“I AM MISANTHROPOS, AND HATE MANKIND”
Wingrave had just come in from an early gallop. His pale cheeks were slightly flushed, and his eyes were bright. He had been riding hard to escape from disconcerting thoughts. He looked in at the study, and found Aynesworth with a mass of correspondence before him.
“Anything important?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Aynesworth answered. “The letters marked private I have sent up to your room. By the bye, there was something I wanted to tell you.”
Wingrave closed the door.
“Well?” he said.
“I was up in the gallery of the Opera House last night,” Aynesworth said, “with a—person who saw you only once, soon after I first came to you—before America. You were some distance away, and yet—my friend recognized you.”
Wingrave shrugged his shoulders.
“That, of course, is possible,” he answered. “It really does not matter so very much unless they knew me—as Wingrave Seton!”
“My friend,” Aynesworth said, “recognized you as Sir Wingrave Seton.”
Wingrave frowned thoughtfully for a moment.
“Who was it?” he asked.
“A most unlikely person,” Aynesworth remarked smiling. “Do you remember, when we went down to Tredowen just before we left for America, a little, long-legged, black-frocked child, whom we met in the gardens—the organist’s daughter, you know?”
“What of her?” Wingrave asked.
“It was she who was with me,” Aynesworth remarked. “It was she who saw you in the box with the Marchioness of Westchester.”
Aynesworth was puzzled by the intentness with which Wingrave was regarding him. Impenetrable though the man was, Aynesworth, who had not yet lost his early trick of studying him closely, knew that, for some reason or other, his intelligence had proved disturbing.
“Have you then—kept up your acquaintance with this child?” he demanded.
Aynesworth shook his head.
“She is not a child any longer, but a very beautiful young woman,” he said. “I met her again quite by accident. She is up in London, studying art at the studio of an old friend of mine who has a class of girls. I called to see him the other afternoon, and recognized her.”
“Your acquaintance,” Wingrave remarked, “has progressed rapidly if she accepts your escort—to the gallery of the Opera!”
“It was scarcely like that,” Aynesworth explained. “I met her and Mrs. Tresfarwin on the way there, and asked to be allowed to accompany them. Mrs. Tresfarwin was once your housekeeper, I think, at Tredowen.”
“And did you solve the mystery of this relation of her father who turned up so opportunely?” Wingrave asked.
Aynesworth shook his head.
“She told me nothing about him,” he answered.
Wingrave passed on to his own room. His breakfast was on the table awaiting him, and a little pile of letters and newspapers stood by his plate. His servant, his head groom, and his chauffeur were there to receive their orders for the morning. About him were all the evidences of his well-ordered life. He sent both the men away and locked the door. It was half an hour before he touched either his breakfast or his letters....
He lunched at Westchester House in obedience to a somewhat imperative summons. There were other guests there, whom, however, he outstayed. As soon as they were alone, his hostess touched him on the arm and led him to her own room.
“At last!” she exclaimed, with an air of real relief. “There, sit down opposite to me, please—I want to watch your face.”
She was a little paler than usual, and he noticed that she had avoided talking much to him at luncheon time. And yet he thought that he had never seen her more beautiful. Something in her face had altered. He could not tell what it was for he was not a man of much experience as regarded her sex. Yet, in a vague sort of way, he understood the change. A certain part of the almost insolent quietness, the complete self-assurance of her manner, had gone. She was a little more like an ordinary woman!
“Lady Ruth proved herself an excellent tactician last night,” she remarked. “She has given me an exceedingly uncomfortable few hours. For you, well for you it was a respite, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know that I should call it exactly that,” he answered thoughtfully.
She looked at him steadfastly, almost wistfully.
“Well,” she said, “I am not going to make excuses for myself. But the things which one says naturally enough when the emotions provoke them sound crude enough in cold blood and colder daylight. We women are creatures of mood, you know. I was feeling a little lonely and a little tired last night, and the music stole away my common sense.”
“I understand,” he murmured. “All that you said shall be forgotten.”
“Then you do not understand,” she answered, smiling at him. “What I said I do not wish to be forgotten. Only—just at that moment, it sounded natural enough—and today—I think that I am a little ashamed.”
