"Bruised his arm! Oh, is he much hurt?" Laline cried, anxiously.
An ugly smile crossed Wallace's face.
"A bruise on his arm is of more importance to you than my whole existence—isn't it?" he asked, bitterly.
Laline's spirit was roused.
"Certainly it is, Mr. Armstrong," she retorted; "and I should never forgive myself if, after I had sent your cousin to rescue you in a disreputable scuffle, he had been hurt while protecting you."
"Don't distress yourself. A little arnica, together with your sympathy, will soon cure him!" he sneered. "What I want to speak about is this. When you met me yesterday you told me my cousin had never mentioned my name to you; he confirmed your statement, and he is one of those George Washington sort of prodigies who scorn to tell a lie. I was sober enough yesterday afternoon in all conscience; and yet, from what he said, you at once hated me so much that you wanted to break with him on my account. Is that true?"
The colour came and went in Laline's face, and her heart beat fast. It was indeed only too true that on his account she must part from Lorin—but true in a far deeper and distant sense than Wallace knew or could guess.
"I cannot discuss my private affairs with you," she said in a very low voice, and without looking him in the face.
"But if you have any sense of justice," he returned, quickly, "you will tell me what reason you had for the scorn and hatred—for it was nothing short of that—you showed from the moment that you found out it was not my cousin but I to whose arms you had rushed. Those few seconds, while you clung to me before you found out your mistake, were among the sweetest in my life."
"Mr. Armstrong," she said, growing hot with anger, "if you are only detaining me here to insult me, your conduct is even worse than I expected from you."
"Is it an insult," he asked, "to tell you that a spontaneous caress from a woman as good as she is beautiful made me feel another man? Is it an insult to tell you that, during those few seconds, while you rested your head on my shoulder and I felt the touch of your hands about my neck, I would have given the rest of my life to have been for a few moments only the man you loved?"
"It is impossible!" she cried, in great agitation. "You had not even seen my face!"
"Just a fleeting glimpse in the twilight of beautiful appealing eyes and beautiful arms outstretched towards me. But it was the love in your touch, Miss Grahame, and the love in your voice which moved me. No woman has ever loved me like that. The women I have known have been fools, or worse. But as you nestled in my arms for those few seconds and I smoothed your hair, I understand what a woman like you might make of a man like me."
Instinctively he moved one step towards her, and as instinctively Laline put up her hand, as though to ward him off, and drew a step farther away from him. He saw the action and frowned impatiently.
"Why should you hate me as you do?" he asked, in tones of passionate anger. "Can you not love my cousin without hating me? I tell you it was the thought of your scornful eyes and your scornful voice that drove me to drink yesterday. I had been half inclined to swear off and reform and be reconciled to my uncle, and all that; but your disdain seemed to choke me. I couldn't go home and think about it, so I tried to drown the memory of you and your words too. Now be frank with me, Miss Grahame. What could have made you hate me even before we had ever met, unless it was Lorin's account of me?"
"I had heard about you from others," she answered, in a confused tone, averting her face from him. "I—I have a horror of people who drink. I had seen things about you in the papers——"
"Oh, I don't pretend to be a saint!" he broke in. "My life is my own—it's of no value to any one but myself; and what I do with it is no one's concern but my own. My flawless cousin is perpetually playing guardian angel to me. It is a part he enjoys, and he ought to be grateful to me for providing employment for him in that capacity."
"It is your paltry sneers about your cousin that make me dislike you, Mr. Armstrong!" Laline flashed out at last. "I am not one of the women who care for dissipated heroes or who believe in the love of reformed rakes; and I see nothing to sneer at in the unselfish goodness of an honourable man towards an ungrateful relative. The sneers and sarcasm, to my mind, should be for the man who deliberately indulges in degrading vices and then poses as unloved and misunderstood because well-conducted people have no wish to know him."
Just for one second a look of furious anger shot from Wallace's eyes. Then he turned humble again.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "for seeming to disparage my cousin. But why should he have everything and I nothing? Is it not enough to be accepted as my uncle's heir—to be rich, successful, and popular, and a partner in one of the finest businesses in London—but he must also have the love of one of the best and purest and most beautiful of women? Why should he have everything and I nothing? In this very house, every corner of which I knew as a boy, I have had for weeks and months past to slink about like a hunted thief, flying from the man who should by rights stand to me in the place of a father. I have been allowed here on sufferance by my cousin and the butler, who take it upon them to lock up everything but tea and soda-water while I am about, and who watch me as though I were a dangerous wild beast. Do you think such treatment tends to sweeten a man's disposition or to make him think better of his fellow-creatures?"
"You did not look, when I entered, as though you were here on sufferance, or as if you greatly feared being found here by Mr. Wallace," Laline remarked, coldly.
"No; but for this immunity I have had to do penance with bell and candle. I was only taken back into favour this morning at Lorin's intervention, and have had to promise and vow unheard-of things in the way of reformation before my uncle would condescend to shake hands with me."
"And it was Lorin who brought the reconciliation about?"
"Oh, Lorin—always Lorin to the fore in good works!" he sneered. "I think in this case it was as a set-off in the ledger of his conscience against having gone for me and called me bad names last night."
"Is it possible you feel no gratitude towards him?"
"No," he answered, roughly; "I don't understand gratitude! Love and hate I know, and scorn, and even now and then, in weak moments, something like regret. But that last is waste of time; and as to gratitude—why should one be grateful? No man does more for another than he feels inclined to. Some people enjoy giving up things and being unselfish and denying themselves and so on. I don't. I have never yet met the man or woman who, in my opinion, was worth the slightest sacrifice from me, and I don't suppose I ever shall. Don't turn from me in such disgust, Miss Grahame. Most people think as I do, but fear of others make them hold their tongue about it and pose as being fond of doing good and all that sort of humbug. Now I am not like that."
"No," she returned; "I see you are not. You like to boast of your evil qualities as though you were proud of them; and you think it a fine thing to utter bitter and uncalled-for jests at the expense of others, under the pretence of loving truth."
"Miss Grahame," he said, suddenly seizing her gloved hands and turning her face to the light, "what makes you hate me as you do? It sounds in your voice, which vibrates with dislike; you shrink back from my touch as though I were a viper; you can't even look me in the face; and your scorn breaks out in every word you utter. What possible harm have I ever done you that you should hate me as you do?"
His fierce pressure of her hands hurt her, and the very touch of his fingers had the effect of making her tingle from head to foot with aversion. A desire, which was almost hysterical in its intensity, came upon Laline to answer him back the truth, and cry,—
"I hate you because you are my husband, because you won me by a cruel and heartless trick, because I understand your nature and my own revolts against it, and because you stand between me and the man I love with all my heart and soul!"
