"If I marry you."
"If! You won't be able to help yourself. How slowly this mare is going!"
"Slowly! We seem to me to be skimming over the ground!"
"Ah, but that's because you are not so anxious as I to get there!"
Laline glanced shyly up at him, and her heart began to suddenly beat quicker. She had never yet been made love to in her life, but she felt certain that Wallace was counting the moments until he could claim the kiss out of which Clare Cavan's sudden entrance had defrauded him on the preceding Wednesday. For the first time it became strongly borne in upon her mind that she was doing something altogether startling and unconventional in thus accompanying a young man, against whose character very serious accusations had been made, to his country-house without the necessary sacrifice to Mrs. Grundy provided by the presence of a chaperon. But, after all, was she not engaged to him, with his uncle's full sanction—and was he not by law her natural guardian and protector, being in very truth her husband?
Looking at him under the bright, clear light of a frosty winter sun, Laline could see in Wallace's face no signs at all of the vices and follies attributed to him. The study of his features, on the other hand, filled her with a secret delight and pride of possession which thrilled through her entire being. This was essentially a manly man, handsome, erect, full of life, strength, and vigour—a man whose mere outward appearance attracted long and admiring glances from women of all ranks as he drove along, and whose driving and perfectly neat and smart turn-out drew towards him looks of approbation from masculine equals and inferiors alike. And he was not only her husband, but in love with her—a man wealthy, popular, and much sought after, who had gone out of his way to implore her, a little penniless dependant, to be his wife.
They were driving up a steep hill by this time, not far from Hampstead Heath.
"That is the Homestead," Wallace said, indicating with his whip the tall stacks of chimneys of a large white house peering from among trees near the summit of the hill.
Laline felt glad of both Wallace's and Mrs. Vandeleur's recent additions to her wardrobe as she drove in the dog-cart through the lodge-gates of the Homestead. Clearly the rumour that the young master was bringing down his future bride had spread abroad, for the lodge-keeper came out to pull his forelock and smile, with his wife curtseying and smiling behind him.
At the house—a big rambling erection, decked with ivy and creepers, and wearing an air of homelike comfort—Mrs. Sylvester, a plump, middle-aged, gray-haired woman, came out in an evident flutter of excitement and her best silk dress and cape to welcome the visitors.
Mrs. Sylvester wanted nothing better than for the young master to marry and instal himself at the Homestead, to impart a little liveliness to the establishment, and prevent it from being let to strangers, and she was delighted with the appearance of Mr. Armstrong's fiancée.
"Quite the lady!" she confided afterwards to the cook, in discussing Laline's appearance. "As handsome as you may wish to see, though p'raps a bit too thin for some people's tastes; but that only makes her more elegant. A sweet face, cook, and dressed in the height of fashion. That sable collarette she was wearing must have cost thirty or forty pounds; and her black velvet hat and cape were quite the latest fashion. For my part, I like a young lady with some style about her."
Big fires had been lit everywhere about the house in accordance with old Mr. Wallace's orders, so that Laline might be favourably impressed with the place, and by her own request she was presently shown over the identical rooms prepared for her reception when she had been expected as a bride four years before. These rooms wore by this time a more or less faded and neglected air; but the affectionate forethought with which the whole suite had at first been planned touched Laline deeply as she wandered through the pretty sitting-room, furnished with books and piano, the daintily-appointed dressing-room and bath-room, and the cosy little study fitted with every trifle necessary to the mistress of a household.
After the inspection was over, Laline found Wallace waiting for her in the drawing-room at the back of the house, which led into the grounds through a spacious conservatory. A large fire was burning in the fireplace, and, as the door closed on Mrs. Sylvester, Wallace drew his betrothed towards the friendly blaze.
"You must get your hands warm before you go out again," he said. "You must have got cold sitting still in the cart."
Standing with her in front of the fire, he drew up her hands against his neck, and looked down into her eyes, his own alight with love.
"At last we are alone," he whispered. "Lina, do you love me?"
"I'm afraid I do."
"Then put your arms round my neck of your own accord and kiss me. See—I let them go. It must be of your own accord."
Her hands crept gently up until they were clasped behind his neck, and her soft lips fluttered lightly upon his for a second, until, with a sigh of content, he folded his arms about her, and kissed her again and again with all his soul in his lips.
"My darling—my Lina—my wife!"
It seemed to Laline that all her life through she had been waiting for this moment, and that no future happiness could equal this of the first kiss of love given and returned.
"To think that I have let you grow to twenty before I claimed you!" he exclaimed, while they stood together before the fire and he stroked her soft hair as she pillowed her cheek on his shoulder. "Ever since I first came to Mrs. Vandeleur's, and you dropped that magic crystal at sight of me, I have dreamed of this moment. For though you seemed to be so strangely afraid of me in life, in my dreams you were always just as you are now, with my arms about you and your head on my shoulder; and I knew the moment would soon come when my dreams would come true. From the very first I knew that you belonged to me by right and must be mine some day."
"That is only because you happened to take a fancy to me," she protested, perversely. "Supposing that I had been married to some one else, where would your presentiments have been then?"
"Ah, but you couldn't have looked as you did if you had been married to any one else, or if you had loved any one else! I know—I am certain that you never cared for any one before. But tell me so; I like to hear it."
She laid her hands upon his shoulders and drew a little away from him, looking earnestly into his eyes.
"I solemnly swear," she said, "that I have never in my life known what it was to love before, and that I love you with my whole heart! There—will that satisfy you?"
"And when will you be my wife?"
"Oh, not for a long time yet."
"Why not? Don't you wish to be always with me?" he demanded, jealously.
"Yes; but you hardly know me. We must be at least engaged long enough to make each other's acquaintance. I shall want to hear all your past life; you will want to hear all mine——"
"Your past life is written in your face, dear. All I want to read is there."
"But there are things which you must hear—things which may anger and surprise you, and even make you cease to love me."
He held her from him at arm's length while he scanned her face intently.
"There is only one thing I care to know," he said. "Has any man ever kissed your lips before?"
"Never!"
"There," he cried triumphantly, folding her in his arms again and covering her cheeks and lips and eyes with quick kisses—"that is all I want to know and all I will listen to! Come outside now and skate, or we shall deeply wound the feelings of the men who have been all the morning clearing the ice from show. Let me help you to put on your hat. If you look up at me under the brim like that I shall never let you get outside, but shall spend the entire afternoon kissing you! Your lips are as soft as a rose-leaf, and you have been allowed to grow to twenty without being forcibly carried off and married, whether you consented or not! Waiting for me, my dear, beautiful Lina? One last kiss before we leave the conservatory, and one more on that enchanting little pink ear, and one more still on the soft cream-coloured space behind your ear, where the gold-brown hair grows! Here we are at the conservatory door. A moment more, and I sha'n't be able to kiss you. Just stop long enough to tell me that you love me. No more 'Mr. Armstrong;' call me by my second name, as my uncle does—'Lorin.' My name is Wallace Lorin Armstrong. Now say that you love me and are glad to be my wife."
