In the meantime, the betrothed lovers had been very happy and this interview, which she had always dreaded but felt she could not avoid, having passed over, Paulina was more at liberty to realize her changed position, and dwell on her future prospects. She was really happy, but in her happiness there was some touch of fever, something too much of nervous excitement. It was not the calm happiness which makes the crowning joy of an untroubled life. A long career of artificial excitement, of alternate fears and hopes, the mad delight and madder despair which makes the gambler's fever, had unfitted Paulina for the quiet peace of a spirit at rest. She yearned for rest, but the angel of rest had been scared away by the long nights of dissipation, and would not answer to her call.

Victor Carrington had fathomed the mystery of her feverish gaiety--her intervals of dull apathy that was almost despair. In the depth of her misery she had lulled herself to a false repose by the use of opium; and even now, when the old miseries were no more, she could not exist without the poisonous anodyne.

"Douglas Dale must be blinded by his infatuation, or he would have found out the state of the case by this time," Victor said to himself.

"Circumstances could not be more favourable to my plans. A man who is blind and deaf, and utterly idiotic under the influence of an absurd infatuation, one woman whose brains are intoxicated by opium, and another who would sell her soul for money."

These incidents, which have occupied so much space in the telling, in reality did not fill up much time. Only a month had elapsed since Lionel Dale's death, when Reginald Eversleigh and Paulina had the interview described above. And now it seemed as though Fate itself were conspiring with the conspirators, for the watch kept upon them by Andrew Larkspur was perforce delayed, and Lady Eversleigh's designs of retributive punishment were suspended. A few days after the return of Mr. Larkspur to town, that gentleman was seized with serious illness, and for three weeks was unable to leave his bed. Mr. Andrew lay ill with acute bronchitis, in the lodging-house in Percy Street, and Mrs.

Eden was compelled to wait his convalescence with what patience she might.

Sir Reginald Eversleigh and Douglas Dale met at the Phoenix Club soon after Reginald's interview with Madame Durski.

Douglas met his cousin with a quiet and courteous manner, in which there was no trace of unfriendly feeling: a manner that expressed so little of any feeling whatever as to be almost negative.

It was not so, however, with Sir Reginald. He remembered Victor Carrington's advice as to the wisdom of a palpable estrangement between himself and his cousin, and he took good care to act upon that counsel.

This course was, indeed, the only one that would have been at all agreeable to him.

He hated Douglas Dale with all the force of his evil nature, as the innocent instrument of Sir Oswald's retribution upon the destroyer of Mary Goodwin.

He envied the young man the advantages which his own bad conduct had forfeited; and he now had learned to hate him with redoubled intensity, as the man who had supplanted him in the affections of Paulina Durski.

The two men met in the smoking-room of the club at the most fashionable hour of the day.

Nothing could have been more conspicuous than the haughty insolence of the spendthrift baronet as he saluted his wealthy cousin.

"How is it I have not seen you at my chambers in the Temple, Eversleigh?" asked Douglas, in that calm tone of studied courtesy which expresses so little.

"Because I had no particular reason for calling on you; and because, if I had wished to see you, I should scarcely have expected to find you in your Temple chambers," answered Sir Reginald. "If report does not belie you, you spend the greater part of your existence at a certain villa at Fulham."

There was that in Sir Reginald Eversleigh's tone which attracted the attention of the men within hearing--almost all of whom were well acquainted with the careers of the two cousins, and many of whom knew them personally.

Though the club loungers were too well-bred to listen, it was nevertheless obvious that the attention of all had been more or less aroused by the baronet's tone and manner.

Douglas Dale answered, in accents as audible, and a tone as haughty as the accents and tone of his cousin.

"Report is not likely to belie me," he said, "since there is no mystery in my life to afford food for gossip. If by a certain villa at Fulham you mean Hilton House, you are not mistaken. I have the honour to be a frequent guest at that house."

"It is an honour which many of us have enjoyed," answered Reginald, with a sneer.

"An honour which I used to find deuced expensive, by Jove!" exclaimed Viscount Caversham, who was standing near Douglas Dale.

"That was at the time when Sir Reginald Eversleigh usurped the position of host in Madame Durski's house," replied Douglas. "You would find things much changed there now, Caversham, were the lady to favour you by an invitation. When Madame Durski first came to England she was so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of evil counsellors. She has learned since to know her friends from her enemies."

"She is a very charming woman," drawled the viscount, laughingly; "but if you want to keep a balance at your banker's, Dale, I should strongly advise you to refuse her hospitality."

"Madame Durski will shortly be my wife," replied Douglas, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the bystanders; "and the smallest word calculated to cast a slur on her fair fame will be an insult to me--an insult which I shall know how to resent."

