"Did he write just such letters to Stella Mayne, I wonder? No; there was no need for writing--they were always together."

The candles on her desk had burnt low by the time her task was done.

Faint gleams of morning stole through the striped blinds, as she sealed the packet in which she had folded that lengthy history of Angus Hamleigh's courtship--a large square packet, tied with stout red tape, and sealed in several places. Her hand hardly faltered as she set her seal upon the wax: her purpose was so strong.

"Yes," she said to herself, "I will do what is best and safest for his honour and for mine." And then she knelt by her bed and prayed long and fervently; and remained upon her knees reading the Gospel as the night melted away and the morning sun flooded her room with light.

She did not even attempt to sleep, trusting to her cold bath for strength against the day's ordeal. She thought all the time she was dressing of the task that lay before her--the calm deliberate cancelment of her engagement, with the least possible pain for the man she loved, and for his ultimate gain in this world and the next. Was it not for the welfare of a man's soul that he should do his duty and repair the wrong that he had done; rather than that he should conform to the world's idea of the fitness of things and make an eminently respectable marriage?

Christabel contemplated herself critically in the gla.s.s as she brushed her hair. Her eyelids were swollen with weeping--her cheeks pallid, her eyes l.u.s.treless, and at this disadvantage she compared herself with that vivid and sylph-like beauty she had seen at the Kaleidoscope.

"How could he ever forget her for my sake?" she thought, looking at that sad colourless face, and falling into the common error that only the most beautiful women are loved with perfect love, that perfection of feeling answers to perfection of form--forgetting how the history of life shows that upon the unlovely also there have been poured treasures of deepest, purest love--that, while beauty charms and wins all, there is often one, best worth the winning, who is to be vanquished by some subtler charm, held by some less obvious chain than Aphrodite's rosy garlands. Perhaps, if Miss Courtenay had been a plain woman, skilled in the art of making the most of small advantages, she would have had more faith in her own power; but being a lovely woman who had been so trained and taught as to think very little of her own beauty, she was all the more ready to acknowledge the superior loveliness of a rival.

"Having worshipped that other fairer face, how could he care for me?"

she asked herself; and then, brooding upon every detail of their betrothal, she came to the bitter conclusion that Angus had offered himself to her out of pity--touched by her too obvious affection for him--love which she had hardly tried to hide from him, when once he had told her of his early doom. That storm of pity and regret which had swept over her heart had annihilated her womanly pride: she forgot all that was due to her own dignity, and was only too eager to offer herself as the companion and consoler of his brief days. She looked back and remembered her folly--thinking of herself as a creature caught in a trap.

No, a.s.suredly, there was but one remedy.

One doubt--one frail straw of hope to which she might cling--yet remained. That tried, all was decided. Was this story true--completely and positively a fact? She had heard so much in society about baseless scandals--she had been told so many versions of the same story--as unlike as black to white or false to true--and she was not going to take this one bitter fact for granted upon the strength of any fashionable Medusa who might try to turn her warm beating heart to stone. Before she accepted Medusa's sentence she would discover for herself how far this story was true.

"I will give no one any trouble," she thought: "I will act for myself, and judge for myself. It will be the making or marring of three lives."

In her wide charity, in that power to think and feel for others, which was the highest gift of her rich sweet soul, Stella Mayne seemed to Christabel as important a factor in this life-problem as herself or Angus. She thought of her tenderly, picturing her as a modern Gretchen, tempted by an early and intense love, much more than by the devil's lure of splendour and jewels--a poor little Gretchen at seventeen and sixpence a week, living in a London garret, with no mother to watch and warn, and with wicked old Marthas in plenty to whisper bad advice.

Christabel went down to breakfast as usual. Her quiet face and manner astonished Mrs. Tregonell, who had slept very little better than her niece; but when the servant came in to ask if she would ride she refused.

"Do, dear," pleaded her aunt; "a nice long country ride by Finchley and Hendon would do you good."

"No, Aunt Di--I would rather be at home this morning," answered Christabel; so the man departed, with an order for the carriage at the usual hour in the afternoon.

There was a letter from Angus--Christabel only glanced at the opening lines, which told her that he was to stay at Hillside a few days longer, and then put the letter in her pocket. Jessie Bridgeman looked at her curiously--knowing very well that there was something sorely amiss--but waiting to be told what this sudden cloud of sorrow meant.

Christabel went back to her own room directly after breakfast. Her aunt forbore any attempt at consolation, knowing it was best to let the girl bear her grief in her own way.

"You will go with me for a drive after luncheon, dear?" she asked.

"Yes, Auntie--but I would rather we went a little way in the country, if you don't mind, instead of to the Park."

"With all my heart: I have had quite enough of the Park."

"The 'booing, and booing, and booing,'" said Jessie, "and the straining one's every nerve to see the Princess drive by--only to discover the humiliating fact that she is one of the very few respectable-looking women in the Park--perhaps the only one who can look absolutely respectable without being a dowdy."