Tears were in her eyes as she obeyed him—tears of intense happiness after long years of loneliness and separation.
"I love you, Lorin dear," she murmured, in tender, trembling tones; "and I am glad with all my heart and soul to be your wife!"
CHAPTER XVII.
Skating in the Homestead grounds was skating at its best.
A considerable expanse of water, forming a miniature lake, led out into a long winding canal, which took its course under tall over-arching trees and between steep banks, in summer decked with flowering reeds, forget-me-nots, and ferns.
Laline had not skated since she lived in the country with her mother as a little child; but Wallace Armstrong excelled in skating, as he did in all outdoor exercises, and once he had fitted to her feet one of several pairs of skates he had provided, and had affixed his own as well, the two started, he grasping both her hands in support and teaching her to bend and sway her supple figure as they moved over the ice together.
The keen air blew in their faces, the whirr of their skates and here and there the snapping of a twig under the weight of snow were the only sounds that came to them; across the western sky red bands of light showed where the sun was sinking to rest; while over a long stretch of sparkling white snow they could see through the bare tree-branches the comfortable lights shine out of the windows of the house to beckon them to warmth and shelter.
But Laline and Wallace were on enchanted ground; they seemed no longer two persons, but moved by one and the same spirit as they sped hand in hand over the frozen lake. Faster and faster they flew, until they seemed to leave the beaten wind behind them and to glow with a warmth that was kindlier than sunshine. It was as though they could not tire; the magnetic effect of shoulder touching shoulder, hand clasped in hand, spurred them ever to fresh efforts. Not until six o'clock did Laline remember that she was tired. Then suddenly her ankle gave way; she slipped, and would have fallen had not Wallace caught her in his arms.
"I am tired," she said, clasping both hands round his arm as she smiled up in his face. "I never thought of it until this minute, because it was so perfectly beautiful. But I am really very tired."
He reproached himself strenuously for having allowed her to do too much, and, tenderly assisting her to a seat, removed her skates and led her to the house. In the drawing-room a lamp was burning under a shade of crimson silk, throwing a ruddy glow over the room, and the leaping firelight shone on the tea-things spread on a small table near its cheerful blaze.
"You must want dinner now, my poor, dear child!" exclaimed Wallace, ruefully. "We ought to have had tea an hour and a half ago, only we forgot all about it."
"Tea is just exactly what I want," she declared—"tea by the fire! And then I must be rushing back as fast as I can go. What will Mrs. Vandeleur say?"
"I will see her to-night, if you like."
"Not for the world!"
Into Laline's face a troubled look crept. There was still so much to be told. Mrs. Vandeleur had yet to learn that Wallace was her husband; and Wallace had yet to be told that he was at length in love with his own wife. She was so happy at this moment that instinct warned her against the risk of explanations. Wallace saw the cloud on her face, and was by her side in a moment.
"What is the matter, my darling?"
"Nothing," she said, turning to him suddenly with tears glistening in her eyes—"except the fear that some day you may learn things, hear things, which will make you love me less."
"There is no possibility with me of loving you less, dear," he said, "for I love you absolutely. Until I met you I merely drifted through life; art, business, society, athletics, each took a certain portion of my time, but I wanted an anchorage. I was frittering my time away waiting for you. Do you know what that wonderful little old lady of yours told me when she first saw me? She said—I remember her actual words—'You are capable of going to the greatest lengths of what people would call folly for the sake of one you love. You like many people, you love very few. But where you love it is a passion, a religion!'"
"Did she tell you anything else?" asked Laline, deeply interested.
"Yes. She predicted that I was on the eve of a new experience which would alter the whole course of my life. Why, Lina, that was loving you!"
"Yes; but did she make no prediction? I know one ought not to be so superstitious as to believe those things, but she makes such strangely true guesses sometimes. Did she say your love would make you happy?"
He hesitated.
"Of course Mrs. Vandeleur doesn't know everything," he said at last, half laughing. "She is merely a remarkably close observer, and a good judge of character from the face and hand."
"But what did she say?" persisted Laline.
"She said," he answered, throwing his arm about her waist and drawing her closely to him, as though defying Fate to separate them, "that my love-affair would bring me a great deal of trouble, and that there would be sorrow and partings and evil wrought me by an enemy, until death should set me free."
Almost unconsciously, as he quoted the little sibyl's words, his tone changed from banter to deep seriousness; and to Laline there was something ominous and terrifying in Mrs. Vandeleur's prophecy.
"I can't bear to hear you repeat her words," she whispered, clinging to him as she spoke, "for to me also she prophesied that trouble—terrible trouble—would come into my life if once I let love enter my heart."
"And yet what trouble can come between you and me?" he asked, smoothing her brow with his hand as she rested her head against his shoulder. "Who can part us? No one, so far as I know, has either the power or the will to do so. My uncle is almost as anxious for my marriage as I am—and, if I had my way, it should take place to-morrow. Mrs. Vandeleur will offer no objection, I imagine, and, even if she did, she has no authority over you. Your health is good——"
"I never remember a day's real illness in my life."
"Nor do I. And here is your house ready for you. As to money to buy frocks and things—you have only to mention a sum and my uncle will send it to you by return of post. Nothing can part us now!"
"Don't, don't!" she exclaimed, laying her fingers on his lips—"it sounds like a challenge to Fate!"
He laughed as he kissed her finger-tips.
"That ghost-ridden panelled room of Mrs. Vandeleur's has held you too long," he said. "You are growing as superstitious as an old villager. And, my darling, there are actually tears rolling down your cheeks! Now let me dry them, and then you must bathe your eyes and take off your hat and cloak, and we will sit down facing each other at the tea-table and play at being a newly-married clerk on a hundred a year bringing home his bride!"
Half laughing, but with moist eyes, she obeyed him, and in a very few minutes they were sitting down to an old-fashioned country tea of hot cakes, hot buttered toast, and eggs served in various ways. To each it seemed the most absolutely satisfactory meal ever placed before them; but then they were very much in love, and they were together.
The one predominating idea in Wallace's mind was the wedding-day; and upon whatever subject Laline began to talk he invariably brought it round to the date he wanted her to fix.
"You have just said you are so fond of sunshine and that you don't like cold and fogs," he said. "Well, then, why put up with any more of them? We will be married at once, and set sail for Algiers or Cairo or the Canary Islands, or just where you please where there is sunshine and warmth and a blue sky above us. Why should you be shivering in St. Mary's Crescent, and I be freezing at a desk in the Strand, when we might be enjoying ourselves on sunny seas together? Are you fond of the sea?"
