CHAPTER XIV.

MORE TREACHERY.

“Do you think I should have a crape veil?” Mother and daughter sat alone in the comfortable sitting-room that was Ismay’s own, when a week had passed after the reading of the will and their security was no longer a matter for ceaseless, exulting discussion. Around both of them lay a wild confusion of dressmakers’ patterns, bits of black stuff of all sorts, sketches of gowns which had been, till now, only dreams of Ismay Trelane. Yet she pushed them suddenly off her lap and yawned listlessly. A whole week had gone by without a sign of Cylmer; and yet she knew he had patched up a hollow truce with her mother.

“Oh, I wish I knew if he were in love with Cristiane,” she mused moodily. “I could do more.”

“Do listen, Ismay, and don’t look so sulky!” Mrs. Trelane said smartly. “Do you think I had better have a crape veil or plain net?”

“Crape. It hides your face more!”--with unpleasant significance. “Ugh! How I hate mourning. Mother, where is Cristiane?”

“Where she always is; sitting moaning in that library,” was the answer. “She is so deathly in her plain black serge she makes me cold. And she won’t talk of anything but her father’s grave, and how we must go to Rome in the spring. I never heard of such nonsense as having him moved there. As if he knew where he was buried!”

“I don’t know that I would have dug him up, either,” said Ismay; “but don’t, for Heaven’s sake, say so.”

A faint, far-off sound, which might have been the clang of the door-bell down-stairs, reached her as she spoke. Mrs. Trelane, not nearly so quick-eared, went on gloating over the vision of a soft black silk gown, that should glitter with jet, all veiled with cloudy crape. She did not see Ismay stiffen in her chair.

“It must be tea-time,” she suggested absently. “Perhaps you had better go and find Cristiane.”

“Perhaps I had.” Life in her eyes, the blood scarlet in her lips, Ismay was up like a flash. It had been the door-bell; she had heard the great hall door close dully in the silent house. And a visitor could be none other than Miles Cylmer. Every drop of her blood ached to see him, and there was another reason that hurried her through the passages. Miles must not be allowed to see Cristiane while that scribbled card of his reposed in Ismay’s pocket. His hand had written it, and Ismay Trelane had lacked strength to burn the dangerous thing.

“Even if he does tell her he’s called twice, she won’t believe him now!” she reflected, pausing at the library door.

It was shut. From inside came a murmur of voices. Cristiane’s strained, wild, almost joyful; then another--oh! it was not Miles Cylmer’s.

Sick with terror, Ismay clung to the door-handle. Whose voice was it that she heard, cold, suave to oiliness? Surely she was dreaming; it could not be that voice here!

“Tell me, tell me everything!” Cristiane was crying, but her voice, broken and piercing, was distinct to the girl whose feet were failing under her.

“All I know.” The answer was plain, and conviction struck heavy at Ismay’s heart.

It was he, Marcus Wray! But how had he got here, and what was he telling Cristiane? His voice went on low and smooth, his words she could not hear. And she dared not go in; she, Ismay Trelane, who had said she feared nothing, was cold with fear now. She got up-stairs, her knees trembling under her as she stumbled into the room where Mrs. Trelane sat, gloating over her toilets.

The blood gone from her cheek, her heart hammering at her side, Ismay clutched her by the shoulder, her shut throat so dry that she could not speak.

“Are you crazy?” Mrs. Trelane cried angrily. “You hurt me; let me go.”

Ismay shook her fiercely.

“Go down, quick!” she muttered. “He’s there with Cristiane. He’s telling her something--it must be about us. You must go and stop him.”

“Him! Who?”

Ismay’s grasp slackened.

“Marcus Wray.”

For a minute they looked at each other, the elder woman’s face turning from unbelief to gray despair. How had her enemy found her?

“Go! There’s no time to waste,” the girl said sharply. “I knew he’d hunt us down. I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

Mrs. Trelane drew a long breath.

“Perhaps he will find it is different now,” she said. “We can keep him quiet with money; oh, I know we can!”

“It may be too late--now. And you once kept him quiet with diamonds!”--contemptuously.

