"From the first she despised me. She saw I wasn't well-educated, that I wasn't even in her cla.s.s. Oh, I know she is connected with all sorts of people, but she ought not to have let me see so plainly that she looked down on me as a n.o.body. She never lost a chance of humiliating me. Why, at lunch over and over again I've sat silent while you and she talked.

If I ventured to speak, she listened, quite politely, till I had finished, and then went on talking as though I'd not spoken. For days and days I hardly saw you. You were shut up there with her, and I was all alone. I was no one to you, she was everyone. I was your wife, but she was your companion. Everyone noticed how I was left alone; they all knew you ignored me--I was miserable, but you never saw----"

"You--miserable, Toni?" Owen spoke abruptly.

"How could I be anything else? You treated me always as a child--an unreasonable, ignorant child----"

"Well?" Owen interrupted her, but his tone was one meant to conciliate, for suddenly he thought he saw a way to end this deplorable scene. "And aren't you a child? A pretty, engaging child, I grant you--but still----"

"No." It was her turn to interrupt, and white to the lips she faced him.

"I am not a child any longer--I was until a short time ago, but you have changed me into a woman----"

"Come, Toni." Deceived by her quiet tone Owen laid his hand on her arm.

"Don't grow up too quickly. Let me have my little child-wife a bit longer yet----"

She shook his hand off with a violence for which he was not prepared, and he spoke angrily, his softer impulses dying away.

"Hang it all, Toni, you needn't repulse me as if I were a snake. You _are_ a child, after all, and a jolly bad-tempered one at that!" It was the first time he had ever used such a tone, and the girl's anger flared up in reply.

"A child--of course--you think so, you always will--you and your precious secretary!" As she spoke Toni s.n.a.t.c.hed up a packet of neatly-folded proofs from the table behind her. "This is her work, I suppose. Oh, how I _hate_ her--and you--and the book! I'd like to destroy it all--to burn it up--like that!"

With a pa.s.sionate gesture she turned round and flung the bundle of papers into the very heart of the fire blazing on the hearth behind her.

"There!" She faced him again, her breast heaving, her eyes flashing stormily. "I'd burn it all--if I could. You like your book better than me--but I've burnt so much of it, anyway."

Owen had started forward as she spoke, but it was useless to attempt to save the burning sheets, and he fell back from the hearth with an exclamation of anger.

"You are a little fool, Toni." He spoke coldly. "What, good do you expect to do by a piece of childish spite like that? Those proof sheets were all corrected--now the duplicate set will have to be revised, and as they are due in London to-morrow, I shall have to spend several hours over them before I can get to bed to-night."

Toni, frightened now at what she had done, stood motionless during his speech. As he said the last words her rage melted suddenly into contrition.

"Owen--I'm--I'm sorry." She spoke haltingly. "I--I didn't mean to give you trouble. Can I--will you let me help you--to make up for what I've done?"

He raised his eyebrows and laughed rather bitterly.

"It's very kind of you, Toni, but I think I won't trouble you. Your repentance is a little belated, isn't it? And I think I prefer to keep my work to myself in future."

The fire of her rage gave one last expiring flicker.

"As usual," she said, "your work is more to you than I. I wonder you ever married, Owen. Marriage doesn't seem to mean a great deal to you."

"I sometimes wonder, myself," he said drily. "Certainly I haven't found it a very enjoyable state of late. It seems you haven't, either. Perhaps we were in too great a hurry after all, Toni."

He did not mean the words, which were wrung from him by his exasperation at her childish folly; but the effect on Toni was disastrous.

She could not well turn paler than she was already; but a chill crept into her veins, congealing her blood as she stood in front of the fire.

She shivered slightly; and then with an effort which made her feel physically exhausted, she moved slowly towards the door.

"Where are you going, Toni?" Owen questioned her rather coldly.

She turned round; and all the youth was gone from her face.

"I am going to bed," she answered quietly. "Good-night, Owen."

And without waiting for a reply she opened the door and went slowly out of the room.

CHAPTER XXV

Quite calmly and quietly Toni went about her preparations for departure.

The scene in the library had turned the scale in favour of her flight.

Owen had openly avowed his opinion that their hasty marriage had been a mistake; and now that the pa.s.sion of rage and jealousy which had possessed her had died away, Toni could see no other method of relieving the situation than by leaving Greenriver at once.

