CHAPTER XXVIII

Was the loving, foolish "Joan" the woman he had married? The woman she had seen coming down Haythorn Street as she drove up? Or was she "another woman" altogether?

She gazed fiercely at the sweet face in the photograph. It seemed to gaze blandly, calmly, back.

"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 almost unbearable. Still, selfish misery was soon extinguished by the greater, sterner passion which possessed her--her grim purpose of revenge, or as she chose to consider it, the just punishment of the one who had, she believed, poisoned her beloved.

It was not like Victor to take a noxious drug, nor was he suicidal in feeling. He loved life! He was all gaiety and careless enjoyment of the passing hour, when he was not white-hot with passion.

But could he have lied to her about the age of his "wife"? Then, gazing once more at the face in the photograph, she miserably told herself that that girl could not be termed "hag" and "cat." No, there must be two women! And yet--and yet--

She started. There was a knock and a ring. It could not be Mr. Naz! She glanced interrogatively at the little silver watch she wore which had been her own mother's. It told her that it was half-past eleven. She ran into the front attic--her and her step-mother's bedroom--and looked out of the window. There was a hansom at the door. A man stood on the step below.

She ran downstairs and opened the hall door. It was Paul--pale, serious, faultlessly dressed in half mourning. He bowed low as he took off his hat, and apologized for being early. He was not his own master! He thought of "wiring to her," but his anxiety for an interview urged him not to postpone his visit.

"Come in," said Vera, in a low voice. "My mother is in there, and I want to see you alone," she added, as she cautiously closed the door. "I had better tell her you are here, though. Do you mind coming up to the lumber room, where I am looking through Victor's things? There is nowhere else."

"Anywhere--where we can be alone, Miss Anerley," he gravely said--thinking that if ever human agony had been fully seen in a woman, it was now, in this fragile girl with the pale face drawn with anguish, the great eyes luminous with wild desperation.

He admired her for her self-possession, as he heard her ringing voice telling her step-mother, who was somewhat hard of hearing, that "Victor's kind friend, Mr. Naz, was here, and she would bring him to see her presently--she would first take him upstairs to choose something of dear Victor's as a keepsake."

"She is an actress, of course," he told himself, as he ascended the oil-cloth-covered stairs after her--how strange were these sordid surroundings of a man who had claims upon the wealthy, luxurious Sir Thomas Thorne and his family! "But there is only a little of the actress--the rest is woman--passionate woman!"

Vera mutely conducted him into the disordered lumber-room, amid the dusty boxes and old baskets, where the two open trunks were standing.

"I have been searching his things," she began, abruptly.

"Yes?" he answered, tentatively.

"Perhaps you can tell me who these are?" She dipped into a trunk and handed Paul the photograph of the three young girls.

At a glance he saw the subject. "My sight is not very good, I will take it to the light," he said, moving to the window, holding back the blind, and examining the portrait with his back to her.

Heavens! For a moment, as he saw the lovely face of the seated girl, he felt as if some one had given him a blow. There was only one Joan Thorne! To mistake that face was impossible.

Regaining his composure with a stern effort of will--for he must not "give his friend away," especially now that he was one of the helpless dead--he turned to Vera.

"I don't understand! Who are these persons?" he asked, as if mystified.

"That is what I want to find out!" she cried, passionately. "Mr. Naz--I know, I feel, my dearest Victor was murdered! He never took that morphia himself! It was given him--and--by a woman! I should know her again--I should, I am sure I should! It was she I saw coming away from the house that night. I said nothing about it at the inquest, for fear of dishonouring my dearest; it was she the servant next door heard talking to him, and saw coming out of the house--the landlady has just been in to tell me about it! The girl will swear to it--when we get her--she was so frightened about it she has run away! Mr. Naz, you were his friend, surely, surely you will not rest till his murderess is found and punished? I demand it of you!"

Her great sapphire eyes gleamed--she was impressive in her intensity. Paul's fair hair seemed to bristle on his head. Victor had always fascinated--influenced him--his mantle seemed to have fallen on his beloved's shoulders.

