Front matter (continued 2)

Nell the cat and her kitten were playing on the floor of the salle, and the little bride slipped on her knees beside them to bid them an affectionate and tearful farewell. Nell's kitten had an untidy habit of dragging any plaything it could find from one room to another about the house; as she caressed it, Laline remembered that her three keys on a little piece of string were among the kitten's favourite toys, which might account for the fact that they were at this present moment nowhere to be found.

On consulting Bénoîte, the latter declared that she had seen the "le p'tit chat" amusing itself with some keys on the floor of the salon that morning; but, as she never meddled with anything of Monsieur's, she had not rescued them. Clearly the salon was the place to search for the missing keys, and with that idea Laline turned the handle of her father's den.

The two men were sitting by Garth's desk with their heads bent over a paper; close at hand stood the cognac, a syphon, and two well-filled glasses. They seemed absorbed in the contents of the paper before them, and did not hear Laline's timid turning of the handle of the door. Before, however, she had opened it sufficiently wide to enable her to enter, some words, loudly spoken in her bridegroom's voice, arrested her attention, and made her suddenly stop as though turned to stone.

"You've only got to alter the date of the certificate from the thirtieth of August to the thirtieth of July, and the thing is done. I wrote to my uncle that I was married and that my wife was starving just twenty-four days ago. I didn't say how long I'd been married; and, as I landed at Marseilles in the middle of July on my way to Paris, I should have had plenty of time to get on here and through the ceremony by the thirtieth. Of course, Laline doesn't look as if she were starving, though I think you've kept her pretty short in the matter of food. But, if she's only sea-sick, she may look woebegone enough for the character!"

"Your difficulty will be," said Garth, "to persuade her to back you up in those few little necessary lies. For one thing, I have stated her age as seventeen; for another, she must be made to understand that she's been married a month, and has been starving in Boulogne for some days. But your toughest job will be to induce her to state that she's the orphan daughter of a clergyman, and that she met you coming home from Australia. It's almost a pity to have left all these very important details to the last moment."

"It's all the fault of that humbugging training of hers," growled Armstrong. "But I'm not going to let any whimpering school-girl spoil my prospects. Laline's my wife, and she's got to obey me. I shall impress upon her that my uncle, who is very particular, would never forgive me for marrying the daughter of such a man as you, ex-keeper of a gambling-club, where I got fleeced and ruined five years ago,—a man who daren't show his face in England; and I shall assure her that I invented this story of a dead parson-father in order to spare her natural feelings."

"Stop a bit!" exclaimed Garth, whose flesh-tints had deepened from crimson to purple while Armstrong was speaking. "I draw the line at that. It's bad enough to be deprived of my daughter's companionship; but I won't have her mind poisoned against me; understand that! You can tell her that I am connected with the turf, as I suggested before, and that your uncle has a Puritanical horror of horse-racing. But I won't have my memory blackened in the mind of the only kith-and-kin I have in the world!"

"I shall arrange it as I said!" said Armstrong obstinately, while he helped himself to more brandy. "You've sold me your daughter for a hundred a year, to be afterwards raised on two separate occasions. You wanted money, and so did I. Both of us were stone-broke. I wrote to my uncle, pretending I had a starving wife; he took me at my word, and promised to forgive me and provide for me if I would produce her. It was necessary to find a wife immediately, and desirable that she should be too young or too silly to ask questions. I settled on your daughter. The bargain was struck, and she passed from your keeping to mine, having filled her very proper mission of providing us both with money. But, now that she is mine, and I have saddled myself with a lanky, half-fledged school-girl, you have no more part in her, and I shall speak to her of you or of anybody else in just what terms I choose!"

"My daughter is my daughter until she leaves my roof, at least!" cried Garth his patience suddenly deserting him. "I'm sick of your bullying, blustering, hectoring ways! The settlement as to my future income is all signed and sealed and witnessed, and what is to prevent me from informing Laline of your true character before she leaves this house? What authority would you exercise over her if I told her your record? A gambler, a drunkard, a bully, and a forger, who has only escaped a felon's cell by the leniency of an uncle, who shipped him off to Australia in order to get rid of him!"

Captain Garth rose while he spoke, and made as though he were approaching the door, when, suddenly, Armstrong sprang from his seat with a smothered oath, and caught him roughly by the shoulder. Just for one moment Laline, gazing with distended eyes through the crack of the door, saw them, the faces of both excited and angry—Garth's with a red rage of indignation, and Armstrong's with a white cruelty which was infinitely more dangerous. Then, as the two men struggled, the sound of scuffling commenced, drowning Laline's flying footsteps, and enabling her to gain the staircase and her own apartment unseen and unheard.

One only idea filled her mind—to escape at that instant from both these men; and the strange lucidity of thought which comes to some emotional natures at moments of high tension seemed suddenly to make clear to her ways and means.

It was only a few minutes past eleven; she had heard the church-clocks chime the hour while she listened at the salon door. The Folkestone boat did not leave until ten minutes past two; if Armstrong and her father had their luncheon served to them at twelve, they would not think of her until past one. She would tell Bénoîte that she was going to call upon some friends before leaving Boulogne, and that she would be back in time for the boat; she would lock her bedroom-door and throw away the key in order to still further delay pursuit. But then—where was she to go?

All her thoughts and wishes pointed to England. And yet where in her native country was she to make her home until she could find means to earn her own living, as she had so long desired to?

Her uncle, the clergyman in Sussex, had held no communication with his sister since her marriage with Randolph Garth, and only as a last resource could Laline entertain the idea of seeking shelter under his roof. But there was a much-loved school-friend of the late Mrs. Garth, a widow named Melville, whose constant and affectionate letters had been much looked forward to by the little household in the Westmoreland village. Her messages to her old friend's little daughter had been of the kindest description. She kept a girls'-school in Norwood, and Laline remembered her address; but since her arrival in Boulogne she had had no communication with Mrs. Melville, who, Laline realised, would be shocked by the Bohemian mode of life in the Rue Planché.

Laline had not seen this lady since she was a very little child; but she remembered her as kind, and believed that, for her dead mother's sake, Mrs. Melville might be induced to help her, and to Mrs. Melville's protection Laline resolved to fly.

There was no time to be lost indeed. The girl could hear men's voices in angry discussion below. England must be reached as speedily as possible; and yet to travel by the Folkestone boat was clearly out of the question. The Calais route was shorter, if Laline could only get to Calais; and by that journey she would arrive in London more than hour before her pursuers, should they even guess that she had escaped thither.

Providentially, she recalled the fact that the train from Paris to Calais stopped at Boulogne for a few minutes before proceeding on its journey at a quarter to twelve o'clock. Laline's mind was at once made up; and in less time than it takes to tell it she had seized her cloak and gloves, locked her bedroom-door, slipped the key in her pocket, and astonished Bénoîte by darting into the kitchen and whispering a hurried message in her ear before leaving the house by the way into the Rue St. Denis.

Her entire worldly wealth consisted of one franc and fifty centimes; but her father's chronic impecuniosity had taught Laline the method by which the poor and improvident raise money, and, with a beating heart and a hot flush on her cheek, Laline stopped on her way to the station to change the two rings which Armstrong had given her, the turquoise and diamond engagement-ring, the hated wedding-ring, together with her much-loved mother's watch and chain, for money wherewith to buy her freedom.

For it seemed to Laline that she would be free of the horrible, loveless bargain which her marriage had been could she but tear from her finger the gold circlet which Wallace Armstrong had an hour ago placed there, could she but put the sea between herself and him, and, losing herself in the vastness of London, change her name and live out her life away from him and his evil influence.

Her heart was full of the most passionate indignation against both him and her father; of the latter, indeed, she hardly dared to think, so deeply did she resent his treatment of her; but of Armstrong she thought with a growing fear and horror, which dwelt upon the brutality of his speeches and the cruelty of his expression, until he seemed to her to be scarcely human. Rather death than a return to the care of either of those men! Terror lent wings to her feet, until, breathless, panting, but with a great sigh of relief, she jumped into the already moving train for Calais.

Fortune favoured the runaway. The passage was smooth enough under a gray, lowering sky, and Laline's heart leaped within her at sight of the white cliffs of her native land in the afternoon. Before six o'clock on that eventful day the Dover train steamed into Charing-Cross Station, and Laline Armstrong stepped out upon the platform, a slim, girlish figure, alone and friendless in the great city of London.

CHAPTER VII.

On a winter afternoon in London, rather more than four years after Laline's flight from Boulogne, a beautiful young woman stood in the ground-floor sitting-room of a London lodging-house, poring over the advertisements headed "Wanted" in a daily paper.

To the owner of the house, who was a relative of her old friend Mrs. Melville, of Norwood, this young lady was known as Miss Lina Grahame; but the reader has already made her acquaintance as Laline Garth, who, on a certain rainy morning in Boulogne, became the bride of Wallace Armstrong.

For four years Laline had earned her living in the girls'-school kept by her mother's old school-fellow—four well-occupied uneventful years, spent in the schoolroom, the dormitory, the Crystal Palace, and walks in the neighbourhood of Norwood, looking after the younger pupils, teaching French to the elder ones, preparing and correcting lessons and studying for examinations, with the duties of every hour in the day well-defined and clear, a healthy but monotonous life of gray routine and unchangeable discipline.