"Very, very fond. I was never so happy when I lived in Boulogne as when I could wander alone for miles along the sands, watching the waves. And I am a capital sailor too."
"So you have lived at Boulogne?" he remarked, in some surprise. "I had a short and very unpleasant experience of the place rather more than four years ago—a time I much dislike recalling. But, if you love the sea, we have endless delight to look forward to, for I am never happier than when on board ship. So that brings me back to the day, Lina dear; and if you really loved me you wouldn't put me off and keep me waiting."
"I have never bought a trousseau!" she demurred. "You must let me consult Mrs. Vandeleur as to just what time I shall want to get my things together."
"I think it is the most preposterous convention in the world," he protested, energetically, "that two people who love each other should be kept apart over a silly matter of millinery! As though I should value you more highly with a dozen hats than with one, or think you more beautiful in any gown than you look at this minute! In Shakspere's time girls knew what love meant. Juliet didn't worry Romeo to wait while she ordered and tried on frills and furbelows, but went straight to the point—
'If that thy bent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage, send me word to-morrow,
By one that I'll procure to come to thee,
Where, and what time, thou wilt perform the rite;
And all my fortunes at thy feet I'll lay,
And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world!'"
"Juliet was only fourteen, and didn't know the value of dress," Laline retorted, laughing.
"If we have a special license," he remarked, ignoring her protest, "we need not have that tiresome fortnight of delay."
"When I do marry you," she said, quickly, "it must be in a church. Marriage in a registry office means nothing to me and seems only an impious mockery."
"Of course we'll be married in a church!" he returned, in some surprise. "St. Mary-le-Strand or Kensington Church, whichever you prefer. And, now that we have come to the place, dear, it is as well to fix the day."
It was only after long persuasion that Laline at last agreed that the ceremony should take place in February, a month that had just begun. It seemed as though she were afraid of hurrying on the wedding lest those misfortunes at which Mrs. Vandeleur had hinted should follow close upon her decision. She was intensely anxious, for the same reason, to defer, for the next few days, at least, any public announcement of her forthcoming marriage.
"Everybody will say I am marrying you for your money," she explained, "and I sha'n't like to hear it."
"What in the world does it matter to us what they may say?" he inquired. "They will scarcely tell you so to your face; and, if such things are going to be said, they will be uttered just the same if we marry next week or next year. If you loved me a hundredth part as much as I love you, you wouldn't want to defer our marriage by an hour."
"We are so perfectly happy as we are!" she was pleading, when he interrupted her.
"Perfectly happy! When I have to leave you and exist through hours before I see you again I am not happy. Of course I will call to-morrow at St. Mary's Crescent——"
"Not to-morrow. Monday."
"Lina, you are proving every moment more clearly how little you care!"
"Lorin, dear, I do care! But I must have breathing time."
This conversation took place in the brougham, in which Laline was being driven back to Kensington, as Wallace feared lest she might catch cold in the dog-cart. In the brougham, too, he could sit beside her with his arms wrapped round her, which was an ideal method of travelling and to the taste of both. To Wallace it seemed as though immense capabilities for passion and tenderness, which for years had been closed up within his heart, overflowed now for the first time. He could not lavish enough caresses upon her, could not call her by enough tender names; and the contrast between his present extreme demonstrativeness and the easy courteous self-possession of his habitual manner might well have startled Laline, but that the change in her own bearing was, if possible, even more marked.
Very early deprived of a mother's love, and placed in a position entailing a measure of responsibility, Laline had received little or no marks of affection from man or woman since her early childhood. "La p'tite Gart" had cooked her father's dinners, run on her father's errands, and taken care of the neighbours' children; and, later, Miss Lina Grahame, assistant mistress at Mrs. Melville's select Academy for Young Ladies, had been looked up to as a paragon of austere propriety, engaged from seven in the morning until nine at night in instilling English, French, needlework, and manners to her employer's pupils.
In all this life of routine there had been no love at all. For seven years the girl's whole nature, originally confiding and affectionate, had been repressed and thrown back on itself. Knowing that she was really married, she had set herself the task of crushing out of her heart every trace of tender feeling for any person of the opposite sex. She had not dared to love, and had planned for herself a future of incessant work and activity, into which no thoughts of love might ever enter. The shock of overhearing her father and husband haggling over the money bargain by which she was transferred from the one to the other had been great and even terrible; but fortunately Laline's nature was too sweet to be permanently embittered against all men by those unhappy early experiences. Still the result of these latter had been to make her both self-reliant and reserved, and to induce her to regard herself as a person set apart, for whom the happiness of loving and being loved could never exist, doomed by man's selfishness to a life of loveless solitude.
Matters being thus with her, the affection with which, almost from the moment of his entrance into Mrs. Vandeleur's house, Wallace had inspired her, came like the warmest sunshine into Laline's heart, melting the icy reserve in which it perforce was wrapped. She had never really tried to resist the feelings of interest and tenderness with which he had inspired her. He was her husband—it was right that she should love him; and neither her remembrance of his selfish treachery towards her years ago, nor the vague rumours of drunkenness and dissipation which she had heard against him recently, sufficed to diminish her growing regard. Duty and inclination went hand in hand, and she knew now that she had loved him as they wandered together under the snow-covered trees in Kensington Gardens, had loved him as they stood together in the South Sea room at his uncle's house, and that she loved him now, passionately and without reserve, receiving and returning his kisses with a warmth and tenderness which satisfied even a lover's exacting spirit, and nestling against him with a gentle confidence which touched and delighted him beyond the power of words to express.
It was nearly ten o'clock when the carriage arrived in the old-fashioned red-brick Crescent and clattered over the stone-paved court until it drew up before Mrs. Vandeleur's door. A light burned in the front room on the ground-floor, and Clare Cavan's face was clearly to be seen, pressed against the window and peeping out at them.
"Don't kiss me, Lorin—some one is watching!" whispered Laline; but her warning was thrown away.
"I am proud of my right to kiss you, darling, and I don't care who sees me!" he whispered back, as, raising his hat, he pressed his lips to hers.
The next moment the door was opened by Susan, and Laline ran into the house.
In the front room Clare bit her thin red lips until the blood started; she was too genuinely angry even to go after Laline.
"Cat!" she whispered to herself. "Sly cat, with her Puritan airs! But I'll make her suffer for cutting me out and making me look ridiculous! And Aunt Cecilia, too, laughing at me absolutely, and telling me I'd better leave off trying to attract with Lina about! I can at least make her thoroughly miserable and uncomfortable to-morrow morning. But as soon as he comes he will set it right. Never mind; he shall have a bad time of it to-morrow, too, and shall be made to feel disgraced and ashamed before Lina and Aunt Cecilia and me if I can manage it. It's most unlucky that to-morrow's Sunday!"