"Why won't you look at me?" he was asking. "Is my appearance so loathsome that you daren't even do that? Look in my eyes, and you will read there whether, if I had Lorin's chance, I could not love you a thousand times better than he is capable of doing. Love! He doesn't know what it means. How can a man with beautiful manners and beautiful clothes, a man who paints pretty pictures and plays tennis with pretty girls, a man of flawless character with his pockets full of money and his future nicely garden-rolled before him, know of the passion that burns in the veins of a friendless scamp such as I? Your good men who go to church on Sunday and stick to their desks so many hours on weekdays don't know the meaning of the word passion. Lorin has everything in life—why should he want you too? Good women like you are sent into the world to redeem bad men like me, not to carve beef and mutton for such estimable citizens as my cousin Lorin. A good woman whom I loved and who loved me might do what she liked with me; and, Lina, from the moment when yesterday you ran into my arms, I have loved you and longed to hold you there again!"
"You must be mad!" she exclaimed, struggling to free her hands from his grasp. "If you were in your right senses you would not dare to speak to me like this! I have only once before seen you—I have no feeling for you but contempt and dislike—and yet you talk to me of love! Let my hands go this instant, and never presume to so insult me again!"
She was looking him full in the face this time, with mingled terror and aversion shining in her soft, dark eyes. As he met their gaze, Wallace Armstrong suddenly dropped his hands and fell back a step with a muttered expletive—
"What a likeness!" he ejaculated, and continued staring fixedly at Laline.
In terror lest he should have recognised her, the girl turned abruptly from him and hurried towards the door. Before she could reach it he had arrested her steps by laying his hand on her arm.
"I beg your pardon," he stammered, "but just for one moment you looked so strangely like some one I once knew—my wife, in fact—a worthless hussy, who deserted me on our wedding-day. I meant to treat her well, for I liked her, and she might have made something of me if she had tried; but she was a true daughter of her father, and bad to the core. For just an instant, though, you looked so like her that it was quite startling."
During this speech Laline had had full time to recover her self-possession.
"Thank you," she said, with glacial politeness. "From your description it is hardly flattering to be likened to such a person. Your uncle and your cousin must have been misinformed. They told me that your wife was an orphan when you first met her, and that she died, deeply regretted, of typhoid fever about a month after your marriage."
He gazed at her curiously, still with his hand on her arm.
"So that is the story you heard—eh?" he remarked. "I said my wife bolted from me on her wedding-day; but I never said I didn't get her back, did I? As to the 'deeply-regretted'—well, we are all deeply-regretted on our tombstones, aren't we? No—don't shake my hand off; if we are to be cousins by marriage, mayn't I even touch your sleeve?"
And at that identical moment, as they stood close together facing each other, Wallace with his hand on Laline's arm and both clearly agitated, the door opened quickly, and Lorin and his uncle came upon them.
CHAPTER XXV.
A look of astonishment passed into old Alexander Wallace's face, and into that of Lorin an expression of acute vexation as they stood in the open doorway.
"Lina," the latter exclaimed, "I am so sorry I could not come before. Apparently I need not introduce you to my cousin. You never told me that you had met him?"
"Your cousin visited Mrs. Vandeleur's yesterday afternoon, but I was out of the room nearly all the time," said Laline, constrainedly. "Didn't I mention it to you? Now please let me say 'How do you do?' to your uncle."
"Welcome to my niece Lina!" exclaimed old Alexander, beaming with benevolent joy. "May I have an uncle's privilege, my dear?"
With paternal tenderness he took both the girl's hands in his and kissed her on the cheek.
Luncheon was served in the dining-room on the ground-floor. To Laline it was a terrible ordeal to sit between Lorin and Wallace. The latter, as she afterwards learned, had insisted upon being included in the party, maintaining that his presence at such a family gathering would be the clinching proof that he had been taken back into favour. He was in the highest possible spirits, devoting himself to Laline, paying her compliments, and forestalling her wants at table, the while he, with what appeared like irresponsible gaiety, rallied Lorin on his backwardness in looking after his fiancée.
"'A laggard in love,' that's what you are, Lorin!" he cried. "This is the second time you have neglected to hand the salt to Miss Grahame. Take care I don't prove another young Lochinvar, and carry off your prize under your nose."
"In the case of young Lochinvar, Mr. Armstrong, the bride was willing to go," Laline remarked with some acerbity, whereat old Alexander, who in no way understood the undercurrent of bitterness which lay in both sallies, laughed heartily and declared that Wallace had met his match.
"I wish I had with all my heart, sir!" his nephew retorted, directing a bold glance of admiration at Laline's face; and the old gentleman laughed again in childish enjoyment.
It hurt Laline to see how, in spite of his serious and repeated delinquencies, Wallace was clearly the favourite of Alexander, who was delighted to kill the fatted calf in his behalf, Lorin's years of filial devotion and unselfishness counting for nothing against the shallow good humour and assumed affection of this showy ne'er-do-well. Old Alexander's eyes rested constantly, with evident content, upon his elder nephew's face; and, pleased as he was by the prospect of Lorin's marriage, to him it was clearly an even greater subject for thankfulness that his boy Wallace had humbled himself before him and been forgiven.
"You must make allowance for me if my high spirits carry me away this afternoon, Miss Grahame," Wallace said. "The fact is—and as you are so soon to be a member of the family I can talk freely before you—I have been a very, very bad boy, and a dreadful disgrace to everybody about me. So I was punished, as bad boys ought to be. The worst part of my punishment was the knowledge that I had deeply hurt the best man in the world, and that I was shut out from my old home and my old place in his affections. So this morning I went to him and appealed for another chance; and he, having, as I believe, a corner in his heart somewhere for me, took me home there again. That is the reason of my gaiety to-day, cousin Lina, and I feel sure you will sympathise with me and understand."
As Wallace spoke he laid his hand, with what looked like spontaneous affection, upon that of his uncle, to the left of whom he was sitting. Old Alexander grasped his hand warmly and tears filled his eyes. But the little scene failed altogether to move Laline, who felt only indignant that the simple-natured and kindly old man should be so flagrantly deceived in his worthless nephew, whose sneers and gibes at his uncle's expense were still fresh in her mind.
Lorin for his part talked very little. He had considerable difficulty in concealing his deep annoyance at the attitude which Wallace had adopted towards Laline. He had opposed as strongly as he could the suggestion that Wallace should form one of the luncheon-party that day. Knowing his cousin's record, he disliked the idea that anything approaching familiar friendship should be instituted between his cousin and the woman he loved. Lorin's sense of character was as keen as that of his uncle was deficient. Wallace's pretended affection and pretended reformation in no way deceived him, and, although, from the associations of his boyhood, he still retained some little love for the scapegrace elder who had taught him cricket and football years ago, experience had taught him that no reliance was to be placed in Wallace's honour or Wallace's word.