She would go away with Leonard Dowson, thereby leaving the way open for Owen to divorce her. Her own future life occupied but the smallest fraction of her thoughts. Somehow her power of visualizing the future seemed to stop short with her departure from her home; and although she had a very clear vision of Owen, relieved from the incubus of her presence, and free to devote himself to the work which, she had persuaded herself, meant more to him than any purely domestic happiness, she never gave even a pa.s.sing thought to her own existence when once she had severed the ties which bound her to the old house by the river.

Very early in the morning of the day following her interview with Dowson she had posted a note to him. There was only one short sentence on the little sheet of paper--only three words; but she know it would be enough.

"I will come. TONI."

That was all; and yet as she wrote the little sentence, Toni had a queer, stifling sensation as though she were indeed signing her own death-warrant.

The note would be delivered at lunch-time; and about two o'clock Toni began to look for an answer, though she knew it was hardly likely the young man would reply so promptly.

At three o'clock she went out into the garden. Her head was throbbing painfully, her cheeks burnt with a scarlet flush, and it was surely quicksilver and not blood which ran so swiftly through her veins.

The day was unseasonably warm, and a slight fog hung about, making the air damp and heavy. Owen had gone to town immediately after lunch; and Toni was inexpressibly relieved by his absence.

They had barely spoken to one another to-day. Owen was suffering from one of his worst neuralgic headaches, which at all times made him feel disinclined for speech; and Toni said little because she had nothing to say.

At half-past three a note was delivered to her by a lad wheeling a bicycle; and when the messenger had withdrawn, Toni opened the grey envelope with fingers that shook. Inside she found a fairly long letter, which had evidently been written in haste, for the writing was untidy, and here and there a word was almost illegible.

"I can hardly believe you will come, Toni." So ran the letter in which Leonard Dowson accepted, the happiness promised to him. "It seems too good, too exceedingly, marvellously good to be true. Yet your little letter lies before me, and you are too kind, too sincere to deceive me.

So it is true; and the sun has risen on my grey and lonely life. Then listen, Toni. I have made all preparations for my own departure to-night. I have paid off my servants, the rent, and left everything in order; and I am in possession of a sufficient sum of money in notes and gold to enable us to live for some months in peace on the Continent. Now comes the question of our meeting. I have ascertained that the night boat leaves Dover about eleven; and in order to cross to Calais, on the way to Paris, we must take the boat train from Victoria. I think it will be safer to motor up to town rather than risk meeting any acquaintances in the train; and a car will be waiting at the corner of Elm Lane at six o'clock. That will give us sufficient time to catch the train, and will be pleasanter than the other mode of travelling. With regard to your luggage, do not trouble to bring more than a dressing-case; for it will be my pleasure and privilege in future to provide you with all you may desire. I have still much to do, so will bid you farewell until the precious moment which brings you to my side."

He had evidently hesitated over his signature; there were one or two erasures; but at length he had written, his name firmly, without any attempt at a formal leave-taking.

For perhaps a minute Toni stared at the two words "Leonard Dowson"; and a chill, as of antic.i.p.atory dread, swept over her at the sight of that firm, clerkly handwriting.

Until this moment she had looked upon Leonard's proposal as the one and only means of setting Owen free. Once she had taken this step, had burned her boats, her husband would surely accept his freedom with a feeling of vast relief; and in spite of everything Toni had only one thought--that of Owen's good.

But suddenly she was afraid, with a purely human, selfish fear for herself. To what was she condemning herself by this unlawful flight?

When once Owen had accepted her sacrifice, had set in order the machinery of the law which should give him his release, what would become of her? Would she be obliged to marry a man for whom she felt only a tepid friendship, unwarmed by the smallest coal from the fire of love? She had found life sad even when married to the man she loved; but what would it be to her as the wife of a man to whom she was almost completely indifferent?

Quite unconsciously Toni was exaggerating Owen's att.i.tude towards his marriage, was accepting as his last word a few irritable sentences wrung from him by fatigue and annoyance at having seen the corrected proofs destroyed in a fit of childish temper on the part of his wife.

Far from regretting his marriage, Owen merely regretted Toni's unreasonableness in the matter of Miss Loder; and once that young woman was removed from the scene, Owen had no doubt that he and his wife would shake down again quite comfortably and forget the recent scenes between them.