A sudden inspiration came at that moment to Miss Cavan; her odd green eyes gleamed with satisfaction as she quickly seated herself before a desk and proceeded to write, in a round disguised hand, a letter addressed to "Wallace Armstrong, Esq.," and signed "A Well-Wisher."
She laughed as she read it; and, still laughing, ran lightly to her room, put on her hat and cloak, slipped the letter into her pocket, and, venturing boldly out into the snowy night, chartered a hansom and directed the man to drive to a certain address, in order that with her own hands she might place her precious missive in the letter-box.
CHAPTER XVIII.
To Laline's great relief, no one spoke to her or interferred with her in any way on her return; and she was able to retire with her ecstatic thoughts to her own room.
To say that she had never been so happy in her life would be to understate the case. Until this day she had not known what happiness was. Sleep was out of the question for a long time; Laline was too happy to sleep. She laid her flushed cheek upon her pillow, and proceeded slowly and lingeringly to recall every word, every look, and every caress she had received from Wallace Armstrong.
Her vivid imagination being excited to its utmost, she thrilled again at her lover's touch, saw again the love-light in his eyes, turned her face to meet his kisses, and murmured into her pillow answering vows of unalterable love.
No scruples restrained her from giving herself up heart and soul to thoughts of him. He was her husband, and she had a right to love him, to glow with delight at the memory of his caresses, and to long ardently for the moment when she should see him again. In a very few days she would be doubly married to him—for Laline was resolved that the blessing of the Church should cement that hurried and unimpressive civil ceremony at Boulogne.
It occurred to her more than once that Wallace, in his impatience to claim her as his wife, might wish, when once he learned her identity, to dispense with the delay of a second wedding; and for this reason alone she debated whether it might not be better to defer telling him the truth until after the ceremony had been performed.
Yet again she told herself that before the altar she must speak the truth. Laline Armstrong and not Lina Grahame was her name, and as Laline Armstrong she must be married—Laline Armstrong, neither spinster, widow, nor wife. The definitions confused her, and she laughed aloud in the dark from sheer light-heartedness to think that a man should be unknowingly wooing and wedding his own wife.
She would never feel that she was really his wife until they had been married in a church. So utterly different was the man she now knew and loved from the reckless, defiant, capriciously kind Wallace Armstrong of the old Boulogne days, that it seemed as though another soul had entered into the man, and that another ceremony was necessary to make him truly her husband.
The marked dislike, amounting almost to abhorrence, with which he alluded to his past experiences was characteristic of his complete reformation; but it was just this quality which made Laline dread breaking the truth to him. At least for a few days she decided that she must still be Lina Grahame. Their relations were so perfect that the introduction of any new element might mar their complete harmony; and having once arrived at this determination, Laline let her brain slip back again to the congenial employment of living again through every incident of her second courtship until at length her waking dreams of passionate delight were merged in sleep.
At this precise moment all happiness fled. No sooner was she asleep than terrible dreams afflicted her soul—dreams in which she was always endeavouring to reach her lover until some terrible catastrophe occurred to prevent their union, and she was hurled away into space with the sound of a man's mocking laughter in her ears.
Sometimes she thought she was wandering in a flower-bedecked meadow under a cloudless sky while numberless birds sang sweetly overhead. At a little distance she perceived Wallace approaching her, with gladness in his eyes and arms outstretched to embrace her. Through all her joy at sight of him a sense of foreboding hung over her which was too soon justified; for as, advancing rapidly to her side, he had almost seized her hands in his, the solid earth cleft open beneath their feet and they were irrevocably parted.
"You are mine—mine!" another voice seemed to mutter in her ear. Invisible hands imprisoned her, holding her back whenever she strove through the long hours of hideous dreaming to reach her lover; and, when at length the morning dawned and she awoke, it was with a terrible sense of impending trouble weighing upon her mind.
Just such a night of horrors had she experienced on a previous occasion not many days before. The night preceding Wallace Armstrong's appearance at Mrs. Vandeleur's house had been marked by exactly similar dreams; and Laline, as she dressed and contemplated her pale face and startled eyes in the looking-glass, tried to reassure herself by recalling that no untoward event had followed her dreams on the former occasion.
"They say dreams are always fulfilled in just the reverse way," she told herself. "Meeting my husband again was the happiest thing that ever happened to me; so why should not last night's horrible fancies, which were exactly similar in character, portend some unexpected blessing? Oh, I am growing too sillily superstitious! Wallace is quite right; this house isn't good for me. But I shall leave it soon; and this month my husband's home will be mine. Nothing can part us now—nothing!"
In spite of her assumed brave front, Laline could not get rid of the unpleasant impression produced by her night fancies; and when she joined Clare Cavan at the breakfast-table, that young lady commented at once upon her altered appearance.
"My dearest Lina, you look so pale and so upset! What is it? Did you overtire yourself yesterday? You were out with some friends from your old school, were you not?"
Looking up suddenly, Laline perceived the lurking malice in the speaker's eyes and boldly took up the challenge Clare had thrown down.
"I was with Mr. Armstrong," she answered, in clear, firm tones, "skating in the grounds of his uncle's house at Hampstead."
"With Mr. Wallace Armstrong?" Clare inquired, in tones of assumed surprise and anxiety.
"Yes. I thought I saw you at the window watching us drive up to the house," Laline observed, calmly.
"Well, I certainly thought it was you and he," the ingenuous Clare returned, "but in the dark I couldn't be sure. I am so sorry!"
"Why should you be sorry?"
"Well, I hardly like to tell you; and yet perhaps I ought to. Of course you know that Mr. Armstrong admired me very much and paid me a great deal of attention? Well, I liked him too, as you know; but certain facts about him came into my possession yesterday which made me resolve to ask Aunt Cecilia to drop him for the future."
"What are those facts?"
"It's a most shocking affair, dear, and I am afraid will distress you. I was dreadfully grieved about it; for you know I thought Mr. Armstrong so nice at first. It appears that old Mr. Farquharson the clerk was right, and that, though Mr. Armstrong appears so pleasant and well-bred and charming, he indulges periodically in fits of heavy drinking, during which he is really like a wild beast and not responsible for his actions."
"Who told you all this?"
"Mrs. Fitzroy Cleaver was talking about it yesterday. She had to forbid him her house because he got frightfully tipsy and tried to make love to the servants. That happened last year; but he is never to be trusted, she declared, and may break out at any moment."
"I simply don't believe it!"
"Will you believe your eyes?" asked Clare, lowering her white lids to hide the triumph in her gaze. "Read this; it is from the Daily Leader of last June."
As she spoke, she took from her purse and laid in front of Laline's plate a cutting from a newspaper, headed—"Disgraceful Conduct of a Gentleman."