He grew hot with indignation, therefore, when he marked the insolent admiration in his cousin's gaze, and heard the familiar "cousin Lina" he addressed to Laline. One of Wallace's favourite boasts was that he could fascinate any woman if he choose to try, and beautiful, pure-minded Laline would not be the first woman who has been temporarily attracted by a plausible scamp.
It was clear to Lorin that, since his cousin's visit to Mrs. Vandeleur's house on the preceding day, Laline had changed towards him. All their talk during their foggy walk in the Park after church had been of deferring their marriage, and to-day her manner towards him was strangely cold and absent. He had surprised her with his cousin's hand on her arm, an incident concerning which neither she nor Wallace had volunteered the slightest explanation, and even now she was passively receiving his flattery and thinly-veiled love-making without any evident signs of disapproval. Not one look, not one word had he a chance of exchanging with her unnoticed by his cousin, although there was very much that he was longing to communicate to her. He had hoped that the occasion of seeing her home might give him the opportunity he longed for; but his presence was required in the bank that afternoon, and old Alexander was loath to let Laline leave so early.
"Even if Lorin is busy, and Wallace here finds for once something useful to do, my dear," he said, "you can stay and have a cup of tea with me at four o'clock, can't you?"
"I have nothing more useful or more pleasant to do than to stay also," Wallace was beginning, when Laline cut him short.
"I will stay alone with you, Mr. Wallace," she said. "You and I can have a nice quiet tête-à-tête together."
The idea had been strengthening in her mind ever since her arrival that by old Alexander's assistance she might contrive to break her engagement. The presence of Wallace, looming large and aggressive upon her mental horizon, made all hope of association with his cousin impossible. Laline was suffering acutely. The watchfulness of Wallace's bold eyes incessantly fixed upon her face wrought her to such a pitch of nervous excitement that she was hardly conscious of what she said or did. The man exercised a magnetic power over her, so that, much as she disliked and even detested him, she was profoundly affected by his presence. A knowledge of the suffering she would shortly bring upon Lorin increased her distress of mind; she felt she dared not look in his face, lest her glance should be intercepted, or lest he should read in her eyes the consciousness that she was deceiving him.
Yet the very strength of her love and pity for Lorin, and the necessity for putting a severe curb upon her emotions, made her manner of parting with him seem strangely cold.
"Good-bye, Lina dear! At about five o'clock I will return and take you home."
"I may not be able to wait until then. Good-bye!"
How could he tell that her indifferent manner was only assumed, and that her woman's heart was throbbing with grief and vain regret? She could not even trust herself to return his look as he gazed down into her face, his own full of surprise and pain. She drew her fingers swiftly from the caressing clasp of his hand, lest his touch should unnerve her for the work before her, and she let him go from her presence thus, without one word or look to tell him that she loved him.
Wallace Armstrong noted the parting, and formed his own conclusions thereon. He would have given a good deal to win this girl from his cousin. Her beauty, her disdain, and something reminiscent in her face and voice at once piqued and fascinated him. So far as he was capable of loving a woman, he loved her, and he longed most ardently to humble her pride and to make her will subservient to his. He was nearly thirty-one, and his constitution was prematurely aged by his irregular method of life. Possibly he knew that he was on the downward road, and seized at the idea that he could be saved by the sacrifice of the love of a pure and beautiful girl. Certain it was that he definitely resolved, if the thing could be done, to win Laline from her allegiance to his cousin, either before or after her marriage. Pity and remorse were qualities as foreign to Wallace's nature, where his own selfish enjoyment was concerned, as reverence and gratitude; and on this very day of reconciliation and forgiveness, which was to herald a new era of reformation, when he unwillingly left his uncle and Laline to their tête-à-tête, he betook himself, not to the office, in which he had again been offered a position, but to one of his favourite drinking haunts, where he speedily made amends for his comparative abstinence at luncheon.
In Lorin's sitting-room a cheery fire was burning, and Laline drew old Mr. Wallace's arm-chair towards the blaze, while she herself stood with one hand on the mantelpiece and one foot on the fender, looking earnestly down into the glowing coals.
"What a slip of a girl you are, to be sure, my dear!" remarked Alexander Wallace, as he noticed the graceful but unduly slender outline of her figure in its severely-cut blue-serge gown. "It's time you had some one to look after you and make life pleasanter for you! And what is the exact day you have fixed for the wedding?"
She turned and faced him suddenly, very pale, with big tears gathering in her eyes.
"Mr. Wallace," she said, "I am going to hurt you dreadfully—but it hurts me even more. My marriage with your nephew Lorin can never take place!"
Alexander started from his seat and gazed at her blankly.
"Never take place?" he repeated slowly. "You are surely joking, my lassie! I thought you seemed a bit cold to the boy; but it's only some lovers' tiff, and you will make it up when you meet again. I am not too old to forget young folks' ways."
"There has been no tiff. I love your nephew far too well to quarrel with him; but we must part, all the same."
"Can it be possible," Alexander asked, in bewildered tones, "that you have taken a fancy to my other nephew? I hope not, my dear. Much as I love Wallace—and he is like my own son to me—I hope not. A good woman might be the making of Wallace, I do believe, but her heart might be broken in the process. He's a wild harum-scarum fellow, and——"
"Do you think for one moment," cried Laline, indignantly, "that I would break off my engagement with Lorin in order to marry your other nephew? I have seldom met any one I dislike so much as he in all my life!"
"Yet he's a fine, handsome fellow, and I have heard that women go crazy about him. There's a lot of good in Wallace, too," said his uncle, anxiously; "and you and he seemed very good friends when Lorin and I came in suddenly and found you together before luncheon."
"He had roughly seized my arm and I could not get it away," returned Laline, shuddering at the remembrance of the scene. "I can't endure even to talk about him! Lorin is worth a whole regiment of such men! Lorin is manly and sincere, unselfish and kind——"
"If he is all this, why don't you want to marry him?"
"But I do want to marry him—I want to marry him with all my heart!" she cried, distractedly. "Oh, Mr. Wallace, listen to me and help me with your advice, for I am very, very unhappy!"
She slipped down on her knees on the hearthrug before his chair, and told her tale thus, nervously clasping and unclasping the slender hands in her lap while she spoke.
"What I am going to tell you you must give me your word to keep secret," she said. "No one must know—not even Lorin. Promise me that."
"I promise; but——"
"I loved Lorin as soon as I met him, and I was proud of loving him, and encouraged him to love me in return. I agreed to marry him directly he asked me. I never tried to hide my feelings for him. You know this, don't you?"
"Why should you hide your feelings? He is a man any girl might be proud to love."