"Shall I go to her room and try if I can be of any comfort to her?"

mused Jessie, as she went up to her own snug little den on the third floor. "Better not, perhaps. I like to hug my sorrows. I should hate any one who thought their prattle could lessen my pain. She will bear hers best alone, I dare say. But what can it be? Not any quarrel with him.

They could hardly quarrel by telegraph or post--they who are all honey when they are together. It is some scandal--something that old demon with the eyebrows said yesterday. I am sure of it--a talk between two elderly women with closed doors always means Satan's own mischief."

All three ladies went out in the carriage after luncheon--a dreary, dusty drive, towards Edgware--past everlasting bricks and mortar, as it seemed to Christabel's tired eyes, which gazed at the houses as if they had been phantoms, so little human meaning had they for her--so little did she realize that in each of those brick and plaster packing-cases human beings lived, and, in their turn, suffered some such heart-agony as this which she was enduring to-day.

"That is St. John's Wood up yonder, isn't it?" she asked, as they pa.s.sed Carlton Hill, speaking for almost the first time since they left Mayfair.

"Yes."

"Isn't it somewhere about there Miss Stella Mayne lives, the actress we saw the other night?" asked Christabel, carelessly.

Her aunt looked at her with intense surprise,--how could she p.r.o.nounce _that_ name, and to ask a frivolous question?

"Yes; she has a lovely house called the Rosary. Mr. FitzPelham told me about it," answered Jessie.

Christabel said never a word more as the carriage rolled on by Cricklewood and the two Welsh Harps, and turned into the quiet lanes about Hendon, and so home by the Finchley Road. She had found out what she wanted to know.

When afternoon tea was served in the little third drawing-room, where Mrs. Tregonell sat resting herself after the dust and weariness of the drive, Christabel was missing. Dormer brought a little note for her mistress.

"Miss Courtenay gave me this just before she went out, ma'am."

"Out! Has Miss Courtenay gone out?"

"Yes, ma'am; Daniel got her a cab five minutes ago."

"To her dressmaker, I suppose," said Mrs. Tregonell, trying to look indifferent.

"Don't be uneasy about me, Auntie," wrote Christabel: "I am going on an errand about which I made up my mind last night. I may be a little late for dinner--but as I shall go and return in the same cab, you may feel sure that I shall be quite safe. Don't wait dinner for me."

CHAPTER IX.

"LOVE IS LOVE FOR EVERMORE."

The Rosary, St. John's Wood: that was the address which Christabel had given the cabman. Had any less distinguished person than Stella Mayne lived at the Rosary it might have taken the cabman all the evening to find that particular house, with no more detailed address as to road and number. But a brother whip on a rank near Hamilton Terrace was able to tell Christabel's cabman the way to the Rosary. It was a house at which hansoms were often wanted at unholy hours between midnight and sunrise--a house whose chief hospitality took the form of chablis and oysters after the play--a house which seldom questioned poor cabby's claim or went closely into mileage--a house which deserved and commanded respectful mention on the rank.

"The Rosary--yes, that's where Miss Mayne lives. Beech Tree Road--a low 'ouse with veranders all round--yer can't miss it."

The cabman rattled away to Grove End Road, and thence to the superior quietude and seclusion of Beech Tree Road, where he drew up at a house with a glazed entrance. He rang the bell, and Christabel alighted before the summons was answered.

"Is Miss Mayne at home?" she asked a servant in plain clothes--a servant of unquestionable respectability.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, and preceded her along a corridor, gla.s.s-roofed, richly carpeted, and with a bank of hot-house flowers on either side.

Only at this ultimate moment did Christabel's courage begin to falter.

She felt as if she were perhaps entering a den of vice. Innocent, guileless as she was, she had her own vague ideas about vice--exaggerated as all ignorant ideas are apt to be. She began to shiver as she walked over the dark subdued velvet pile of that shadowy corridor. If she had found Miss Mayne engaged in giving a masked ball--or last night's supper party only just finishing--or a party of young men playing blind hookey, she would hardly have been surprised--not that she knew anything about masked b.a.l.l.s--or late suppers--or gambling--but that all these would have come within her vague notions of an evil life.

"_He_ loved her," she said to herself, arguing against this new terror, "and he could not love a thoroughly wicked woman."

No, the Gretchen idea--purity fallen, simplicity led astray--was more natural--but one could hardly imagine Gretchen in a house of this kind--this subdued splendour--this all-pervading air of wealth and luxury.

Miss Courtenay was shown into a small morning-room--a room which on one side was all window--opening on to a garden, where some fine old trees gave an idea of s.p.a.ce--and where the foreground showed a ma.s.s of flowers--roses--roses--roses everywhere--trailing over arches--cl.u.s.tering round tall iron rods--bush roses--standard roses--dwarf roses--all shining in the golden light of a westering sun.