CHAPTER XXIII

.

THE DARK GLASS.

“Adrian’s gone,” said Lady Levallion to herself as she woke the next morning. She knew she ought to be glad of it, thankful that he was no longer in Levallion’s house; for which reason, probably, she dragged herself out of bed and thought with blank loathing of the empty day before her; of the women who must be amused; of Levallion, who must not see she missed any one.

“I might as well pretend not to care if Tommy died!” she said bitterly. “For it’s just the same. If I know anything about Adrian, he will never see me again, of his own accord.”

There was a letter on the plate at breakfast, and for one-half second she thought he might have written a bare half-dozen words of farewell to the woman he had meant to live and die with. But the common envelope, the scrawled address, undeceived her. It was a begging letter, and she opened it listlessly, and hardly noticed some scraps of torn pasteboard that fell out of it. But as she read the soiled half-sheet of common writing, Gwendolen Brook nudged Colonel Scarsdale. Lady Levallion’s face was a dull crimson from forehead to chin.

Even Levallion noticed it, as she stuffed the letter into her pocket and gathered up those fallen bits of pasteboard. Noticed, too, that the very instant breakfast was over, she went to her own sitting-room, scarcely waiting to hear the plans for the day. Yet it was not the letter that had brought the blood to her face. That was from the Umbrella, as Tommy had prophesied; and the news in it was late for the market, except that it gave chapter and verse of what Ravenel had only guessed at.

Lady Annesley had turned Adams out, she had lost her savings, was at a farmhouse half a mile off, with no money and--she thought--dying. Would Miss Ravenel come to her, as she could not die with her wickedness on her mind? It was she who had warned Lady Annesley of that wild dream of marriage with Adrian Gordon, she who had shown him Ravenel’s torn Sunday frock on the day of the duchess’ party, and said that as Miss Annesley could not go to the fête for want of a dress, she had gone to the country town with Sir Thomas.

“This is the card Captain Gordon left for you the day you was out,” it wound up. “I send it so you may see it is true. Her ladyship cut his ring off your neck that day you know of, and gave me five pounds to post it to him. I kept the torn card just to have something to hold over her. But she didn’t care, and she turned me off. I’m a dying woman, I feel it. They’ll let me die here; if you’ll come over and say you know me--and, oh, Miss Ravenel, do come and say you forgive me! For I saw you at your wedding, and I wake up at nights and see your face, which was like a dead person’s. I don’t want money, the parish can bury me, only you to say you did not mind about Captain Gordon.”

“I won’t go,” thought Ravenel, laying down the letter.

“She always hated me. She’s only doing this to pay Sylvia out. I couldn’t see her. I won’t let any one tell me things--or pity me,” but even as she said it she knew she would go. She was never a good hater, and the woman was dying--or thought so.

She laid the scraps of card on the table and pieced them together. There was one bit gone. The Umbrella must have left it in her ladyship’s rubbish-basket. But she made out the penciled pitifully guarded scrawl, in spite of the missing corner.

“Dear Miss Annesley”--it ran--“how have I missed you? Didn’t you get my letter? I sail to-morrow, but after mess. Please.”

“Forgive her!” said Ravenel, making sense well enough, for she knew the missing words must have been, “I’ll come back to-night” and “meet me,” because of Adrian’s story of his useless waiting in the garden. “I can’t forgive her. I don’t believe I ever forgave anything in all my life, or forgot, either. I’ll send her money, but I never want to see her as long as I live.”

A sound at the door startled her into saying, “Come in” before she swept the patched card off the table. It was only Levallion, but his face grew gray as he saw her put her arm sharply over the torn card, the scrawled letter. Something that had been on his lips died there, and there flashed up in his mind, like an instantaneous photograph, the memory of Adrian falling in a dead faint under the trees, and the little inarticulate, dreadful cry with which Ravenel had sprung toward him.

“Are you coming out?” he said. “They are waiting for you,” and he went away without waiting for an answer.

Her back had been to the door. She had not seen his face, nor could she dream that outside in the lonely passage he stood for one instant, and hid his worn face in his hands. The next second he threw into a jar of flowers a scrap of penciled card Lady Gwendolen had said sweetly was his wife’s; “Lady Levallion had dropped it.”