Laline's heart beat with a sickening apprehension. Not wishing Clare to see her emotion, she rose from the table and took the cutting to the window, where, with checks crimson with mortification, she read that Wallace Armstrong, "stated to be nephew to the well-known banker Alexander Wallace," had been brought before the magistrate on a charge of drunkenness and brutal assault on the police. The accused, it was stated, made no answer to the charge; and, it being proved that on three previous occasions fines had been inflicted for similar offences and instantly paid, the magistrate decided to mark his sense of the man's disgraceful conduct by sending him to prison with hard labour for six months.
"Of course they got him off again," Clare volunteered, as Laline returned the paper to her without speaking, "and it was kept out of most of the papers. I am so dreadfully sorry for that poor dear old Mr. Wallace! That sort of drunkenness is nothing else but insanity; and I suppose one ought to be sorry for Mr. Armstrong as well. As soon as I heard the dreadful story it explained so many things I couldn't understand during our visit the other day. That person shut up near the studio, for instance, was no doubt Mr. Armstrong's keeper, close at hand to look after him in case he should have one of his attacks."
"You pretended that it was a woman who sprang out upon you."
"Did I say so? Of course in the dark I couldn't see. In any case, I am very, very sorry for the whole business; and I do hope, dear Lina, that you won't take it too much to heart. Remember, Mr. Armstrong is only a very slight and recent acquaintance; it isn't as if he were an old friend. Don't worry yourself about him, dear."
"I don't want your sympathy and I don't want your advice; I don't believe in either of them!" flamed out poor Laline. "I believe that these are all lies and that Mr. Armstrong will be easily able to disprove them. And as to being a mere acquaintance—I love him, and I am going to marry him!"
With that, Laline swept from the room, desperately unhappy, but determined in spite of all appearances to be loyal to the man she loved.
She tried not to think about him in church, tried to appear at luncheon as though nothing had ruffled her usual serenity. But Clare's exaggerated consideration and obvious sympathy were well-nigh intolerable. Laline could neither eat nor talk, and could hardly keep back from her eyes tears of shame and vexation at the turn things had taken since the morning.
Wallace, her chivalrous, tender, manly lover, a drunkard and an insensate brute! The thought seemed sacrilege. And yet Laline remembered she had somewhere heard that dipsomaniacs were often, but for that one hideous vice, among the most refined and sweet-natured of men. Of one thing she was the more resolved every hour—she would see her husband at once, tax him with what she had learned, and if possible elicit from him the entire truth. If only her influence might avail to wean him from this degrading vice she would not for one moment hesitate, but would dedicate her life to the task of reclaiming him.
With these conflicting reflections agitating her mind, she could hardly pretend to pay any attention to Clare's easy and incessant flow of chatter during the course of the meal any more than she could attune her mind to Mrs. Vandeleur's fantastic talk in her study in the afternoon. The little lady shook her head sadly as she looked at her secretary.
"Already spoiled! Already spoiled!" she murmured. "Lina, have you nothing to say to me?"
"I shall have ever so much that I want to say to you by this time to-morrow!" Laline cried, springing from her chair and beginning to move restlessly about the room. "But you must let me see Mr. Armstrong once more first, dear Mrs. Vandeleur. After that, I promise I will tell you the entire truth."
The little sibyl looked at her long and intently through her jewelled eye-glasses.
"You are very much in love," she observed, in her light silvery voice, and forthwith sighed. "It is a great pity, when we were getting on so well together," she added, regretfully. "I wish," said Laline, wistfully, "that you could tell me whether it will all turn out happily. What does it mean, Mrs. Vandeleur, when one dares not look ahead, when one watches the hands of the clock in dread of what the next hour will bring forth? And all for no reason or for insufficient reason. It is true that to-day I have heard something that troubles me greatly. But I was not wholly unprepared to face it, and this dreadful foreboding seems to presage something even worse, some terrible misfortune for which I am wholly unprepared."
She stood before Mrs. Vandeleur in her trailing white draperies, with scarcely more colour in her face than in her gown. Even her lips were pale, as, with low trembling accents, she gave voice to her fears.
"I have told you that love would bring trouble into your life," said Mrs. Vandeleur, "but of course I did not expect you to pay any attention to my words. To a limited extent, you have yourself the gift of second sight. I am going out now to pay a long-promised call on Lady Wray. While I am away take this crystal; concentrate your gaze immovably upon it, and let your heart guide your thoughts. It is possible that you may be able to learn as much about your future as I can tell you."
With that, she gently pushed Laline into a seat, and, placing in her hand the crystal ball, passed her fingers lightly and rapidly over the girl's brow, softly murmuring some undistinguishable words the while.
A feeling of drowsiness crept over Laline. Her eyelids closed, and for a few seconds she was lost to her surroundings. When she again opened her eyes she was alone, sitting by the fire, the light from which danced on the gleaming tiles and tall brass "dogs" within the fender. The afternoon was one of black frost and gray fog, and although it was not yet four o'clock the dull, red sun gave but little illumination. St. Mary's Crescent was intensely quiet, but the boards and panelling of Mrs. Vandeleur's study emitted fitful creakings in the highest degree calculated to startle a nervous person.
Laline, as a rule, did not like to be alone there in the twilight, but this afternoon she was so much absorbed in her thoughts that she was almost indifferent to outer influences. She was intensely anxious to see Wallace and deeply regretted her own parting mandate to the effect that he must defer his visit until the following day. It was terrible to live in suspense, dreading and doubting lest he should not be able to clear himself from the abominable charges made against him. And yet, in the face of that newspaper cutting, what could he say? Already the ecstastic happiness which had filled her heart on the preceding evening had been dispelled; in spite of everything, she persisted in loving Wallace as dearly as ever, but her tranquil joy in loving him was a thing of the past.
As she leaned over the fire, lost in thought and rendered dreamier than was her wont by Mrs. Vandeleur's parting touches, Laline had entirely forgotten the crystal which the latter had placed in her hand, and it was only the sparkle of the glass as it caught the firelight which attracted her attention to it again. She held it from her and gazed into its glistening depths; the dancing flames, the ruddy logs, the cloudy night sky flecked with stars painted on the ceiling, the dark oak panelling of the walls, and the faded tints and gruesome figures in the "Dance of Death" tapestry which ran as a frieze round the room, were all mirrored there in miniature, seen imperfectly by the aid of her near-sighted vision. Gradually, as she bent nearer, fascinated by the prettiness of the reflections, her own face came within focus, unusually intent and pale, with eyes fixed and distended. Once before, on the afternoon of Wallace's first visit, she had held the crystal in her hands, and on that occasion, as she recalled now, she had seemed to see imaged the figure of her husband.
Would the same thing happen now? she wondered, as, with straining eyes, she stared into the crystal.
Presently the glass became clouded, the various objects about the room were no longer there, and in their stead Laline caught a gleam of green shutters, opened to flood with sunshine a small uncarpeted room on the floor of which a bright-haired girl was playing with a kitten. Laline held her breath. She knew before it happened that the door would open and a red-faced man with a heavy white moustache would enter, bringing another man after him.