“I’ll do what I can.”

She was not so frightened as Ismay, though she knew Marcus Wray. Startled she was at his finding her, yet surely now that she had money and position she could make terms with a man who lived by his wits. A sense of power had grown in her since the day she had looked defiance into Miles Cylmer’s eyes; she felt strong now, even for Marcus Wray, as she opened the library door and went in gracefully, languidly, as though she expected nothing.

Yet what she saw was staggering enough. Marcus Wray, in the flesh, sat with his back to her, faultlessly dressed, as usual, his black hair brushed to satin. Facing him was Cristiane, her checks crimson, her violet eyes shining softly, the dyes of one moved to the depths.

“Dear Mrs. Trelane”--the girl had started up and run to her--“I was just going to send for you. This gentleman has been telling me things I--I was sick to hear.”

Helen Trelane’s upper lip was wet.

“What things, dear?” she managed to say, as Marcus Wray turned round and faced her. Cristiane’s hand was cold in hers, and the touch brought back the deadly chill of Abbotsford’s hand as he lay in the little rose-colored room. But she would not wait for an answer.

“Mr. Wray!” she exclaimed; and, to her credit, there was pleased surprise in her voice. “You here? I did not know you knew my little ward!”

Marcus Wray came forward and took the loose, lifeless hand that she could not make steady, Cristiane clinging to the other the while.

“It is an unexpected pleasure for me,” he murmured, with smooth untruth. “I did not know Miss Le Marchant was your ward. I came to tell her”--he paused almost imperceptibly, noting the tiny drops round Helen Trelane’s mouth--“that I was with her father--at the end.”

His eyes were on hers, in cold warning; yet, in spite of the hidden threat there, the woman breathed again. At least, he had not been telling Cristiane of Abbotsford--and the diamonds.

“I did not know you knew Mrs. Trelane.” Cristiane glanced wonderingly from one to the other.

“You see, Miss Le Marchant,” he said courteously, “Mrs. Trelane and I have been--friends--for some years.”

“We have known each other--well, for a long time.” For her life, Helen Trelane could not keep the angry scorn from her voice, but Cristiane was not woman enough to hear it.

“I am so glad,” she said, with a little sigh of pleasure, “for now perhaps Mr. Wray will spend the night. I have so much to ask him--it seems like a last message”--with a quiver of her lovely lips--“from daddy.”

Mrs. Trelane sat down, Cristiane beside her, on the wide sofa by the fire. Her brain was whirling. Was it possible that Marcus Wray was telling the truth, or was it all a lie to get into the house?

“Please tell it all again,” Cristiane said pleadingly, and Marcus Wray obeyed her, the story of the accident to the train only slightly altered by his being with Sir Gaspard, having accompanied him from Paris, instead of having followed him in that lucky last carriage.

“It was all so quick he felt nothing,” he ended gently. “I would have saved him if I could.”

“Have you been in Aix ever since?” Mrs. Trelane asked dryly.

Marcus Wray made his last, best point with Cristiane.

“I have been to Rome,” he responded. “There was a telegram from Sir Gaspard’s lawyers that he should be buried there, and I, as his only friend, went, too, and saw him laid in his last resting-place. He had told me, in Paris, that he would like to be buried in Rome----”

“But was he ill in Paris?” Cristiane cried.

“Very ill, I am afraid,” Wray answered gently. “He spoke of his wish, at all events, and so I saw that it was fulfilled.” He drew out a pocketbook and took some violets from it that were sweet still.

“These are from your mother’s grave”--his voice reverential, softly thrilled, he put them into Cristiane’s hand. “And he lies beside her.”

But the tiny purple scented things fluttered to the ground, the very flood-gates of her heart opened, she sobbed on Mrs. Trelane’s shoulder, torn with her grief.

“Oh, if I could go, too!” she moaned. “Father, father, if I could go, too.”

Mrs. Trelane caught the girl to her.

“Darling, don’t cry like that; please don’t!” she said authoritatively. “Come with me; come to Ismay.”

