Then--it was as if death itself laid a cold hand on her heart--for there was one in the detested writing of Victor Mercier. He had dared--risked--writing to her openly in her own home, under her uncle's roof!

What did it mean?

CHAPTER XIII

The latent sense of being arbiter of a beautiful young woman's fate--which had been perhaps Victor Mercier's only sentiment in Joan's regard during their separation--developed, on that evening they met in the Regent's Park, into a certain pa.s.sionate exultation in possessing her for his own, evidently against her wish. But when he felt convinced, from Paul Naz' innocent betrayal of society talk, that the girl who was legally his wife had a lover, and that already their names were coupled together, the smouldering resentment that her girlish pa.s.sion for him was dead, burst into a fierce flame of absolute hatred.

He had enjoyed abandoning himself to the enjoyment of Vera's love with a double zest--because it was a secret revenge upon Joan. He had gone about after he had received Joan's letter postponing their next meeting, making subtle and refined plans for the long-drawn-out punishment of his "faithless wife," as he termed her. He told himself he was glad of a week's interlude. If he had seen her then, he might have betrayed his wrath and desire for revenge. His tactics were quite the opposite of that.

"First, I must compromise her," he decided. "I must have her actions now, at the actual moment, in my power--she must have been alone with me in such a way as to turn this n.o.ble lord who wants her against her, should he know of it! Yes--if she had refused to see me, she might have gone in for a divorce! But if I have her condonation for the past on my side, she will have no case--even if she would not have entirely d.a.m.ned herself with this cur of a lover!"

This accomplished--something tangible in the present to hold over her head--he would take her away and make constant and pa.s.sionate love to her. He told himself grimly that there would be a fantastic delight in this uxorious enjoyment of a wife whose heart was given to another man, which fell to the lot of few. The secret ecstasy would be the knowledge that he had left the loving arms of a devoted girl who was ready to die for him, and could return to them at any moment--for he well knew that Vera's infatuation for him included wholesale acceptance of any lie he chose to invent to account for his absence, or any detail of his life.

"Then--I can play upon them all in turn, as upon a set of musical instruments," he promised himself. "The uncle will do what I ask--sn.o.b as he is, parvenu, beggar on horseback!--to hide what he will think disgrace! The lover--well, he shall be neatly disposed of by-and-bye.

He shall see me with her in my arms, somehow, somewhere, somewhen! Upon my word, that will be almost as much torture to them both as the old-fashioned, out-of-date revenges. It is a poor revenge upon people to kill them! Let them live--and thwart them, make them writhe in their impotence to do what they want!"

And during this week Vera must be plunged more hopelessly and abjectly in love, so that she would become such a mere echo of himself that she would do, or not do, whatever he suggested, without so much as a second thought.

So he devoted himself to her, and spent his money freely in the process.

He bought her pretty trinkets, and some ready-made costumes and becoming hats--and almost every day took her some excursion. They had a day at Brighton, one at Windsor, one in Richmond Park, one up river. That was the day before the one in which the crucial interview with Joan was to occur; and he chose to a.s.sume a portentous gravity, and to tell her that he must go away for a time.

"My sweetest pet, this being with you is pretty well driving me mad with impatience to get rid of that cat of a woman who keeps us apart," he told her, as, after they had had a little _fete champetre_ of cold chicken and champagne, he lounged at her side in a boat drawn up under the willows of a little creek. "So I have made up my mind to set about it at once! What do you say?"

"Dearest!" was all she could reply. Her beautiful blue eyes gazed at him through a mist of emotion. How deliriously dainty she looked--flickering shadows cast by the willow branches on her _pet.i.te_, white-clad figure--the heat of a mid-summer noon bringing a rich rose glow to her rounded cheeks, so much more delicately pretty without war-paint.

"It will necessitate my being absent for a little while, but that you must not mind," he went on, judicially, resting his head on her shoulder and thinking what a wonderful provision of Nature it was--this unbounded credulity of enamoured women. Did they really believe in their men, he wondered, a little contemptuously--or did their frantic desire for their love to be returned swallow up everything that stood in its way? "When one wants a good thing, one must be content to make a little sacrifice for it, eh, darling? I don't think you are as selfish as most of your s.e.x, I will say that for you!"