"A gentleman to see us, Laline!"
She could almost hear the words, but, as the door opened and the girl sprang to her feet to greet the visitor, the figures in the crystal began to fade, and of the tall massive form following close on that of Captain Garth Laline caught barely more than a glimpse.
Only a glimpse, yet it drove the blood from her cheeks and lips and made her catch her breath as one half suffocated. With all the will-power she possessed she strove to gaze again into the past. At first her efforts were in vain, but after a few seconds of quivering apprehension the crystal depths became cleared again. She could see waves rippling in the sunlight and up the shiny green supports of a pier, upon which two figures were seated side by side—a man and a girl.
Every detail was correct. Laline remembered the pink cotton frock, made with her own fingers, and the black lace hat and Suède gloves, Wallace's gifts, which she had worn so proudly. The man's head was lowered over the girl, whose left hand he held in his. But although Laline could not see his face she experienced a thrill of repulsion and terror at sight of his figure and thick curly black hair which showed under his straw hat.
Once again her memory brought back words from the past to complete the picture, and a man's voice, at sound of which her heart stood still with fear, slowly and impressively pronounced these words—
"This man will love you, and you will not be able to escape from him. His line of fate and yours run side by side and nothing but death can separate them!"
On the words the glass became clouded, the figures grew fainter and fainter until they vanished altogether, and Laline sat, trembling in every limb, with a new dread in her soul.
"It is the future and not the past which I must see," she told herself. "If I could only get sight of something to guide me!"
From the depths of the crystal the face of a man seemed to resolve itself, and brilliant bluish-gray eyes under heavy black eyebrows to fix themselves upon her. A faint cry rose to Laline's lips. She did not wish to see what the glass held; she would not believe her eyes. Every moment the face became clearer while her sentiment of loathing and detestation increased in proportion.
Moved out of herself by overmastering excitement, she would have flung the crystal from her; but at that exact moment the silence in the room was suddenly broken by the opening of the door and Susan's voice announcing—
"Mr. Wallace Armstrong!"
CHAPTER XIX.
Trembling like a leaf in the wind, unnerved and weeping, Laline started from her seat, and as the door closed on the servant held out her arms towards her lover.
"You have come at last!" she sobbed out. "Oh, if you had stayed away another moment, I think I should have gone mad!"
He hesitated for a moment and then advanced into the room. As he did so she made a step towards him; but her limbs trembled so much that she faltered and would have fallen had he not drawn her into his arms.
For an instant she clung to him, sobbing hysterically, while he held her close against his breast smoothing her hair with one hand. Then over her from head to foot passed a quiver of the same strong repulsion and dread she had experienced a few seconds earlier. For a few seconds she remained absolutely motionless while her very blood seemed to turn cold drop by drop. Then, disengaging herself suddenly, she fell back from him and stared through the obscurity at his face.
"Wallace," she cried—"it is not Wallace Armstrong!"
"That is my name, at your service, all the same."
She did not faint or scream. She stood perfectly still before him while her heart seemed to turn to stone. She did not attempt to deceive herself. No mistake was possible now. All the old happy delusion was destroyed for ever by this man's touch, by this man's voice.
For, although she could not clearly see his face, although he had only spoken a few words, the voice was the same as that which had uttered the prophecy on Boulogne pier four years ago.
And at the sound of that voice all hope of love, all thought of happiness died out of Laline's heart. Her dream was over. Not the man she loved but this man whom she hated was her husband.
The whole truth poured in upon her brain as a sudden shaft of light in those terrible moments of silence. Five words told the story. There were two Wallace Armstrongs, and she had chosen to persuade herself that the one she loved was her husband. This man who stood before her now, with mocking laughter in his voice, an echo of which had haunted her dreams—this man, whose very clothing exhaled a nauseous perfume of spirits and whose accents were husky with drink, was the husband to whom she had pledged herself until death should part them on that fatal summer morning.
There was much to be explained, much that she could not understand; but of this one awful fact she was convinced and needed no further testimony. He had come into her life again, and already his sinister shadow had darkened all its sunshine.
So she stood before him in the twilit room and lived a lifetime of despairing grief before he spoke again.
"I am really exceedingly sorry to disappoint you," he said. "I suppose you expected my cousin? Your servant made a similar mistake at first. From your greeting I presume that I may congratulate him?"
"Yes, you presume," she said, and, passing him swiftly, she gained the door.
"One moment, please," he interposed, before she had time to leave the room. "I don't think there is any mistake on my part. I have come here on an introduction to Mrs. Sibyl Vandeleur, the celebrated sorceress or thought-reader or pin-finder—I don't quite know how she styles herself. I was not aware, until I arrived at the house, of the—well, the very intimate terms upon which my cousin was received here."
He paused, as though he expected her to speak. At every word he uttered in those leisurely sneering tones which she ought never to have forgotten Laline hated him a little more. She wondered now how she could ever have believed that such a man as this could grow gentle and chivalrous, unselfish and kind. Bitter and contemptuous in manner he had always been, but there was about him now an added recklessness—outcome of a savage scorn against himself and all the world. In manner he was the antithesis of his cousin, and yet every now and then Laline caught in his voice some inflection which reminded her of the man she loved. Even by this light she realised that in figure he was a little taller and of much heavier build than his namesake, and already inclining to the unhealthy stoutness which comes of lazy and dissipated habits.
It was strange that this time she felt but little of the fear of recognition she had before experienced when she believed herself in the presence of her husband. This man and she seemed in spirit so many leagues asunder, and there was so strong a barrier of gross material instincts between his mind and hers, that Laline intuitively knew he would not remember her. One woman would be the same as another to him; he would be incapable of differentiating between them. Moreover, any other thought she might entertain about him was swallowed up in the overpowering sensation of physical dislike with which he inspired her. In this dislike fear had a part, but it was the shrinking horror of a delicate and refined nature when confronted by one essentially coarse and brutal, and not a personal fear lest he should know and claim her as his wife which moved Laline.
The man was sunk enough, but not so sunk that he failed to recognise, even in the twilight of Mrs. Vandeleur's room, how this slenderly-made, sweet-voiced girl, who had clung so tenderly to him when she mistook him for his cousin, shrank from him, once her error was made known to her, in aversion none the less plain that it was not expressed in words. Wallace Armstrong the elder was a very handsome man, and had won some cheap reputation as a "lady-killer;" consequently this girl's antagonistic attitude piqued and angered him.
"Can I wait here for Mrs. Vandeleur?" he inquired, with mock politeness. "Or can I wait somewhere else—because, if you expect my cousin, I fear I shall be rather in the way?"
"Mrs. Vandeleur is out. She expects no visitors to-day, and I do not know when she will return."