He rose from his seat. Her eyes leaped up to his expectantly, and the color streamed into her cheeks. But he only stood by her side. He did nothing to meet the half-proffered embrace.
“Dear Lady Emily,” he said, “all the kind things that you said were spoken to a stranger. You did not know me. I did not mean anyone to know me. It is you who have commanded the truth. You must have it. I am not the person I seem to be. I am not the person to whom words such as yours should have been spoken. Even my name is an assumed one. I should prefer to leave it at that—if you are content.”
“I am not content,” she answered quietly; “I must hear more.”
He bowed.
“I am a man,” he said, “who spent ten years in prison, the ten best years of my life. A woman sent me there—a woman swore my liberty away to save her reputation. I was never of a forgiving disposition, I was never an amiably disposed person. I want you to understand this. Any of the ordinary good qualities with which the average man may be endowed, and which I may have possessed, are as dead in me as hell fire could burn them. You have spoken of me as of a man who failed to find a sufficient object in life. You were wrong. I have an object, and I do my best to live up to it. I hate the whole world of men and women who laughed their way through life whilst I suffered—tortures. I hate the woman who sent me there. I have no heart, nor any sense of pity. Now perhaps you can understand my life and the manner of it.”
Her hands were clasped to the side of her head. Something of horror had stolen into the steadfast gaze with which she was still regarding him. Yet there were other things there which puzzled him.
“This—is terrible!” she murmured. “Then you are not—Mr. Wingrave at all?”
He hesitated. After all, it was scarcely worth while concealing anything now.
“I am Sir Wingrave Seton,” he said. “You may remember my little affair!”
She caught hold of his hands.
“You poor, poor dear!” she cried. “How you must have suffered!”
Wingrave had a terrible moment. What he felt he would never have admitted, even to himself. Her eyes were shining with sympathy, and it was so unexpected. He had expected something in the nature of a cold withdrawal; her silence was the only thing he had counted upon. It was a fierce, but short battle. His sudden grasp of her hands was relaxed. He stood away from her.
“You are very kind,” he said. “As you can doubtless imagine, it is a little too late for sympathy. The years have gone, and the better part of me, if ever there was a better part, with them.”
“I am not so sure of that!” she whispered.
He looked at her coldly.
“Why not?”
“If you were absolutely heartless,” she said, “if you were perfectly consistent, why did you not make me suffer? You had a great chance! A little feigned affection, and then a few truths. You could have dragged me down a little way into the pit of broken hearts! Why didn’t you?”
He frowned.
“One is forced to neglect a few opportunities!”
She smiled at him—delightfully.
“You foolish man!” she murmured. “Some day or other, you will turn out to be a terrible impostor. Do you know, I think I am going to ask you again—what I asked you last night?”
“I scarcely think that you will be so ill-advised,” he declared coldly. “Whether you believe it or not, I can assure you that I am incapable of affection.”
She sighed.
“I am not so sure about that,” she said with protesting eyebrows, “but you are terribly hard-hearted?”
He was entirely dissatisfied with the impression he had produced. He considered the attitude of the Marchioness unjustifiably frivolous. He had an uneasy conviction that she was not in the least inclined to take him seriously.
“I don’t think,” he said, glancing at the clock, “that I need detain you any longer.”
“You are really going away, then?” she asked him softly.
“Yes.”
“To call on Lady Ruth, perhaps?”
“As it happens, no,” he answered.
Suddenly her face changed—she had remembered something.
“It was Lady Ruth!” she exclaimed.
“Exactly!” he interrupted.
“What a triumph of inconsistency!” she declared scornfully. “You are lending them money!”
“I am lending money to Lady Ruth,” he answered slowly.
Their eyes met. She understood, at any rate, what he intended to convey. Certainly his expression was hard and merciless enough now!
“Poor Ruth,” she murmured.
“Some day,” he answered, “you will probably say that in earnest.”
JULIET GAINS EXPERIENCE
“Of course,” Juliet said, “after Tredowen it seems very small, almost poky, but it isn’t, really, and Tredowen was not for me all my days. It was quite time I got used to something else.”
Wingrave looked around him with expressionless face. It was a tiny room, high up on the fifth floor of a block of flats, prettily but inexpensively furnished. Juliet herself, tall and slim, with all the fire of youth and perfect health on her young face, was obviously contented.
