"I suppose so. These coincidences are very curious. I have never seen him, never even heard of him, since our rupture." She reflected, her chin on her hand. "Strange that he should have inherited money," she observed. "He was not at all well off when I knew him, though he was very ambitious. He wrote--essays and so on for the Press. He was certainly clever. Twenty-two years since I last saw him! How strange it seems! I used to be afraid at first that he might try to kill me or your father. He was so violent. At our wedding we had special police arrangements. But nothing happened. Nothing at all." She spoke as if the fact were slightly disappointing.

"It is a chance," sighed out Virginia at length. "If you can bear it, mother--if it is not asking too much of you to go and beg a favour from a man you once treated badly, then I think you had better try."

Mrs. Mynors' mouth drooped at the corners, and her face took on the sweetest look of resignation. "Virgie, dearest, you can fancy--you can understand something of what it will cost me. But for my children's sakes I must put my own feelings aside. I must go and see what I can do. Let me see! Where--how could I meet him? A solicitor's office does not lend itself. Oh, Virgie, I have it! What a comfort, what a piece of good luck, that I became a life-member of the 'Sportswoman' three years ago! I will ask him to meet me there! I will write a note, to be given to him direct; and I don't think he will refuse. If he does, I will just go to London and take him by storm. I vow I'll see him somehow!

Leave it to me, Virgie! You shall see what I can do. When my children's bread is at stake, no effort shall be too great, no sacrifice too difficult."

Later on, when Virginia had done her hair to perfection, and gone away to do the house-work, Mrs. Mynors took a chair, mounted it, and unlocked a small drawer at the top of her tall-boy. There were several bundles of letters and papers in the drawer, and a small jewel-case containing a ring. She searched among the papers for one loose envelope, addressed in a forcible, small but not cramped handwriting.

She sat down, with this letter and the ring-box upon her knee, and read:

_You make a mistake. It is not the transfer of your affections from myself to Mynors of which I complain, for this has not taken place.

What has happened is simply that you have bartered yourself for his money and position. If I had been cursed with a few hundreds a year more than he has, you would not have forsaken me. You never loved me; but for a whole year you have succeeded in deceiving me--in making me believe that you did. This is the thing I find unpardonable. Men have killed women for such treachery as yours. Were I to kill you, it would save poor Mynors a good many years of misery. But the code of civilised morals forbids so satisfactory a solution. You must live, and destroy his illusions one by one. I ought to thank you for my freedom, but that I cannot do, being human. As a man in worse plight than mine once said: "My love hath wrought into my life so far that my doom is, I love thee still." There lies the humiliation and the sting._

The woman's lips curved into a smile of foreseen triumph. The insult of the first part of the letter was nothing to her. There was his written confession. In spite of her betrayal, he loved her still.

After the lapse of all these years the lava-torrent of his boyish fury had no doubt cooled. The love might well remain.

CHAPTER V

THE OLD LOVE

"_Now hate rules a heart which in love's easy chains Once pa.s.sion's tumultuous blandishments knew; Despair now inflames the dark tide of his veins, He ponders in frenzy o'er love's last adieu._"--Byron.

A week later Mrs. Mynors stood before her mirror at a much earlier hour than was her wont. She was arranging her veil with a hand that shook, and eyes full of a curious mixture of anxiety and triumph. The anxiety was because she was bound upon an errand of enormous strategic importance; the triumph because her imagination ran on ahead and pictured things that she would have blushed to own.

Her old lover had a.s.sented to her proposal for a meeting. He was to be this morning at twelve o'clock at the Sportswoman--that smartest and most go-ahead of county ladies' clubs in London.

Virginia stood near. She held in her hand a dainty handbag, embroidered in steel beads and lined with pale violet. Into this she was putting a purse, a powder-puff, a wisp of old lace that was supposed to be a handkerchief, and so on. The aroma of the expensive perfume was over everything.

Mrs. Mynors' costume was a subtle scheme of faint half-mourning. It was most becoming.

"What time do you think you shall be back?" asked Virginia.

"My child, how can I say? You must expect me when you see me. It depends so much upon what I accomplish. If Osbert Gaunt proves disagreeable, I must just get a bit of lunch at the club and come straight home. If he is hospitably inclined, why, you see, it might be later."

"I only wanted to know how much money you are likely to spend."

"Don't trouble about that, dear one. I have plenty of money for my modest needs."

She stepped back, surveyed the general effect of her appearance, and sighed a little. Then, opening one of the small jewel drawers in her toilet table, she took out a ring-case, extracted the ring it contained, and slipped it upon her finger. It was a large tourmalin, set in small brilliants--a lovely blue, like the eyes of its wearer.

