Evidently the street where her bugbear at present lived was an ordinary one, and respectable. The policeman's tone of voice suggested that!

She went along the road, which was rather dark, until she came to a neat-looking street of small, uniformly built houses. Yes, this was Haythorn Street--she read the name by the light of the gas lamp close by. Now to find the number! The corner was number one, so she went on at once, and then her heart gave a dull, leaden thud against her chest.

She saw a dark figure on a little balcony a few houses up, which disappeared as she advanced. When she came up to number twelve, the street door stood open--Victor came out, took her hand, and led her in.

"Welcome, my dearest wife!" he exclaimed, embracing her. Then he closed the door. She saw an odious, triumphant smile on his sharp, handsome features, and in his bright dark eyes. He was carefully dressed.

Although only half a Frenchman, he had the southern taste for fantasy in costume. A diamond stud shone in his embroidered shirt-front, a b.u.t.ton-hole of some white, strongly-scented blossom was in his coat.

"You are frightened, my own!" he caressingly said, with a suggestion of proprietorship which made her inwardly shudder.

"Don't be! We are quite alone in the house, you and I! And I will take precautions to keep us so," he added, returning to the door and putting up the chain.

CHAPTER XV

Joan staggered against the wall with sudden horror as Victor walked away and adjusted the chain which shut out possible intruders. Alone in the house--with him--and he was legally her husband! Could she face it? "I must, I will!" she said to herself, clenching her teeth and summoning all the fort.i.tude she possessed to her aid.

As he turned, he noticed her pallor, the wild glitter in her great eyes.

"At bay," he thought. "Mad with pa.s.sion for another man--hates me--what a delicious situation!"

"Come upstairs, dearest," he said, in the new, abhorrently caressing tone which seemed to curdle her blood. "What? The staircase is too narrow for us both? Then I will go first." He tripped lightly up the steps, which were covered with oilcloth, and after turning up the gas on the landing, stood smiling upon her as she slowly, reluctantly, ascended. As she reached the top, he opened a door, and she saw a well-lighted room with a book-case, good, solid chairs, and a new Kidderminster carpet. But a curious odour floated out to meet her.

"What an odd smell of drugs!" she exclaimed, standing on the threshold.

It seemed to take her back years, that pungent odour, to the schoolroom--when she went into the schoolmistress' little medicine-room to be physicked.

"I am very sorry, but I happen to be on sufferance in these rooms--their real tenant is a medical student, who has got leave because of a series of catastrophes in his family. Look here! This looks like business, doesn't it?"

He opened a cupboard door, and she saw a skeleton hanging on a peg.

"Oh!" she cried, shrinking back.

He laughed. "I thought you were strong minded," he said. "But somehow I am rather glad you are not. But you are not going to stand there all the evening, are you, because there are a few harmless bones in the cupboard? There are worse things in creation than skeletons!" He spoke meaningly.

She watched him as he seated himself in a revolving chair by a writing table. There was a certain insolence in his manner and tone, as well as in his depreciatory stare, as he gazed slightingly at her and twisted his small black moustache. A diamond twinkled on his little finger.

Somehow she took courage from his shallow, careless att.i.tude--and she was strongly stirred by a wild idea that flashed upon her. She would make use of her own scheme with Vansittart to cajole him into waiting until the mine was sprung, and he had lost her for ever!

"I am not strong-minded, more's the pity, or I should not be here to-night," she said, firmly, and she entered and seated herself opposite him, once more mistress of herself and her emotions. "Why not? Because I should have been with you long ago, if I'd had the spirit some women have!"

"You would--have followed me?" he asked, a little taken back, puzzled.

"I would! Because I believed in you!" she said, honestly. "I thought you more sinned against than sinning!"

"That is right! A woman's first duty is to believe in her husband," he exclaimed, leering at her.

"Her husband!" For a moment she was off guard, she spoke with scathing contempt. "A husband, who leaves his wife month after month, year after year, without a word!"

"A real woman would have searched for me the world through, when she had money to command as you have had!" he said, leaning back, folding his arms, and contemplating her with a savage, vindictive expression.

"Money? I have only an allowance!" she exclaimed, bitterly, and with a real bitterness. It had sometimes maddened her since his return, when she thought of what she might do if only her uncle had given her the control of a small fortune, instead of doling out an income. "And that is where our difficulty lies, Victor. I have taken a week to think hard about it. Suppose we hire a yacht under another name, and wander about for a time, and then I appeal to my uncle? I think he would be inclined to forgive--everything."

"If you remember, my dear, that was my idea, not yours," he said, leaning back in his chair, puzzled. Was it possible that Paul Naz, and the people who coupled Joan with that "milord" Paul had spoken of, were mistaken, and that she cared for him still--only her pride and vanity had kept her from showing it? "Not a yacht--bah, I detest the sea--and to be shut up in a boat! Not even with you, my beautiful wife, could I stand such _gene_! No, no, I have a better idea than that. Let us lose ourselves in Paris! You know nothing, you are still a baby, if you have not seen and enjoyed life there! But you are a baby--hein? I must teach my child-wife what life really is."

