“ Joan stood in the corridor, white, hardly breathing, as if turned to stone, her beautiful eyes riveted on the spot where the man who was once her lover had disappeared.
"Victor!" she thought, as her whole being seemed to writhe in an agony of despair. "Victor--and in the duke's livery--am I mad?"
She gave a wild laugh, and the sudden sound startled her into sanity. Numbness had followed the shock of seeing the man living, in the flesh, whom she had hoped against hope was dead. Now she seemed to come to life again. ”

“ Joan was seated at the end of the long table in the big, finely furnished diningroom, where luncheon was already being handed round by the men in Sir Thomas' fawn-and-silver livery to some ladies and a man or two who had dropped in and been invited to stay by Lady Thorne. As the kindly, middle-aged, motherly-looking lady welcomed him with what he felt to be pleasurable astonishment, he felt less sickened by the mingled scent of savoury entrées and the pines, forced strawberries and rich rose blooms that decorated the luncheon-table in profusion. ”

“ For awhile, as Joan sat, her lover's arm around her, all about them so bright--the pretty boudoir, decked with dainty gifts of her uncle's and aunt's, gay with flowers and sunshine--she was infected by his radiant happiness. A faint hope stole timidly up in her crushed heart--a vague idea of "misadventure"--"the visitation of God"--as the real cause of Victor Mercier's death, she only the unhappy instrument. ”

“ For your uncle will approve, and you--you, Joan! All that was wanted was your love to make you my dear--wife!"
"Wife!" She sank back and groaned. "I shall never be any man's wife!" she said. "Why? Because I do not want to be! That is all! Because I never shall and will be!"
Was she crazy? He rose, slowly, and contemplated her. No! There were anguish and suffering in the lines about her mouth and eyes--in those lustrous, strained brown orbs--but no insanity. ”

“ Joan, my beloved--the only one in the whole world I care for--for, indeed, you have all my love, all--I am yours, body and soul!--what can come between us if you love me? And you do! I know you do! I feel you don't want to--and I don't wonder, I am not good enough, no one can be--but if you love me, I and no other man, ought to be your husband! ”

“ Joan felt that she could not have borne the innocent chatter of those bright, unconscious girls, so happy in their unsullied ignorance of life and its undercurrent of horrors. Only in a silent, inward clinging to the thought of Vansittart--so soon to be her husband, her mainstay, her refuge, her only hope--could she endure the few hours before she would be safe--safe--alone with him on the high seas, no one knowing where they were or whither they were going. ”

“ Victor sat silently by his companion. His nature was strung up to its fullest tension. First had come the exasperating blow--the discovery that his jealous surmise had been right--the wife he called wife because of those few words spoken in a registrar's office, alone, loved another man--perhaps was even secretly his. Then had come the surprise of Vera's beauty--grace--talent--and the conviction of her great passion for himself.
"I will secure her," he grimly told himself. "I must tell her--something! To know there is 'another woman' will make her irrevocably my own." ”

“ Joan gave a faint cry, and buried her wet, dishevelled head in Vansittart's coat-sleeve.
"Hush, darling, I am here!" he tenderly said. Then, supporting Joan's fainting form, which was already a dead weight, he looked with cool scorn, with stern defiance, at the slender, black-clad figure, at the white, miserable face with those menacing eyes.
"Case, indeed," he exclaimed with scathing contempt. "A jealous woman's vengeance, you should say! But your miserable plot to destroy my injured wife, woman, will succeed in injuring no one but yourself. ”

“ Altogether there was a certain softness about her whole appearance, Joan considered, as she anxiously gazed at her reflection in the many mirrors she passed proceeding to her boudoir, which was on the same floor as the drawing-rooms, and opened upon a small balcony full of flowers, with a peep of the enclosure and the Park beyond, just under the red and white awning.
It was eleven when she entered her room and set herself to write a whole host of letters. She had barely finished three before a brougham dashed up to the hall door. She started up, her heart beating, her cheeks aflame. ”

“ To Joan that dance was like a new, delicious dream. To feel the one she loved as she had never imagined it was in her to love, near her, was in itself an abiding joy. But to have lost the awful burden--her secret link to another--to be relieved of the weight of fear lest she should really be a criminal--that, mingled with the delight of being the betrothed bride of her beloved, was in itself an earthly heaven.
The valse over, they betook themselves to a couple of chairs placed invitingly under a big palm. But Vansittart yearned to be alone with her ”

“ Joan lifted her pale, miserable face--miserable with the woe of reality after the delirious joy of being clasped to her lover's heart--and slowly shook her head.
"I have no terms to dictate," she slowly, dismally said. "I cannot go through a secret engagement! It would be impossible to keep it secret, either. Uncle will guess! Why, I have hardly been decently civil to any man who seemed as if he had ideas of marriage--he will know at once--and then--every one else would know--oh, I could not bear it! ”

“ You have had every chance which the goodness of your fellow creatures, and their kindness to you has been almost unexampled, could provide. You have had, I fear, more mercy than you deserve. For myself, I cannot hold out any hope that your misguided and guilty life can possibly be spared." Then Joan listened in mute agony to the sentence which condemned her to be "hanged by the neck till she was dead"; she heard the awful prayer, uttered with deep feeling by an aged man to whom Death could not long remain a stranger, "and may God Almighty have mercy on your soul!" ”