"But you expect my cousin? I am sure he will be delighted to see me if you will allow me to wait until he arrives."
"If Mr. Wallace Armstrong is your cousin," Laline said, frigidly, with her hand on the door, "he has certainly never mentioned you. Under the circumstances, perhaps it would be better if you communicated your business to Mrs. Vandeleur by letter. She only receives strangers by appointment."
She was desperately anxious to get rid of this man, to stir his pride so that he should leave at once and never gain a footing within the house. His presence tortured her, and she longed to escape to her room that she might consider the new and horrible situation in which she found herself. But before the unwelcome visitor could do more than make one step towards the door, it was suddenly flying open, and Clare Cavan, in walking-dress, hurried in, and held out her hand cordially towards him.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Armstrong! So good of you to come on such a horrid foggy day! Why—have I made a mistake? Susan said it was Mr. Armstrong——"
"And it is Mr. Armstrong. Unfortunately my cousin and I were given precisely the same name by our respective mothers, both of whom were sisters to Alexander Wallace the banker, and anxious to propitiate him by making us his godsons. Two sisters married two brothers, you see. I was the unlucky result in the one case, and my Admirable Crichton of a cousin was the satisfactory result in the other. I come with an introduction to Mrs. Vandeleur; but it seems I am rather de trop——"
"Pray don't say so. I am sure we are delighted to see you!" exclaimed Clare, effusively. "I am Mrs. Vandeleur's niece, and my name is Cavan. Any friend or relation of Mr. Armstrong's is extremely welcome here. Isn't that so, Lina dear?"
Laline did not respond. A combination between Clare and this man suggested all manner of vague dangers. She longed to quit the room, and yet feared to leave them alone together lest they should discuss her and make she knew not what discovery thereby. Meanwhile Clare was flitting about, ringing the bell for the lamp and chattering gaily to her aunt's visitor, apparently bent upon putting him at his ease.
"Detestable weather to-day, isn't it, Mr. Armstrong? This fog is so fearfully depressing! And I have been calling on a family, half of whom were down with the influenza and the other half deadly afraid of catching it. London on a foggy Sunday afternoon is a most ghastly place, isn't it? I like church, but I do hate church bells! In the country—across meadows and all that sort of thing—they sound musical and soothing; but in town they are most funereal and out of tune with other sounds, and always suggest that one will be late, and that one's glove-buttons will come off at the last minute, and one will walk into church after the service has begun all red and perspiring and plain! And that's an awful ordeal!"
The lamp was brought in during the foregoing speech, and by its light, toned down by the amber silk-shade which veiled it, Wallace Armstrong the elder gazed curiously at the two other occupants of the room. Laline had resumed her usual low seat by the fire, but it was not to her that his glance was at first directed. Clare Cavan stood immediately before him, and his bold eyes ran approvingly over the voluptuous curves of her figure, the dead whiteness of her skin, and the red and yellow lights in her untidy coil of hair. Her white eyelids and pale lashes were lowered to all appearance modestly under his scrutiny, but out of the corners of her eyes she too was taking stock of him.
What she saw was by no means wholly pleasing. Even by the subdued light of the lamp and fire it was easy to read in this man's appearance the deterioration of his moral and physical nature. Originally handsomer than his cousin, he had at thirty years of age acquired the look of a man ten years older. His plentiful curly hair, which fell heavily over his forehead, was already streaked with gray. His cheeks were haggard and pale, contrasting with the puffiness of the skin under his eyes and about his chin and jaw, and his eyes, beautiful in shape and colour, were bloodshot and red in the lids. There was undoubtedly a strong family likeness between himself and his cousin; both men were tall, broad-shouldered, and well made, black-haired, blue-eyed, and of regular features, but there all resemblance ceased. Wallace Armstrong the elder was clearly on the downward road. His voice and manner had become coarse and rough, and the bitterness of his nature showed itself in almost every word he uttered. Especially in his allusions to his cousin did this sneering tone assert itself; and as if she perceived this and wished to ascertain the reason for it Clare led the conversation at once to the topic of the younger Wallace Armstrong.
"Now that I see you by the light," she said, "you are really very much alike. But I think your eyes have more gray about them; your cousin's are wholly blue."
"My hair has more gray about it too," he remarked, sardonically.
"Has it? I hadn't noticed that. But do you know I so much admire gray hair on young men? It is so piquant, I think! Then you are taller and bigger than the Wallace Armstrong we know; and you wear a moustache, while he is clean-shaved."
"Yes—a moustache is the one thing Lorin can't cultivate successfully," he sneered. "But he is so eminently lucky in every other respect that he ought not to mind that one deficiency."
"Then your voices are different, very different," Clare continued, standing before him with her head on one side reflectively, and speaking with the air of ingenuous innocence she knew so well how to assume. "There are just tones now and then which resemble your cousin's, but not many."
"My voice is not adapted to cooing and flattering, as his is!" he retorted, with sudden savagery. "It has had no practice in such arts."
"It is odd," Clare said, affecting not to notice his growing anger, "that we did not see you when we visited your uncle's house last Wednesday afternoon!"
"Oh, I am kept in the background!" he returned, with a short laugh. "I am not pretty or nice-mannered enough to be shown to visitors; and they have never thought of a cage for me, with 'Keep away—he bites!' as a warning inscription. My cousin is the show animal, with nice, tea-drinking, tennis-playing manners. My roughness frightens people. Why, I have already frightened your friend here, as you see."
Clare glanced at Laline. The latter was sitting with her eyes fixed, in fascinated dislike, upon the third occupant of the room. Perhaps she hardly realised how clearly her features expressed the disgust with which he inspired her. But Wallace saw it and winced under it. No woman in his sober moments had contemplated him like that yet, and he felt he hated both her and himself for that look.
"I ought to have introduced you!" cried Clare. "How stupid of me! Lina, this is our Mr. Armstrong's cousin, and he thinks he frightened you. Isn't that absurd?"
"Very. I am not at all afraid of Mr. Armstrong."
"By——But you shall be!" was the thought that sprang into life in Wallace's mind as he noted the quiet scorn of her tones. He turned to look at her as she sat by the fire in her soft white draperies, with slender hands clasped loosely round her knee, one foot on a stool before her, and her head a little thrown back. She looked very beautiful at that moment and her beauty struck into his heart like a dull pain. There was something proud and aloof in her appearance of icy purity and reserve; and when he contrasted her present haughtiness of bearing with the passionate demonstrativeness with which she had, as she thought, flung herself into the arms of his cousin a few moments before, a bitter anger was stirred within him.
Why should she lavish caresses upon Lorin and treat him—Wallace—like a dog?
He would make her pay for it, for certain, and he was not a man to register a vow of vengeance against any one and fail to make it good.