"He is indeed! That's what makes it so hard to give him up!"
Tears were raining down Laline's cheeks now and her voice was choked by sobs.
Alexander Wallace gazed upon her in wondering pity for a moment. Then he gently took her hands, which were pressed to her eyes, and drew her to the side of his chair.
"Tell me all your trouble, my child," he said, tenderly. "Why should you give up Lorin, since you love each other and since there is no quarrel between you?"
"Mr. Wallace," she faltered, "don't think too harshly of me! I have deceived you all. When I was little more than a child I was married!"
"Married?" Alexander repeated, in astonishment. "Then you are a widow?"
"No!"
"Your husband is alive?"
She bowed her head.
A long pause followed. Mr. Wallace let her hands go and rose from his chair.
"Heaven forgive you," he said, solemnly, "for playing with a good man's love! It was an ill deed, whatever prompted it? My poor boy!"
"Mr. Wallace," cried Laline, springing up and facing him, "don't misjudge me! When I met Lorin, I believed myself free to be his wife. It is only quite recently—within the past few days, indeed—I found out that——"
"That your husband was alive?"
"Yes."
"And you have to return to him?"
"No, no—not for the whole world! I——Please—please don't ask me any questions, Mr. Wallace! My marriage was a terrible mistake! I had heard and seen nothing of the man I married for several years; I knew of nothing to prevent my marriage with Lorin. Then, by sheer accident, I learned that that other man was still alive. I cannot tell you how much I hate him; and he never cared for me for one moment, and has forgotten my existence. But he lives, and I cannot marry Lorin!"
"But why tell me all this, my child? Why not go to Lorin, and let him hear the truth from your own lips?"
"No, no—I can't; it is quite impossible! I have made up my mind what to do. I must go away from here, to some place where he cannot follow me; and then you must break it to him. Only remember one thing. You must tell him I loved him with all my heart and soul. Tell him I never knew what love was until I met him. Tell him that my marriage was a miserable farce, that within one hour of the ceremony I was far away from my husband, and that I never went back to him again. Be sure to tell him that. Tell him it is of no use to think of me any more. I don't want him to leave off loving me, but he must love me as though I were dead, for I must be dead to him. I shall leave England, and he must not attempt to find me or follow me. I trust to his honour to respect my wishes, for it is of no use pretending to be better or stronger than I am, Mr. Wallace. I love Lorin so dearly that, if I were to see him or write to him, I don't know what I might say or do. You see it is a great temptation. I am tied to a man I hate, who does not even know that I am alive; yet, because of those words we spoke together years ago when I was too young to understand the meaning of what I did, I must break my own heart and that of the man I love and live lonely and uncared for perhaps all my life. To me it seems bitterly, cruelly hard! Yet I would not for anything let Lorin fall from my ideal of him; and, if we were together, and he asked me to become his wife, in spite of the law, I could not be sure of myself, and perhaps I might say 'Yes.' Now do you understand why you must tell him all this and not I?"
"I understand," the old man answered, in a broken voice. "My poor children!"
CHAPTER XXVI.
Alexander Wallace was, it is to be feared, incapable of keeping a secret.
Had he not been a singularly lucky man with an excellent head for figures, he would never have augmented the splendid business which came to him from his father, for he was almost incapable of deception and by nature as trustful as he was truthful.
His nephews were both men of wider education and more subtle brains than he possessed, and both could read him like a book. As a result of this, Lorin anticipated his wishes and studied his comfort in every detail, while Wallace took advantage of the old man's weak points and sneered at his guilelessness.
It followed therefore that, as soon as Lorin entered his uncle's presence at about five o'clock that day, and found him greatly agitated and Laline already departed, he became convinced that some talk had passed between them intimately connected with his own future happiness, and set himself to work to find out of what it was composed.
"Have you and Lina settled the wedding-day between you, Uncle Alec?" he inquired, taking his stand by the fireplace, so that the lamplight fell full on his companion's face.
Alexander Wallace's features twitched as at some painful remembrance, and there was an embarrassed pause before he replied—
"'There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,' my boy. I should not tease Lina about the date, if I were you. She has known you so short a time that it is not surprising she should want the wedding put off for a bit."
"Oh, but I shall never agree to that!" Lorin returned, in tones the coolness of which belied his keen anxiety. "The first thing to-morrow I shall buy the licence; and before the end of this month we shall be man and wife."
"Ay, if she will have you."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing!" Alexander returned, confusedly, remembering his promise to reveal nothing until Lina was far away. "But girls change their minds, so people say."
His attempt at acting was a complete failure—a child would not have been deceived by it. Lorin, from his vantage-ground back to the light, stared relentlessly into the old man's face, which gave his words the lie, and a great fear began to creep into his heart.
"Did Lina tell you she does not love me?" he asked, after a pause.
"No, no, my boy—no word of such a thing!"
"Did she tell you she meant to break with me? Answer, for Heaven's sake, and tell me the truth! It is not like you, Uncle Alec, to hesitate and beat about the bush and say what you do not mean, and it is not fair to me. My life's happiness is at stake and I must know what she said to you."
"I cannot break my promise to her!" exclaimed Alexander, rising in deep distress. "Lorin, my boy, you should give up all thoughts of her—for the present, at least. I fear, my lad, it is not to be and that you must forget her."
"You might as well tell me to tear my heart out and not feel the pain! What reason did she give you? But she can't be in earnest; she only means to try me."
"She is absolutely in earnest, and she trusts to you to respect her wishes. Consider what a short time you have known her——"
His words fell upon heedless ears. Before he had finished speaking Lorin darted from the room. In a very few seconds he was down the stairs, out of the house, and in a hansom on his way to 21, St. Mary's Crescent.
Only one idea filled his brain—he must see Lina, must never leave her until she had sworn to be his as soon as the Church could marry them. To-morrow he would buy a special licence, and, that bought, she must instantly become his wife, so that no more deadly torturing fears of losing her could harass him.
Twice he shouted to the driver to go faster; and a block in the thoroughfare at the top of Sloane Street threw him into a fever of nervous impatience. The hideous supposition that she might be induced to jilt him for his cousin rose more than once in his mind, to be angrily dismissed again. She must be merely wishing to try him out of girlish coquetry, for which she should be punished by being married, trousseau or no trousseau, within the next twenty-four hours. Of that he was fully determined.
"I am too jealous to be an engaged man," he told himself. "Lina must be mine altogether, and I must take her away with me. I know she loves me. What could possibly come between us? It must be some girlish freak on her part. But I am glad I have to see her, for I am starving for a kiss! I must see her alone, and will kiss away from her lips the memory of her coldness to-day. What a confoundedly slow cab this is! I could walk the distance in half the time!"