And now, at the age of forty-two, Mrs. Melville, Laline's employer and friend, had been carried off to Canada by a cousin and old sweetheart, who, finding himself at the age of forty-five a well-to-do widower, with four young children, had bethought him of that eminent instructress of youth, his widowed cousin, and in a very practical letter had proposed to come over to England, marry her, and take her back with him to Canada to look after his household and his children.

Such an offer, in the eyes of a buxom business-like woman of forty-two, was too advantageous to be refused. Mrs. Melville thought so; and, after speedily disposing of her house and selling the scholastic good-will and name to her senior teacher, she married her cousin with the utmost composure, and dutifully accompanied him to his Canadian home in order to undertake the mental and moral education of her four step-children.

To her junior governess, Miss Lina Grahame, Mrs. Melville gave on parting a travelling-clock, an ivory-bound prayer-book, and some excellent advice.

"I have only one fault to find with you, my dear," she had said, kindly—"you are too pretty. It grew to be quite awkward sending away the foreign masters because they made themselves silly about you, and the pupils noticed it. No—I don't tell you to cut your hair off or to wear blue spectacles; but I do say that I am not surprised that Miss Finch doesn't want to keep you on with the school, although you have such nice ways with the children and such a good French accent. I have myself been a very successful teacher—but then I have always been plain. Now, although it goes against the grain to say it, for a girl with your appearance I suppose that the most desirable profession is marriage."

Laline had suddenly flushed at Mrs. Melville's words, and then burst into a peal of laughter.

"Now, Mrs. Melville," she had cried, "that comes very oddly from you, who are just marrying for the second time! And I have often told you that it is useless to talk like that to me, as I shall never marry."

This parting conversation recurred to Laline as she turned over the advertisement-pages of the papers on this wintry afternoon in search of a suitable scholastic engagement.

"I wonder," she reflected, "that all those years I never let out that I was really married in talking to Mrs. Melville. I often felt strongly tempted to tell her, but that it seemed impossible that just a visit to a Consul's house, and some mumbled words, and a ring which I never wore, can mean a tie for life. It is not as if it had been in a church, and I had gone through a proper religious ceremony, with some kindly-faced clergyman to utter the beautiful words I know. I should have held that to be binding; but as to this, it all seems now like an incident in a half-forgotten dream. And yet I suppose that, if Wallace Armstrong is not dead, I really am his wife, and shall be as long as he and I both live. Yet if he saw me now he would not know me, and I think I should hardly recognise him. It seems absurd. Luckily I have never been the least little bit in love, and do not mean to be, except in day-dreams and with wholly imaginary persons. I never felt anything, I know, when Monsieur Marchand and Herr Pfeiffer got sentimental about me. I suppose they behaved like that just because I was what Mrs. Melville called pretty. She thinks my looks will stand in my way; she would have been amused at my impudence in answering yesterday this advertisement, which I see is inserted again to-day."

And, with her soft eyes sparkling with fun, Laline read over the somewhat remarkable insertion to which she had replied.

"Wanted, as companion and amanuensis to a lady, a well-educated young girl, refined and beautiful, of high character and gentle birth. Apply by letter, enclosing photograph, to Occult, Box 72,631, advertisement-office, Daily Post."

"Occult, whoever she may be, must be rather mad," Laline decided. "But I haven't a doubt that she will get dozens of answers. I wonder what she is like? There is an originality about the advertisement which is fascinating; and to be a companion and amanuensis sounds much nicer and more vague than to be teacher in a school."

At that identical moment the repeated double-knock of a telegraph-boy resounded through the hall. Then came a tap at the door of Laline's sitting-room, and a slatternly little servant entered and presented a telegram addressed to "Miss Grahame."

The message ran thus:—

"Re Occult's advertisement. Come at once to 21, Queen Mary Crescent, Kensington. Photograph and letter approved."

It was with excitement not unmingled with a curious sense of trepidation that Laline got out of a hansom cab, the driver of which had had considerable trouble in discovering the narrow cul-de-sac turning which led to St. Mary's Crescent—a row of old-fashioned houses, mellowed by age and smoke to a deep crimson colour. Near them waved the tall trees of Kensington Gardens, and before their narrow green-painted doors two steps led to a walk three feet wide and a stone-paved yard, over which the wheels of Laline's cab clattered noisily, awakening the protests of more than one pet-dog from the quiet houses into which the noise from the busy thoroughfare of the High Street came only as a distant and soothing murmur.

As Laline laid her hand on the knocker of number seven, she became suddenly embarrassed as to the name of its occupant. Could she ask for Miss or Mrs. Occult?

"I have come in answer to a telegram about an advertisement," she finally announced, as the door was opened by a neatly-dressed parlour-maid, and Laline found herself in a very small square hall dimly lighted by an oil-lamp, and furnished with tapestry-hangings and two oak settles of old-fashioned make.

The servant opened the door of a room to the right of the entrance, and asked the visitor to step inside. Almost at the same moment a young lady darted down the staircase into the hall, so swiftly and suddenly as to suggest the idea that she had been on the watch for the visitor, and joined Laline at the door of the room into which she was being shown.

"It is my aunt who has sent for you," the new-comer whispered confidentially to Laline, after carefully closing the door behind her; "and I do hope she will engage you! The moment I saw your face at the door I took such a fancy to you!"

The speaker was a girl of apparently Laline's own age, well developed, and of medium height, with curiously lithe feline movements. Her dress, of yellow-green serge, was loosely draped about her and caught here and there by silver buckles, her skin was white as paper and framed in an untidy halo of silky yellow-red hair. Regular features, oddly-gleaming green-gray eyes under pale-yellow lashes, and narrow curved red lips completed an ensemble which to Laline was at once repellent and attractive.

"If this was the niece, what would the aunt be?" she asked herself, fascinated by the strange brightness of the girl's eyes. But, as Laline gazed, her new acquaintance suddenly lowered her white eyelids, and the trick struck the other as affected and insincere.

The same cat-like quality which characterised her movements was shown also in her voice, which was marked by a purring and caressing intonation.

"Do you know who my aunt is?" she asked.

And then, as Laline shook her head, the red-haired girl enunciated her aunt's name with much impressiveness.

"She is Mrs. Vandeleur—Mrs. Sibyl Vandeleur."

The name meant nothing to Laline, but she saw that the red-haired girl expected her to be struck by it, and she hastened to explain her unmoved attitude.

"I know nothing of London celebrities," she said; "I have not lived in London since I was a child."

"Oh, that accounts for your not having heard of her!" said the other, evidently disappointed. "My aunt is extremely well known; and I should have thought that, to any one who reads the papers——"

"But I don't read the papers!" put in Laline. "I have never had time."

The other girl drew back her head, and appeared to be studying her.

"How delightful!" she murmured, sympathetically. "I should like to be like that—it leaves so many things to be found out. You have lived all your life at Norwood, haven't you?"

The question was asked with such point-blank directness, but, at the same time, with such an appearance of spontaneous simplicity, that Laline was a little taken aback. With the strange intuition which she had retained from her childish days, she already distrusted the apparent friendliness of this picturesque stranger, and she accordingly framed her answer in vague and reserved tones.

"I have lived for a part of my life at Norwood," she answered.

"At a girls'-school? That must be a dull life, but nice and restful for the nerves. Have you any nerves? This house is the worst possible place for you if you have."

The last words were uttered in a very low voice, after a quick glance round the room.

"I don't think I am particularly nervous," Laline replied.

"But you look nervous," remarked the red-haired girl. "Those delicate faces, with pale-pink skins and dark eyes and auburn hair, are always the nervous ones. Now I am colourless and lymphatic, so this house doesn't hurt me!"

"And why is it likely to hurt me?" inquired Laline, calmly.

"Hush—don't talk so loudly! I liked your face so much that I thought I ought to speak to you just to put you on your guard!"

She glanced round her again, and, drawing nearer to Laline, breathed rather than spoke in her ear—

"Are you afraid of ghosts?"

Before Laline could answer, a thin but silvery voice broke upon the silence, and caused the red-haired girl to start guiltily from her companion's side.

"Go to your room, Clare—I wish to speak to Miss Grahame alone!"

Without a word Clare stole away, leaving Laline tête-à-tête with a lady whom she rightly judged to be "Occult," otherwise Mrs. Sibyl Vandeleur.

Standing before the picturesque background of dark-red plush curtains which draped the folding-doors through which she had entered, Mrs. Vandeleur appeared to Laline one of the most picturesque figures she had ever seen. Rather under the medium height, and of extreme thinness and fragility, she looked more like a spirit than a woman, an effect heightened by her powdered hair, dressed loosely and high upon her head, her piercing, dark eyes, ivory-white skin, and the soft silvery-gray draperies swathed round her slender form. In her thin hand she held a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, the handle of which was thickly encrusted with turquoise and garnets in an old-fashioned gold setting, and through these she peered in a bird-like manner at Laline, with her head poised a little on one side.

"What is your name," she asked—"your full name, given you at baptism?"

The terms of the question rather disconcerted Laline, and there was a perceptible hesitation in her voice as she replied—

"I am called Lina Grahame."

"That is not your real name!"

"It is the one by which I am known."

"That means," said Mrs. Vandeleur, putting down her eye-glasses and tapping her thin fingers with them, "that you have reasons for concealing your identity?"

"I had at one time, Mrs. Vandeleur, and I have now got used to the names of Lina Grahame, to which I have some right!"

"The surname was a family name?"

