A Woman Martyr

"I am Vera Anerley," said the pale girl, speaking in clear tones of deadly meaning. "I have come to tell your wife that the case against her is complete; that she may be arreste...

But for once Lord Vansittart's good star seemed in the ascendant. Joan was seated at the end of the long table in the big, finely furnished diningroom, where luncheon was alread...

"Yes, certainly, we will go. Bear up, my dearest, you are safe with me. I deserve to be shot for bringing you to see this cursed stuff," murmured Vansittart, as he supported Joa...

The big mansion of which she was the pampered, cherished darling, lay solemn, pompous, solid, dark, behind her. Before her, the pavement, wet after a summer shower, shone in the...

"Where was I? Oh! About Sar' Ann making tracks like that. Well, if I tell you what she told me, and ease my conscience like, will you give me your word, Miss Anerley, as no harm...

Joan staggered against the wall with sudden horror as Victor walked away and adjusted the chain which shut out possible intruders. Alone in the house--with him--and he was legal...

Sir Thomas Thorne was sincerely, honestly attached to his beautiful young orphan niece--perhaps the sentiment was all the stronger for being tinged with a latent remorse for his...

The morning after the Duchess of Arran's ball Lord Vansittart was seated at his breakfast, the _Times_ propped up in front of him, when a ring of the hall-door bell was followed...

Joan stood in the corridor, white, hardly breathing, as if turned to stone, her beautiful eyes riveted on the spot where the man who was once her lover had disappeared.

If Joan had succeeded in fascinating Lord Vansittart until his passion dominated him to the extinction of all his ordinary interests in life, while she was mysteriously enwrappe...

"Oh, God! What shall I do?" she wailed, grovelling on the floor in her despair. The anguish of discovery that another had reigned over his affections, and so lovely a rival, was...

"Joan! What does it mean?" asked the bridegroom, white, stern, after the shock, still seeming to see those awful words, "Vengeance is Mine!" dancing before his dazed eyes in let...

She went to her room somewhat heavy-hearted. She was no woman of the world, and was taken aback by his unexpected change of manner. Her maid Julie was busy with a charming _toil...

Victor a'Court was identified by several witnesses--one a detective, who had failed to track him when he was "wanted" four years ago for embezzling monies belonging to his firm-...

Old Doctor Thompson sat up in his study, smoking and listening to his nephew's theories anent Victor Mercier's death, while Vera, sleepless in her anguish, remained sifting her...

As Joan went into the restaurant on Lord Vansittart's arm, she felt a subtle, exquisite sensation of leaving her troubled, garish, emotional life on the threshold, and stepping...

The hansom drove swiftly along through the muddy streets. Victor sat silently by his companion. His nature was strung up to its fullest tension. First had come the exasperating...

He laughed as he said, encouragingly, "I can assure you you need not trouble yourself that I have bad news--everything is going most swimmingly!" But as they threaded their way...

Vera Anerley had never acted better than that night when Joan secretly visited Victor. Some subtle excitement--born, perhaps, of an unusually passionate kiss of her beloved's wh...

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 Me...

When Joan awoke after a few hours' slumber, it was to a sense of racking headache and utter exhaustion. She could only vaguely feel, rather than remember, the crucial events of...

After that spontaneous, passionate prayer to Heaven for mercy, Joan seemed to awaken to a stronger, intenser life. A new instinct burst into a fierce clamouring within her--the...

"No answer," Vansittart said to the boy. Then he turned, his face pale, his lips twitching, and saying, "Come in for a moment," he took Joan's hand and led her back indoors, thr...

The tone of the missive seemed to half paralyse poor Joan. For a little while she lay prone on her bed, unable to think, answering Julie mechanically as she hovered about, pulli...

Could she have heard aright? Joan lifted her pale, miserable face--miserable with the woe of reality after the delirious joy of being clasped to her lover's heart--and slowly sh...

At first Joan had been almost fearful in her new-born hope. The prospect of flight with her lover, the idea of marrying him secretly, and starting for a tour round the world, ab...

Joan made her way home--how, she hardly knew. In the confusion of thought succeeding that terrible interview which had successfully shown her she was in the power of a merciless...

A sharp shower pattering on the foliage of the sycamores and elms was scattering the equestrians in the Row. Fair girls urged their hacks into a canter and trotted swiftly homew...

Joan shuddered. To hear that fiat of her lover's--that only death or the divorce court could free a girl in her position from that slight yet deadly tie--and to hear it uttered...

For awhile, as Joan sat, her lover's arm around her, all about them so bright--the pretty boudoir, decked with dainty gifts of her uncle's and aunt's, gay with flowers and sunsh...

When Vansittart had spoken those awful words, in a light, almost reassuring manner, "she kills him before the curtain falls on the last act," Joan first felt as if her whole men...

The latent sense of being arbiter of a beautiful young woman's fate--which had been perhaps Victor Mercier's only sentiment in Joan's regard during their separation--developed,...

"Merciful Heaven--it can't be that!" mentally exclaimed the unhappy girl. "Why--people will surely be coming in--I shall be found--and he--like that--with the drugged brandy in...

"Don't say I didn't make haste," he said, pantingly, as he poured some water from the glass jug he was carrying into his own tumbler, which was empty. "You won't mind your husba...

If the duke's pale, wrathful valet had suddenly changed into the grinning skeleton which had seemed to Joan to mock and gird at her that night when she replaced the poison bottl...

which influenced me to love her as I do. Oh, may I be worthy of being her guardian; for my past is not the fair, white, unsullied page that hers is! No man's can be."