PART I

"Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin Beset the Road I was to wander in."

--OMAR KHAYYÁM.

Lady Mary Carden sat near the open window of her blue and white boudoir looking out intently, fixedly across Park Lane at the shimmer of the trees in Hyde Park. It was June. It was sunny. The false gaiety of the season was all around her; flickering swiftly past her in the crush of carriages below her window; dawdling past her in the walking and riding crowds in the park. She looked at it without seeing it. Perhaps she had had enough of it, this strange conglomeration of alien elements and foreign bodies, this _bouille-à-baisse_ which is called "The Season." She had seen it all year after year for twelve years, varying as little as the bedding out of the flowers behind the railings. Perhaps she was as weary of society as most people become who take it seriously. She certainly often said that it was rotten to the core.

She hardly moved. She sat with an open letter in her hand, thinking, thinking.

The house was very still. Her aunt, with whom she lived, had gone early into the country for the day. The only sound, the monotonous whirr of the great machine of London, came from without.

Mary was thirty, an age at which many women are still young, an age at which some who have heads under their hair are still rising towards the zenith of their charm. But Mary was not one of these. Her youth was clearly on the wane. She bore the imprint of that which ages--because if unduly prolonged it enfeebles--the sheltered life, a life centred in conventional ideas, dwarfed by a conventional religious code, a life feebly nourished on cut and dried charities sandwiched between petty interests and pettier pleasures. She showed the mark of her twelve seasons, and of what she had made of life, in the slight fading of her delicate complexion, the fatigued discontent of her blue eyes, the faint dignified dejection of her manner, which was the reflection of an unconscious veiled surprise that she of all women--she the gentle, the good, the religious, the pretty Mary Carden was still--in short was still Mary Carden.

The onlooker would perhaps have shared that surprise. She was indubitably pretty, indubitably well bred, graceful, slender, with a delicate manicured hand, and fair waved hair. Her fringe, which seemed inclined to grow somewhat larger with the years, was nearly all her own. She possessed the art of dress to perfection. You could catalogue her good points. But somehow she remained without attraction. She lacked vitality, and those who lack vitality seldom seem to get or keep what they want, at any rate in this world.

She was the kind of woman whom a man marries to please his mother, or because she is an heiress, or because he has been jilted and wishes to show how little he feels it. She was not a first choice.

She was one of that legion of perfectly appointed women who at seventeen deplore the rapacity of the older girls in ruthlessly clutching up all the attention of the simpler sex; and who at thirty acidly remark that men care only for a pink cheek and a baby face.

Poor Mary was thinking of a man now, of a certain light-hearted simpleton of a soldier with a slashed scar across his hand, which a Dervish had given him at Omdurman, the man as commonplace as herself, on whom for no particular reason she had glued her demure, obstinate, adhesive affections twelve years ago.

Our touching faithfulness to an early love is often only owing to the fact that we have never had an adequate temptation to be unfaithful. Certainly with Mary it was so. The temptations had been pitiably inadequate. She had never swerved from that long-ago mild flirtation of a boy and girl in their teens, studiously thrown together by their parents. She had taken an unwearying interest in him. She had petitioned Heaven that he might pass for the Army, and he did just squeeze in. By the aid of fervent prayer she had drawn him safely through the Egyptian campaign, while other women's husbands and lovers fell right and left. He had not said anything definite before he went out, but Mary had found ample reasons for his silence. He could not bear to overshadow her life in case, etc., etc. But now he had been safely back a year, two years, and still he had said nothing. This was more difficult to account for. He was fond of her. There was no doubt about that. They had always been fond of each other. Every one had expected them to marry. His parents had wished it. Her aunt had favoured the idea with heavy-footed zeal. Her brother, Lord Rollington, when he had a moment to spare from his training-stable, had jovially opined that "Maimie" would be wise to book Jos Carstairs while she could, as if she was not careful she might outstand her market.

Mary, who had for many years dreamed of gracefully yielding to Jos's repeated and urgent entreaties, had even begun to wonder whether it would not be advisable if one of her men relations were to "speak to Jos." Such things were done. As she had said to her aunt with dignity, "This sort of thing can't go on for ever," when her aunt--who yearned for the rest which, according to their own account, seems to elude stout persons--pleaded that difficulties clustered round such a course.