"What a pretty ring! I never saw it before," said Virginia, with interest. She loved pretty things. That trait she had inherited from her mother.

"His engagement ring," said the widow pensively. "He would not take it back. He said it would bring a curse upon any woman who wore it. He shall see that I have kept it."

Virginia's heart surged up within her until she almost broke into weeping. Her own mother, the widow of Bernard Mynors, the widow of the most-beloved, the dearest, the best, the handsomest--she was setting out gaily to fascinate an old lover, wearing on her finger the ring he had bestowed in the days when she had never seen her husband.

"How she can!" thought Virgie to herself. Her mother was a continual puzzle to her. In her intense simplicity the girl took her usually at her own value. She believed devoutly that it was at great personal cost that Mrs. Mynors was going to town that day. She judged her feelings by her own. And yet, and yet----

The sound of wheels on the road outside caused her to look from the window. "Why, here is an empty fly stopping at the door," said she in a tone of surprise.

"I ordered it, Virgie," replied her mother, a little embarra.s.sed. "I have so little strength, especially of a morning, I felt that, on an errand like this, I should want all my force, all my coolness. This heat is so unnerving."

She smiled deprecatingly. "My poor little fly is the sprat to catch a whale," she laughed. Then impetuously she flung her arms about her daughter's neck. "Wish me luck! Oh, wish me luck!" she cried.

Virginia's warm heart leapt at the cry. She embraced her mother with all the fervour she dare employ without crushing the delicate toilette.

They went downstairs together, the lady stepped into the shabby fly with a look of disdainful fort.i.tude, her sunshade was given her, and with a wave of the hand to the girl at the gate she started off upon her great mission. Virgie went slowly into the kitchen, sat down wearily, and poured out her tepid tea. After eating and drinking a few mouthfuls listlessly, she roused herself to prepare fresh tea for Pansy and to carry her breakfast upstairs.

"Good morning, precious! How have you slept?" she cried cheerily, as she set down the tray, drew up the blind, and came to the bedside.

Pansy lay there smiling, perfectly flat on her back, with Ermyntrude, the new doll, at her side.

"Slept booful. Not one pain all night. But I'm fearfully hungry, Virgie!"

"I don't wonder; I am dreadfully late! I had to get mother off, you see. She has just started," replied Virginia, trying to keep the sorrow out of her trembling voice. She stooped, touched a handle below the bed, and with incredible care and delicacy wound the little cripple up into a posture just enough tilted to enable her to feed herself.

"Gone to see a gentleman she used to know before she knew dad,"

remarked Pansy, pondering. "He'll think she's every bit as pretty as she was then. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, I am sure he must think so."

"Oh, Virgie!"--after a long pause--"suppose he was to ask her again?"

Her sister winced as this dark idea was thus frankly expressed in words. She had, however, been more or less prepared for it.

"I don't think it very likely, Pansy," she replied slowly, "but if he did, and if mother thought it was her duty to say 'Yes,' we must not make it hard for her."

"How could it be her duty to say 'Yes'?" demanded Pansy argumentatively. "She loved dad, and it would be beastly to have a step-father."

"It would be beastlier still not have enough to eat," was the thought in Virgie's heart. She did not express it, however. The child knew nothing of the terrible state of things, and must not know unless it was inevitable. "We'll hope for the best, darling. He may not ask her,"

she softly told the child. "And now eat your breakfast, while I go and clear away downstairs."

From Euston one must positively take a taxi in order to arrive at Dover Street. Mrs. Mynors instructed the driver to throw back the hood; and reclined, her sunshade between her delicate face and the June sun, enjoying a few minutes of the kind of pleasure in which she revelled.

Ah! the joy of it. The gay streets, the well-dressed crowds, the enticing shops, the loaded flower-baskets, at the street corners, the window-boxes in the tall houses, the flashing cars, the bustle and movement of London in the season. Here, she felt, was her native element. To this she belonged--she whom a cruel fate had treated so ill as to cause the whole structure of her pleasure to crumble to nothing at the very time of life when a woman begins to feel that she needs comforts and luxury.

For forty years she had enjoyed that empire which any beautiful woman may enjoy if she chooses. Her beauty had prevented every one who came near her from realising the truth about her. Had you told her that she was a monster of selfishness, that she had never loved anybody but herself, that she had jilted a poor man to marry a rich one, and that she had loved neither the one nor the other, she would simply have wondered how your mind could have become so warped as to cause you to utter such slanders.