She cast an indignant look at Marcus Wray. Why did he harrow the girl with his lies?

“Don’t let him go,” Cristiane gasped. “I want to ask him something.”

“I will wait.” Marcus Wray’s voice and glance turned Mrs. Trelane’s indignation to terror.

Somehow she got Cristiane up-stairs, with the aid of Jessie, who was all sympathy at the quick words Mrs. Trelane whispered.

“My lamb, you must rest!” the woman said pityingly. “You shall see the gentleman to-morrow. Come with Jessie now.”

As the girl went to her room, worn out, Mrs. Trelane forgot to send Ismay to soothe her; forgot everything on earth but Marcus Wray. Cristiane was out of the way; it did not matter where Ismay was.

She little knew how those early morning inspections of Ismay’s had familiarized her with every room and nook and passage of the house. Nor that a door opening into the library from the drawing-room was masked by bookshelves on one side and curtains on the other, and had warped so that it could never be quite closed from the weight of the shelves on it. But Ismay knew!

Crouched tailor-fashion on the floor, she had heard from her hiding-place every word of Marcus Wray’s, and her quick brain was working, as she waited for her mother’s return, like a detective’s on a clue.

“It was not to tell Cristiane that drivel that he came,” she thought nervously, almost afraid to breathe, lest his quick ears should know it. “There’s something more. Oh, I wish mother had listened to me and never gone to Lord Abbotsford’s.”

Her mother’s voice cut on her ears as the door from the hall closed behind her.

“You have nearly killed the girl with your lies,” she cried. “Why couldn’t you come and ask for me, instead of playing a game like that? I know quite well you came to see me.”

“You are--partially--right!” Cristiane would not have recognized the voice, so slow and insulting. “I did come to see you. But I did not tell lies, but truth--embroidered.”

“You knew I was here,” she retorted angrily. “You did!”

“I did”--with amused mockery.

“Then what do you want of me? Do your worst and go. I tell you I will not live like this, to be bullied by you!”

“Whom once you bullied,” the man answered quietly. “Sit down, Helen, and don’t scream your conversation. I am here as your friend.”

“My friend! How?”

But Ismay heard the soft rustle of silks as Mrs. Trelane sat down.

“I’ll tell you, only listen and be quiet. I was with Sir Gaspard in Paris, but by chance, as a lawyer, not as his friend. Do you understand?”

“No.” Very low, and it was well Ismay could not see how her mother was cowering before Marcus Wray’s contemptuous eyes.

“Don’t you? Well, I made that will. Now, do you know what brought me here?”

“To make me pay you to go away”--bitterly.

“No, not that. I do not mean to go away; and what good would the pittance you could screw from five hundred a year be to me? I am going to pay you short visits often; the girl likes me----”

“Mark,” she broke in, “what for? Why do you want to come to a dull hole like this if it was not to get money out of me?”

A thought that sprang in her suddenly made her gasp, and then speak louder.

“Or do you want to make love to Cristiane, and marry her, and have me turned out by betraying all you know?”

“I don’t mean anything out of that exhaustive catalogue”--coolly. “Let me recall a clause of the will to your memory: ‘If my daughter Cristiane should die unmarried or without children, the property and all moneys of which I am possessed shall go to my only remaining relative, the aforesaid Helen Trelane, reverting on her decease to her only daughter, Ismay Trelane.’ Now do you see my meaning?” His voice was low as caution could make it; his eyes spoke terrors that could not be said even to the wretched woman before him.

With a dreadful, strangled wail she was on her knees beside him.

“Mark, Mark! Would you make me a murderess?”

His eyes burned into hers as he stooped closer to her, where she shook on her knees.

“What are you now, if I speak out?” he said slowly. “You can take your choice.”

“I can’t do it! It would be madness. She is young. Oh! for God’s sake, say you didn’t mean it.”

“Mean what? I said nothing. You need do nothing. But if that happens you are free. Why, you fool! Do you think I want you to give her a dagger?”

“Marry her; let me go, and marry her! You’d be rich!”

“I am going to marry Ismay,” said Marcus Wray.