CHAPTER XXIX

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 by a man-servant's entrance with a telegram.

Since his engagement to Joan, he had been singularly nervous--her changeful moods were hardly calculated to soothe a lover! He regarded the buff-coloured envelope askance.

Still his tone was cheerful as he said. "No answer." The message was from Joan; but there was nothing alarming in it. The few words were merely "Come as early as you can."

In a very few minutes after its delivery at his house, he had given his brief orders to the household for the day, had carelessly said he did not know when he should return, or if he would be home before night except, perhaps, to dress--and without waiting for a conveyance of his own--there would be delay if he sent down to the stables--he was out, striding along the pavement until he met a hansom, which he chartered with promise of an extra tip for quick driving.

"Miss Thorne is in her boudoir, my lord," said the porter, when he alighted at the house. Evidently the order had been given to that effect. The groom of the chambers bowed respectfully, but was easily waved aside. Vansittart crossed the hall and sprang up the stairs as only one of the family might do without disregard of the _convenances_.

Tapping eagerly at Joan's boudoir door, his attentive ear heard a footstep, the door was opened by Joan herself. She was in the pink and white _deshabille_ she had worn the happy day she had first admitted that she loved him sufficiently to marry him. But now, her beauty seemed in his fond eyes increased by the natural arrangement of the wealth of beautiful hair which was unbound and, merely confined with a ribbon, floated about her shoulders like a veil of golden strands.

She drew him into the room and blushed, as she said she had not expected him so early.

"I had to write to my bridesmaids about their frocks," she began, nestling to him. "I meant to have my hair done before you came----"

For answer he seated himself and drawing her to him, kissed the shining tresses and held them ecstatically in his hand. Their soft touch seemed to fire his emotions.

"Do you know you seem unreal, you are so beautiful?" he said, passionately, lifting her chin and gazing intently at her delicate lovely features and the rich brown eyes which to his delight looked more calmly than usual into his. "You make me feel--as if--when I get possession of you--you must vanish into thin air--you are an impossibility--a mocking spirit, who will disappear with elfish laughter."

"Don't rave!" she fondly said, returning his kiss. "Or you will make me rave! And to rave is not to enjoy oneself! Dear, I asked you to come early--I want to spend every moment of my life with you--from this--very--minute! Why should we be separated? You know what you told me--that they were telling each other falsehoods about you at the clubs--so our being always together will be like killing two birds with one stone! It will make me happy, and give the lie to their wicked calumnies! Do you mind?"

"Do--I--mind?" He kissed her brow, lips, hair, again and again. "Am I not yours--more yours than my own--all yours through time into eternity?"

"For worse as well as for better?" She had said the words before she remembered her terrible dream--when the judge who was condemning her to be hanged had upbraided her for not having fulfilled her wifehood; as they escaped her lips she recollected, and shuddered. "You think me better than I am, dearest! I am human--erring----"

"I--know--what you are!" he passionately exclaimed. He was plunged in a lover's fatuous ecstasy. It was half an hour before Joan could get away to put on her habit. She meant to ride to Crouch Hill to hear her old nurse's opinion of what had occurred. Mrs. Todd had not known Victor's name--she would not have identified "The Southwark Mystery," as the newspapers termed it, with herself and her wretched entanglements. She would tell her that Victor was dead, and hear what she would say to it.

While she was dressing, Vansittart went back to his stables, and waiting while the grooms equipped his now staid, but once almost too mettlesome grey horse "Firefly," returned to find Joan's pretty "Nora" waiting at the door, held, as well as his own horse, by her groom. He had barely dismounted when she issued from the house, a dainty Amazon from head to foot, and tripped down the steps, smiling at him. "Why did you ride your old grey?" she asked, as she sprang lightly into the saddle.

"Why?" he repeated, as he arranged her habit, and thrilled as he held her little foot for one brief moment in his hand. "Because I am so madly in love with you to-day that I cannot trust myself on any horse but the soberest and most steady-going in the stables! I am particularly anxious not to bring my 'violent delights' to a 'violent end' by breaking my neck!"

