CHAPTER IX

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REVENGE--AND A BALLROOM.

The Duchess of Avonmore was giving a ball, and she prided herself on giving the best balls in London.

The big house was a fairy-land of flowers and lights, the staircase was impassable. Ravenel, standing by her hostess in a white satin gown with a string of the Avonmore pearls round her neck, was beautiful enough to take away a man’s breath. The duchess, swelling with pride in blue velvet and diamonds, was enraptured at her looks, for there had been no want of animation in Ravenel ever since that visit to Hester Murray. She was feverishly gay and full of laughter. Not even Sir Thomas knew her spirits came from pride alone.

No wonder Adrian Gordon had jilted her, and no wonder he had wished to keep that mad plan of marriage a secret! He had had excellent reason. It all held together too plausibly for doubt. No one--no one should ever know what a fool Ravenel Annesley had been, to believe in the sweet lies, the passionate promises of a lover like Adrian Gordon. She was glad she had lost his ring; she thanked the fate that had made him repent at the last moment and leave her.

No one seeing her to-night would have dreamed she had a care in the world; yet behind her smile her teeth set suddenly. Two men of Adrian’s regiment, his best friends, were coming up the stairs. They should not have to tell him if they wrote that the girl with whom he had amused himself in the country was either sad or sorry for his sake.

She looked about her sharply for a weapon, for some man whose outspoken devotion should let these men see how little she cared. And there--at her side--was Levallion.

He bowed to her with his old half-mocking politeness. He was very handsome for all his years, and his evening clothes seemed to take from his age. His keen eyes were full of admiration. Ravenel held out her hand, nearly touching those two men, who knew her by sight from seeing her with Adrian Gordon.

“You!” she cried. “At last! Do you know you have never come near me?”

“I was warned off,” calmly. “I am not supposed to be a good playmate for little girls.”

“Now, Levallion, do move on!” cried the duchess over her shoulder. “You can’t talk here,” for he was calmly blocking the way.

“I told you so,” he commented, perfectly unmoved; he took Ravenel’s program, where it dangled from her fan, and wrote his name on it four times in succession.

Two hours later the whole room was agog.

Levallion, who never spoke to a girl and had not danced for years, was doing both.

And he danced admirably. Even the duchess, who was furious, allowed that. But she was so angry with him that she even snubbed her dear friend, Mrs. Murray, who--looking her innocent best in white--was most uneasy at the sight of Sylvia’s stepdaughter on such excellent terms with the only man who ought not to hear of “Mrs. Gordon.”

“Dear Grace,” she said pathetically, “do tell that poor child that she will have no reputation left if she makes herself conspicuous with the most notorious man in London.”

The duchess gave her a stare.

“Tom Annesley’s child and my adopted daughter,” she remarked calmly, if untruthfully, for she had no idea whatever of adopting Ravenel, “has reputation enough to do anything she pleases.” And she turned a stout shoulder on her friend, to the joy of the onlookers.

But, nevertheless, she went post-haste in search of Levallion and his partner, who had mysteriously vanished. And in her own house looked in vain.

Lord Levallion was no novice. He had found the only dark place in the conservatory, and there he and his companion remained long after their four waltzes had crashed out and died languorously.

He was wise from experience. He had stayed away from the house till the girl wondered why he never came. Even now they had been seated for minutes behind a flowering orange-tree before he spoke. Then he stopped fanning her and looked at her.

“When are you going home?” he said.

“Home!” Her face was suddenly wild. She had forgotten! She must face Annesley Chase, her stepmother--perhaps gossip that had leaked out; for a curate who is asked to marry a couple who never come might be excused if he spoke about it.

“Yes, home! Back to Sylvia?” drawled Levallion.

“Oh, I can’t! I can’t!” she said in a sick whisper. “I had forgotten.”

“But you go in a fortnight,” coolly.

The girl laid a trembling hand on his coat-sleeve.

“Lord Levallion, you know the world! You know--Lady Annesley! Can’t I--isn’t there anything I could do to earn my living, and Tommy’s?”

“No!” and for once he spoke bluntly. “There is nothing you could do. You are too handsome; women would not have you in their houses!”

She thought of the long, long summer days at the Chase, with thoughts of Adrian wherever she turned, and was frightened--at herself. Here she could live it down, there--a sob rose in her throat. But she said nothing. She sat like a stone, her hand lying as it had fallen from Levallion’s coat-sleeve.

Somehow, she had thought this man might help her, friend of Sylvia’s though he was.