She glanced at him gratefully. One word of praise from his lips recompensed her for all the drudgery, hard work, and mental suffering of the past years--when, not knowing where he was or what had become of him--whether he was dead or in prison, or fallen among thieves in some unreachable country--she had slaved and toiled nearly the four-and-twenty hours through to keep a home together in which, some day, to welcome back the wanderer, or even the total wreck of him.

"And now you must help me in something," he went on, sliding his arm about her slender waist and looking up into her face with those sinister, penetrating black eyes, which were, perhaps, the deterrent when dogs growled and snarled at, and children fled from, him. "I am not one of those silly men who talk about their business--who chatter, prate, prattle, and do nothing!--I say little--but act! (The secret of successful life, my dear!) I have not been idle since I returned with the hope of winning you for my wife. Already I have found out much of the woman who was my ruin for a time with her unscrupulous devilry, which will help me immensely to free myself from that obnoxious tie.

But I have still to see a very important witness against her, and I can only see the man at my leisure at home. Do you think that if I appoint to-morrow night, you can persuade mother to go to the theatre with you?"

"Don't you know? She is going to the entertainment given for the patients at the Hospital," returned Vera, eagerly. "That will be the very thing for you! You will have the house to yourself. Mr. Dobson is going, of course!" (Mr. Dobson was a student lodger).

"Everything smiles upon us, my love," he said, tenderly, grimly congratulating himself on his good luck. And he gave himself up to love-making for the remainder of the summer afternoon--returning earlier than he had intended, though, to write that letter to Joan: the letter which Julie brought among others to her bedside, and which she read with blanched cheeks and sinking heart:--

"You must not go to the old place, but come to me here, to-morrow night, Wednesday, at nine. If you fail, I intend to call upon you without demur, and at all risk. Take a cab to the corner of Westminster Bridge, the other side of the river, and then inquire for Haythorn Street.

V. a'COURT."

CHAPTER XIV

The tone of the missive seemed to half paralyse poor Joan. For a little while she lay p.r.o.ne on her bed, unable to think, answering Julie mechanically as she hovered about, pulling up the blinds, getting the bath ready, placing the dainty garments ready to hand.

Then, with the first returning pang of despair--for that letter told her that she need not imagine she was in the least secure--a sword of Damocles hung over her unhappy head--she cast about what she must do.

Go, of course! that was certain. And make terms--or, rather, accede _in toto_ to anything he might propose for that flight of theirs which was never to take place.

"I had better take money with me," she told herself. "And--to a certain extent I must take Julie into my confidence." "Julie, I have no money by me, do you know," she said, irrelevantly, as Julie was dressing her golden hair, and wondering why her young mistress' beautiful face was so pale and _triste_. Julie usually cashed her young lady's cheques drawn to "Self" for pocket-money.

"Shall I go for madamoiselle--after breakfast?" asked Julie, sweetly, as she vigorously combed the glistening hairs from the jewelled hair brush, one of Sir Thomas' frequent gifts to his niece. She had always liked her beautiful young mistress, but since Joan had sympathized with her love affair with Paul Naz, she had been ready and willing to fly to the ends of the earth to do her bidding, if need be.

"No. I am going shopping in the carriage, and you shall come with me.

I don't like your taking much money into omnibuses, Julie, so I think I shall draw a large sum at once. It is perfectly safe locked up in this room."

Julie readily acquiesced--and during the morning drove with Joan to several shops, and to the Bank, where she cashed a cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds in rouleaux of gold, which she carried in a bag to the carriage. As they were driving home Joan told her she wanted her to help her in an errand of charity that very evening.

"Mais certainement, mademoiselle!" the girl readily exclaimed.

"To-night? I can easily go out another evening."

"I don't want you to do that," returned Joan. "What I want is this. My uncle knows nothing of this poor person I am helping, and I do not want him to know. I thought that I might take a sudden fancy to go--say, to Madame Tussauds', which I have not seen for years--that we might start together in a cab--my uncle and aunt are going out to dinner, and have the landau--and then I will drop you at a certain spot, and meet you there again when you are returning home."