"Yes!"

Grahame was indeed the maiden name of Laline's mother, and the girl was startled and interested by Mrs. Vandeleur's surmise.

"I was often called Lina as a child," she added, quickly, to forestall Mrs. Vandeleur's interrogatories.

"The mystery concerns a man," said the little lady in gray, peering again at Laline through her gold-rimmed glasses. "And yet your face——Take off your glove—no, the left hand—and let me look at your lines!"

Laline obeyed. As she did so, with startling distinctness there flashed back upon her memory a similar scene in which she had taken part more than four years ago. In her mind's eye she saw it all again—the hot stirless afternoon in mid-August, the sun's rays shining over a long stretch of gleaming sand and peeping under the straw hat-brim of a big black-haired Englishman with insolent, bright blue eyes. By his side sat a thin over-grown girl of sixteen, listening in rapt silence while he told her fortune by the lines of her hand, and prophesied that all her life through she would be haunted by the influence of a stronger will than hers, and that, before the age of seventeen, she would marry a man who would never cease to dominate her life until death should part them.

Half dreamily, with her thoughts elsewhere, she began to listen while Mrs. Vandeleur, in a level, monotonous voice, as though speaking words dictated to her rather than spontaneous utterances, began to repeat aloud what she professed to read in Laline's hand.

"Early in your life," she murmured, "you were subjected to strangely-opposing influences. Your career has been unlike that of girls of your age. Let me look at your eyes; the light is bad, and I am near-sighted but, before I see them, I will tell you their colour—it will be that of the darkest hazel-nut, a mossy green, with red-brown lights here and there. Do you dream much and vividly?"

"Constantly. And by day as well as by night, I am ashamed to say!" Laline answered, laughing. "I am a born dreamer."

"You are just the person I want!" exclaimed Mrs. Vandeleur, a touch of restless excitement showing itself in her voice and manner. "My niece Clare cannot dream. A dreamer—a day-dreamer—must have a pure white soul, must be untouched by the world, and far above all monetary considerations. What is your age? I could find out by your hands, but I know that I can believe your words."

"I was twenty last August."

"You look younger; you have not yet lost your child-mind. You have never been in love—oh, I know you haven't—you need not tell me!"

"I have certainly never been in love with any one alive."

"That means that you have had ideals, and have loved them in dreams and waking fancies?"

"Sometimes."

"Keep your ideals for your dreams, child, and love them there. In real life you will never meet them. There is but little ideality in end-of-the-century Englishmen. We read the old fairy-tale of the Briar-Rose Princess, and are glad that she awakes at the Prince's kiss. But she was much happier dreaming. In her dreams he and she would never grow old, would never fall sick, would never tire of loving, would never die: autumn winds would never blow down summer leaves, or spring flowers wither at the touch of frost. Life is full of sadness, full of disillusions! Only in dreams and fancies can true happiness be found!"

Something in the sadness of Mrs. Vandeleur's sweet voice brought the tears to Laline's eyes. This woman, with her fairy-like appearance and disconnected talk, her pretensions to sibylline magic, her ready intuition, quick observation, and random guesses at truths she could not know, possessed an undeniable fascination, to which older and more experienced brains than Laline's were wont to succumb. The girl felt that she had met a friend, and one wholly in sympathy with an especial side of her nature; and Mrs. Vandeleur, for her part, had discovered just such a personality as she required, sensitive, impressionable, yet maidenly, reserved, and proud.

"You will make your home here with me, of course," she said, patting Laline's hand. "Bring your things here directly; your room has been waiting for you a long time. Fifty pounds a year and all your expenses. You won't find it too much, for I shall want you always to be picturesquely dressed; but come to me when you require more, and you shall have it. No—I ask no references. Your face and your hand are sufficient references for me. I shall study your hand when I mean to know more. One thing I have learned from it already: in the troubled time before you will want me as a friend—you will come to me for counsel, and I will give it."

CHAPTER VIII.

Laline dined that evening with Clare Cavan, Mrs. Vandeleur's niece.

"Aunt Cissy never eats before people," the latter explained. "She thinks it's a great pity we have to eat at all. She's a dear sweet thing, and I quite agree with her that eating is very mundane; but we can't all of us live on air. Aunt Cissy tries to, but even she can't quite succeed. I call her Aunt Cissy when we are alone because her real name is Cecilia. But since she became celebrated she has taken the name of 'Sibyl,' which is more suggestive of mystery, you know."

There was a veiled sneer in the words which made Laline glance quickly across the table at Clare's face. But Miss Cavan was eating her dinner with a placid countenance untouched by sarcasm, her light-yellow eyelashes veiling her eyes.

"I am perfectly beside myself with delight that aunt has chosen you!" Clare presently remarked. "You have no idea what a number of answers she had to her advertisement. That was through putting in the word 'beautiful.' Such old bags sent their photographs, too, and answers and pictures are still pouring in by every post. Did Aunt Cecilia tell you anything about the nature of your duties?"

"No."

"That is just like her! She is always so vague. Perhaps, when you know all about this house, you won't stay. It's rather uncanny. The only servants aunt can keep are an old Scotch cook, who doesn't know what nerves mean, and the maid who opened the door to you. She stays because she's afraid to run away."

"Afraid?"

"Yes. Aunt Cecilia is a Devonshire woman, and can put a wish upon any one she's vexed with. She leaves the most valuable things about; but though at one time she was always changing her parlour-maids, no one has ever dared to steal anything from her private sitting-room up-stairs. You'll understand why when you've once been inside it."

Clare's white face grew, if possible, a shade whiter as she spoke, lowering her voice to a very subdued key.

"Are you afraid of your aunt too?" Laline asked.

Clare shivered and glanced towards the door.

"Horribly!" she replied, in a very low voice. Then she gave a little nervous laugh. "It sounds absurd to you, doesn't it? But Aunt Cecilia is a wonderful woman! I am an orphan, and she was my mother's younger sister. My mother often told me how Cissy used to terrify her as a child by prophesying things. Well, she has cultivated her powers in that direction until she almost forgets she has a body at all; she is all mind and spirit and that sort of thing, you know! Won't you have some more apple-pie? Aunt Cissy's cook makes such capital pastry, it's a pity to neglect it! As I was saying, my aunt, who isn't forty yet, in spite of her powdered hair, went in for spiritualism and all that sort of thing quite early. She was the seventh child of a Scotchwoman and a Devonshire man, and both my grandparents were dreadfully superstitious. Aunt Cissy was very pretty, my mother told me, in a sort of ethereal way—a figure like yours, I should say, only not so tall and a little thinner—you are so charmingly slender that I feel a great fat thing beside you!"

"I think you have a beautiful figure!" said Laline, simply.

"Oh, it's very sweet of you; but there are too many curves about me! I know I must appear very plump and earthly in Aunt Cissy's eyes. Men like curves, I know; but then I don't care about pleasing men a little bit—they simply bore me when they try to make love to me! Do you feel the same about them?"

"I don't know. No man has ever tried to make love to me."

And then Laline, although she had answered with perfect truthfulness, suddenly blushed, remembering that she was actually a married woman. Clare noted the blush and decided that her new friend was lying.

"I am so fond of women," she proceeded, with apparent enthusiasm. "Men are all very well in their way—I don't mind talking to them for a few minutes; but for a friend, a companion, a confidant, give me a woman. You and I ought to get on splendidly together. We are both orphans—at least, I am an orphan—and your parents are dead, are they not?"

Again Laline flushed deeply.

In truth she had neither seen nor heard anything of her father since that fateful thirtieth of August more than four years ago. But she was by no means inclined to confide in Miss Cavan, whom she admired but instinctively mistrusted; and she therefore contented herself by stating that her mother was dead, and that she had not seen her father for some years.

"How sad!" cooed Clare. "Well, to go back to Aunt Cissy. When she was five- or six-and-twenty she married Mr. Vandeleur, a distinguished man, a good deal older than herself, who held a good government post in India. Out there Aunt Cissy got friendly with Buddhist priests and jugglers and snake-charmers and all sorts of wonderful people, and picked up the most interesting things travelling about the country. After some years of study at occult subjects she found out that Mr. Vandeleur's soul didn't soar high enough to reach the rarified atmosphere she had herself attained, and that comparative solitude was essential to her. So she left him quite amicably in India and came and settled in Kensington, to pursue her studies undisturbed. I believe he had a liver, and was very fond of eating, and had most conservative and orthodox notions. So that altogether he must have been a trial to Aunt Cissy."

"And have you lived here with your aunt ever since?"

"Oh, no," returned Clare, opening her glittering green eyes; "I have only been with Aunt Cissy a few months, since my mother died in Dublin last summer and left me in her care. I am not in mourning, because Aunt Cissy objects to it. She doesn't believe in death, you know! That is one of her notions. She thinks that dead people are all about us in the air, and that, if we keep our spirits sufficiently clear, we are able to see and talk to them. It makes my flesh creep even to think of it!"

"Do you do any work for your aunt?" asked Laline, wondering greatly what the nature of her own duties would be.

"No. I wanted to, but she found me too 'earthly.' That means, I suppose, that I am not skinny enough to please her," Clare added, rather viciously—"at least," she corrected herself, glancing at Laline's slim figure, "I don't exactly mean skinny—I mean spiritual-looking."

Laline burst into a hearty laugh.

"I don't in the least mind being called skinny, I assure you," she said, good-humouredly.