At St. Mary's Crescent bad news awaited him. Susan, who showed him into the morning-room on the ground-floor, and took his name up-stairs to Miss Grahame, returned to tell him that that young lady could not receive him. She was suffering from a bad headache, and had gone to bed.
"Gone to bed? It isn't six o'clock yet! Is she really ill, Susan?"
"Yes, sir."
Lorin looked doubtfully at Susan; then he drew a sovereign from his pocket and laid it in her hand. While she was feebly affecting to return it, he closed her hand upon it, and spoke in low quick tones in her ear.
"Susan, have you a sweetheart?"
"Dear—no, sir!"
"No one who loves you?"
"Well, sir, I won't quite say that——"
"Susan, remember what your sweetheart would feel if he were disappointed about seeing you, and tell me the truth. Has Miss Grahame really gone to bed?"
"Not quite, sir; but she is in her room, and looks dreadful bad. She's been crying, sir. She was crying while she spoke to me."
"You must take her a note."
"Will you write it in here, sir?" asked Susan, in sympathetic tones, putting pen, ink, and paper on the table before him, and discreetly retiring a few steps.
And Lorin wrote thus—
"My own Darling Heart—I must see you! I can't live another hour unless you speak to me! I have something of the utmost importance to both of us to propose. Lina, my only love, why were you so cold to me to-day? Why won't you see me now? And why are you crying? See me just for one brief instant, and let me kiss your tears away! Lina, I shall go mad if you treat me coldly! You can't possibly understand what you are to me or you would never play with me like this. Lina, you have my very heart and soul in your keeping; I will not even believe it possible that you could treat me badly until I hear it from your lips! See me, my darling, for Heaven's sake, just for one moment! You need not even speak. Come down and give me one kiss, my wife that is to be, and I will go away happy. Only come!
"Yours, through life and death,
"Lorin."
A silly, incoherent, lover's letter, but poor Laline's eyes overflowed at each line of it.
Susan waited discreetly outside the door while Miss Grahame read it, and heartily hoped the handsome, pleasant-spoken young gentleman with the beautiful blue eyes and lovely curly black hair would not be disappointed.
Presently Laline's voice came to her from within the bedroom.
"Go to Mr. Armstrong, Susan, and tell him I am very sorry but I am not well enough to see any one to-night."
A stifled sob came after the words, and Susan decided that Miss Grahame was "awful cruel," and did not deserve so fascinating a sweetheart.
"And him a young gentleman of fortune, and she only a sort of governess, too!"
This was Susan's private comment. Aloud she said timidly—
"Mr. Armstrong seems in a dreadful way about you, miss. Shall I tell him you are feeling a little better now?"
"Please tell Mr. Armstrong just what I have said and no more!"
"Fine airs she do give herself, to be sure—and her no better-looking than some other people!" Susan said to herself, as she flounced down-stairs. "It isn't everybody that admires them thin women! She isn't half as pretty as Miss Clare to my way of thinking! Miss Clare and me we have got a bit of flesh on our bones; and I've heard say that's what the men admire, and not your scrag-ends of girls!"
But aloud to Mr. Armstrong, eagerly waiting in the front room, Susan, with demure mien, merely repeated the message Miss Grahame had given her.
Lorin knitted his brows.
"She is really ill, then, Susan?"
"I think she is upset, sir, about something—more than ill, so to say."
"Ah! Is your mistress in?"
"Yes, sir. She is in her study."
"Alone?"
"Yes, sir."
"Will you take her a note, too, Susan, while I wait for an answer?"
"Certainly, sir!"
Susan was growing quite excited over this little romance. Lorin, on his part, understood something of Mrs. Vandeleur's nature, of her shrewdness, her inquisitiveness, and her love of what Americans call "bossing the show," and being appealed to as an arbiter of fate. There was therefore some subtlety in his note, which ran as follows—
"My dear Mrs. Vandeleur—On my memorable first interview with you not many weeks ago you told me various things about myself that were true, and foretold others that have since come to pass. You were also good enough to express yourself in kind and friendly terms towards me, and to advise me to come to you should I need counsel. At this present moment I am in deep distress and perplexity, and should be most grateful for your advice and help. Will you give them? Hoping fervently that your kindness may move you to do so, I remain,
"Yours very faithfully,
"Wallace Lorin Armstrong."
He had not long to wait for an answer. In a very few seconds Susan tripped down with a gracious message, and showed the visitor into her mistress's study.
How well he remembered, as he entered, his first meeting with Laline, the slim white figure dimly visible in fog and firelight, and the look of fear and astonishment with which she had turned towards him as she dropped the crystal ball at his feet in her alarm at his unexpected entrance. It had all happened so few days ago, and yet it seemed to Lorin that he must always have known Laline, that she must always have been part of his very existence, and that his hopes and aims must ever have centred wholly in her. The room, with its odd accessories, gleaned from Eastern and mediæval art by modern superstition, recalled her image so vividly before his mind that his eyes turned involuntarily to the low seat by the fire, as if expecting that the form of Laline herself would resolve itself from the shadows and rise on his approach.
But the little gray lady with the jewelled fingers and the bird-bright eyes was alone, peering at him out of her long-handled eye-glass set with garnets and turquoise.
"So you have sought me?" she said, extending a small ivory-like hand towards him. "I thought you would! You were rather sceptical, too. But let that pass. Shall I tell you, or will you tell me, what you have come about?"
"As you like," he answered, sinking into the chair she indicated with a wave of her hand.
"You are passionately in love with my beautiful secretary. For that I owe you a very deep grudge. She was just the white-souled, child-hearted creature I wanted for my work, and you have spoiled her. When she came to me her mind was as a clear page; now it is disfigured by an ideal picture of you. Yes—disfigured, to my way of thinking, in spite of your good looks, Mr. Armstrong. If she had remained the passionless white-flower soul she was when she came to me, we might together have completed my two great works in a comparatively short space of time. But now this tiresome, transient love-rubbish has already rendered her self-conscious, capricious, and hysterical, and from the calm, soulful study of the occult, she has fallen to studying only you. What is the result? Lina can't write, she can't think, she has headaches, and cries when she is looked at. That is not the psychic state in which to approach loftier spheres of thought. That is the worst of our sex. Give them the hope of fortune, of distinction, of a career, a calm and elevated sphere of thought, which would raise them above the little aches and pains and vexations of humanity, and what do they do? At the distant vision of a man, it all goes to the winds! All my secretaries have been like that; and I might have guessed that Lina, who is very much the most beautiful, would not escape this craze for the male sex which is a drag upon the spiritual progress of almost every woman between seventeen and fifty. Why could you not have fallen in love with my niece Clare? That would in no way have interfered with my work or my plans. Clare is very handsome, I suppose, although it is not a type that I personally admire. Were I an elderly man, however, I could imagine myself raving about her. You were supposed to be Clare's admirer at first, and had you continued to be so I should have nothing to complain of. Between my niece and me there is nothing in common. She is too mundane, too full-blooded for me. She is like too much sunlight coming glaringly in one's eyes between Venetian blinds—the shock all the cruder because of the pretence of concealment and shade. But Lina—she is far too good to be wasted on a man! Love and marriage take all life and individuality out of ninety-nine of every hundred Englishwomen; and the better the woman, the more like a cow or a cabbage she becomes under domesticity. There—my sermon is ended! Now you can recount your little love-troubles; but don't suppose for a moment that you have happened upon a sympathetic listener!"