The course was not taken, for Jos suddenly engaged himself to a girl of seventeen, a new girl whom London knew not, the only child of one of those ruinous unions which had been swallowed up in a flame of scandal seventeen years ago, which had been forgotten for seventeen years all but nine days.

It was sedulously raked up again now. People whispered that Elsa Grey came of a bad stock; that Jos Carstairs was a bold man to marry a woman with such antecedents; a woman whose mother had slipped away out of her intolerable home years ago for another where apparently life had not been more tolerable.

Jos brought his Elsa to see Mary, for he was only fit to wave his sword and say, "Come on, boys." He did not understand anything about anything. He only remembered that Mary was a tender, loving soul. Had she not shown herself so to him for years? So he actually besought Mary to be a friend to the beautiful young sombre creature whom he had elected to marry.

Mary behaved admirably according to her code, touched Elsa's hand, civilly offered the address of a good dressmaker (not her best one), and hoped they should meet frequently. The girl looked at her once, wistfully, intently, with unfathomable lustrous eyes, as of some untamed, prisoned, woodland creature, and then took no further notice of her.

That was a fortnight ago. They were to be married in three weeks.

Mary sighed, and looked once again for the twentieth time at the letter in her hand. It was a long epistle from her bosom friend, Lady Francis Bethune, the electric tramways heiress, joylessly married to the handsomest man in London, the notorious Lord Francis Bethune.

"My dear," said the letter, "men are always like that. They are brutes, and it is no good thinking otherwise. They will throw over the woman they have loved for years for a flower-girl. You are too good for him. I have always thought so. (So had Mary.) But the game is not up yet. I could tell him things about his Elsa that would surprise him, not that he ought to be surprised at anything in her mother's daughter. He is coming to me this afternoon to tea. He said he was busy; but I told him he must come as it was on urgent business, and so it is. He is my trustee, you know, and there really is something wrong. Francis has been at it again. After the business is over I shall tell him a few things very nicely about that girl. Now, my advice to you is--chuck the Lestrange's water-party this afternoon, and come in as if casually to see me. I shall leave you alone together, and you must do the rest yourself. You may pull it off yet, after what I shall say about Elsa, for Jos has a great idea of you. Wire your reply by code before midday."

Mary got up slowly, and walked to the writing-table. Should she go and meet him? Should she not? She would go. She wrote a telegram quickly in code form. She knew the code so well that she did not stop to refer to it. She and Jos had played at code telegrams when he was cramming for the Army. She rang for the servant and sent out the telegram. Then she sat down and took up a book. It was nearly midday, and too hot to go out.

But after a few minutes she cast it suddenly aside, and began to move restlessly about the room. What was the use of going, after all? What could she say to Jos if she did see him? How could she touch his heart? Like many another woman when she thinks of a man, Mary stopped before a small mirror, and looked fixedly at herself. Was she not pretty? Had she not gentle, appealing eyes? See her little hand raised to put back a strand of fair hair. Was not everything about her pretty, and refined, and good? The vision of Elsa rose suddenly before her, with her dark, mysterious beauty and her formidable youth. Mary's heart contracted painfully. "I love him, and she doesn't," she said to herself, with bitterness. But Jos would never give up Elsa. She would make him miserable, but--he would marry her. Oh! what was the use of going to waylay him to-day? Why had she lent herself to Lady Francis's idiotic plan? Why had she accepted from her help that was no help? She would telegraph again to say she would not come after all. No. She would follow up her own telegram, and tell her friend that on second thoughts she did not care to see Jos.

She ran upstairs, put on her hat, and in a few minutes was driving in a hansom to Bruton Street. The Bethunes' footman knew her and admitted her, though Lady Francis was technically "not at home."

Yes, her ladyship was in, but she was engaged with the doctor at the moment in the drawing-room. The footman hesitated. "They were a-tuning of the piano in her ladyship's boudoir," he said, and he tentatively opened the door of a room on the ground floor. It was Lord Francis' sitting-room.

"Was his lordship in?"

"No, his lordship had gone out early."

"Then I will wait here," said Mary, "if you will let her ladyship know that I am here."

The man withdrew.