The two girls offered a very marked contrast in appearance. Clare Cavan's startling fairness and pallor, her abundant hair, red by day, but converted by artificial light into a ripe gold, the voluptuous curves of her figure, her aquiline features, almost Egyptian in profile from the sharp outlines of the nose and chin and curled upper lip, her scarlet mouth that constantly smiled, her heavy white eyelids drooping over her brilliant eyes, and complexion "pale with the golden gleam of an eyelash dead on the cheek"—all these items combined to form a most picturesque and unique personality, and a type of beauty certain to provoke discussion and arouse in some keen admiration, and in others a feeling akin to repulsion.

In Laline Armstrong, or "Lina Grahame," as she now called herself, there was no element to provoke spontaneous dislike. A little above the medium height, her girlish slenderness made her appear taller than she really was; but her quick, graceful movements were rather those of a short than a tall person. Her habitual expression was alternately eager and dreamy. Her soft auburn hair, which had grown some shades darker within the past few years, was coiled neatly at the back of her shapely head, and rippled in natural waves above her broad brow. Her nose was short and straight, her mouth rather large than small, and full of charming curves, humorous and tender, her chin was round, and under her level dark eyebrows her eyes, of wonderful depth and darkness, looked out with a wistful intentness, accentuated by the comparative shortness of her vision. When Laline was amused she laughed outright, showing two rows of dazzling teeth; whereas Clare never passed beyond a smile, in spite of her native Irish humour.

In colouring, too, the girls offered a marked contrast. Laline's complexion was of a pinky fairness, varying from cream to a rose-flush in her cheeks, which came and went with the least excitement. Her voice was lower in pitch, and of a more contralto quality than that of Clare, who to the silvery sweetness of Mrs. Vandeleur's tones added a touch of caressing "Irish blarney" in her intonation.

"I should so very much like to help Aunt Cissy in her work!" resumed Miss Cavan. "And it seems rather hard that I can't just because I am rather plump, doesn't it? In evening-dress I am only twenty-two inches round the waist—and that isn't absolutely unwieldy, is it?"

"Not at all," said Laline.

She was beginning to wonder whether she herself would get discharged from her post if she grew any fatter; but she had already decided that in this household she must get used to surprising incidents and alarming statements, so she made no further comment at the time.

Clare was going to an evening "At home" at nine o'clock, she informed her new acquaintance.

"And I shall be so grateful if you will help me to dress and give me your opinion of my frock. It is a deep-red velvet, cut square. Rather daring with my red hair, isn't it? But I think the effect is nice."

Susan, the maid, entered at that moment with a message to the effect that Mrs. Vandeleur would be glad if Miss Grahame would come up-stairs to see her in her study.

"I can't come with you," said Clare—"I've got to dress; and, besides, aunt hasn't asked me. But I shall just pop my head in before I go. I hope she won't frighten you too much! She's dreadfully weird at times; and I believe she drove one of her secretaries into an asylum. Oh, you're not the first secretary she's had by at least a dozen! They've all been too mundane or too unimpressionable, or too illiterate or not beautiful enough, or else Aunt Cissy has sent them quite off their heads and they've been packed off to asylums! Of course she might have saved herself all the expense of a secretary by employing me—indeed, that was poor mamma's idea when she left me in Aunt Cissy's care, and my aunt's idea, too. But, as soon as she saw me, she wouldn't hear of my touching her precious papers and things! However, I am beginning to do her a great deal of good socially by going out and talking of my wonderful aunt, and making people want to consult her; so that I am worth having after all."

Laline was convinced by this speech that Miss Cavan deeply resented her aunt's refusal to employ her as her secretary, and that she cherished a keen jealousy against any other applicant for the post, and would not be loath to warn them away by exaggerating its difficulties and dangers. But Laline's life had taught her self-control, and it was with a firm step and composed manner that she proceeded to the room on the first floor, given up to Mrs. Vandeleur's "studies."

The apartment occupied the entire first floor of the house, which was by no means large. Folding-doors had once filled an archway in the middle of the room, but they were now replaced by hangings of tapestry. Dark oak panelling, mellowed by age, went up to within a few feet of the ceiling, across which the stars in their courses were painted upon a midnight sky, while a frieze of tapestry, which in faded colours and mediæval outlines pictured the "Dance of Death," completed the wall-decoration of the apartment.

The room was full of furniture, chiefly of oak and elaborately carved, and many curious old-fashioned cabinets and cupboards of various shapes and sizes were to be found in the corners and against the walls. A high carved oak mantelshelf was surmounted by a mystical picture, incomprehensible to the uninitiated, but which was named the "Awakening of the Spirit World;" and everywhere, scattered over the mantelpiece, on shelves, within glass-covered antique tables, and in the cabinets about the room, there was a multitude of curios, of old-fashioned charms and relics, of amulets, and metal images of roughly-beaten gold, ornaments from the East, fat little gods in soapstone and ivory, bead fetiches of North American Indians, and delicately-carved skulls and skeletons in German work of the Middle Ages—a heterogeneous collection, to which the superstitions of the entire world seemed to have each contributed their part.

In a deep arm-chair of dark oak, with a high-carved back, the little priestess of the room sat among cushions of Oriental brocade. The chair was so large and the little lady so small and fragile that she seemed to Laline to encamp rather than to sit in it; but the darkened wood formed a most effective background for her pale face and powdered hair. Mrs. Vandeleur was writing at a table littered with papers; but as Laline entered she laid down her pen and put her gold-rimmed spectacles on the table.

"Sit down, child," she said, pointing to a low-cushioned seat near the wide fireplace, furnished with red tiles and shining brass-dogs, upon which logs of wood were burning, it being one of Mrs. Vandeleur's principles to ignore the existence of gas and of coals alike—"sit down, and let me look at you! To-morrow morning you must come to me for money and buy something else to wear. I detest black, and black silk most of all!"

"What would you like me to wear?" asked Laline, smiling.

"White—white in soft folds. There should be no stiff outlines about you; your skin and hair supply the requisite colour."

"But white will get very dirty in London, surely!" Laline objected.

"Not if you have enough white dresses," returned her employer, loftily. "Go to-morrow and buy four, of creamy-white nun's veiling. I will make a sketch to show you how they must be made. Presently you shall have others. I should like to see you in white velvet," she concluded, gazing dreamily at Laline through her jewelled eye-glasses, which she invariably used in preference to her spectacles when not alone or not engaged in writing.

"White velvet would be very expensive, I am afraid," Laline was beginning, when Mrs. Vandeleur cut her short.

"Leave off thinking of money altogether!" she said. "What does money matter? If we can have the necessaries of life—and among them I count beautiful surroundings, which are essential to a woman of my nature—of what use is extra money? Look at my niece Clare. She is forever drawn this way and that by two mastering passions—love of men and their admiration and desire of money. The conflict will spoil her beauty. Already it is so marked in its results that her presence troubles me. The beings by whom in the spirit and the flesh I am surrounded must be without harrowing passions or disturbing longings. Tell me—how does this room affect you? Stand up, look about you, and speak out quite fearlessly."

Laline rose and looked about her. As she did so she became conscious of a singular perfume, faint but penetrating, which filled the air. This arose in part from the many sandal-wood ornaments and receptacles about the room, and also from Mrs. Vandeleur's practice of burning joss-sticks and pastilles.

As Laline afterwards learned, her employer was also much addicted to the use of Eastern perfumes, high in price and difficult to obtain, with which her hair, hands, and clothing were liberally sprinkled. The wood logs, too, seemed to emit a fragrant odour, and the mingled scents gave to the atmosphere a quality peculiar to that room, and with which Laline ever afterwards associated it.

A lamp of ruby glass, suspended by silver chains from the ceiling on the farther side of the tapestry-hangings, supplied light to the farther portion of the room, illuminating feebly the spacious bookcase, the low divans, the corner cupboards, and the tall brazier, which formed its chief furniture. The standing-lamp of Mrs. Vandeleur's writing-table was shaded by amber silk, and, with the two unlit wax-candles in silver stands on her table, gave, but for the dancing firelight, the sole means of illuminating the apartment.

Laline stood for a few seconds gazing about her at the crystal balls, the strange little ebony wands, the framed parchment-scrolls inscribed with cabalistic signs, the heavy volumes in moth-eaten covers, and the many other signs of abstruse and unwholesome studies into the unknown which met her eye. Then she turned slowly, fascinated by the piercing gaze of Mrs. Vandeleur; and, drawing insensibly a little nearer to her, she scanned that lady's face.

"The room is beautiful and interesting," she said, "but it affects me rather unpleasantly. I feel oppressed and stifled, as though a weight had been put upon my heart and I could not breathe. There are so many things about that I do not understand, and some that fascinate but half frighten me. I feel—"

She hesitated, blushed, then stopped outright.

"Go on!" said Mrs. Vandeleur, imperatively.

"Well, it sounds tactless and discourteous, but I feel as if I would rather be on a wide common, with the wind blowing a little rain into my face, than here, and that, if I passed much of my life here, I might grow into an idle, listless dreamer, with all the best side of my nature sent to sleep forever."