"I would rather be understood than sympathised with," he returned, gravely. "Mrs. Vandeleur, all that you have been saying is extremely interesting. But, to take your own admissions, Lina is young, exceptionally beautiful, and essentially womanly. That being the case, she must necessarily give and inspire love. Although she is exceedingly intelligent, she makes no claim to mental or spiritual gifts above the average. Although you and I may agree that she is made of 'spirit, fire, and dew,' and that the 'good stars stood in her horoscope,' to most people she would only appear a charmingly attractive girl, whom any man might fall in love with. That is the way in which men, and women too, think and speak of girls, and I am inclined to think such a method of thought will prevail as long as this world of ours. Given these premises, isn't it a good thing that Lina, of whom I am sure you are fond, should be going to marry a man whom you dislike so little as you dislike me?"
"I don't dislike you at all," said the little lady, smiling graciously enough. "There is much in your nature that I admire, and with which I am in accord. Your cousin, on the other hand, is quite remarkably evil, although extremely interesting. But, to go back to your tiresome little love-affair, which of course to you blocks out all other subjects from your mind, and will for a few weeks—what puzzles me is not that Lina should be trying to part from you, but that she should ever have consented to marry you. Did you really in so many words ask her to be your wife? And did she say 'Yes'?"
"Most certainly."
"It is very extraordinary indeed! And I must tell you it was only through my niece Clare that I heard one word of this love-business between you and Lina. The girl herself can hardly be persuaded to speak of you at all."
"Why should you be surprised at our engagement, Mrs. Vandeleur? You must have seen that I loved her."
"To fall in love and to suffer was marked in your hand. With Lina things were different."
She was thinking of that previous marriage of Lina's, which the girl had half confided after the elder lady had half guessed it.
"And now," said Lorin, rising and coming over to Mrs. Vandeleur's table, "as the mischief is done, and your secretary merged in the woman who loves, I have come to throw myself upon your compassion and implore your help. Something—I don't know what—has come between Lina and me. Last night, when I met her on her return from church, she was strangely agitated, although twenty-four hours before I had left her full of love and happiness. She spoke of deferring our marriage, and to-day, when she came to luncheon, her manner towards me had incomprehensibly altered and she barely spoke to me. Some confidence passed in my absence between her and my uncle, and induced him on my return to speak to me about breaking off our engagement. And when, on realising the purport of his stumbling hints, I hurried off here, Lina refused to see me, and sent a message to say that she had a headache and had gone to bed. Mrs. Vandeleur, there must be some reason for this extraordinary change of front. I do not, I will not, believe that it is mere caprice on Lina's part which induces her to treat me thus. Therefore, I come to claim your help. You understand her, you can influence her, you can find out what is the obstacle her imagination—for it can be nothing else—has placed between us. Do this for me out of the kindness of your heart—I beg, I beseech of you!"
She looked up smiling into his handsome, glowing face.
"I promise you I will do my best to serve your cause," she said, holding out her small pale hand; and Lorin, catching at the hope, raised her fingers gratefully to his lips.
CHAPTER XXVII.
When Lorin Armstrong descended the stairs after his interview with Mrs. Vandeleur he felt that he had secured a valuable ally.
If any one could coax from Lina the reason for her conduct it was the little gray witch, whose manner inspired and almost compelled confidence, and who, however much or little she might understand the world of spirits, was marvellously quick in finding out anything she wanted to know about matters pertaining to this earth.
It had been arranged between them that he should call at noon on the following day, by which time Mrs. Vandeleur was to have had a long interview with Lorin's recalcitrant love-lady. Had the matter rested with him the young man would have gladly waited on the doorstep of Number Twenty-one throughout the whole of that evening, or, with equal celerity, would have presented himself there before dawn on the following day. But Mrs. Vandeleur clearly was not a woman to be hurried in well-doing, and she had no intention of either detaining Lorin this evening or of putting in an appearance before her usual time on the next morning, solely because her secretary had tried to quarrel with her sweetheart.
Lorin had therefore to content himself with impressing upon her the vital importance to his very existence of a speedy reconciliation between himself and his divinity, and had then perforce to depart, full of new hopefulness, until, at the foot of the stairs, he found gleaming at him across the dimly-lighted hall the strange green eyes of Clare Cavan.
Meeting with the girl at this exact moment affected Lorin unpleasantly as an evil omen. From the artist's point of view he admired her immensely, and often hoped he might some day have time and opportunity to sketch her as Vivien tempting Merlin. She was an ideal Vivien, but that fabled lady was also a more or less sinister personage, and at this moment it clearly appeared as though mockery gleamed in Miss Cavan's cat-like eyes and echoed through her purring accents.
"Oh, Mr. Armstrong, I am so sorry you are off just as I have come back! I have never yet been able to offer you my congratulations on your engagement. It was so very sudden, you see, and Lina has said so very little about it. But perhaps I am premature?"
"Not at all," he returned, coolly. "So far as I am concerned I heartily wish my marriage with Miss Grahame could take place to-morrow."
"How perfectly sweet! But you men are all like that; you want us poor little women to scamper off to the altar without a thought of chiffons and bridal costume, and frocks and shoes and gloves and those pretty things which will perhaps last us longer than all your much-vaunted affection! I've been quite longing to meet you for another reason, too. Your cousin and namesake called on us on Sunday afternoon, and I think he is perfectly delightful! So humorous and original, and so unlike the ordinary men one meets in drawing-rooms. I assure you we all found him simply irresistible! Didn't Lina tell you so?"
"I really can't recall it."
"Oh, Mr. Armstrong, I do really believe you are jealous! But I assure you Lina will never have a chance of talking to your cousin while I am about. I do so love eccentrics. And I have just been hearing the quaintest stories about him from my friends the Fitzroy-Cleavers."
Lorin winced. The cat-claws showed through the fur in that last thrust, and he felt he hated the girl and her malignant tongue.
"I am glad my cousin pleased you, Miss Cavan," he said, quietly, "and that his conversation was so well suited to your taste."
