beneath her, but she cared nothing for it.
"Oh, why did I do it? I must have been mad—utterly, hopelessly mad!" she cried aloud between her jagged sobs. "Why did I do it, when I love Seti so well? But I know his nature. He is a man of iron beneath that gentle mask. He will never forgive me now that he has learned the depths of my deceit. Yes, I am base and worthless. I am unworthy of his great, noble passion for me. What must he think? What must he think of me now?"
As she lay there, the image of Karl Weiss rose in her mind, no longer draped in the glamorous light of a snow-romance, but revealed in the harsh, unflattering glare of her own guilt. She remembered how Karl, with his practiced craft and predatory cunning, had fascinated her. He had used the same winning ways he had likely practiced on a hundred women before her. She recalled his pretty, poisonous speeches—how, by slow degrees, he had sought to possess her mind and turn her against Seton. He had constantly mocked Darville's age, whispering that the man who loved her was a relic, a boring dotard who could never understand her youth.
For the first time, she gauged Karl at his true worth. She compared his shallow, "pinchbeck" heroism—his stories of brave deeds that were likely nothing but sawdust-stuffed fantasies—with the quiet, immense strength of Seton Darville. She realized that Karl was a man of straw, while Seton was a man of substance. And yet, she had been infatuated. She had been like a bird mesmerized by the swaying of a serpent, helpless and foolish until the venom was already in her veins.
"How can I convince him?" she sobbed, her heart bursting. "How can I make him see that I have loved him all along? That whatever I said to Karl, whatever I wrote in those wretched letters, I am his alone? He will never believe me. He will never trust me again. The honesty I threw away can never be gathered back."
Simultaneously, Seton Darville stood in his guest chamber, a figure of tragic, solitary dignity. He was grief-stricken and heart-broken, his world reduced to a heap of ash. He stood by the bed, leaning heavily upon it, looking around the room with the bewildered eyes of a man who had survived a shipwreck only to find himself on a desert island. Even now, knowing everything, he could still hear her protests of love, but they sounded like the clanging of brass in his ears—a hollow, sickening pretense.
"She is false—damnably, irrevocably false!" he whispered into the silence. He had trusted her with the vulnerability of a man who had thought he'd finally found his soul's affinity, his "perfect woman." Instead, he had found a mistress of the lie. He felt a visceral nausea at the memory of her kisses.
He choked back his sobs and went to the mirror. With mechanical precision, he tied his cravat, his fingers steady despite the fracture in his soul. He descended the grand staircase to the drawing-room, where the bowls of pink tulips seemed to mock him with their freshness. Mrs. Temperley sat there, the picture of maternal, oblivious peace.
"Edris tells me she is going to London to-morrow, Mr. Darville," she said. "You'll stay here with us, won't you?"
"I fear I must also go to London," Seton replied, his voice a marvel of controlled urbanity. "I have an appointment in town that I cannot miss. I shall accompany Edris."
Later that evening, around eleven o'clock, the pair were left alone in the morning-room. The fire had burned low, casting skeletal shadows across the floor. Edris suddenly gripped his arm, her little hands trembling.
"I know you have no confidence in me, Seti," she cried, her voice breaking. "But I repeat—I love you, and you alone! Karl is coming to London to-morrow, and I am meeting him at Victoria. I only invited him to test my love for you!"
Seton's face remained a mask of withering, frozen scorn. "How curious," he remarked, his voice like a winter wind. "You are engaged to me, yet you find it necessary to 'test' your heart with another? I am not a dotard to be gulled, Edris. I am a man of acute faculties. You are longing for the hour of his arrival, as you wrote to him in your last letter."
Edris paled. She realized then that he hadn't just guessed her betrayal—he had read it. The secret letters she had posted with such care were now weapons in his hand. She fell to her knees, clutching his legs, her tears flowing in torrents as she poured out the truth—how the flirtation under the mistletoe had turned into a trap, and how Karl had forced the engagement upon her at Interlaken just before the train left.
But Seton remained stone. He looked down at the woman he had worshipped and felt a profound, hollow pity. "It is too late for explanations, Edris," he said hoarsely. "You have trodden my affection under your feet. Your presence has become repugnant to me."
The following morning at the railway station, the air was thick with the ghosts of their dead romance. Seton stood on the platform, his collar turned up against the chill. He watched her board the train, her face a mask of sorrow and expectation. She was going to meet his enemy, the traitor who had extinguished the sun of his life.
As the train began to move, Seton leaned toward the window and whispered a final, cryptic warning: "Do not forget that I await you!"
Edris watched him recede into the distance, unaware that the "lucrative appointment" Marcus had secured for Karl Weiss was a one-way ticket to a Moscow gallows. Seton turned back to the car, his eyes stinging with tears he refused to let fall. The Architect was no longer building a life; he was presiding over a funeral.