"Silly child!" said Mrs. Vandeleur, holding out her little hands and gently drawing the girl down on her knees beside her chair. "But yours is just the temperament I want. My secretary, my companion, who will take down my ideas and clothe them in suitable language, must not be a mere echo of myself. I am at present engaged on two great works. One is to be called Necromancy in the Nineteenth Century, and the other The Occult Vision. With a mind like yours, fresh and untainted by the world, to supplement my own, I can reach higher altitudes of thought. But for this purpose your mind and spirit must be as clear as a rivulet, in which I may read my changing fancies mirrored. While engaged with me on this work, no thoughts of either of those disturbing elements, love or money, must derange your spirit. I can read in your eyes that you are not mercenary; as to love—you have never loved, and yet you are keeping back some secret from the world and from me."

Looking closely into the girl's eyes, Mrs. Vandeleur softly smoothed her forehead with her fingers. Laline was conscious of a sudden and overpowering desire to confide in the weird little lady, which she rightly attributed to the magnetism of the latter's touch and gaze. Disengaging herself by a quick gesture, she rose to her feet, and spoke with ringing earnestness and unexpected decision.

"If I am to help you in your work, Mrs. Vandeleur," she said, "it is of no use to begin by trying to paralyse my will and make it subject to yours. On such terms I could not stay with you. I think your work is very interesting and fascinating, and that you are exceedingly kind. I know quite well that I am very easily influenced on one side of my character; but I have another side, too, or I should not be here now, nor should I have taken my life into my own hands as I did four years ago. As to money, I think as you do. As to love and marriage, they are not for me; they are shut out of my life altogether. I must not think of them either now or at any future time. If I have a secret, it is not one to be ashamed of. Why, then, try to force it from me?"

"I know your secret," said Mrs. Vandeleur, quietly—"you are already married!"

CHAPTER IX.

That night, when Clare Cavan returned at midnight from her reception, she thanked the yawning Susan for sitting up for her, and softly proceeded to the top floor, where were three bedrooms occupied respectively by Mrs. Vandeleur's two servants, and by her niece and her new secretary.

Laline was in bed but not asleep. She lay awake, thinking with interest of her new surroundings. Her work that evening had been writing at the dictation of Mrs. Vandeleur a long treatise concerning second sight. Part of it she had understood, and part had been wholly incomprehensible to her, as she was not yet accustomed to the semi-mystical jargon in which Mrs. Vandeleur clothed her ideas.

Very little more talk of a personal nature had passed between her and her employer. Laline had neither denied nor agreed to the latter's assertion that she was already married, nor had the little lady again alluded to the subject, contenting herself by warning her new secretary against placing any confidence in Clare Cavan, who, she declared, had been born under an opposing star to that of Laline.

It was all very new and fascinating to the imaginative young girl, coming as this experience did after the monotonous drudgery of a suburban day-school, and so much excited had she been by the incidents of the evening that she was fully awake when, at a little after twelve o'clock, a tap at her bedroom door heralded the entrance of Clare Cavan.

Mrs. Vandeleur's niece was shading her eyes with one hand from the light of a candle carried in the other. Her gown of crimson velvet was out very low in the square front, displaying to full advantage the startling whiteness and smooth texture of her skin, and by the candle-light her eyes sparkled like green topazes.

"Do wake up!" she whispered. "I've something most interesting and wonderful to tell you—I'm in love!"

Placing her candle on the dressing-table, she sat in a chair near, and, clasping her hands round her knees, proceeded to purr out her story.

"It was Lady Moreham's reception, as I told you. She goes in for artists and celebrities, and she has an immense belief in Aunt Cissy, and consults her about everything. Artists, you know, always rave about me; they have the bad taste to admire my horrid red hair! But, to explain really what happened last night, I must go back. It's lovely to have at last a girl of my own age to talk to and confide in! You must know that Aunt Cissy gets cards for all private views and that sort of thing; she seldom goes, except to quite the most exclusive; but I use her tickets. I simply adore pictures! Well, about two months ago, I was looking at a lovely fat Paris Bordone lady in an old-master exhibition. I didn't really mean to attract attention to myself, because the lady in the picture had my coloured hair. Do you know Paris Bordone's beauties? They are always fat and white-skinned, in clothes much too tight for them, with red-velvet dresses and pearls in their red hair. Suddenly I heard a voice behind me—a man's voice—say, 'By George, what colouring! The very replica of the picture! She's superb!' Of course, I never thought he could be talking of me; but I turned round and found the man who spoke looking full at me. Such a handsome man! Tall, with a splendid figure, a square jaw, black hair, blue eyes—an Irish combination that I love, though in this case I've learned he gets it from his Highland descent. He stared at me so hard that I could hardly get my eyes away; he was really looking at me so intently that I was quite fascinated. At last I felt I was blushing deeply, and he too flushed. His friend touched his arm, and that seemed to recall him to himself, for he moved away, and I saw him no more that day. It was the strangest thing, for I fell a good deal in love with him on the spot, and somehow felt certain that I should meet him again. So sure I was, that I had my new evening gown, the one I have on now, made just like the Paris Bordone picture simply because I felt convinced that some day he would see me in it. Aunt Cissy would be able to explain the meaning of that sort of feeling. I only know that I felt it."

"And did you never meet him again until to-night?" asked Laline, sitting up in bed, interested, as are all girls, in anything in the nature of a love-story.

"Once only. He was coming out of the South Kensington Museum late on a Saturday afternoon, and I had been shopping in the Brampton Road. He passed quite close to me, and knew me in a moment, as I could see, and I was so disappointed that he did not speak to me."

"How could he," exclaimed Laline, scandalised, "since you are a lady, and, I suppose, he is a gentleman? It would have been an insult which you would have resented."

Clare eyed her curiously under half-lowered white eyelids, and began taking the hairpins out of her hair.

"Of course I should!" she answered, after a slight pause. "But he didn't. Then I went to the South Kensington Museum constantly on nearly all the free days for more than a month, until I knew all the cases near the entrances by heart. But I never met him, and I began really to despair until to-night."

"And were you introduced to him?" asked Laline, much interested. Her notions of what was right and becoming in a young gentlewoman had been considerably startled by Clare's confessions; but she was a sympathetic listener all the same.

"As soon as I walked into the room I saw him," replied Clare, triumphantly. "He was watching me all the while I was shaking hands with Lady Moreham; and only a few moments after I could feel rather than see that he was being brought up to be introduced by Miss Moreham, who was helping her mother to receive. He had asked to be introduced to me, as I knew he would. And fancy! I had supposed all the time that he was only an artist, but I learned that he is in a very good position, and will have heaps of money some day. Isn't that delightful?"

"Why?"

"Why? Because I adore him! His eyes are perfectly lovely—they sparkle like blue stars! And he has a trick of listening very attentively when one is talking, and just drawing his black eyebrows together while he stares hard at one's face, which is irresistible!"

"And is he in love with you?"

"Of course he is! He fell in love with me the first moment he saw me."

"Did he tell you so?"

"Do you think one requires to be told that sort of thing?" inquired Clare, disdainfully. "He looked it—that was enough. Before I left, Miss Moreham contrived to compliment me on my conquest. She told me that he is next of kin to one of the richest men in London."

"And what will your aunt say?"

"Oh, there is nothing that aunt would like better than to see me safely married to somebody with money! That is why she buys me nice clothes, and sends me to 'At homes' and dances and private views. She wants to get me off her hands. In spite of her dreaminess, you'll find later on that there's a lot of the wisdom of the serpent about Aunt Cissy."

"Shall you tell her about this?"

"I shall have to, for he's going to call either to-day or the next day. He has heard a great deal about aunt, he said, and is very anxious to know her, as he is awfully interested in all about palmistry and divination and that sort of thing. It is my belief that he's going to consult her as to our future lives. Oh, I shall never sleep to-night! I feel so terribly excited! I love his voice; it's deep and sweet, with a certain firmness; and, when I gave him my hand in saying 'Good-bye,' he didn't give a conventional handshake, but held it tight a long time. I hadn't the heart to draw it away, as I dare say I should have done. It made me thrill all over. I shall simply count the minutes until I see him again!"

There was no doubt in Laline's mind as to her companion's sincerity. Clare's eyes shone with a tender, reflective light, which marvellously enhanced her beauty; and when at last she left off talking of her conquest and retired to her own room, it was with the avowed intention of dreaming of her new admirer.

Laline for her part lay awake for a long time after Clare's departure. Just the least little pang of regret, which, however, was far removed from envy, shot across the young girl's heart as she reflected that her position in life would always be that of confidant and never of principal in love-affairs. How short a time it had taken that journey in the fiacre in the rain to the house of the English Consul; and yet the effects of that one half-hour were to be stamped upon her entire life! Of her father she often thought, sometimes with anxiety not untouched by self-reproach. She did not wish ever to see him again, nor could she school herself to forgive the callous greed with which he had designed to make a bargain of his motherless child. But he was her father—her mother had once loved him; and Laline often wondered how he had weathered the rain-cloud of debts and difficulties which had gathered over his head.

But of the man whom that same fateful visit had made her lord and master Laline hardly ever thought at all. Her life at Norwood had been too busy to allow her to indulge either in recollections of the past or dreams of the future, and in the three short weeks that she had known Wallace Armstrong she had seen so little of him that it was not surprising if her memory of him had become blurred and indistinct. The fact that he too was bound for life to a lost mate had hardly ever occurred to her; the bond was of his own choosing, and a man who, according to her father's accusations, was a forger and a cheat, might well be expected to ignore any ties which brought no profit to him.