Slightly exhilarated by his new view of Joan, as possibly as potentially great a victim of his fascinations as poor deluded Vera, he sprang up, and going to her, took her in his arms. The instinct to fling, thrust him violently from her, was cruelly strong. But she--in an agony of woe and love--remembered Vansittart, and mentally thought "for his sake, for his sake," as she willed pa.s.sively to endure, while Victor kept his lips long and firmly on hers. At last she could bear it no longer, and freed herself with a sudden frantic effort.

"You will suffocate--choke me!" she gasped, and her eyes seemed as if starting from her head--her voice came thickly from her quivering lips.

"Well, I will be gentler, my tender dove!" he said a little satirically.

He doubted her again. If she had had "any mind of him," would not that kiss of his have effectually broken down all barriers of pique, and launched her on a sea of pa.s.sion? But there was charm to such a _gourmet_ in love, as he considered himself, in appropriating what she disliked to give. He took her hand. "Come and sit with me on our friend the medico's sofa under the window there!" he coaxingly said. "I want to look at my wife, to kiss her, embrace her after these years of longing, of waiting!"

She gave him an involuntary glance of horror and terror. "Presently,"

she stammered. "First let me give you the money I have brought you--let us settle about our journey, when it is to be."

He stood still for a few moments, gazing steadily at her. That look had told him much--the mention of money when he asked for love told him still more.

"Very well," he said, after a pause, during which she wondered whether it would end in his killing her--in that lonely house she was at the mercy of any sudden outburst of anger of his. Just then she felt that death would be preferable to another kiss of the kind which still stung her icy lips.

"I suppose the money is in that bag?" he went on, going to the writing-table and lifting it. "You want me to take care of it for you, as your contribution to our honeymoon?" He spoke sneeringly.

"Yes," she said, watching him as he seated himself before the table.

Then she went to him, took up the bag, and shook out six common leather purses she had bought at the bazaar in a great emporium that morning, and filled during the afternoon. Purses and gold alike were untraceable. "There are a hundred and twenty-five sovereigns. Count them, won't you?"

"No! I will trust you," he said, with a sinister smile. "I may be a fool for my pains, but I trust you."

She sat as if spellbound, watching him take a small bunch of keys from his pocket and open a worn old travelling desk on the table. It was his own, that desk, she mechanically thought, as she noted the half obliterated letters "V.M." on the flap, and wondered what was pa.s.sing within his mind to cause that dark frown, that cruel look in his black eyes, as he slowly packed in the purses one by one.

"It is a beggarly sum that you have brought me, do you know?" he said, turning to her with sudden fierceness--and his lips were drawn back, his teeth gleamed white under his moustache. "I am too good to you! I have that here in this desk with which I could coin thousands to-morrow if I pleased. I have only to show your letters, the certificate of marriage, to your d.a.m.nably miserly old uncle, and he would at once make terms.

And you--you would precious soon find me as much money as I wanted if I threatened you to take the lot to your lover, Lord Vansittart!"

If a bomb had suddenly fallen upon the table before her, Joan could hardly have had a greater shock. She staggered back and fell limply into a chair, staring at him. Her lips opened to speak, but no sound came. She was livid as a corpse.

He was frightened. If she should choose to have a prolonged faint--such as he had known some women to have--and Vera returned before he could get her away!

"Don't make a scene here, d'ye hear?" he savagely cried--and he went to the cupboard, and after a clinking of gla.s.s, he brought out a bottle half full of brandy, and two tumblers, and poured some into each.

"Take some of that, it'll pull you together," he said, not unkindly, as he held the gla.s.s to her lips. But she kept them firmly closed, and faintly shook her head.

"No! Water!" she whispered, hoa.r.s.ely. "Water!"

"Don't be so silly! It's not poison! It wouldn't suit my book to get rid of you, my love!" he scornfully exclaimed, rea.s.sured by her being conscious, and speaking. Then he set down her gla.s.s on the table, and taking up his, drank off its contents at a gulp. "There! You see it is not! However, I'll get you some water, if you like."

He crossed to the door, opened it, and went downstairs. She sat up, listening to his footsteps. A new idea had flashed upon her. She glanced first at the desk, hungrily, wildly, then at the cupboard. Then she rose, stepped cautiously, supporting herself, for she was giddy, by the chairs, and peered eagerly in at the half-open cupboard door, where the skeleton hung. She had seen shelves of bottles. Scanning these, she selected one marked "Morphia--Poison"--shook it--it was half-full--and returned to the table. Taking out the stopper, she poured the contents into the bottle of brandy, swift as a flash returned the morphia-bottle to its place on the shelf, then, going back to her chair, leant against the wall in the exhausted att.i.tude she had been in when he left her.

"He drinks," she gloomily told herself. "He will take more. I must make him fall asleep. Then I will secure those letters."