"No right to tell you I love you. Do you think I don't know that?" he burst out. "It is just that very knowledge which has burnt itself into me, and seared my very soul."

"What knowledge?" she asked, forgetful, in the suddenness of his attack, the tactics she had adopted with regard to Lord Standon.

"The knowledge of your engagement," he answered hoa.r.s.ely. "Ah, Constance, be merciful. Surely not even Standon himself would grudge me these last few moments."

"What has Lord Standon to do with me?" she asked, looking him full in the face with steadfast eyes.

He stared at her in amazement.

"Is he not your accepted lover?"

His voice betrayed his agony of spirit; and, hearing this, she relented.

Holding up her left hand, the third finger of which was bare of rings, she said quietly, almost, indeed, demurely:

"This does not look like it, does it?"

The light of hope, new-born, flashed into his face. He sprang forward eagerly.

"Constance!" he cried. "My darling! You will try to care for me then----?" He would have taken her in his arms; but she held him off at arm's length.

"No! no, Adrien," she interrupted sadly. "Because I am not engaged to Lord Standon, is that any reason why I should love one who treats me so lightly?"

"I treat you lightly, you--the one woman I have ever truly loved?

Constance, whatever sins I may have committed, you are my first love, and you will be my last. I am not worthy to touch your hand, as pure as it is white, but will you not forgive me the folly of my past life, and let me live in hope that I may do better? I swear from this day forth to cast off the old life, with all its emptiness and folly, and lay the future at your feet."

As his pa.s.sionate words ceased, she turned to him.

"Adrien, I do not know what to think," she said in low, troubled tones.

"I wrote to you last month--that day we came up to London, believing that perhaps you had learned to care a little for me; but when you deliberately spent the day with another woman, sooner than with me, what am I to think?"

"What do you mean?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"I saw you," she returned simply, "when we were at the station, auntie and I, on the twenty-second----"

"The twenty-second!" he echoed, through blanched lips.

"Yes, you were at Waterloo Station with some one, I did not see her face. But what does it matter now? If you had cared----" She stopped abruptly.

"I do care," he reiterated pa.s.sionately. "Heaven above knows that; but I do not hope to make you believe me. Constance, I can give neither you nor any living being the explanation of that awful day. But I swear to you that the meeting was unsought by me. I could not help myself. I do not know how all this has come about. I understood from Standon that--that he was engaged to----"

"Muriel Branton," interrupted Constance softly. "He told me himself."

For a moment Adrien stared at her in stupefaction.

"If I had known we were at cross-purposes!" he exclaimed. "I see it all now--when it is too late," and sinking down on the stone seat he buried his face in his hands.

For a minute there was silence, broken at last by the rustle of Lady Constance's dress as she came timidly towards him.

"Adrien," she murmured, very low indeed, but not so low that he did not hear.

He looked up, gave one swift glance at her blushing face, then, with an incoherent cry of delight, caught her in his arms.

"My darling!" he cried. "I love you. Believe that, though I failed you so."

No further words were spoken--none were needed; then Adrien said gently:

"Darling, before we return, tell me, just once--let me hear it from your own lips, that you love me; for I can scarcely believe I am awake."

"It is no dream, Adrien," she said, her face flushing and quivering with pent-up emotion. "I love you, dear."

Again he clasped her in his arms and neither heard a step behind them.

It was not until a warning cough roused them, that Adrien started, and became aware of the presence of Mr. Jasper Vermont.

CHAPTER XXII

While the preparations for the ball at Barminster Castle had been going on apace, trouble and confusion reigned in the little village on the banks of the Thames.

No sooner had Mr. Jasper Vermont taken his departure, than poor Lucy Ashford sank on the floor of the shop, and burst into a flood of tears.

So great had been the strain that she was completely unnerved, and had quite forgotten the likelihood of her husband's return from Richmond, as well as the mysterious disappearance of Jessica, who had not been seen in the house since the arrival of Adrien Leroy and his unconscious burden.

This sudden realisation of all the presentiment of evil which Lucy Ashford had ever in her mind, had burst on her like a thunderbolt. She had known always that the man, Mr. Jasper Vermont, who knew her secret, was alive; but never before had she been actually threatened with its betrayal. Her father, Mr. Harker, had always stood between her and that dreadful possibility.

Presently, she jumped up and called to Jessica. Then she remembered that the girl had disappeared from the time she had sent her from the room.

Fearful that Vermont might yet change his mind and return for the night, she ran to the door, calling out Jessica's name in a paroxysm of nervous terror, which finally, on receiving no reply, ended in a severe attack of hysterics, in the midst of which her husband returned and found her.

With an exclamation of alarm, he raised her from the floor and bore her upstairs to the bed on which Lady Merivale had lain such a short time ago. He was greatly puzzled by the disordered appearance of the room, and his first thought was of burglars. He gave no time to this, however, but hastened to get his wife into bed, then rushed out for a doctor.

When he returned with him it was found that Lucy had relapsed into a state of fever, and was talking deliriously, of an inn at Canterbury, an individual of the name of Johann Wilfer, and most of all, making plaintive appeals to Jasper Vermont not to betray her.

As the next day Jessica had not returned, Ashford found all his work cut out for him, to see after the shop and the children, as well as his wife. A kindly neighbour came to his rescue; but John insisted on nursing Lucy himself, while the woman remained downstairs.

At first, the husband paid little attention to the wandering, incoherent sentences of his wife; but as the first excitement died down, and they began to take distinct form, he bent over her, and learned the one error of her life. Naturally, poor John recoiled in horror; the whole thing seemed so incredible, so impossible to believe. Yet, when he had had time to reflect, he saw that this explained all the little strangenesses in his wife's conduct and manner; her intense nervousness at the sight of any stranger; her reticence as to her youthful days; all this was borne in on his mind, and he realised that he had been deceived. His wife, in whom he had so trusted, had loved another before him; and at the bitter truth, John Ashford utterly broke down, and, hiding his face in the counterpane, sobbed like a child. Tears sometimes are Nature's own medicine, and do more to soften the heart than any words. After the first shock had worn away, Ashford commenced to look back on the happy days he had spent with Lucy; the way she had worked with him, and for him. These thoughts did their healing work, and accordingly, a few days later, when Lucy Ashford returned to consciousness, she found her husband's eyes gazing into hers with only pitying tenderness in their depths.

"John," she said faintly, "have I been ill?"

"Yes, dear," he replied gently.

Something in his saddened tones, or perhaps strange intuition, told Lucy that her secret was no longer hers alone.

"John!" she cried, her voice shaking with terror and weakness. "You know all!" And she hid her face in her hands.

Her husband bent over her tenderly and kissed the thin cheek.

"Yes, dear," he said. "You've told me all. Why didn't you trust me before?"