“And your work?” he asked.
She made a little grimace.
“I have a good deal to unlearn,” she said, “but Mr. Pleydell is very kind and encouraging.”
“You will go down to Cornwall for the hot weather, I hope?” he said. “London is unbearable in August.”
“The class are going for a sketching tour to Normandy,” she said, “and Mr. Pleydell thought that I might like to join them. It is very inexpensive, and I should be able to go on with my work all the time.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“I hear,” he said, “that you have met Mr. Aynesworth again.”
“Wasn’t it delightful?” she exclaimed. “He is quite an old friend of Mr. Pleydell. I was so glad to see him.”
“I suppose,” he remarked, “you are a little lonely sometimes?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “But I sha’n’t be when I get to know the girls in the class a little better.”
“I have some friends,” he said thoughtfully, “women, of course, who would come and see you with pleasure. And yet,” he added, “I am not sure that you would not be better off without knowing them.”
“They are fashionable ladies, perhaps?” she said simply.
He nodded.
“They belong to the Juggernaut here which is called society. They would probably try to draw you a little way into its meshes. I think, yes, I am sure,” he added, looking at her, “that you are better off outside.”
“And I am quite sure of it,” she answered laughing. “I haven’t the clothes or the time or the inclination for that sort of thing. Besides, I am going to be much too happy ever to be lonely.”
“I myself,” he said, “am not an impressionable person. But they tell me that most people, especially of your age, find London a terribly lonely place.”
“I can understand that,” she answered, “unless they really had something definite to do. I have felt a little of that myself. I think London frightens me a little. It is so different from the country, and there is a great deal that is difficult to understand.”
“For instance?”
“The great number of poor people who find it so hard to live,” she answered. “Some of the small houses round here are awful, and Mr. Malcolm—he is the vicar of the church here, and he called yesterday—tells me that they are nothing like so bad as in some other parts of London. And then you take a bus, it is such a short distance—and the shops are full of wonderful things at such fabulous prices, and the carriages and houses are so lovely, and people seem to be showering money right and left everywhere.”
“It is the same in all large cities,” he answered, “more or less. There must always be rich and poor, when a great community are herded together. As a rule, the extreme poor are a worthless lot.”
“There must be some of them, though,” she answered, “who deserve to have a better time. Of course, I have never been outside Tredowen, where everyone was contented and happy in their way, and it seems terrible to me just at first. I can’t bear to think that everyone hasn’t at least a chance of happiness.”
“You are too young,” he said, “to bother your head about these things yet. Wait until you have gathered in a little philosophy with the years. Then you will understand how helpless you are to alter by ever so little the existing state of things, and it will trouble you less.”
“I,” she answered, “may, of course, be helpless, but what about those people who have huge fortunes, and still do nothing?”
“Why should they?” he answered coldly. “This is a world for individual effort. No man is strong enough to carry even a single one of his fellows upon his shoulders. Charity is the most illogical and pernicious of all weaknesses.”
“Now you are laughing at me,” she declared. “I mean men like that Mr. Wingrave, the American who has come to England to spend all his millions. I have just been reading about him,” she added, pointing to an illustrated paper on the table. “They say that his income is too vast to be put into figures which would sound reasonable; that he has estates and shooting properties, and a yacht which he has never yet even seen. And yet he will not give one penny away. He gives nothing to the hospitals, nothing to the poor. He spends his money on himself, and himself alone!”
Wingrave smiled grimly.
“I am not prepared to defend my namesake,” he said; “but every man has a right to do what he likes with his own, hasn’t he? And as for hospitals, Mr. Wingrave probably thinks, like a good many more, that they should be state endowed. People could make use of them, then, without loss of self respect.”
She shook her head a little doubtfully.
“I can’t argue about it yet,” she said, “because I haven’t thought about it long enough. But I know if I had all the money this man has, I couldn’t be happy to spend thousands and thousands upon myself while there were people almost starving in the same city.”
“You are a sentimentalist, you see,” he remarked, “and you have not studied the laws on which society is based. Tell me, how does Mrs. Tresfarwin like London?”
Juliet laughed merrily.
“Isn’t it amusing?” she declared. “She loves it! She grumbles at the milk, and we have the butter from Tredowen. Everything else she finds perfection. She doesn’t even mind the five flights of stone steps.”
