Part 30 (1/2)

”It will never be,” I thought over and over to myself as I went down the stairs.

I turned into the dining-room, and flung myself into an armchair and waited there. Everything but Lucia herself was forgotten. My consciousness seemed suspended almost as completely as hers. At last the door opened, and Mrs. Grant herself came in. She started on seeing me.

”You still here, Victor,” she said coldly.

”How could I go?” I murmured. ”Is she better?”

”Yes; she is better.”

Mrs. Grant's face was white and composed, her tones like ice. I saw she was unwilling to trust herself to speak to me even.

”May I not speak to her for one minute?”

”Certainly not. Are you not satisfied with the mischief you have done already?” Her voice shook with suppressed indignation. ”She tells me she has fixed the thirteenth for your marriage. So that is the subject you came to press to-day! I think your conduct is most disgraceful.”

My att.i.tude of mind was--I don't care two d---s what you think.

However, I merely said,--

”I think you do me an injustice. I did not mean to distress Lucia to-day; but what is the use of this sort of thing going on as it has been doing? I have offered to release her from the engagement if she wishes, and in that case, I should go away altogether. I don't see that to keep up our present relations is any benefit to either of us.”

Mrs. Grant's eyebrows relaxed a little.

”Perhaps you are right, Victor,” she said, with a sigh. ”Only we must be careful, or we shall lose her altogether.”

Her voice shook now with something that was not anger. I held out my hand.

”I will come in the evening,” I said, gently, ”to hear of her if I cannot see her. May I?”

Mrs. Grant smiled, we shook hands, and I went out. I walked absently up the pavement, and then stood looking out as absently for a hansom. Now I had pushed matters to the point, I had not delayed nor put off action in this case, and I had attained the object with which I had come, but somehow I did not feel so satisfied as I had antic.i.p.ated I should when I came away victorious.

Things were so different now from what they had been a year ago, and as I stood there looking up and down for a crawler, above the noise of the London thoroughfare, her own words to me in Paris rang with terrible distinctness, that prophecy wrung from her in the agony of her woman's longing--”I shall never be your own.”

I almost believed it now.

”Looks like it,” I thought, as I hailed a coming crawler and got in.

I said nothing to the man, but I suppose he had noted my glance at my watch before I got into the cab, and, in the hopes of an over-fare, he began las.h.i.+ng his horse across the head and neck. It was this that roused me out of a gloomy reverie, and I pushed up the trap.

”If you touch that animal again I'll get out,” I said, angrily, as the poor brute tossed his head from side to side.

”Beg pardin', sir! Thought you was in a 'urry, sir!” came through the roof.

”Drive decently, and don't think,” I muttered, relapsing into my own thoughts, cutting as the lash on the chestnut's neck.

I had stopped the lash, but I could not stop my thoughts. After dinner that evening I went to see her again. In this I did not succeed. I was told she had already gone to bed, but she had left a message for me, and not a word was said about rescinding the promise that had been forced from her in the morning. On the whole I went away satisfied and relieved.

”She will be all right,” I thought, ”now she has once made up her mind.

It is extraordinary; women seem to have as great an aversion to forming a decision as children have to taking medicine.”