Julie acquiesced with acclamation--and flushed with pleasure at being admitted to share a secret with the sweet, proud girl who would, she was certain, very soon be a great lady. If she had her doubts about the "poor person," and imagined, from what she knew by experience of Joan's eccentricity--as she considered her mistress' coldness. .h.i.therto in regard to the opposite s.e.x--that the nocturnal escapade meant an a.s.signation with the charming milord who intended to make a great lady of Miss Thorne--she kept it to herself.

Mistress and maid carried out their plan without hindrance. Sir Thomas teased his niece a little slily about the sudden fancy for waxworks--he had, like Julie, some _arriere-pensee_ not unconnected with Vansittart--but he made no objection to the expedition. Nor did Lady Thorne, to whom, after his talk with Vansittart, he had said, after giving her some broad hints--"my dear, understand this once and for all--if we give Joan her head, and don't interfere in the least, she will be the Viscountess Vansittart before we know where we are!"

Shortly after Joan had had a solitary tea-dinner in her sitting-room upstairs--a meal she affected when she preferred not to accompany Sir Thomas and Lady Thorne to a long, dreary, dinner-party of old fogies--mistress and maid started off in a four-wheeled cab to which a man-servant pompously gave the address--"Madame Tussord's."

Julie had admired, with a French girl's admiration, her young lady's _savoir faire_, when she had suggested that they should actually make a tour of the exhibition and take an opportunity of slipping quietly out when others likely to absorb the door-keeper's attention were coming in, and had readily acquiesced in the idea.

They alighted at the entrance, paid their money, walked leisurely in, strolled about, apparently examining the effigies with interest then steering unostentatiously towards the door by which they had entered; they waited until a number of lively children were flocking obstreperously upstairs and had to be held in check at the turnstile, when they issued forth, and walked along the Marylebone Road.

When they came to a church, Joan stopped. "Will you remember this place?" she asked. "You are sure? Then I will leave you here, and meet you again at the exact spot at eleven o'clock. If you are here first, wait until I come. On no account are you to go home alone--without me!

Do you understand?"

Julie's protestations that she understood were sincere and hearty. Joan said no more, but took the bag from her--Julie had mentally commented upon its weight, and wondered who was the lucky person to be benefited by its contents--and with an easy "_au revoir_, then," was gone.

She sped along the street as much in the shadow as she could, lest a glance of recognition might by any possibility be cast upon her from any of the carriages which drove by almost in numbers, for it was the climax of an unusually gay London season. Then, when she began to meet crawling cabs and hansoms, she hailed one, gave the order, "Westminster Bridge--the Southwark end," and sank back in the corner a little spent and exhausted by the first part of her escapade.

"So far, so good," she told herself, drawing a long breath of mingled anxiety and disgust. Although she had steadily pulled herself together, willed resolutely to go through the tragic farce with Victor Mercier, as her only alternative--her loathing of the part she had to play was so intense that at times she felt tempted to take a leap into the black waters of the great river instead of submitting to his endearments. As the cab drove briskly towards Westminster, and her eyes rested miserably on the familiar landmarks of the great city, so beautiful in its nightly robe of the mingled light and darkness which is so typical of its very soul--she said to herself in a wild moment--"death or Vansittart--which?" and the memory of her beloved one's fine frank face, glorified into absolute beauty by the strong tenderness of his deep love--won.

"Even Victor's touch--his kiss," she grimly told herself, "are not too much to pay for a lifetime with _him_!"

A clock informed her that it was considerably past nine o'clock. So much the better! The shorter that hated _tete-a-tete_ with Mercier would be, the more thankful she would feel.

The air blowing freshly down stream as they crossed the bridge, revived her. She alighted, paid the cabman, and taking her bag tightly in her hand, pa.s.sed some roughs who were shouting noisily as they came along, by stepping into the road; then seeing the helmet and tunic of a policeman silhouetted against the sky--still dully red after the sunset--she went across the road to him.

"Can you direct me to Haythorn Street?" she asked.

"Haythorn Street? Yes, miss. Straight along that road, and first to the left."