“Social problems,” Wingrave remarked, “do not trouble her.”
“Not in the least,” Juliet declared. “She spends all her pennies on beggars and omnibus rides, and she is perfectly happy.”
Wingrave rose to go in a few minutes. Juliet walked with him to the door.
“I am going to be really hospitable,” she declared. “I am going to walk with you to the street.”
“All down those five flights?” he exclaimed.
“Every one of them!”
They commenced the descent.
“There is something about a flat,” she declared, “which makes one horribly curious about one’s neighbors—especially if one has never had any. All these closed doors may hide no end of interesting people, and I have never seen a soul go in or out. How did you like all this climbing?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t appreciate it,” he admitted.
“Perhaps you won’t come to see me again, then?” she asked. “I hope you will.”
“I will come,” he said a little stiffly, “with pleasure!”
They were on the ground floor, and Juliet opened the door. Wingrave’s motor was outside, and the man touched his hat. She gave a little breathless cry.
“It isn’t yours?” she exclaimed.
“Certainly,” he answered. “Do you want to come and look at it?”
“Rather!” she exclaimed. “I have never seen one close to in my life.”
He hesitated.
“I’ll take you a little way, if you like,” he said.
Her cheeks were pink with excitement.
“If I like! And I’ve never been in one before! I’ll fly up for my hat. I sha’n’t be a moment.”
She was already halfway up the first flight of stairs, with a whirl of skirts and flying feet. Wingrave lit a cigarette and stood for a moment thoughtfully upon the pavement. Then he shrugged his shoulders. His face had grown a little harder.
“She must take her chances,” he muttered. “No one knows her. Nobody is likely to find out who she is.”
She was down again in less time than seemed possible. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright with excitement. Wingrave took the wheel himself, and she sat up by his side. They glided off almost noiselessly.
“We will go up to the Park,” he said. “It is just the time to see the people.”
“Anywhere!” she exclaimed. “This is too lovely!”
They passed from Battersea northwards into Piccadilly, and down into the Park. Juliet was too excited to talk; Wingrave had enough to do to drive the car. They passed plenty of people who bowed, and many who glanced with wondering admiration at the beautiful girl who sat by Wingrave’s side. Lady Ruth, who drive by quickly in a barouche, almost rose from her seat; the Marchioness, whose victoria they passed, had time to wave her hand and flash a quick, searching glance at Juliet, who returned it with her dark eyes filled with admiration. The Marchioness smiled to herself a little sadly as the car shot away ahead.
“If one asked,” she murmured to herself, “he would try to persuade one that it was another victim.”
NEMESIS AT WORK
Wingrave was present that evening at a reception given by the Prime Minister to some distinguished foreign guests. He had scarcely exchanged the usual courtesies with his host and hostess before Lady Ruth, leaning over from a little group, whispered in his ear.
“Please take me away. I am bored. I want to talk to you.”
He paused at once. Lady Ruth nodded to her friends.
“Mr. Wingrave is going to take me to hear Melba sing,” she said. “See you all again, I suppose, at Hereford House!”
They made slow progress through the crowded rooms. Once or twice Wingrave fancied that his companion hung a little heavily upon his arm. She showed no desire to talk. She even answered a remark of his in a monosyllable. Only when they passed the Marchioness, on the arm of one of the foreign guests in whose honor the reception was given, she seemed to shiver a little, and her grasp upon his arm was tightened. Once, in a block, she was forced to speak to some acquaintances, and during those few seconds, Wingrave studied her curiously. She was absolutely colorless, and her strange brilliant eyes seemed to have lost all their fire. Her gown was black, and the decorations of her hair were black except for a single diamond. There was something almost spectral about her appearance. She walked stiffly—for the moment she had lost the sinuous grace of movement which had been one of her many fascinations. Her neck and shoulders alone remained, as ever, dazzlingly beautiful.
They reached a quiet corner at last. Lady Ruth sank with a little gesture of relief into an easy chair. Wingrave stood before her.
“You are tired tonight,” he remarked.
“I am always tired,” she answered wearily. “I begin to think that I always shall be.”
He said nothing. Lady Ruth closed her eyes for a moment as though from sheer fatigue. Suddenly she opened them again and looked him full in the face.