“It’s not very valuable,” Levallion had answered, glancing at the scrap, and taking in both sides of it with the quickness habitual to him. But now, when he had seen her poring over some fragments exactly like it, he cursed his quick eyes and Lady Gwendolen. For on one side of the quarter-card was “Gordon--Hussars.” On the other, “I’ll come back to-night. Meet me. ‘A. G.’” No wonder Ravenel had turned red and torn it up.

“Quid pro quo!” said Lord Levallion slowly. “It’s my turn now, I suppose, having taken a wife instead of borrowing one. But I don’t think there’ll be any meeting!” He straightened himself, wearily, and went out shooting as if his heart was not like lead. Somehow, he had lacked either courage or inclination to tell Ravenel what he knew. And she never dreamed he would have listened to the silly, childish story that meant nothing now, except to her and Adrian.

She sent some money to Adams, with a carefully written note to the effect that she knew of nothing she had to forgive, since nothing Lady Annesley or her maid had done had caused her any harm. It was a lie, of course, but there was nothing else Levallion’s wife could say. She breathed freer when it was gone.

But when the shooting-party came home, Levallion’s face somehow worried her. All the softness was wiped off it, and he talked as the old Levallion had been wont to, not the new. She waited for him in her dressing-room till the gong went for dinner, but he never came. And when he passed her in the drawing-room on his way to give his arm to the duchess, she stopped him.

“Levallion,” she whispered, her hand on his arm, “what’s the matter? Aren’t you well?”

“Perfectly, thank you,” he said quietly, but he never looked at her. A sudden gust of wicked temper shook him like a leaf; if they had been alone he would have broken out in questions that would have ended in relief; but here before every one made him shake off her hand as if it had been a snake--to wish the next second that he had kissed her before the whole room.

For as he looked straight before him he met Lady Gwendolen’s amused, insolent eyes, and knew that all he knew she knew also; and his knowledge of it besides. His lordship went into dinner with the cheerful conviction that at forty-seven he had made a fool of himself--before the people! And it did not soften his heart to his wife.

A curious second light, born of strained nerves, made him slip away from the men some ten minutes after the women had left the dining-room. And crossing the hall was what he had expected, Ravenel in a hat and cloak, hurrying to a side door. Levallion’s heart turned over.

“Where are you going?” he said very quietly. But his hand that caught her arm was not gentle.

“To--out--the man’s waiting----” she gasped, utterly terrified. “Levallion, don’t look at me like that! It’s a poor woman who sent for me this morning, and I wouldn’t go. She’s sent again to-day; she isn’t dying, but she must see me. Thought I could go and be back before you came out of the dining-room. The woman knows me, she used to be Lady Annesley’s maid. Look!” she held out a scrawled letter.

But no one knew better than Levallion that any letter might mean anything. He flickered it to the ground contemptuously.

“You have excellent reason to go and see your stepmother’s maid,” he said, careless that he betrayed ill-gotten knowledge. “But I fancy not to-night. You can drive over in the morning. Go back; take off those things; try and remember that if I was blind other people are not.” His low, furious voice carried farther than he knew, to where, on the turn of the staircase, Lady Gwendolen Brook stood breathless with laughter. Having seen the note delivered which sent her hostess from the drawing-room, it had been a delightful way of passing time to follow her. But she had not anticipated anything so amusing as this.

“Levallion,” said Ravenel, “you’ve no right to speak to me like this!” She threw off her cloak and hat, and in all her white satins faced him paler than he. “Now, if the people you’re afraid of do come,” she whispered contemptuously, “they won’t see anything to amuse them. But listen to me you shall. Even though I don’t know what you are suspecting. Read those.” With a gesture that was superb, she stooped for the letter he had dropped, put it and another into his hand; “then go outside and speak to the boy who’s waiting to take me to the farmhouse, and then tell me, if you like, what you are thinking about me.”

“As you like.” He shrugged his shoulders, having in his day written many a letter that meant other things than were in it. But as he read, his face changed. There was nothing in those letters but their face value.

“Ravenel,” in the stillness she heard the men rising in the dining-room, heard a quick rustle of silk on the stairs, and moved sharply round a corner so that she was out of sight. But Levallion was quicker. They stood now in the porch of the side door, as much alone as in Sahara, and she saw in the dim light that his hard mouth trembled.

“I have behaved abominably,” he said with a humiliation that sat ill on him. “I--I found half a card this morning; and I heard something you said to Adrian the other night. I thought----”

“Here’s the rest of it. It was six months ago I was to meet Adrian,” she answered simply, for she knew what must have been on the card. “Did you think it was to-night? That I meant to meet another man, and steal out of your house to do it?”

