"Trust you!" she gazed up at him with that startling expression of mingled love and woe into his face-a look he had seen in a great picture of souls suffering in Hades-an expression too full of agony to be easily forgotten. "Only it seems too much to expect! It cannot possibly happen-those good things don't, in this miserable life!"
"You are morbid, dearest, if I may dare to say it," he tenderly said, drawing her into the arms with which he vowed to shelter and defend her from all and every adverse circumstance which might ever threaten her peace and content. And he set himself to comfort, hearten, encourage her drooping spirits, as he painted the joys of their future life in the most glowing terms at his command, during the rest of what was to him their glorious hour together. To a certain extent he thought he had succeeded. At least, Joan had smiled-had even laughed-although the tragic look in those beautiful eyes-absent, hunted, terror-stricken, desperate-was it only one of those things, or all? – had not been superseded by the expression of calm satisfaction it would be such relief and joy to him to see there.
"Something is wrong-but what?" he asked himself, after he had stayed luncheon, and at last succeeded in tearing himself away. "Is it only that fact-a miserable one to so tender yet passionate a nature-that while she is loaded with luxuries by her uncle, her parents died almost in want because he withheld the helping hand? It may be! Well-anyhow-the best thing for her is absolute change-as soon as possible-and that she shall have!"
Victor Mercier-it was his real name, his father, a meretricious French adventurer, had married his mother for a small capital, which he had got rid of some time before he ran away and left his wife and infant son to starve-had left Joan the eventful night of their meeting after long years-in a towering rage.
His was a nature saturated with vanity and self-love. From childhood upwards he had believed himself entitled to possess whatever he coveted-the law of meum and tuum was non-existent in his scheme for getting as much out of life as it was possible to get. Naturally sharp, and with good looks of the kind that some women admire, he had not only made a willing slave of his mother, but when, some years after, the news of his father's death came to her, she married again, a widower with a charming little daughter, step-father and pseudo-sister also worshipped at his shrine.
Then he ingratiated himself with an employer so that he was entrusted with the sole management of the branch business at C-. Here, he "splurged"; spent money freely, and-when he heard that the pretty schoolgirl he had succeeded in establishing a flirtation with was the only surviving member of the weakly family represented by the wealthy Sir Thomas Thorne-he grew more and more reckless in the expenditure of his master's money and in his falsifying of the accounts. Like many others of his kind, he overreached his mark. When he paid a flying visit to London to marry Joan before she was adopted by her uncle-her mother had just died-it occurred to the head of his firm to "run over" to C- and audit the books. The day of Mercier's secret marriage he heard that "the game was up," and his only means of escape, instant flight and lasting absence.
It was quite true that his firm failed a couple of years later. But he had then just established himself as partner in a drinking-bar in the unsavoury neighbourhood of a gold mine in South Africa. The lady of the establishment had fallen in love with him, and there was, in fact, money to be made all round about by one who was not too particular in his morals and opinions. Suddenly, the neighbourhood grew too hot for him, and he found it convenient to remember that the rich Miss Joan Thorne must now be twenty-one and ready to be claimed as his wife.
So he returned with money enough to make a show, later on, of being rich, at least for a month or two. The first thing was to find Joan: the next to meet her.
An acquaintance made in his comparatively innocent boyhood happened to be now confidential valet to the Duke of Arran. He sought him out, flattered, and-without confiding his real story to him-made him his creature by using a certain power of fascination which had helped on his unworthy career from its beginning.
Paul Naz got him engagements as "extra hand" on state occasions in noblemen's houses; he had fulfilled three of these before he attained his end and encountered Joan at the Duke's-Paul consented to pay court to Julie le Roux, Miss Thorne's maid, so as to keep his old playfellow informed as to the doings of the family, who, he told him, owed his late father a considerable sum of money, which he wished to recover privately to save scandal. That very night Paul was taking Julie to see Mercier's so-called half-sister act in a transpontine theatre. "Vera Anerley," as she had stage-named herself, had been on tour with a popular piece-was absent at the time of Victor's return-and had appealed to his vanity by her wild emotion when they met. He was to see her on the stage, and to have a word with Naz, who had had to probe Julie in a certain direction, after he left his "wife" in the Regent's Park.
When he had watched Joan's hansom speed away in the darkness, Victor Mercier walked along, then-hailing a passing cab, was driven to the theatre. As he went he anathematized Joan in the strongest of mining oaths.
"Like all the rest," he bitterly thought. "Always another man-they must have a man hanging about them!"
Alighting at the theatre, he met Naz, a fair, innocent-looking Frenchman, coming out. He joined him, saying "Come and have a drink."
"You have lost much by being late, your half-sister is adorable!" said Naz, as they stood together at the bar of a neighbouring public-house.
"No doubt!" said Mercier carelessly. "So is your Julie, eh? By the way, how is Julie's mistress? Any news?"
"As I said," returned Naz, in an undertone. "The beautiful creature is trapped at last, by a lover who has been out of the country to try and forget her, shooting big game! They ride-meet-he was with her when I posted you in the corridor that night. They passed me, you must have seen him."
"Him-who?" muttered Mercier. There was a gleam in his eyes.
"Lord Vansittart," replied Naz. "The Duchess has been heard to say it was a settled thing!"
CHAPTER VIII
The Duke's valet prattled on until the second and third liqueurs had solaced his being. Then Victor glanced darkly at the clock.
"Let us go," he roughly said.
The softspoken Naz only thought that the delightful fluid which warmed and comforted his gentle self had had a reverse effect upon his old friend, so-following him gently as Mercier stalked gloomily into the theatre and up to the dress circle, which was well-packed with honest citizens and their wives in their ordinary habit as they lived-he returned to his seat by Julie, and left him to his own devices.
The third act was over. In the fourth Mercier's so-called "sister" had plenty to do. She was a peccant wife, revisiting home in disguise, and seeking her husband's pardon. It was a pathetic scene, when she sought her husband and discovered herself. Throwing off her disguise-she was got up as an old woman-she emerged sweet, fascinating, in a white dress, with her black hair in Magdalen-like confusion, and sinking at his feet, alternately implored and adored with such passion and intensity that tears rolled down the feminine auditors' cheeks, and the house literally rose to her.
"And all that passion is mine, to take or leave as I please," was Victor's saturnine comment, as he leant back in his seat with folded arms and frowned darkly at the stage. He well knew that his amorous dalliance with his step-father's daughter, when he had had nothing more to his taste to dally with, had succeeded in inspiring her with so violent a devotion to him that, if he had not pitied, he might have come to loathe her. When she was a mere pretty, stupid schoolgirl, going to and fro to her middle-class girls' school, satchel in hand, he had had but little patience with her absorption in him and his career. But now that he saw her on the stage, beautiful with an undeniable beauty, full of grace and spontaneity, and possessed of that power which passion gives, he thrilled with mingled desire and satisfaction.
Strange ideas rose up in his mind-ideas of a subtle revenge upon Joan-of intense and vivid gratification to himself.
"Joan will be my wife-my bondslave, to be dealt with how I please, and when I please; and as long as I kiss and caress her no one dare interfere, if I choose that she shall spend almost her life in my arms with my lips on hers," he grimly told himself. "But-Vera loves me-and if I am Vera's lover