“Who was she?” she asked.
“I do not understand,” he replied.
“The child you were with—the ingenue, you know—with the pink cheeks and the wonderful eyes! Is she from one of the theaters, or a genuine article?”
“The young lady to whom you refer,” he answered, “is the daughter of an old friend of mine. I am practically her guardian. She is in London studying painting.”
“You are her guardian?” Lady Ruth repeated. “I am sorry for her.”
“You need not be,” he answered. “I trust that I shall be able to fulfill my duties in a perfectly satisfactory manner.”
“Oh! I have no doubt of it,” she answered. “Yet I am sorry for her.”
“You are certainly,” he remarked, “not in an amiable mood.”
“I am in rather a desperate one if that is anything,” she said, looking at him with something of the old light in her tired eyes.
“You made a little error, perhaps, in those calculations?” he suggested. “It can be amended.”
“Don’t be a brute,” she answered fiercely.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“That sounds a little severe,” he remarked.
“Don’t take any notice of anything I say tonight,” she murmured softly. “I am a little mad. I think that everything is going against me! I know that you haven’t a grain of sympathy for me—that you would rather see me suffer than not, and yet you see I give myself away entirely. Why shouldn’t I? Part of it is through you in a way.”
“I rather fancied,” he remarked, “that up to now—”
“Yes! Of course!” she interrupted, “you saved me from ruin, staved it off at any rate. And you held over the reckoning! I—I almost wish—”
She paused. Again her eyes were searching his.
“I am a little tired of it all, you see,” she continued. “I don’t suppose Lumley and I can ever be the same again since I brought him—that check. He avoids being alone with me—I do the same with him. One would think—to watch the people, that the whole transaction was in the Morning Post. They smile when they see us together, they grin when they see you with anybody else. It’s getting hateful, Wingrave!”
“I am afraid,” he said quietly, “that you are in a nervous, hypersensitive state. No one else can possibly know of the little transaction between us, and, so far as I am concerned, there has been nothing to interfere with your relations with your husband.”
“You are right,” she answered, “I am losing my nerve. I am only afraid that I am losing something else. I haven’t an ounce of battle left in me. I feel that I should like to close my eyes and wake up in a new world, and start all over again.”
“It is nothing but a mood,” he assured her. “Those new worlds don’t exist any longer. They generally consist of foreign watering places where the sheep and the goats house together now and then. I think I should play the game out, Lady Ruth, until—”
“Until what?”
“Perhaps to the end,” he answered. “Who can tell? Not I! By this time tomorrow, it might be I who would be reminding you—”
“Yes?”
“That there are other worlds, and other lives to live!”
“I should like,” she whispered very softly, “to hear of them. But I fancy somehow that you will never be my instructor. What of your ward?”
“Well! What of her?” he answered calmly.
She shivered a little.
“You were very frank with me once, Wingrave,” she said. “You are a man whose life fate has wrecked, fate and I! You have no heart left, no feeling. You can create suffering and find it amusing. I am beginning to realize that.”
He nodded.
“There is some truth,” he declared, “In what you say.”
“What of that child? Is she, too, to be a victim?”
“I trust,” he answered, “that you are not going to be melodramatic.”
“I don’t call it that. I really want to know. I should like to warn her.”
“I am not at war with children,” he answered. “Her life and mine are as far apart as the poles.”
“I had an odd fancy when I saw you with her,” Lady Ruth said slowly. “She is very good-looking—and not so absurdly young.”
“The fancy was one,” he remarked coldly, “which I think you had better get rid of.”
“In a way,” she continued thoughtfully, “I should like to get rid of it, and yet—how old are you, Wingrave? Well, I know. You are very little over forty. You are barely in the prime of life, you are strong, you have the one thing which society today counts almost divine—great, immeasurable wealth! Can’t you find someone to thaw the snows?”
“I loved a woman once,” he answered. “It was a long time ago, and it seems strange to me now.”
Lady Ruth lifted her eyes to his, and their lambent fires were suddenly rekindled.
“Love her again,” she murmured. “What is past is past, but there are the days to come! Perhaps the woman, too, is a little lonely.”