“I feel like _Othello_, whom I always considered an egregious ass!” said Levallion slowly. “You see, it was just what I should have done, in Gordon’s shoes.” He slipped card and letter into his pocket.

To Ravenel’s own surprise, the tears came to her eyes.

“You wouldn’t,” she cried hotly. “Never! Why do you lie about yourself? You know nothing would make you do a thing like that.”

“Nor you, either.” She had never heard his voice so slow, so gentle. “I was a fool to doubt you. But I heard--the other night in the conservatory. I thought you cared still; that this--that when I cared at last, fate was having its revenge on me. But I know better now!” Before she could stop him he stooped and kissed the hem of her gown.

“Don’t,” she gasped. “I’ve been wicked. I thought at first when I found out--for I never found out till I saw the ring they cut off his finger--and heard how he got it--that you had known all Sylvia did.”

“My poor little child,” he said soberly. And then wistfully: “You’ll be as happy as you can, won’t you? I--I try, you know.”

“I’m happy, and I’ll be happier,” she answered bravely. “I--you know I like you, Levallion?”

For sole answer he held her hand, hard. Hope waked in him somehow, loyalty and liking were a good half the battle.

“We must go back,” he said. “You forgive me? I was brutal, but it cut, you know,” simply.

Of her own accord Lady Levallion leaned forward and kissed his cheek; afterward she was glad.

“What does this thing mean?” he asked, with a look at one of the letters. “She says she isn’t dying, but that she thought to say so might hurry you. What is it that you must know to-night, or it will be too late?”

“It can’t be anything! All she can tell me is dead and gone,” said Ravenel, with shame. “Oh, Levallion! I hate your knowing how wicked I was, to worry you--and all that.”

“Hush, hush!” almost roughly. “Don’t talk like that. Look here, I’ll tell you what we’ll do! We’ll go over to the farm when the others have gone to bed. The hour won’t matter if they’re sitting up with her. I’ll tell the boy, go, go now.”

There was a kind of awkward hush when Lord and Lady Levallion entered the drawing-room. The duchess had gone away that day, and her absence had loosened Lady Gwendolen’s tongue. Lord Chayter rushed into the breach.

“Where’s that stuff you were talking of the other day?” he asked Levallion. “You said it cured headaches, and I’ve a most infernal one.”

“I said it enlivened the soul, if you had one,” dryly. “It isn’t a medicine. It’s a liqueur, Eau de Vie Magique. But I think I drank it all. I don’t know where it is.”

“In your dressing-room,” said Ravenel promptly. “I’ll get it.” There was something in the women’s faces that troubled her, something covert in their eyes that she was glad to escape from.

Mr. Jacobs arose hastily from a secluded corner and followed her out; and as he lumbered affably beside her she never dreamed that her life hung on whether he came with her or not.

Five minutes later she was back; panting, white, with startled eyes, a squat bottle in her hand.

“Have you seen a ghost?” said Levallion, from where he stood by the liqueur-stand.

“No!” she gasped--and she looked as if she had seen murder!

“Jacobs frightened me--dreadfully! He--I think there must have been a cat.” As she held the bottle out to him it shook in her hand.

“It’s a dead cat, then,” said Tommy. He rose and went to see where Jacobs had gone to, but no one took any notice of his movements.

“I shall have to dose you!” said Levallion lightly. “Your nerves are all off. There’s very little here. Chayter, I’d thought there was more. And it looks muddy!” He poured it out and glanced at it. Instead of being clearly green it was a little clouded.

“Seems so, somehow!” Levallion sniffed it suspiciously.

“Smells of almonds.” He raised the glass to his lips and tasted it, giving the bottle to Ravenel.

“Levallion!” Her shriek terrified them, born of unreasoning terror as it was. “Put it down, don’t touch it!” Wildly, frantically, she tried to snatch the glass, but she was too late.

Levallion had mechanically swallowed the strangely flavored mouthful. He turned to her, smiling. “It’s quite spoiled. You’ve----”

The empty bottle fell from her hand, crashed to atoms on the floor.

“Levallion,” she screamed, “speak to me!”

He swayed toward her, his handsome face convulsed; crashed, like a log, to the floor. As she sprang to him he struggled, his teeth clenched.

“We ought to have gone!” he gasped. “Ravenel--she’s been--too much for me!”

But when she would have lifted his head it dropped lifeless on her breast.

##