But to-night for the first time the idea of this detested husband, this man who, in order to secure for himself an income, had married an ignorant child, for whom he cared nothing, that a lie might be turned to a truth and a victim provided, haunted Laline's wakeful spirit. She was as yet too young and too entirely fancy-free to lament with any bitterness the lifelong loneliness which Wallace Armstrong's selfish action had entailed upon her. But something in Clare's joyous description of her new love-affair recalled with painful clearness to Laline the fact that she herself was set apart from all other girls, and that never to her ears would a man's lips murmur words of love.

"I can't understand Clare's nature," she said to herself, as she lay with wide-open eyes fixed upon the darkness. "Of course I must never let myself grow fond of any man, but if I were as free as she and really cared, I could not speak of it to a stranger, and especially a stranger I did not like! And I feel sure that Clare doesn't like me, in spite of her friendliness, and that she is very jealous of me with her aunt. Life in Queen Mary Crescent will be much more difficult and complicated than it was at Norwood. But this house is very quiet, at least, and no one will dream of seeking for Laline Garth in Mrs. Vandeleur's new secretary Lina Grahame."

With this soothing reflection, Laline fell to sleep, only to awaken in terror as early morning was breaking under the influence of a disquieting dream. It seemed to her that she was transported to the gates of an earthly paradise, a garden of enchanting beauty, where she wandered at will over mossy sward, breathing moss-laden air and listening to music of a more than earthly sweetness, music that seemed to whisper of love. Suddenly, as she was giving herself up to the full delights of the scene, a loud and brutal laugh sounded close behind her, her arms were seized and loaded with chains which cut into her flesh, and when she awoke and sprang up in bed with a stifled scream, weeping and trembling, she could still hear ringing in her ears the words of her captor—

"You belong to me! I am your husband!"

Too terrified to go to sleep again, Laline lay awake until the morning, and the unpleasant impression remained so strong that when she came down to breakfast her unusual pallor excited Clare's comments.

"You look as though you and not I had been up late last night," Miss Gavan said. "I am always white, so that I don't look any different to-day. You don't seem to have any appetite. What is the matter?"

"Nothing. I've only had a horrid dream!"

"Oh, you must tell Aunt Cissy! She is great on dreams, and knows what everything in them means. People come from tremendous distances to consult her about their dreams. What was yours all about?"

"Only silly fancies. This morning I want you to tell me where I ought to go shopping. You see I don't know London at all, and I have to order four gowns of white nun's veiling, and something white I must get to wear in the house this afternoon. I have only three dresses—a black silk, a blue serge, and a gray tweed; and your aunt says they all set her teeth on edge, they are so dark and stiff and plain."

"So aunt thinks white is your color?" observed Clare, glancing askance at Laline. "She evidently considers you very candid and unsophisticated."

The words suggested a sneer, but not so the tone; and that morning Clare proved herself invaluable in assisting Laline to make her purchases. She was the right guide on such an expedition, having excellent taste and the advantages of an extremely economical training; and when the girls returned home for luncheon they were both laden with parcels and brimful of good-humour and excitement.

Very early in the afternoon Mrs. Vandeleur drove off in a hired brougham on some mysterious errand connected with her divining powers, leaving a message for her secretary to the effect that she would return between three and four o'clock, and hoped to find Miss Grahame awaiting her in the study. Clare Cavan, in a flutter of anticipation over her admirer's visit, betook herself to her room to put the finishing touches to her hair and toilet, after impressing upon Susan the necessity of letting her know at once if a gentleman should call to see her; and Laline, in the waning light of a wintry afternoon, found herself in the room sacred to her employer's occult studies.

It was too early for lamplight, yet the shadows cast by the dancing flames from the logs looked strange and eerie in that room of spells and charms. Altogether in keeping with her surroundings was the slender form, draped in the soft folds of a tea-gown of creamy-white serge and silk, seated on a low chair by the fire gazing into the glowing wood. Laline felt very nervous that day. Whether it was the result of her dream or the influence of the room she could not tell; but gradually a presentiment gathered in her mind that some momentous crisis in her life was coming nearer and nearer to her at every breath she drew.

Oppressed and over-strung, divided between a longing to fly from the room and a quivering desire to know the meaning of the strange foreboding which hung upon her spirit, Laline rose and began restlessly moving about the room, lightly lifting and as quickly putting down various trifles which arrested her attention. The firelight, glancing here and there, centred and sparkled on a crystal ball which stood on Mrs. Vandeleur's desk. In the magic crystal, Laline's employer had gravely assured her, those of pure hearts and minds, when they knew its secret, could see mirrored the future and the past. Laline raised the crystal in her hands and pored into its depths.

Half mesmerised by so intent a gaze, the memory of last night's dream returned in force upon her mind, thrown out of balance by her agitated nerves and strange surroundings. Mistily, as she looked, she seemed to behold a face she once knew mirrored within the glistening depths of the crystal. But before she could do more than recognise the features of the man she had married, the study-door opened, and a voice, not from dreamland but from reality, spoke the name—

"Mr. Wallace Armstrong!"

CHAPTER X.

At the announcement by the servant "Mr. Wallace Armstrong" the crystal ball fell from Laline's relaxed fingers and rolled upon the floor.

She stood as though paralysed, with her back to the window, through which the last rays of a fast-fading sunset touched her bright hair, making a halo of gold round her shadowed face. Her eyes were lowered; she dared not lift them; dared not meet her husband's gaze; dared not speak lest he should recognise her voice.

Wallace Armstrong, for his part, coming into the dark room, could distinguish little but a tall, slender woman's figure in long white draperies, a figure that neither moved nor spoke when the servant announced him, but stood more like a wraith than a living thing between him and the light. Was it a trick of the celebrated Mrs. Vandeleur, he wondered, to receive strangers in this way? It was certainly original and striking, if hardly calculated to set visitors at their ease.

"Is it Mrs. Vandeleur?" he asked. "I am afraid you dropped something as I came in. May I find it for you?"

As he bent his head Laline looked down upon it, and remembered, with a little quiver of repulsion, how often at the Rue Planché she had noticed his thick curly black hair.

"Here it is!" he exclaimed, at that moment. "A crystal ball. It isn't broken or even chipped. Is it a magic crystal, like the one Rossetti wrote about?"

Still she did not answer, and found, to her horror, that he was looking at her in surprise. Raising her eyes to his in a sudden defiant impulse, she realised at once that Wallace had changed almost as much as she herself had done. For one thing, the heavy dark moustache, which four years ago had shaded his mouth, was close shaved; he wore his hair much shorter than before, and the look of brooding sullenness was gone from his brow. He was now to all appearance as perfectly "in condition," physically and mentally, as before at Boulogne he had been neglected and "run down." Under straight black eyebrows his brilliant blue eyes glanced in searching interested fashion upon the face of the still figure before him; but the old haggard insolence, the old defiance and distrust, seemed to have entirely disappeared from his voice, face, and bearing, and before she had even opened her lips to speak to him, Laline felt that the horror and the hatred of years had already begun to melt away within her heart.

"I hope you will forgive me, Mrs. Vandeleur," the visitor observed, after a short pause, "for my intrusion. But I know so many of your intimate friends very well indeed that I thought I might venture to call, on the strength of the letter from Lady Moreham, which I sent to you by messenger this morning. I hope, by the way, that you received it?"

It was necessary for Laline to speak at last, and in very low tones she informed Mr. Armstrong that Mrs. Vandeleur was out, and that she was her secretary.

Her heart beat so violently as she spoke that it seemed to choke her, and she almost feared that he would hear its throbbing. She had often been told that her speaking voice was one of unusual depth and sweetness, and she dreaded lest he should recognise its tones. But though he inclined his head a little in her direction, the better to catch her murmured words, Mr. Armstrong made no comment upon them, but broke at once into talk upon the different objects of interest about the room.

"May I wait here until Mrs. Vandeleur returns?" he asked; and, when she bowed her head in response, he went on at once with his remarks. "Like a page of old-world romance this room is. One might expect any wonder amid such surroundings. Are you versed in occult lore, may I ask? Miss Cavan, as I understand, admits that it has a kind of terrifying fascination for her."

A light seemed to flash upon Laline. This man, Wallace Armstrong, her husband, was none other than Clare Cavan's rich admirer, to whom she had been introduced on the preceding evening. Why had not some prescience taught her—Laline—who it was that Clare had described as tall and strong, blue-eyed, black-haired, of Highland descent, and next-of-kin to one of the richest men in London!

This man, then, had presented himself at Mrs. Vandeleur's house in the character of her niece's lover, disregarding altogether the ceremony which had bound him, more than four years ago, to a bride who had escaped from him.

As to his gentleness of manner, Laline knew better than to trust to that. Vividly, while he spoke, she recalled Wallace's good-humour and kindness to her friends the children, and the treats he had given them at the pastry-cook's, and afterwards in that memorable drive. All the experiences of those three weeks seemed to crowd back upon the girl's memory, the while Wallace, not unnaturally mistaking her awkward silence for shyness, strove by talking to put her at her ease.

If only Mrs. Vandeleur or Clare would come, she thought, and end this terrible tête-à-tête! She scarcely heeded the words he uttered, so concerned was she in listening for tones in his voice which she could recognise. She had never even asked him to sit down, nor did she dare to ring for lights. So that she was standing just where he had found her on entering the room, with her back to the window and her hands clasped before her, when the door opened noiselessly, and Clare Cavan crept towards them.