They rode off through the sweet summer morning, he so bathed in actual joy, as well as fired by the anticipatory delights of life with Joan for his wife, that in his blissful mood he could have enwrapt the whole of humanity in one vast embrace--Joan abandoning herself with all the force of her will to the natural instincts that underlay all ordinary, acquired emotions.

During her long self-colloquy she had deliberately burrowed, mentally, below her civilized being, and sought these. She had told herself that the primary instincts of woman were wifedom and motherhood. For the present--until she was reassured anent her safety by time and the course of events--she would listen to no others.

The two lovers--so near in seeming, so far asunder in reality, divided as they were by a hideous secret--rode gleefully on, rejoicing in their youth and love, making delicious plans for their future together, gloating over their coming joys from different standpoints, but with equal ardour.

"And for to-day," said Joan, as they rode under a canopy of boughs in one of the country lanes still undesecrated by the ruthless hands of the suburban builder, "and not only for to-day, but most days, I want to see how the other half of humanity lives, dearest! Before I am Lady Vansittart, I want to see the life that commoners enjoy! I want to dine out with you, at restaurants, and go to the theatre with you, and, in fact, be alone with you in crowds who neither know nor care who we are, or what we are doing!"

Vansittart, albeit slightly puzzled, readily acquiesced. When they drew rein at Mrs. Todd's cottage, it was settled that they were to use a box he had taken for the first night of a new play brought out by a manager who was an acquaintance of his, dining first at a restaurant Joan selected as being one not affected by their circle.

Joan entered the cottage and saw the dark old woman totter to meet her, eagerness in her trembling limbs and brilliant, searching eyes, with a feeling of sickly dismay. Last time she stood here Victor was alive; since then she had killed him! Involuntarily she gave a little moan of pain.

"My dearie, my lamb, what is it?" The aged nurse was terribly agitated as she caressed and tried to console the only creature she really loved on earth, who had sunk crouching at her feet. "Is it--come, tell Nana--you know I would die this minnit for you, lambie--tell me if that fellow is alive and annoying you in any way, for, as I sit here, if he is, I'll tell of him! I'll set the police upon him!"

"Don't," said Joan, chokingly, clasping her knees. For the first time she seemed to realize what she had done. "He is dead!"

"Thank God for that!" cried the old woman, in an access of fervour. "He is just, I will say that, if He's sent that blackguard to the only place he's fit for, instead of leaving him here to worry innocent folks as 'ud do their Maker credit if they was only let alone! And now you can be my Lady, and go to Court with as big a crown and as long a train as the best of the lot, duchesses and all! And you can bring little lords and ladies into the world to be brought up proper by head nurses and then send them to colleges, and make real gentlemen of 'em! The Lord knows what he is about! There ain't a God for nothin'!"

After the first thrill of something akin to horror at Mrs. Todd's grotesque rejoicing, Joan put aside her questioning as to "how the brute came to his end" by asking her if she would like to see Vansittart, and he, in his rapt adoration, eager to have to do with every detail of his beloved one's life, was only too ready to be curtsied to and congratulated and blest.

"She is a good old soul, darling, we must look after her," he feelingly said, as he waved farewell presently to the tall old crone watching them from her doorstep as they rode slowly up the road. "And now, where shall we go?"

After one of Joan's scampering rides they returned home, spent the afternoon in sweet talk in her boudoir, then Joan retired to dress--donning her plainest black evening frock and simplest ornaments--and he paid a flying visit to his house to dress also, returning to fetch her, as she had bidden him, in an ordinary hansom.

"I mean to enjoy myself to-night!" she gaily said. She insisted on feeling gay--insisted to herself. Presents were arriving in battalions, boxes of exquisite garments were delivered with a monotonous regularity. She had chosen the restaurant they would dine at, she was also to select the menu. As they alighted at the door, a man, who was about to enter, halted, and smiled as he lifted his hat.

"Who is that?" she asked as they went in.

"A very clever fellow, the dramatic critic of the _Parthenon_," he returned. "I will introduce him to you."