This announcement fell like a thunderbolt in the assembly of fashionable idlers. All knew the history of the house at Fulham. They knew of Paulina Durski only as a beautiful, but dangerous, syren, whose fatal smiles lured men to their ruin. That Douglas Dale should unite himself to such a woman seemed to them little short of absolute madness.

Love must be strong indeed which will face the ridicule of mankind unflinchingly. Douglas Dale knew that, in redeeming Paulina from her miserable situation, in elevating her to a position that many blameless and well-born Englishwomen would have gladly accepted, he was making a sacrifice which the men amongst whom he lived would condemn as the act of a fool. But he was willing to endure this, painful though it was to him, for the sake of the woman he loved.

"Better that I should have the scorn of shallow-brained worldlings than that the blight on her life should continue," he said to himself. "When she is my wife, no man will dare to question her honour--no woman will dare to frown upon her when she enters society leaning on my arm."

This is what Douglas Dale repeated to himself very often during his courtship of Paulina Durski. This is what he thought as he stood erect and defiant in the crowded room of the Pall Mall club, facing the curious looks of his acquaintances.

After the first shock there was a dead silence; no voice murmured the common-place phrases of congratulation which might naturally have followed such an announcement. If Douglas Dale had just announced that some dire misfortune had befallen him, the faces of the men around him could not have been more serious. No one smiled; no one applauded his choice; not one voice congratulated him on having won for himself so fair a bride.

That ominous silence told Douglas Dale how terrible was the stigma which the world had set upon her he so fondly loved. The anguish which rent his heart during those few moments is not to be expressed by words. After that most painful silence, he walked to the table at which it was his habit to sit, and began to read a newspaper. Sir Reginald watched him furtively for a few moments in silence, and then left the room.

After this the two cousins met frequently; but they never spoke. They passed each other with the coldest and most ceremonious salutation. The idlers of the club perceived this, and commented on the fact.

"Douglas Dale and his cousin are not on speaking terms," they said: "they have quarrelled about that beautiful Austrian widow, at whose house there used to be such high play."

In Paulina's society, Douglas tried to forget the cruel shadow which darkened, and which, in all likelihood, would for ever darken, her name; and while in her society he contrived to banish from his mind all bitter thought of the world's harsh verdict and cruel condemnation.

But away from Paulina he was tortured by the recollection of that scene at the Phoenix Club; tormented by the thought that, let him make what sacrifice he might, he could never wipe out the stain which those midnight assemblies of gamesters had left on his future wife's reputation.

"We will leave England for ever after the marriage," he said to himself sometimes. "We will make our home in some fair Italian city, where my Paulina will be respected and admired as if she were a queen, as well as the loveliest and sweetest of women."

If he asked Paulina where their future life was to be spent she always replied to him in the same manner.

"Wherever you take me I shall be content," she said. "I can never be grateful enough for your goodness; I can never repay the debt I owe you. Let our future be your planning, not mine."

"And you have no wish, no fancy, that I can realize, Paulina?"

"None. Prom my earliest girlhood I have sighed for only one blessing--peace! You have given me that. What more can I ask at your hands? Ah! Douglas, I fear my love has already cost you too dearly. The world will never forgive you for your choice; you, who might make so brilliant a marriage!"

Her generous feelings once aroused, Paulina could be almost as noble as her lover. Again and again she implored him to withdraw his promise--to leave, and to forget her.

"Believe me, Douglas, our engagement is a mistake," she said. "Consider this before it is too late. You are a proud man where honour is concerned, and the past life of her whom you marry should be without spot or blemish. It is not so with me. If I have not sinned as other women have sinned, I have stooped to be the companion of gamblers and roues; I have allowed my house to become the haunt of reckless and dissipated men. Society revenges itself cruelly upon those who break its laws. Society will neither forget nor forgive my offence."

"I do not live for society, but for you, Paulina," replied Douglas, passionately; "you are all the world to me. Let me never hear these arguments again, unless you would have me think that you are weary of me, and that you only want an excuse for getting rid of me."

"Weary of you!" exclaimed Paulina; "my friend, my benefactor. How can I ever prove my gratitude for your goodness--your devotion?"

"By learning to love me a little," answered Douglas, tenderly.

"The lesson ought not to be difficult," Paulina murmured.

Could she do less than love this noble friend, this pure-minded and unselfish adorer?

He came to her one day, accompanied by a solicitor; but before introducing the man of law, he asked for a private interview with Paulina, and in this interview gave her a new proof of his devotion.

"In thinking much of our position, dearest, I have been struck with a sudden terror of the uncertainty of life. What would be your fate, Paulina, if anything were to happen--if--well, if I were to die suddenly, as men so often die in this high-pressure age, before marriage had united our interests? What would be your fate, alone and helpless, assailed once more by all the perplexities of poverty, and, perhaps, subject to the mean spite of my cousin, Reginald Eversleigh, who does not forgive me for having robbed him of his place in your heart, little as he was worthy of your love?"