“ Joan first felt as if her whole mental and physical being were convulsed with a strange, almost unearthly, pain; then everything surged around her, and threatened to sink away into blackness, blankness.
Good heavens, she was going to faint! With an effort of will she fought against unconsciousness; gasped for breath, struggled to maintain her senses, and was rewarded by coming slowly back out of the mists, and seeing the plain, clever face of the dramatic critic appear opposite, seemingly from nowhere. Then she heard that Vansittart was expressing disapprobation of the play. ”

“ But no voices came from out the walls, the ticking of the clock had no sinister meaning. She heard the charwoman singing some common music-hall tune to herself as she swept. Swish, swish, went the irritating broom--then an organ began to play aggressively at the end of the street--a chorus from a comic opera she had heard one night, nestling against Victor in the dress circle of a suburban theatre.
She shuddered and wrung her hands. Why was life so ghastly, so full of horror, of terror? But she must not stand there, letting the precious moments go idly, fruitlessly by. ”

“ They rode off through the sweet summer morning, he so bathed in actual joy, as well as fired by the anticipatory delights of life with Joan for his wife, that in his blissful mood he could have enwrapt the whole of humanity in one vast embrace--Joan abandoning herself with all the force of her will to the natural instincts that underlay all ordinary, acquired emotions.
During her long self-colloquy she had deliberately burrowed, mentally, below her civilized being, and sought these. She had told herself that the primary instincts of woman were wifedom and motherhood. ”

“ Dearly, passionately as I love her, I would rather give her up than behave dishonourably to you and Lady Thorne!"
"Good Lord, what nonsense!" cried Sir Thomas with a short laugh. "D'ye think I don't know that Joan is so soaked in romantic folly that she isn't capable of one single, reasonable, common-sense idea? Go on and prosper, old boy! You have my blessing upon whatever method of courtship you think best to adopt, even if it is to roll her in the mud and kick her, or climb up to her window in the middle of the night and carry her off down a rope-ladder! ”

“ Lord Vansittart went up to it with bowed head, and folding back the sheet that was scattered with the crimson blooms, showed a beautiful waxen face surrounded by close-woven gleaming hair: waxen hands folded meekly on the breast.
"Good God! Dead!" The detective recognized her--he had no doubt as to the fact--but he felt it with a shock.
"No," said Lord Vansittart, grimly, turning to him with a look which he afterwards confided to his wife was the worst experience of his hard-working and disillusionary existence. "Alive! Men may torture and kill our bodies, man, but who can kill the soul?" ”

“ She must love him! How else should she wish to sail the oceans of the globe with him, alone, as her companion?
"Dearest, that will be for you to say," he fondly returned, gazing rapturously at the exquisite profile, waxen and delicate against the drooping black feathers of her picture hat. If only the lines under those beautiful eyes were less sharply defined, and the droop in those soft, sweet lips less ominous of secret sorrow!
But, as he himself termed it, at that juncture in their tête-à-tête Joan seemed to "take a favourable turn." ”

“ If Joan had succeeded in fascinating Lord Vansittart until his passion dominated him to the extinction of all his ordinary interests in life, while she was mysteriously enwrapped in an unaccountable gloom--a gloom which hid her natural charms, her bright, ready wit, her spontaneity, her sympathetic responses to the moods of others, as a thick mist hides a beautiful landscape--in her new gaiety and sudden joyousness she simply intoxicated him. ”

“ There was an air of subdued gaiety about the four at the luncheon table. Joan held her thoughts and emotions in check with a tremendous effort of will. In the afternoon the lovers rode out into the country, and she enjoyed an almost wild ride. She had an idea that bodily fatigue might weaken her power of thought. If only she could tire herself into physical exhaustion, she fancied she might forget. Oh! only to ignore, to be able to ignore the past--for a few brief hours!
Vansittart was too madly in love to take exception to any desire or even whim of his darling's. ”

“ Joan staggered against the wall with sudden horror as Victor walked away and adjusted the chain which shut out possible intruders. Alone in the house--with him--and he was legally her husband! Could she face it? "I must, I will!" she said to herself, clenching her teeth and summoning all the fortitude she possessed to her aid.
As he turned, he noticed her pallor, the wild glitter in her great eyes. "At bay," he thought. "Mad with passion for another man--hates me--what a delicious situation!" ”

“ During that silent drive in the cab he had resolved what complexion he would put upon "that wretched business," as he termed his defalcations and consequent flight: in other words, what lies he would tell this trusting, devoted girl.
"W--What?" she stammered--turning deadly white and gazing at him as if in those words she had heard her death-sentence.
"The old game! A woman pursuing a man," he said, with scornful irony. Why would these women be so terribly tragic? It spoilt sport so abominably! "Don't be jealous! I called her a hag--and she was one! ”

“ With a half-frantic wonder what he had best do, he lifted her in his arms, so strong in his anguish that she seemed a mere featherweight, and carrying her upstairs to her room by a side staircase that was little used, laid her on the bed, and rang for Julie. While a man was despatched in hot haste for the doctor, the two cut and dragged off Joan's soaking garments, and vainly endeavoured to chafe some warmth into her icy limbs. But at last insensibility had come to the rescue of Victor Mercier's unfortunate dupe. ”

“ These were, however, sufficiently in the minority for a verdict of "death by misadventure" to be returned, and when Joan understood that by this she was still unsuspected by man of that which God alone yet knew she had done, the sudden shock of joy was as bad to bear as her agony when she read that Victor Mercier was dead.
"I am not to be hanged, I am not to be shamed before the world--God is just--He is merciful--He has heard my prayer!" she frantically told herself, as in the folly of ecstasy she clasped and kissed the paper, and held it to her heart. Was the world all sunshine, all joy? ”