“I think not,” he answered calmly. “The woman is married, she has lived with her husband more or less happily for a dozen years or so! She is a little ambitious, a little fond of pleasure, but a leader of society, and, I am sure, a very reputable member of it. To love her again would be as embarrassing to her—as it would be difficult for me. You, my dear Lady Ruth, I am convinced, would be the last to approve of it.”
“You mock me,” she murmured, bending her head. “Is forgiveness also an impossibility?”
“I think,” he said, “that any sentiment whatever between those two would be singularly misplaced. You spoke of Melba, I think! She is singing in the further room.”
Lady Ruth rose up, still and pale. There was fear in her eyes when she looked at him.
“Is it to be always like this, then?” she said.
“Ah!” he answered, “I am no prophet. Who can tell what the days may bring? In the meantime...”
The Marchioness was very much in request that evening, and she found time for only a few words with Wingrave.
“What have you been doing to poor Ruth?” she asked. “I never saw her look so ill!”
“Indeed!” he answered, “I had not noticed it.”
“If I didn’t know her better,” she remarked, “I might begin to suspect her of a conscience. Whose baby were you driving about this afternoon? I didn’t know that your taste ran to ingenues to such an extent. She’s sweetly pretty, but I don’t think it’s nice of you to flaunt her before us middle-aged people. It’s enough to drive us to the rouge box. Come to lunch tomorrow!”
“I shall be delighted,” he answered, and passed on.
An hour or so later, on his way out, he came upon Lady Ruth sitting a little forlornly in the hall.
“I wonder whether I dare ask you to drop me in Cadogan Square?” she asked. “Is it much out of your way? I am leaving a little earlier than I expected.”
“I shall be delighted,” he answered, offering his arm.
They passed out of the door and down the covered way into the street. A few stragglers were loitering on the pavement, and one, a tall, thin young man in a long ulster, bent forwards as they came down the steps. Wingrave felt his companion’s grasp tighten upon his arm; a flash of light upon the pale features and staring eyes of the young man a few feet off, showed him to be in the act of intercepting them. Then, at a sharp word from Wingrave, a policeman stretched out his arm. The young man was pushed unceremoniously away. Wingrave’s tall footman and the policeman formed an impassable barrier—in a moment the electric brougham was gliding down the street. Lady Ruth was leaning back amongst the cushions, and the hand which fell suddenly upon Wingrave’s was cold as ice!
RICHARDSON TRIES AGAIN
“You saw—who that was?”
Lady Ruth’s voice seemed to come from a greater distance. Wingrave turned and looked at her with calm curiosity. She was leaning back in the corner of the carriage, and she seemed somehow to have shrunk into an unusual insignificance. Her eyes alone were clearly visible through the semi-darkness—and the light which shone from their depths was the light of fear.
“Yes,” he answered slowly, “I believe that I recognized him. It was the young man who persists in some strange hallucination as to a certain Mademoiselle Violet.”
“It was no hallucination,” she answered. “You know that! I was Mademoiselle Violet!”
He nodded.
“It amazes me,” he said thoughtfully, “that you should have stooped to such folly. That my demise would have been a relief to you I can, of course, easily believe, but the means—they surely were not worthy of your ingenuity.”
“Don’t!” she cried sharply. “I must have been utterly, miserably mad!”
“Even the greatest of schemers have their wild moments,” he remarked consolingly. “This was one of yours. You paid me a very poor compliment, by the bye, to imagine that an insignificant creature like that—”
“Will you—leave off?” she moaned.
“I daresay,” he continued after a moment’s pause, “that you find him now quite an inconvenient person to deal with.”
She shuddered.
“Oh, I am paying for my folly, if that is what you mean,” she declared. “He knows—who I am—that he was deceived. He follows me about—everywhere.”
Wingrave glanced out of the carriage window.
“Unless I am very much surprised,” he answered, “he is following us now!”
She came a little closer to him.
“You won’t leave me? Promise!”
“I will see you home,” he answered.
“You are coming on to Hereford House.”
“I think not,” he answered; “I have had enough of society for one evening.”
“Emily will be there later,” she said quietly.
“Even Lady Emily,” he answered, “will not tempt me. I will see you safely inside. Afterwards, if your persistent follower is hanging about, I will endeavor to talk him into a more reasonable frame of mind.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she turned to him abruptly.
“You are more kind to me sometimes than I deserve, Wingrave,” she remarked.