Levallion glanced at her pale face. There was certainly more than dread of Sylvia there, but it was no concern of his. And without it the girl would never have been here.

“You don’t want to go home, and you can’t work,” he said brutally. “There is one other thing you can do--marry me!”

“Marry you!” she gasped. She sat staring straight in front of her, her hands clenched in the folds of her satin skirt. “No, no, no!” she cried fiercely. “I can’t marry any one. You don’t know me; you can’t want me--you----”

“Are a friend of Sylvia’s!” he finished for her quietly. “Listen! I do want to marry you, and I want to know nothing”--emphatically--“about you that I do not know already. Do you understand?”

A terror shook her. Could he know what a fool she had been, what a laughing-stock she had made of herself for a married man? She could not speak.

“As for being a friend of Lady Annesley’s, I may tell you that the only reason I do not wish to marry you is that it will please her. But that will not matter. She will go out of your life as she came into it. You need never see her when you marry me.”

“But I don’t love you,” she said, with hard eyes.

Levallion smiled.

“I haven’t asked you for love,” he returned indifferently. “I don’t know that I expect it. I am forty-seven years old, and I have no home but grand empty houses, no relations but Adrian Gordon”--if she winced he did not see--“and I want you--and Tommy!”

“Tommy says you are an old beast,” said Ravenel, with despairing frankness.

“So I am!” watching her. “But even I have my good points, though I would not reform even if you married me; it would bore me. I think, though, I might leave Adrian a decent legacy to make up for my astounding daring in getting married.”

He spoke more to himself than to her, but the sense of his words made her face grow suddenly dangerous. Adrian--who had said he must go to India because he was too poor to marry her--was this man’s heir! If she married him would be so no longer. And every pulse in her body beat for revenge on Adrian Gordon, who had deceived her and made her name a laughing-stock in her old home; for there is never anything that is not known in a village.

A curious, slow gleam came into her eyes.

“If I marry you,” she said dully, “can Tommy go into the army?”

“If he can pass his exams. Certainly!”

For a long moment they looked at each other in the dim rose light, the man covertly triumphant, the girl strangely vacant-eyed.

Levallion was not imaginative, but the curious quietude of her crouching attitude in her chair made him think suddenly of a panther he had seen trapped in India. The beast had been dull-eyed, quiescent, like the girl, till a man came within her reach. Then--Levallion moved uneasily--he had never willingly thought of how that man looked when they got him away. Yet the very wildness in her face pleased him. Even at forty-seven, Lord Levallion preferred excitement to calm in his love-affairs.

“Well,” he said gently, “is it Sylvia, or I?”

For a moment she did not answer, then her voice came harsh and changed.

“I will marry you, if you like,” she said slowly, for, now that her revenge was in her hand, it sickened her; “but I’m a bad bargain.”

“You please me,” calmly. He was too wise to kiss her; he did not even touch the hands that lay so still on her lap. He rose silently, and without any will of her own Ravenel Annesley followed him. She never felt him take her hand and lay it on his arm; never saw where he was leading her, till she stood in the door of the ballroom, the center of all eyes, face to face with the righteously angry duchess.

“You had better stay with me, Ravenel,” she said coldly, without a glance at Levallion. But it was he who answered her, not the girl who stood at his side dazed and silent.

“You are too late, dear lady.” Levallion smiled into her cross face. “I have stolen her--for good!”

“What!” The duchess could not get out another word to save her life. The people about stopped talking and listened.

“She has promised to marry me,” said Levallion, laughing.

If there had been a convenient chair her grace would have dropped into it. Levallion! of all men! And yet, why not? He was richer than any man she knew, he was probably no worse than a great many of them, and he had not always shown his evil side to the duchess, who had a sneaking affection for him under her virtuous disapproval.

“My dear Levallion,” she cried, “I wish you joy! But--well, you have surprised me!”

Levallion smiled. His marriage would surprise a good many people--disagreeably--but that affected him not at all.

“Take me away,” said a husky voice in his ear. “Oh, take me away!”

The lights, the staring people, the publicity of it all, were like separate daggers in the heart of the girl, who only a month ago had put on her wedding-gown for a bridegroom who never came.

The duchess patted her shoulder kindly. No wonder she looked pale and shy!

“Give her some champagne, Levallion,” she said. “I see I am not the only person taken by surprise to-night.”

Levallion nodded. But even he did not know how hard it was for his promised wife to lift her head and walk by his side out of the room. And no one in the crush of wondering people on the stairs guessed that the pale girl on Levallion’s arm was taking the first step on the bitter path that leads to the very gates of a shameful death.

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