"Why, how dark it is!" she exclaimed. "And how stupid of Susan to have shown you up here, Mr. Armstrong! How are you? I must ring at once for the lamp. I had no idea that you were here."

"I think the servant was under the impression that your aunt had returned," said Wallace, as he turned to shake hands with Clare. In an instant Laline made a swift movement towards the door, hoping to escape before he had clearly seen her; but in this design she was circumvented by the sudden entry of Susan, who met her in the doorway, carrying in her hands the upper portion of the tall lamp which usually stood by the side of Mrs. Vandeleur's writing-table.

The light fell full on Laline's face, and quick as thought Wallace Armstrong turned and gazed upon her features thus revealed to him. As though to facilitate his inspection, Susan, lamp in hand, paused by the door to inform Miss Grahame of Mrs. Vandeleur's return; and Wallace Armstrong gazed his fill, and all his life remembered vividly just how her face looked then—the lovely flesh-tints paled with agitation and fear, the soft dark eyes distended, and between the level brown eyebrows two perpendicular lines indicative of worry and distress. Every curve of the parted red lips, of the firmly-modelled chin and long well-rounded throat, he learned by heart in those few seconds, and his eyes lingered with wondering admiration upon her small pink ear, set far back, and enhanced in beauty by the bright hair, almost yellow at this point, which half-veiled the upper portion of its curled outline.

Clare Cavan noted with astonishment and indignation the direction of Wallace's eyes—noted, too, the perceptible start he gave as he first beheld Laline's face in the full light, and the fixed intensity of his gaze. A keen stab of venomous jealousy shot through Clare's heart, and she mentally registered a vow to be even with Laline for having provoked Mr. Armstrong's attention.

Left alone with Clare, Wallace surprised her by making no reference to Laline. He began, on the contrary, at once to talk of the various persons whom they had met on the preceding evening—light desultory conversation, not at all after Miss Cavan's heart, which he continued until the entrance of Mrs. Vandeleur broke up their tête-à-tête.

Wallace Armstrong was a man of considerable determination and strength of character, as might be guessed by the squareness of his jaw and the firm lines of his handsome mouth. He had fully made up his mind this afternoon to please Mrs. Vandeleur, and he succeeded admirably. The genuine interest he took both in her personality and her pursuits made it easy work for him to please her, the more so as the little lady was greatly swayed by the outside appearance of those she met, and Mr. Armstrong's finely proportioned figure, handsome face, and frank and courteous manners were well calculated to satisfy the most exacting of women.

To him the experience was unique and delightful. This picturesque little old-young lady, with her powdered hair, her odd talk and pretensions to hidden powers, her shimmering gray-satin gown redolent of some faint Eastern perfume, her dainty lace frills and cuffs, her small fingers sparkling with diamonds, and her searching dark eyes peering at him from behind her jewelled eye-glasses, Wallace considered a most interesting and delightful personage; while, as offering a contrast to her rococo charm, Clare Cavan, in a tea-gown of sea-green cashmere and silk, her untidy yellow-red hair crowning her alluring white face, appeared to supply just the note of flesh-and-blood actuality which would otherwise have been wanting in the scene.

Clare made tea, and hovered near him as much as possible. Not once did Mr. Armstrong allude to his meeting with the secretary; but he questioned Mrs. Vandeleur closely as to the properties of the crystal which he had seen fall from Laline's hands when he entered the room.

"The story is that only certain special temperaments can discover anything in it, isn't it?" he asked, while he held the ball in his hands and examined it carefully.

"It is a gift," said Mrs. Vandeleur—"a gift given to few. Happily I have discovered a young girl whose mind is so finely tempered that in time she may go very far, very far indeed, in the study of the occult."

"Indeed! May I ask how you came across her?"

"Outsiders would tell you by accident; but my creed does not admit of accident. I put certain words in a public print, and directed them to one particular type of mind. I wanted that especial spirit; I appealed to that, and it came to me as surely as a needle comes to a magnet. That was all."

"But you had heaps and heaps of unsuitable replies as well, aunt," put in Clare, sweetly.

It was by such remarks as this that she daily alienated her aunt's liking more completely; but for reasons of her own Clare did not wish the conversation to turn upon Laline.

"They do not count," said Mrs. Vandeleur, loftily, though with a shade of annoyance on her brow. "The world will always be composed of the two or three who understand and the millions who do not. Suffice it that I found the temperament I required—a creature of perfect purity and truth, unsullied by thoughts of love or money."

"'Her soul was pure and true; The good stars met in her horoscope, Made her of spirit, fire, and dew,'"

quoted Wallace Armstrong, looking steadily in the fire, as though he saw some picture there—a picture, it might be, of a tall and slender maiden, in straight white draperies, with her sweet face lowered and the light making an aureole of her hair.

"Whose lines are those," asked Mrs. Vandeleur, much interested, "and why do you quote them?"

"They are from Browning's 'Evelyn Hope,' and they seemed appropriate to such a woman as you were describing."

"You have seen Miss Grahame, my aunt's secretary, of whom she is speaking, Mr. Armstrong," said Clare, hardly able to control her vexation, but speaking very sweetly. "She was here with you when I came in."

"There was a lady here when I entered, and I supposed that she was Mrs. Vandeleur at first," he answered, composedly; "but she hardly spoke, except to tell me of my mistake, and it was much too dark to see her face."

"I thought you saw her when the lamp came in," observed Clare, innocently. "She is such a nice girl, full of fun, and does so enjoy shopping! I hope you will like the tea-gown I got for her at Baker's this morning, aunt. Lina much prefers stiff tweed or serge tailor-built things; but I knew you insisted upon white dresses and flowing lines for her, so I coaxed her into having them. I don't think I ever saw anybody so fond of sweets; she is quite like a child in a grocer's shop!"

By this artfully-planned speech Clare hoped that she had spoiled the romantic effect of Laline's appearance. "Evelyn Hope" enjoying sweets in a grocer's shop, and with difficulty restrained from purchasing tweed tailor-made gowns, was surely sufficiently prosaic. Apparently Wallace thought so too, for he did not pursue the subject, and the talk presently drifted to palmistry.

"Some day you must tell my fortune, Mrs. Vandeleur," her visitor said.

"A good deal of it I can read in your face," said the little lady, promptly. "You have considerable self-control, but you are capable of going to the greatest lengths of what people would call folly for the sake of one you love. You like many people; you love very few. But where you love, it is a passion, a religion."

He flushed deeply, and then laughed.

"I don't think I am quite so fine a character as you are kind enough to suppose me," he said. "There are no deep tragedies in the daily routine of life at a bank for a rich man's nephew."

"Yet you have had some moving experiences," pursued Mrs. Vandeleur thoughtfully, still scanning him through her eye-glasses—"experiences involving much will-power and considerable self-sacrifice, and making their mark upon your after-life."

"Has Lady Moreham told you much about me?" he asked, quickly.

"I do not need to be told by others what I can read in your face. Give me your hand; now both hands."

She bent closely over first one and then the other for a moment, and then looked up.

"Another's life, another's career is strangely involved in yours," she said. "Your line of fate is hampered by another's. It is an association which will bring you nothing but harm. It still lies within your power to sever it."

Clare Cavan, watching curiously, saw the young man's healthy colour pale and a set look come into his mouth. But he did not speak, and Mrs. Vandeleur continued.

"Just at this point in your career the easy life you have led of late will be utterly changed. Your whole existence will be swerved from its ordinary course, for a new and most powerful element will enter it. From what I can judge, it will be love, the love of a woman."

A triumphant smile flashed into Clare's eyes. She was inclined to place implicit faith in her aunt's prophecies, and had little doubt but that a passion for herself would be the new element introduced into Wallace Armstrong's career. Apart from his monetary position, she was really very much in love with this extremely personable young man, who clearly admired her, and was desirous of getting into her aunt's good graces. Mrs. Vandeleur's Sibylline speeches about his future were therefore profoundly interesting to Clare, who sat supporting her chin on her hands in a picturesque attitude near the fire, listening with all her ears.

"Your love-affairs will bring you a great deal of trouble," pursued the little prophetess. "Or, rather, I should say, your love-affair, for you will have but one."

"Won't she return my affection, then?" asked Wallace, half laughing, but with a note of suppressed eagerness in his voice.

"There will be trouble and partings and evil wrought you by an enemy, until death severs a link and you are free."

Mrs. Vandeleur spoke slowly and oracularly on her last words; she dropped his hands, and, leaning back in her chair, passed her fingers wearily over her eyes.

"I am tired," she said. "But I foresee trouble before you, and I should like to warn you, for I take a great interest in you. Be very wary of your friends. False love and false friendship are Will-o'-the-wisps, to lead you to destruction. Now you must go. I have my work to attend to. But you must come and see me again often, very often, for I like you."

With an imperial graciousness she stretched out her hand, which Wallace lightly kissed, as he felt he was expected to do.

"I am really grateful for your kind forethought about my future," he said, "and I shall certainly come again."

He was not in the least superstitious, and Mrs. Vandeleur's pretensions to omniscience surprised and amused him; but he realised that she was at least sincere in her charlatanism, and that she believed in herself almost as much as she expected others to believe in her. Moreover, she had touched a sore and secret place in his heart in her rambling talk. No one knew better than he how the course of his life for the past few years had been overshadowed by an association of ill omen, so far as his own prospects were concerned, and Mrs. Vandeleur's intuition in this respect impressed him considerably.