"I don't understand," he stammered, taking refuge, for safety, in apparent bewilderment; although even as she had clamoured her new evidence with seeming incoherence, he saw all the damning circumstances in their most fatal light: Joan Thorne's portrait, Victor's curious suggestions about the Thorne family being in his power; Miss Thorne's secret expeditions with her maid Julie, his betrothed, whose acquaintance, although it had led to his really caring for her, had been made by him at Victor's suggestions; the admission of Victor's that he was married; then this new and startling evidence--and Miss Thorne's ghastly, horror-stricken face when he, only half believing she was the woman _liee_ with the dead man, only half-suspecting that she might have been instrumental in his destruction, boldly taxed her with it at the Duke of Arran's ball, when alone with her for a few moments in the conservatory.

"You don't understand?" She spoke bitterly. "You are no friend of his, then! You would leave him--in his tomb--killed, murdered--his murderess at large!"

"What good could it be to him, now?" he said, firmly, almost impressively. "Can we follow the spirits we have lost, and do anything for them? Might not cruelty to others hurt them? How can we tell?"

"Cruelty to others!" she cried, wildly. "Understand, Mr. Naz! I know his love--his Joan! I will soon be on her track! If you will not help me, I will go to the detectives!"

In her almost frenzy of mingled love for the dead man, and hate of her rival, the woman who had been with him the night he died, she hazarded a chance shot, and even as she did so, she rejoiced. For the bullet had found its mark. Paul's face fell--there was an expression of dismay in the eyes which were almost fearfully watching her.

"No, no! You must not do that!" he slowly said. "I do not know what my poor friend may have told you, but remember a man is sometimes betrayed into a little exaggeration----"

"I have her letter," said she, exultant, yet calm. "I have plenty of evidence to give the detectives. I will not trouble you, Mr. Naz!" She glanced scornfully at him.

What was he to do? Abandon Joan Thorne to this infuriated, outraged, therefore unscrupulous rival, and a horde of professional detectives, who would show little or no mercy? His whole somewhat chivalrous being revolted against it. When he left Haythorn Street half-an-hour later he had pledged himself by all he held sacred to assist Vera in discovering the real story of Victor Mercier's untimely end, and acting upon it, whatever it might prove to be.

* * * * *

When Joan, at the Duchess of Arran's ball, had, with the most violent effort of will, played her dismal part, acted, feigned enjoyment of her last dances with Vansittart, beguiled him with well-simulated smiles, and sternly resisted the awful inward fear awakened by Paul Naz's daring words and sinister demeanour, she almost collapsed. Then, left alone in her room, the prattling Julie gone, her night light flickering, she sat up in bed confronted by the new, hideous fact.

Paul Naz suspected her! He knew of her affair with Victor Mercier! He had identified her with the "hag" wife that girl Victor loved had spoken of at the inquest! _What more did he know?_

The cold beads stood out on her brow. The innate conviction she now knew that she had felt from the very beginning of her love for Vansittart--the conviction that it would lead to her doom--arose within her like some unbidden phantom.

What doom? Public shame and the hangman? Or the utter loss of Vansittart's love? One seemed as terrible a retribution as the other.

"But--do I deserve such an awful punishment for what was done in ignorance, my fancying myself in love with Victor, and being talked into marrying him at the registrar's?" she asked herself, with sudden fierce rebellion against fate. "Do I even deserve it for drugging him to take possession of my letters? What had he not threatened me with? And I never meant to kill him! I am sure I would rather have died than that!"

Again, a passionate instinct of self-defence as well as of self-preservation came to her rescue. As she lay there among the shadows in the silent night, with no sound but the distant rumble of belated vehicles, and the measured footsteps of the policeman as he went his round upon the pavements below breaking the stillness, she determined, once and for all, to kill the past.

"It shall be dead!" she told herself, sternly. "I will have no more of it! If any one or anything belonging to it crops up, I will defy, deny, ignore, resist to the death! No one saw me--no one can really hurt me! I have had enough of misery and wretchedness--I will--yes, I _will_--be happy--and no one in the world shall prevent me!"