He could not guess that Laline's appearance of scornful quiet was to a great extent the result of the tumult of emotions which agitated her. A fierce despair held possession of her heart. She seemed to see, lying in ruins about her feet, the beautiful castle in the air that love had built; and the dirge of a love that must die was ringing in her ears as an accompaniment to every word he uttered. This extreme tension of feeling kept her rigid as a statue, outwardly cold, but with heart and brain on fire. Her every nerve was in quivering rebellion against Fate, which had linked her to this man she hated, while with all her soul she longed to be the wife of another. And so she sat, within a few feet of her husband, preternaturally pale and still, her heart throbbing with a woman's passionate love and as passionate grief under her white conventual gown; and Wallace looked and hated her for her scornful pride, and hated his cousin for having won her love, and told himself that he would punish the pair of them if the chance should come in his way.
But to Clare his visit was a disappointment.
"He is rough and rather dreadful," she said to herself, "but comparatively sober. I hoped he would be mad with drink, as he was last Wednesday, and as he often is, or I would never have asked him to come."
CHAPTER XX.
Clare Cavan had wholly misunderstood the man with whom she had to deal when, by means of an anonymous letter, signed "A Well-Wisher," which she herself had delivered at his lodgings on the previous evening, she had summoned Wallace Armstrong the elder to her aunt's house.
From what her friends at the skating-party had told her she imagined him to be a degraded sot, lost to all sense of decency, barely sane, and utterly unpresentable.
"Awful thing for that poor young fellow Wallace Armstrong!" her friend Mr. Fitzroy Cleaver had confided to her. "He's got a cousin who's rather like him in appearance, and has the same name too, which is playing it very low down on a fellow. This chap—the other Wallace Armstrong, you know—is always getting had up for assault and drunkenness and all that sort of thing; and old Alexander Wallace has to pay to have the things kept out of the papers. He's been sent out of the country more than once, but always comes back, like a bad ha'penny. The last scandal about him was in the summer; my sister has a copy of the newspaper about it somewhere. I believe his uncle has disowned him since then. I am not quite sure but what he's doing 'time' now for that. People like that ought to be shut up—don't you think so? He'll only end by committing a murder or something unpleasant of that sort if he's left at large; and think how horrid that will be for his family!"
From her hostess, Mr. Cleaver's sister-in-law, Clare received the paragraph she showed to Laline, and other details concerning the reprobate in question.
"I had no idea what the creature was like, my dear; and, when he introduced himself to me at Hurlingham as a cousin of Mr. Armstrong and a nephew of Alexander Wallace, it never occurred to me to be on my guard against him. I made the terrible mistake of inviting him to dinner. Luckily, it was only ourselves and two very old friends. My dear child, when he arrived he was already half tipsy! Of course I affected not to notice it and tried to keep things out of his way; but it was of no use. He drank fearfully during dinner and grew very noisy and insulting. As to joining the ladies afterwards—he was hardly capable of standing upright and wanted to fight the butler—such an excellent man! He had been with us five years, and was really almost to be depended upon not to steal too much wine—and that is high praise for a butler! But this dreadful Armstrong person struck out at him and upset him so much that he gave notice the next morning. Mr. Armstrong used fearful language too, and made my parlour-maid cry by trying to kiss her when she handed him his hat. Dreadful, wasn't it? I assure you I didn't get over it for weeks. And the next time I heard of him he was in prison, where he richly deserved to be. My dear, such a person should be sent to an institution for dipsomaniacs or shipped to the Colonies! I believe he hates his cousin, whom he accuses of supplanting him in his uncle's favour, and that he will try and murder him some day."
Of Mr. Wallace Armstrong the elder's rough brutality Clare herself could bear personal evidence. Curiosity had led her on the occasion of her visit to Alexander Wallace's house to peer into the room on the top floor adjoining the studio; and she would not easily forget the momentary vision she had had of a man's face, red and swollen by drink and fury, which appeared at the doorway, or the violence with which, to an accompaniment of curses, she had been thrust from the room. The incident at the time had been inexplicable to her, although with characteristic mendacity she had made use of it to endeavour to prejudice Laline against the younger Armstrong. But as soon as she learned of the existence of the scapegrace cousin, recently released from gaol, who was forbidden his uncle's house and only frequented it by stealth, she judged rightly that it was he whom she had seen upon the evening in question.
She was far too spiteful to communicate her intelligence to Laline, and thoroughly enjoyed the latter's evident distress when she was led to believe that the man charged with repeated drunkenness and assault was her lover. Clare knew quite well that only a few words would suffice to remove this misconception from Laline's mind, and that she must therefore devise some new plan by which to revenge herself upon her. Understanding as she did to some extent the other girl's sensitive and impressionable nature, she decided that the coarse insults of a half-insane drunkard, who was the near relation of her affianced husband, would be infinitely painful to Laline, and that a visit paid by his disreputable cousin to his lady-love would deeply distress the younger Armstrong.
With this conviction, Clare had sat down on the preceding evening and indited the following letter, in a disguised handwriting, to the elder Wallace, whose address she had learned from her friends.
"Sir—I have never met you, but I have heard of you, and how you, the elder and the legal heir, have been cruelly and unjustly supplanted in your uncle's heart and your uncle's home—which last should certainly be yours—by the cunning tricks of your younger cousin. Although a stranger, I have a fellow-feeling for you, as I too have had my rightful place in the affections of my relations usurped by an interloper. It is only fair that you should know that your cousin is now engaged to be married to a lady who has never even heard of your existence, and who is marrying him for your uncle's money, to which she believes him to be heir. In justice to yourself and to her, can you not see her and tell her the truth? She resides with Mrs. Vandeleur, the celebrated palmist, at 21, St. Mary's Crescent, Kensington. If you call, you might pretend to consult her.
"A Well-Wisher."
Instead of the tipsy maniac she had confidently expected, this letter had produced a man of sardonic humour and rough and unpleasant manners, but undeniably sane and passably sober—a man, too, of strikingly handsome appearance, however marred by an ill-regulated life; and Clare, wholly ignorant of the deadly blow struck at Laline's happiness by his very existence, felt that her shot had missed fire.
Tea was brought in at this point and refused with some disdain by the visitor. With a sickening pang of remembrance, Laline recalled the fact that at Boulogne Wallace had never partaken of tea.
"Liquids that didn't intoxicate weren't worth swallowing," he had declared; and as a child she had been shocked and startled by such a statement until he had managed to convince her that he was joking. How could she have been so blind, so foolish, as to suppose that such a man as this could develop into the Wallace Armstrong she had grown to love? This creature before her was but the man of four years ago, with all his evil habits, his roughness of manners, his scorn for his fellow-creatures, his cynicism, and his degraded tastes intensified; and a shudder ran through her at the thought that, but for her flight on her wedding-day, she would be even now his property, his chattel, dragged down in all possibility to his level.