Clare Cavan led him down the stairs and opened the street-door for him, looking strangely beautiful with the light from the ruby-coloured lamp in the hall falling on her shining hair and white face, and Wallace turned on the pavement to look back and bow again to her. But Miss Cavan had closed the door, not finding the north-east wind to her liking; and at the dining-room window, close pressed against the glass, watching his retreating figure, was the face of the secretary, Lina Grahame, wearing a look of unmistakable dislike and fear.

"That little old lady with the powdered hair is a witch!" Wallace said to himself, as he pursued his way. "I am already in love, and already in trouble over it."

CHAPTER XI.

That night Laline went to bed with her head in a whirl of emotion and perplexity.

All through the evening she had had to endure the comments of both Mrs. Vandeleur and her niece on the manners and appearance, the character, and the prospects of Wallace Armstrong, and had had to listen, to all appearance unmoved, while the possibilities of his falling in love and marrying were freely discussed.

And all the while she knew that she was his wife, sold by an impecunious father, bought by a penniless husband, unrecognised and forgotten, but his wife none the less in the eyes of the law and the sight of heaven.

She could have laughed aloud when Mrs. Vandeleur gravely stated that Wallace Armstrong was a man of "singular nobility of character, of fine artistic tastes, chivalrous instincts, and a high disregard of mercenary considerations." She could not even join in praise of his good looks.

"I think I have a prejudice against men with square jaws and black hair and light eyes," was all that she said.

But there was a marked constraint in her tone, and Mrs. Vandeleur glanced at her sharply.

"You seem to have taken a dislike against Mr. Armstrong," she said. "It is curious, for his is a nature which should blend perfectly with yours. I should certainly not have thought you had been born under opposing planets."

"I don't feel that I ever want to meet him again!" said Laline, emphatically.

"Above all, dear," exclaimed Mrs. Vandeleur, holding up a warning forefinger, "don't attempt to run counter to such an instinct as that! When your whole spirit seems to rise in arms against a personality, the feeling of repulsion is given you as a token to beware of them; and, if you feel as you say towards Mr. Armstrong, have nothing whatever to do with him!"

"I will take your advice," said Laline, dutifully.

But the oddest little prick of vexation came to her as she spoke. In spite of her dread of her husband, and her terror lest he should recognise in her the lost Laline, she had been strangely interested in him that afternoon. His gentleness and geniality she knew to be a sham, his agreeable manners merely things he assumed and dropped at will. None knew better than she that Wallace Armstrong was a man without honour, principle, or remorse—one who would lie and cheat and drink and swear, who would strike an old man and deceive a friendless girl—a creature in whom no truth was to be found. And yet, in spite of all this, and of the fact that he had entered Mrs. Vandaleur's house in the character of Clare Cavan's favoured admirer, Laline could not rid her mind of a secret hankering to see him again.

After all, he was her husband, although he did not know it. It would be her duty not to let his courtship of Clare go too far. Reveal herself she could not and would not; but she might at least contrive to learn from him news of her father. With such excuses she tried to blind herself to the fact that she wanted—greatly wanted, and yet as greatly feared—to meet Wallace Armstrong again.

The thought of him was ever present in her mind, although neither Mrs. Vandeleur nor Clare could contrive to draw from her another remark concerning him. Her brain was fully occupied with him as she put her head down on her pillow, and it was but natural that he should dominate her dreams, through the whole course of which she fancied herself alternately pursuing and fleeing from her husband.

Life at No. 21, Queen Mary Crescent was an entirely novel experience for Laline. Mrs. Vandeleur breakfasted in her bedroom—a small but cosy apartment on the ground floor, built out at the back of the house, and adjoining the dining- and drawing-rooms. By eleven o'clock she was visible, and Laline was required to read aloud to her, to copy or write at dictation, and to listen to long, rambling accounts of her employer's dreams, her opinions, or her psychic experiences. At half-past one the secretary was sent down-stairs to her luncheon; and from half-past three to half-past six or seven on four days a week Mrs. Vandeleur received visitors by appointment, and was by them consulted as to their past, present, and future.

There was no fixed rate of payment for these interviews; and, but for Clare's insidious suggestions, Laline would have thought that Mrs. Vandeleur cast horoscopes, read hands, and shuffled cards from pure love of necromantic lore. But on this point Miss Cavan undeceived her.

"Of course, dear Aunt Cissy doesn't make fixed charges," she purred, "because she knows its actionable. There's an absurd prejudice against fortune-telling and all that sort of thing, you know, though it's only really wicked when dirty old women do it at the back door! When ladies call on Aunt Cissy, after Susan has shown them into the drawing-room, and you have next gone in and taken stock of them and prepared aunt to receive them, they talk to her about themselves and their characters and their love-affairs, and ask her advice and so on, till she must be perfectly sick of them! And, although she likes the importance of it enormously, divination and all that sort of thing take it out of her dreadfully. So it's only fair that she should get paid well for it. People know that, and, when they go, they slip gold or a cheque under the blotting-book on the writing-table. I peeped in once just before a séance, and saw the ends of several cheques sticking out of the shark's-skin cover of the blotter, and several loose sovereigns on the table beside it, just to give visitors a hint, no doubt. Aunt Cissy only has a mean little allowance from her husband—nothing like enough to satisfy her desire for the beautiful. You can't surround yourself with old oak and old silver and china and curios, and wear the whitest diamonds and the finest lace on two hundred a year. Oh, Aunt Cissy's very rich indeed—or she would be if she didn't waste so much money on knick-knacks and lumber!"

More than once Laline asked herself if she was not tacitly condoning a fraud by accepting her position in the establishment. But it was so clear that Mrs. Vandeleur thoroughly believed in herself, and also so certain that her intuition was little short of marvellous and her advice generally excellent, that Laline could not esteem her less on account of her professional fortune-telling.

Only on very rare occasions was Laline present at the interviews between Mrs. Vandeleur and her clients. The secretary herself, slim and tall, in her straight, white draperies, was a fascinating addition to the little sibyl's household, her pure profile and dreamy dark eyes proving specially attractive to Mrs. Vandeleur's male visitors. Clare Cavan, listening to all that passed between Laline and these latter from behind the plush curtains between the dining- and drawing-rooms, clenched her fists with envy, and could scarcely repress her scorn for a girl who let slip such splendid opportunities of securing valuable presents and the possibility of a brilliant marriage.

"It's aunt's wicked jealousy which makes her forbid me to see anybody who calls on business," Miss Cavan told herself. "That fool Lina snubbed a Russian prince yesterday! If I had been in her place, and he had offered me jewelry, I wouldn't have let him off under a hundred-guinea bracelet. I know as well as she does how to take care of myself; but an offer like that deserves something better than a frigid 'I have no jewels, and I require none! I will tell Mrs. Vandeleur you wish to consult her on your domestic affairs, and will explain by whom you are introduced.' Lina is a prude, or else she is much deeper than I am."

Meantime Clare was somewhat concerned because a whole week had elapsed since Wallace Armstrong's visit. It was true that he had written to Mrs. Vandeleur, asking whether she and her niece and secretary would care to pay a visit to the ancient house over Alexander Wallace's bank, to take tea there with himself and his uncle; but the wording of his letter had been far from satisfactory to Miss Cavan.

"I know how much interested you are in all that is ancient and historical," he wrote, "and I feel sure that, with your vivid imagination and insight, you would people some of the old rooms with occupants long since dead. My uncle, who declares himself too old to pay visits, and who is indeed verging on seventy, is very desirous of making your acquaintance. His early Scotch training inclines him to especial interest in second sight and similar phenomena, and I am certain that you would have many subjects in common. He particularly loves to see bright young faces about him, and would, I know, be delighted to welcome those charming young ladies, Miss Cavan, and your secretary Miss Grahame, under his roof. So that I hope you will be able to fix an afternoon next week on which to honour the old house with a visit."

Mrs. Vandeleur had shown this letter to Clare, whose anger over one portion thereof had been extreme.

"Those charming young ladies, Miss Cavan and Miss Grahame," was the line that especially stuck in Clare's throat. By some means Lina Grahame must be kept away from this visit, which should be made to serve the very desirable purpose of introducing Clare to her future husband's uncle. That Alexander Wallace would take a great fancy to her Clare never doubted. Old men always admired her, her striking colouring and beautifully-rounded figure appealing even to the purblind. And she meant to be a very good niece to the wealthy banker, and a devoted wife to Wallace, so long as she should remain in love with him; and at the present time she did not foresee the possibility of her quick passion waning, as it had done on previous occasions. But Lina Grahame must not be present to spoil her plans; and Clare was greatly relieved when that young lady flatly refused the invitation as soon as it was announced to her.

"I shall ask Mrs. Vandeleur to let me stay at home," she said, while a deep flush spread over her face.

It was not only that she dreaded seeing more of her husband, in spite of the lurking fascination which he exercised over her, but that she felt unequal to the signal hypocrisy of meeting face to face that kindly-natured old Alexander Wallace, whose letter welcoming her as his niece she so well remembered reading in the streets of Boulogne more than four years ago. Naturally truthful and sincere, Laline felt that it would be impossible for her to grasp the old man by the hand and sit at his table, the while she was rewarding his hospitality and friendliness with mean deceit, and that she would be untrue to herself were she to submit to such an ordeal.