CHAPTER XXV

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 bottle in the cupboard after pouring its contents into Victor Mercier's brandy, she could hardly have shrunk back more absolutely terror-stricken.

At first she gazed, speechless, at Paul Naz's set, ghastly face, with those pale blue eyes flashing menace and scorn. Then that up-leaping instinct within her to defend herself came to her rescue.

"Are you mad, sir, to speak to me like this?" she haughtily said. "Leave me. If you presume to insult me, I will call for help."

For a moment her daring, her defiance, staggered Paul. Meanwhile, the sudden pallor of her beautiful features, the agony in her dark eyes, had strengthened his gradually formed, but confident, belief that Victor Mercier had been merely shielding a woman when he spoke of the Thornes owing money to his late father, and that he and Joan were either lovers, or had been so. Men did not dress up as men-servants to meet a woman who merely had some cash to repay. Then, he had seen other symptoms in Victor. He believed, when he had read the account of the inquest, that either Victor held Joan's promise of marriage, or that she was his secret and abandoned wife. To the story Victor had told Vera he attached but little significance. Men said such things sometimes to girls to cover unpalatable facts they need not be told.

Then, an interior conviction seemed to assert itself. "This is the woman," cried his soul. He gazed steadily at Joan.

"Mademoiselle, I am sorry to speak like this, but I know you knew my poor murdered friend well," he began in a low tone. "God forgive me if I misjudge you! But I feel you have been cruel to him. Time will show. Meanwhile, I wish to say to you that I will do nothing against you if you do not bring this noble gentleman I hear you are to marry to shame. I leave justice to the Creator, who invented it."

With which he made her a slight bow, turned, and stalked out of the conservatory. She sank into a seat breathless, and stared vacantly at the place where he had stood, for she seemed to see that white, scornful face with the pale blue eyes which to her excited fancy had been ablaze with lurid fire, still.

All was over, then! The mirage of happiness was a mockery. She was once more plunged, steeped, in the atmosphere of crime.

"I see," she told herself, in her mental writhings under this new scorch of pain. "He is a Frenchman; he is--was--Victor's accomplice, his spy. He told Victor of Vansittart. He has been watching me."

Her first insane idea was to tell the duke that his trusted servant was the miserable spy of unscrupulous wretches. Second thoughts said "madness! Keep it to yourself. What can the man do? He knows nothing of your visit to Hay thorn Street. If you say, or suggest, he is a spy, you arouse suspicions."

Upon these second thoughts she acted. She controlled her emotions, summoning all her force, her self-possession, to her aid. There was a long mirror in the corner. She composed her features and rubbed her cheeks and lips before it, regaining a semblance of composure and ordinary appearance only just in time, for as she leant back in her chair slowly fanning herself Vansittart came in, looking grave, troubled, although he smiled as their eyes met. Had _he_ seen or heard anything peculiar?

"Is it a breach of confidence to ask what his Grace wanted you for?" she asked, assuming a sprightly manner which shocked her even as she did so.

"Not at all," he said, a little abruptly; "something about a wedding present."

Then a manservant entered with a tray of champagne and the menu card, and until she had been revived by the food she forced herself to eat, and the champagne Vansittart insisted upon her drinking, she asked no more. But, in her strained state, her lover's pre-occupation was unbearable.

Desperate, she determined to know the worst. "Tell me," she began, leaning her fair elbow on the table and looking pleadingly into his face with those bewilderingly beautiful eyes. "You know you yourself proposed we should share our secrets. And, from your manner, I know--I am positive--the duke said something more than about a wedding present."

"If he did, it was nothing of any consequence," he fondly returned, gazing tenderly at the lovely face which was his whole world. "I would tell you at once, only you are such a sweet, innocent, sensitive darling, so utterly unsophisticated, unused to this rough planet and its still rougher inhabitants--you would make a mountain of what is far less than a mole-hill in one's way."

"What is it?' I would rather, really I would, know." She gave him a coaxing glance.

"Well, it is this," he replied, hardly. "Very little to annoy one. Only I am so absurdly vulnerable, that the merest breath which affects the subject of our marriage seems to shrivel me up. It is those wretched clubs; at least, the miserable gossip which the riffraff of the clubs seem to batten and fatten upon, drivelling, disappointed, soured units of humanity that they are! They seem to be prognosticating that our wedding will not 'take place,' because I have a secret wife somewhere, who is likely to turn up. Do you suspect me, darling?"

Her joyous laugh, born of infinite relief, almost startled him. When he reached his bachelor domain that night, and recalled the events of the evening, the sweetest delight of all was to remember how his beautiful darling took his hands, and with eyes brimming with love, drew him to her and nestled in his arms as some faithful dove might have flown confidently to his shoulder. That ensuing brief--all too brief--half hour, when, by their world seemingly forgot, and certainly their world forgetting, they interchanged tender words and still tenderer embraces, seemed to his passion-stricken nature to have so riveted them to each other that the very machinations of hell itself bid fair to be powerless to part them.

"Her absolute innocence makes her so immeasurably sweeter than all the other women," he told himself, as he stalked about his rooms in a hyper-ecstatic mood. "It is that which makes her so unsuspicious, so trusting. Now, if I had told something of what the duke said to me to an ordinary woman, she would have suspected me of goodness knows what in the past. She might have concealed it, but I should have known that she