She flushed ever so slightly under his remark.
"Shall I tell you a secret?" she asked, assuming her most ingenuous and innocent air. "Women always like that type of man the best, whatever else they may pretend. There's a confession! You must go after that. But you'll find some day that I'm right."
As soon as she had closed the door upon him, Clare summoned Susan and closely cross-questioned her as to the length and other details of Lorin's visit. On these points the maid was voluble and precise, having supplemented her knowledge at first-hand by listening at the library keyhole.
"It wasn't much that I could catch, miss—I was that afraid of misses finding me out and setting her spirits after me, or of cook coming up and down stairs. But something misses is going to do for Mr. Armstrong; and he's to come round about it at twelve o'clock to-morrow. Most likely misses is going to try to make friends between them again—don't you think so, miss?"
"I can't tell, Susan. But it's very interesting, isn't it? Quite like a novel. And you shall have that green-velvet hat of mine."
Clare was intensely curious to know the rights of this quarrel between her rival and Lorin Armstrong. "Pumping" Laline was never any use; but by adroit flattery and artful questions she could sometimes extract information from her aunt, even though the latter resented her intrusion in the study during working hours. But, with the secretary in tears in her room, Clare decided she might risk it, and she accordingly sped lightly to the study door, and, after an admonitory tap, burst in with a great appearance of spontaneity.
"Oh, auntie," she exclaimed, "do let me run in for a few minutes' chat! Why, where is Lina?"
"She is ill—a headache or something. Pray don't flutter, Clare! Fluttering gets on my nerves."
"I wonder what is the matter with Lina?" Clare remarked, taking a seat and slowly removing her hat. "Have you noticed how strangely she has altered since her engagement?"
"All girls alter when they get engaged," said her aunt, maliciously. "Joy turns their heads, I suppose."
"I don't think it's joy in Lina's case," pursued Clare, shaking her head doubtfully. "No; it seems to me she has something on her mind."
"What do you mean?"
By her aunt's tone Clare divined she was on the right tack.
"Well, do you know, Aunt Cissy," she said, with confidential mystery, "I have some reason for supposing that Lina knows of a secret barrier between her and Mr. Armstrong—that is why she is trying to break with him—before he finds it out, I mean."
"Where did you get that idea from?" asked Mrs. Vandeleur, sharply.
"Well, I would rather not say who told me in so many words; but I have suspected the thing before," Clare went on, feeling her way, and wondering whether she was going to stumble on the truth. "Of course you know how people will talk, and this is the sort of thing they say—that it is quite too reckless of Mr. Armstrong, in his position, to offer marriage to a girl about whose antecedents he knows absolutely nothing at all. Why, even you know very little more, do you, auntie? And Lina is twenty, and has had to earn her living somehow since she was a child. And of course she is perfectly lovely, in that thin ethereal style that some people rave about. She is so oddly reticent, too, about her past—haven't you noticed it? But, now that she is going to make such a splendid and unexpected marriage with such an extremely charming man as Mr. Armstrong, no doubt it all comes back to her. She is very religious, you know, and very likely would rather give him up than be married under false pretences, poor girl!"
To the whole of this elaborate speech, evolved bit by bit from Clare's inner consciousness, Mrs. Vandeleur listened, with her brilliant hazel eyes peering intently through her glasses upon her niece's face. But as the girl finished, the little gray lady rose from her chair in her wrath, every fold of her soft brocade bristling with indignation.
"Do you venture to insinuate," she inquired in icily deliberate tones, "that my friend and companion and fellow-worker hesitates to become an honourable gentleman's wife because her past career has rendered her unworthy to fill that position?"
Clare was considerably taken aback; but she resolved to stick to her guns.
"I certainly meant that," she answered, feeling in her own heart that after all she had probably hit upon something very like the truth.
"Then, if these are your opinions—and they are, after all, only such as I should expect from you—let me tell you that you are not fit to take my white-souled Lina by the hand! I know every secret of her heart, and there is not one thought hidden there which would not shame you by its purity!"
"I would not disturb your belief in Lina for the world," observed her niece, a little red spot of anger forming itself in the whiteness of her cheeks; "but, on a subject like this, we may each keep our own opinion, may we not? I myself am very fond of Lina."
"That is not true! You hate her, and are bitterly envious of her!"
"I! Envious of her!"
The white eyelids and yellow lashes were scornfully lowered over the angry eyes.
"I wonder, Aunt Cissy, that with your gifts and your genius you are so easily deceived! I am not strait-laced, as you know; but, really, I have never cared to make a companion of Lina Grahame. She has, I don't doubt, some very good reason of her own for letting Mr. Armstrong escape from her clutches."
"Would you like me to prove to your face that you are lying?" Mrs. Vandeleur inquires, in a white heat of anger and excitement.
"Unfortunately that is impossible—isn't it? You could only get Lina's word, and I don't quite think I should accept that under the circumstances."
"You shall hear it in a form which you cannot fail to believe!" the little lady cried in triumph. "I will put Lina into a hypnotic sleep, and she shall answer me as she would answer her own soul. With her own lips she shall, in your presence, clear her good name from the foul slur which you, in your mean jealousy, have cast upon it. And this shall be done this very evening—here, before your eyes!"
"Dear auntie, pray don't excite yourself!" Clare urged. "Such an ordeal would be unfair to the girl. I really meant nothing."
"I have made up my mind," said the little sibyl, as she sharply rang the silver hand-bell on the table before her.
In Lorin's interests she had already decided to submit Lina to hypnotic influence in order to extract from her the entire truth with regard to her present plans, and she was genuinely glad of the opportunity of proving to her niece how undeserved were her reflections on her rival.
For Mrs. Vandeleur had no trace of doubt but that Laline, when put to the test, would triumphantly prove her spotless innocence in a manner which must convince even the evil-minded and unbelieving Clare. She was revelling in her favourite part of Fate's representative. Lorin should be made happy, Clare confounded, and Laline vindicated by one and the same process.
"Hide yourself!" she signed to her niece imperatively. "Lina must believe herself alone with me. Turn out the lamp in the inner room, and conceal yourself behind that Japanese screen. When she is unconscious, I will signal you to come near."
"Ask Miss Grahame if she will kindly join me here at once, Susan," was the mandate given to that young woman on her appearance in answer to the summons.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am, but I think Miss Grahame's poorly and is lying down."
"Do as I tell you! Ask her to come to me now!"
A few minutes later, almost as pale as the white dress she had donned to please her employer, Laline entered the room. Suffering had made her super-sensitive; she seemed instantly to be aware of an inimical presence, for she glanced nervously about her before advancing towards Mrs. Vandeleur.
"I—I thought Clare was with you!" she stammered.