Mary's face reddened with annoyance. She disliked the idea of telling Lady Francis she had changed her mind, and the discussion of the subject. Oh! why had she ever spoken of the subject at all? Why had she telegraphed that she would come?

The painful, reiterated stammering of the piano came to her from above. It seemed of a piece with her own indecision, her own monotonous jealousy.

Suddenly the front door bell rang, and an instant later the footman came in with a telegram, put it on the writing-table, and went out again.

Her telegram! Then she was not too late to stop it. She need not explain after all.

The drawing-room door opened, and Lady Francis' high metallic voice sounded on the landing.

Mary seized up the pink envelope and crushed it in her hand! What? The drawing-room door closed again. The conference with the doctor was not quite over after all. She tore open the telegram and looked again at her foolish words before destroying them.

Then her colour faded, and the room went round with her. Who had changed what she had said? Why was it signed "Elsa"?

She looked at the envelope. It was plainly addressed--"Lord Francis Bethune." She had never glanced at the address till this moment. The contents were in code as hers had been, but it was the same code, and before she knew she had done so, she had read it.

What did it mean? What _could_ it mean? Why should Elsa promise to meet him after the Speaker's Stairs--to-day--at Waterloo main entrance?

Mary was not quick-witted, but after a few dazed moments she suddenly understood. Elsa was about to go away with Lord Francis. But what Elsa? Her heart beat so hard that she could hardly breathe. Could it be Elsa Grey?

As we piece together all at once a puzzle that has been too simple for us, so Mary remembered in a flash Elsa's enigmatical face, and a certain ball where she had seen--only for a moment as she passed--- Lord Francis and Elsa sitting out together. Elsa had looked quite different then. It _was_ Elsa Grey. She knew it. Degraded creature, not fit to be an honest man's wife.

Mary shook from head to foot under a climbing, devastating emotion, which seemed to rend her whole being. The rival was gone from her path. Jos would come back to her.

As she stood stunned, half blind, trembling, a hansom dashed up to the door, and in a moment Lord Francis' voice was in the hall speaking to the footman.

"Any letters or telegrams?"

"One telegram on your writing-table, my lord."

The servant went on to explain something, Lady Mary Carden, etc., but his master did not hear him. He was in the room in a second, and had closed the door behind him. Lord Francis' beautiful, thin, reckless face was pinched and haggard. He seemed possessed by some fierce passion which had hold of him and drove him before it as a storm holds and spins a leaf.

Mary was frightened, paralysed. She had not known that men could be so moved. He did not even see her. He rushed to the writing-table, and swept his eye over it. Then he gave a sharp, low, hardly human cry of rage and anguish, and turned to ring the bell. As he turned he saw her.

"I beg your pardon. I don't understand," he said hoarsely. "Why did my fool of a servant bring you in here?"

Then he saw the open telegram in her hand, and his face changed. It became alert, cold, implacable. There was a deadly pause. From the room above came the acute, persistent stammer of the piano.

He took the telegram from her nerveless hand, read it, and put it in his pocket. He picked up the envelope from the floor, and threw it into the waste-paper basket. Then he came close up to her, and looked her in the eyes. There was murder in his.

"It was in cypher," he said.

She was incapable of speech.

"But you understood it? Answer me. By--did you understand it, or did you not?"

"I did not." She got the words out.

"You are lying. You did, you paid spy. Now listen to me. If you dare to say one word of this to any living soul I'll----"

The door suddenly opened, and Lady Francis hurried in.

"Sorry to keep you, my dear," said the high, unmodulated voice. "Old Carr was such a time. What! You here, Francis? I thought you had gone out."

"I have been doing my best to entertain Lady Mary till you appeared," he said.

"I came to say I'm engaged this afternoon," said Mary. "I can't go with you to your concert."

The footman appeared with another telegram.

Lord Francis opened it before it could reach his wife, and then tossed it to her.

"For you," he said, and left the room.

"Well, my dear," said Lady Francis, "in this you say you _will_ come, and now you say you _won't_, or am I reading it wrong? I don't understand."

"I have changed my mind," said Mary feebly. "I mean I can't throw over the Lestranges. I only ran in to explain. I must be going back now."

Lord Francis, who was in the hall, put her into her hansom and closed the doors. As he did so he leaned forward and said:

"If you dare to interfere with me you will pay for it."