Part 35 (1/2)

”You're going to marry Vivien! I must go--or the door will be locked.” A smile wavered at him in the darkness. ”It's back to the house or into the lake!”

”Swear you'll manage to see me to-morrow!”

”Yes, yes, anything. And--good-bye.”

He let her go--without another kiss. His mind was all of a whirl. She sped swiftly up the avenue. He made for the gate with furtive haste.

Isobel came to a stop. As the shawl had gone once, the letter had gone.

Whither? Had the wind taken it? She had heard no tread, but what could she have heard save the beating of her own heart? No use looking for it.

”Ah, miss,” said the butler, who had just come to lock up, ”so you'd missed it? I saw it blowing about, and went and picked it up. And you've been searching for it, miss?”

”Yes, Fellowes. Thanks. I must have dropped it this afternoon.

Good-night.”

She went in; the hall door was bolted behind her. The letter had served its purpose, but she was hardly awake to the fact that anything had happened about the letter. She had told Harry! The great secret was out.

Oh, such bad tactics! Such a dangerous thing to do! But everybody had a breaking-point. Hers had been reached that night--for herself as well as for his sake. n.o.body could live like this any longer.

Now it was good-night to Wellgood; another ten minutes there--the one brief s.p.a.ce of time in which he played the lover, masterfully, roughly, secure from interruption.

”I can't do it to-night!” she groaned, leaning against the wall of the pa.s.sage between drawing-room and study, as though stricken by a failure of the heart.

There she rested for minutes. The lights were left for Wellgood to find his way by when he went to bed; Fellowes would not come to put them out.

And there the truth came to her. She could not play that deep-laid game.

She could no more try for Harry, and yet keep Wellgood in reserve. It was too hard, too hideous, too unnatural. She dared not try any more for Harry; she had lost confidence in herself. She could not keep Wellgood--it was too odious. Then what to do? To tell Wellgood, too, that from to-morrow there was only Miss Vintry? Yes! And to try to tell Harry so again to-morrow? Yes!

She had sought to make puppets and to pull the strings. Vivien, Wellgood, Harry--all the puppets of her cool, clever, contriving brain.

It had been a fine scheme, bound to end well for her. Now she was revealed as a puppet herself; she danced to the string. The great scheme broke down--because Harry had looked tired and worried, because Wellgood's rough fondness had grown so odious.

”I won't go to him to-night. He can't follow me if I go straight upstairs.” The thought came as an inspiration; at least it offered a reprieve till to-morrow.

The study door opened, and Wellgood looked out. Isobel was behind her time; he was waiting for his secret ten minutes, his stolen interview.

”Isobel! What the deuce are you doing there? Why didn't you come in?”

The part she had been trying to play, and had backed herself to play, seemed to have become this evening, of a sudden on this evening, more than hopeless. It had turned ridiculous; it must have been caught from some melodrama. She had been playing the scheming dazzling villain of a woman, heartless, with never a feeling, intent only on the t.i.tle, or the money, or the diamonds, or whatever it might be, single in purpose, desperate in action, glitteringly hard, glitteringly fearless. What nonsense! How away from human nature! She was now terribly afraid.

Playing that part, which seemed now so ridiculous because it a.s.sumed that there was no real woman in her, she had brought herself into a perilous pa.s.s--between one man's love and another man's wrath. She knew which she feared the more; but she feared both. Somehow her confession to Harry had taken all the courage out of her. She felt as if she could not stand any more by herself. She wanted Harry.

She could not tell Wellgood that henceforth there was to be only his daughter's companion, only Miss Vintry; she could not tell him that to-night. Neither could she play the old part to-night--suffer his fondness, and defend herself with the s.h.i.+ning weapons of her wit and her provocative parries.

”I--I think I turned faint. I was coming in, but I turned faint. My heart, I think.”

”I never heard of anything being the matter with your heart.” His voice sounded impatient rather than solicitous.

”Please let me go straight to bed to-night. I'm really not well.”

He came along the pa.s.sage to her. He took her by the shoulders and looked hard in her face. Now she summoned her old courage to its last stand and met his gaze steadily.

”You look all right,” he said with a sneer, yet smiling at her handsomeness.