“It is not kindness,” he answered. “I dislike absurd situations. Here we are! Permit me!”
Wingrave kept his word. He saw Lady Ruth to her front door, and then turned back towards his carriage. Standing by the side of the footman, a little breathless, haggard and disheveled-looking, was the young man who had attempted to check their progress a few minutes ago.
Wingrave took hold of his arm firmly.
“Get in there,” he ordered, pointing to the carriage.
The young man tried to escape, but he was held as though in a vise. Before he well knew where he was, he was in the carriage, and Wingrave was seated by his side.
“What do you want with me?” he asked hoarsely.
“I want to know what you mean by following that lady about?” Wingrave asked.
The young man leaned forward. His hand was upon the door.
“Let me get out,” he said sullenly.
“With pleasure—presently,” Wingrave answered. “I can assure you that I am not anxious to detain you longer than necessary. Only you must first answer my question.”
“I want to speak to her! I shall follow her about until I can!” the young man declared.
Wingrave glanced at him with a faint derisive smile. His clothes were worn and shabby, he was badly in need of a shave and a wash. He sat hunched up in a corner of the carriage, the picture of mute discomfort and misery.
“Do you know who she is?” Wingrave asked.
“Mademoiselle Violet!” the young man answered.
“You are mistaken,” Wingrave answered. “She is Lady Ruth Barrington, wife of Lumley Barrington and daughter of the Earl of Haselton.”
The young man was unmoved.
“She is Mademoiselle Violet,” he declared.
The coupe drew up before the great block of buildings in which was Wingrave’s flat. The footman threw open the door.
“Come in with me,” Wingrave said. “I have something more to say to you.”
“I would rather not,” the young man muttered, and would have slouched off, but Wingrave caught him by the arm.
“Come!” he said firmly, and the youth obeyed.
Wingrave led the way into his sitting room and dismissed his servant who was setting out a tray upon the sideboard.
“Sit down,” he ordered, and his strange guest again obeyed. Wingrave looked at him critically.
“It seems to me,” he said deliberately, “that you are another of those poor fools who chuck away their life and happiness and go to the dogs because a woman had chosen to make a little use of them. You’re out of work, I suppose?”
“Yes!”
“Hungry?”
“I suppose so.”
Wingrave brought a plate of sandwiches from the sideboard, and mixed a whisky and soda. He set them down in front of his guest, and turned away with the evening paper in his hand.
“I am going into the next room for some cigarettes,” he remarked.
He was gone scarcely two minutes. When he returned, the room was in darkness. He moved suddenly towards the electric lights, but was pushed back by an unseen hand. A man’s hot breath fell upon his cheek, a hoarse, rasping voice spoke to him out of the black shadows.
“Don’t touch the lights! Don’t touch the lights, I say!”
“What folly is this?” Wingrave asked angrily. “Are you mad?”
“Not now,” came the quick answer. “I have been. It has come to me here, in the darkness. I know why she is angry, I know why she will not speak to me. It is—because I failed.”
Wingrave laughed, and moved towards the lights.
“We have had enough of this tomfoolery,” he said scornfully. “If you won’t listen to reason—”
He never finished his sentence. He had stumbled suddenly against a soft body, he had a momentary impression of a white, vicious face, of eyes blazing with insane fury. Quick to act, he struck—but before his hand descended, he had felt the tearing of his shirt, the sharp, keen pain in his chest, the swimming of his senses. Yet even then he struck again with passionate anger, and his assailant went down amongst the chairs with a dull, sickening crash!
Then there was silence in the room. Wingrave made an effort to drag himself a yard or two towards the bell, but collapsed hopelessly. Richardson, in a few moments, staggered to his feet.
He groped his way to the side of the wall, and found the knobs of the electric lights. He turned two on and looked around him. Wingrave was lying a few yards off, with a small red stain upon his shirt front. His face was ghastly pale, and he was breathing thickly. The young man looked at him for several moments, and then made his way to the side table where the sandwiches were. One by one he took them from the dish, and ate deliberately. When he had finished, he made his way once more towards where Wingrave lay. But before he reached the spot, he stopped short. Something on the wall had attracted his attention. He put his hand to his head and thought for a moment. It was an idea—a glorious idea.