"I have just sent her away. I want to talk to you. My dear child, why this avoidance of me? I assure you I am beginning to be hurt. To think that I should have to wait to learn the news of your engagement from the lips of others——"
"Don't—oh, please don't!"
The girl pressed both hands to her burning forehead. She had wept herself into a weak hysterical state, but she was anxious not to break down.
"I meant to write to you to-night," she went on presently, more calmly. "I didn't feel quite equal to talking to you. During the past few days I have lived through several lives of pain and thought, and I feel weak and worn out. Dear Mrs. Vandeleur, you have been so wonderfully kind to me that I wish I could tell you all the truth! The one thing I must tell you is that I must leave your house to-morrow."
"Leave me to-morrow! Why, where are you going?"
"I must not tell you—I hardly know myself yet. But it must be somewhere where no one I have met lately will ever find me. I have to begin life all over again."
"But, my child, what does all this mean? first, I am astonished by hearing of your engagement with Mr. Armstrong, knowing, as I did, that you were not free to marry; next, you refuse to see the poor young man, and worry him until he is nearly mad by your sudden and capricious coldness; and, finally, you walk in here, with red eyes and white cheeks, and tell me you are going to the other end of the world to-morrow. What can it all mean?"
"I cannot tell you. It has all been a terrible mistake. But, if you believe in me and care for me at all, dear—dear Mrs. Vandeleur, put no obstacle in the way of my going, and never let Lorin or any one know where I have taken refuge. Don't ask me to tell even you, but let me pass out of all your lives within the next few hours, and try to always think the best you can of me."
Just for one instant the thought flashed through Mrs. Vandeleur's brain that perhaps, after all, Clare's suspicions might not be altogether without foundation. Laline's mental attitude seemed hardly consistent with perfect innocence. But she loyally hated to entertain the doubt, and held out her little hands impulsively towards her protégée.
"Come here, my poor, dear, pale child!" she cried. "Put your head in my lap—so—and let me charm away your headache with my fingers. No—don't cry any more! These love-affairs are infinitely wearing, I know. There; let me touch your eyelids and charm away your tears! Is that better?"
"Much better!"
Laline spoke drowsily. She had flown to her friend, deeply moved by her sudden display of tenderness and sympathy, and had unsuspectingly knelt at her feet, weeping tears of gratitude. Yielding herself thus readily to the magic of Mrs. Vandeleur's touch, she became, in her unnerved and broken condition of mind, the most susceptible subject possible to hypnotic influence.
Even while she still spoke her eyes became fixed and vacant in their gaze. Still the little lady's fingers swept in slow caressing touches about her brow and eyelids. A deep sigh quivered through the girl's parted lips, and her head fell heavily forward on Mrs. Vandeleur's knees.
"Clare! Quick! Help me to lay her in this chair. Move away and let me place my hand on her brow—so!"
Pale and inert as a dead thing Laline lay. Clare drew a little on one side and held her breath with excitement. Then, through the perfect stillness of the room, Mrs. Vandeleur's sweet voice sounded, speaking low, in slow distinct tones.
"Lina, can you hear me?"
A faint quiver passed over the still face; then the voice came as from a long way off—
"Yes."
"Do you love Lorin Armstrong?"
"Yes."
"Shall you marry him?"
"No."
"Why have you broken your engagement?"
"Because I am already married."
"Married!" burst from Clare's lips in amazement.
"Silence!" exclaimed her aunt, imperatively. Then, turning again to Laline, she asked slowly—
"What is the name of your husband?"
A pause, and then softly, but with perfect distinctness, came the words—
"Wallace Armstrong."
"Not Wallace Armstrong—Lorin's cousin? Can you mean him?" cried Mrs. Vandeleur, in horror.
"Yes."
"When did you marry him?"
"More than four years ago."
"Tell me your name before you married."
"Laline Garth."
"Good heavens! But he thinks you dead. Does he or any one know or guess the truth?"
"No one."
Clare drew a long breath. The discovery meant everything to her, and the one idea in her mind was to communicate the precious secret in the right quarter.
A faint sigh and a fluttering of the eyelids from Laline made Mrs. Vandeleur bend anxiously over her prostrate form; and in the slight diversion thus afforded Clare slipped noiselessly from the room.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Every nerve in Clare's body was tingling with revengeful joy over the possession of her rival's secret.
Of Laline's selfishness in wanting to marry both the Armstrongs she could not think without hot indignation. Ignoring the mistake which Laline had made on her first meeting with Lorin, Clare naturally supposed that her rival had deliberately gone to work to win Lorin from his allegiance, although she knew herself to be already married.
That Laline detested her husband was very clear. Under an entirely new light Clare recalled the short and angry scene between them to which she had been a witness on the preceding Sunday.
Doubtless, so Clare decided, Laline was at present drawing back and holding Lorin off only in order to pique him into an immediate union; and Miss Cavan set her short, sharp, white teeth vindictively together as she planned destruction to Laline's schemes.
"Of course she married the one cousin for his money, and probably found him a brute and ran away from him. Then she must have trusted to not meeting him or to his not recognising her when she set to work to get hold of the other! What consummate impudence! I really almost admire her for it. Now if I can only find Wallace Armstrong the elder, and find him sober, I shall be the blessed means of restoring a missing wife to a loving husband's arms."
A very unpleasant smile curved her thin scarlet lips as she reflected thus while completing a hasty outdoor toilet before the looking-glass in her room. Opening her door, she stealthily crept out to listen for sounds from the floor below; then, reassured by the perfect stillness, she fled noiselessly down and out of the house, sprang into a hansom in the High Street, and directed the driver to Wallace Armstrong's lodgings off the Strand, where once before she had called in order to deliver "A Well-Wisher's" warning letter.
Mr. Armstrong was out, Clare was informed by an elderly housekeeper, who gazed at her with evident suspicion, and who evidently disapproved of a beautiful and well-dressed young lady calling at the rooms of a handsome and dissipated bachelor at nine o'clock in the evening.
But Clare was too much excited to be sensitive on this point, and at once begged for an envelope and a piece of paper, upon which she scribbled an emphatic mandate to Wallace to come at once to St. Mary's Crescent on receipt of her message at any time before midnight.
"Drive very slowly along the Strand," she told her driver, when she left the house; "I am looking out for some one."
Laline's evil star was in the ascendant that night, for Clare's cab had not proceeded many yards, with its occupant craning her neck out of it, when she suddenly signalled to the driver to stop.
For there, before her eyes, lurching along the Strand, with his hands in his pockets, on his way from one drinking-bar to another, was the object of her search—Wallace Armstrong, Laline's husband.
Laline's husband! Clare's heart leaped in triumph at the thought, which amply avenged her for any slights and disappointments Laline had unwittingly caused her to suffer.